Chapter 24 #2
I’m not sure why he wants to.
“It’s my responsibility.” I move away a couple feet. “Fallon wouldn’t want this, and I can’t believe Ciaran would either.”
If she knew who he was, she wouldn’t want him involved at all.
Slicing into the earth, I pull out a lump of soil and dump it to the side.
“You should wait for dark,” Farrow warns me.
But I might not have till then. “I’m doing it now.”
Before I forget, I pull a folded envelope out of my back pocket and hand it to him. “For the burial arrangements when the time comes.”
And then I send him off. I need to be alone.
I continue digging, pushing the shovel in with my foot and locking my jaw to keep the bile down because eventually, the shovel is going to hit bone. I cringe every time the shovel burrows into the dirt, waiting for it.
The ache of that night returns, and I try to push it away and keep moving, but I know I deserve this. I owe him.
My chin quivers. “I’m sorry,” I murmur to David Miller. “I’m sorry I left you here.”
I kept staring at Miller’s chest, willing it to move. Please.
My chest shook as I knelt at his side, in the mud, not blinking.
“If it makes you feel better,” Drew said as he squatted next to me, “he tried to offer up his girlfriend to me to work off his debt.”
The thirty-two-year-old man on the ground laid with his eyes half-open.
“I mean,” Drew went on, “I’ll still fuck her, of course, but—”
I howled, lunging for Drew and digging my fingers into his throat as I squeezed. “You piece of shit!” I cried, bringing my fist down on his face like a hammer. “You lousy, fucking piece of shit.” I got in his face. “I hate you!”
Tears quaked in my vision, and I pinned him to the ground. A smile curled his mouth even as I choked him.
His guys grabbed me, dragging me off.
But grief overcame the anger—the pain, regret, and fear—and everything bubbled up from my stomach. I vomited on the bank of the pond.
No, no, no, no, no, no…
Heaving once, then twice, I emptied my body, wishing I could die.
Or just wake up.
Please let me wake up.
I sobbed quietly, the life I had ten minutes ago a dream compared to what I willingly walked into in just as short of a time. I shook my head.
“I thought for sure you’d be the one to jump ship first,” Drew mused, standing up and dusting himself off. “All your daddies are fine, upstanding civil servants—I was certain you’d be the one with overwhelming character.”
Daddies.
Madoc, Jared, Jax… My father. Why didn’t I know better?
“But you weren’t.” I heard his lighter snap shut as he lit a cigarette. “It was Lance who had the character. You knew something was wrong, but unless you have the guts to walk away, what does it matter?”
I squeezed my eyes shut against the shame. Why didn’t I leave with Lance?
“You like Green Street,” Drew told me. “More than you know you should. When I picked the two of you, I never thought you’d be the last one standing.”
I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my suit coat.
“Thanks for buying the building.” His voice held back glee. “Luckily, Lance was stupid enough to believe it was his idea.”
My heart sank, realization dawning. Fuck…
“I wish it would’ve worked out, though,” he told me. “It would’ve made everything easier. The women like you.”
“My mom thinks he’s a good role model,” his guy, McCann, joked.
I stared at David Miller—a thug, an addict, and a burden on everyone around him. But he liked the smell of a good fire, and collected old radios, and tomorrow he could’ve woken up and made himself into a person he liked. He didn’t deserve this.
“He was a good role model,” Drew replied to McCann. “Until he murdered Miller.”
I ball my fists.
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” his other lackey, Carlo Shield, mimicked.
Followed by the third, Luccson. “We tried to stop you.”
They just fucking played along with the new story as the walls closed in.
They were framing me.
“We just couldn’t hold you back from hurting him,” Shield added.
Grabbing my phone from where we left ours on the downed tree trunk, I turned to Drew.
“Try it,” I bit out. “I have a permanent seat at the dinner tables of two of the best lawyers in the state.”
Madoc might’ve been a little more talented than his father, but Jason Caruthers had a bigger network of powerful friends after thirty-five years.
But Drew just shook his head at me. “And I have fifty people willing to swear that Miller wasn’t your only victim,” he fired back.
“You brought in the drugs too,” Luccson chimed in, eyeing me.
“And the whores,” Shield offered, a sad pinch to his brows. “You turned those poor, young girls out.”
Oh, fuck you. I didn’t do any of that shit.
“You do what you want to do,” I growled, opening my phone and dialing. “I’ll do what I have to.”
Holding it to my ear, I faced them, ready to repel an attack if they come at me.
The line picked up. “Shelburne Falls Police Department,” a woman answered.
I opened my mouth, but not before Drew. “And I even heard his biggest customers were some fine, ‘upstanding civil servants,’” he cooed to his crew, telling another lie about me.
My customers?
“Hello?” the officer prompted over the phone.
Fine, upstanding civil servants. Did he mean Madoc?
And then it hit me. He wasn’t just framing me. He was threatening my family.
My hand fell away from my ear, and I ended the call.
Drew approached. “You brought this on yourself,” he said. “You shouldn’t have tried to stop me. We could’ve been partners. Family.”
Until he killed me, he means? It was only a matter of time.
“But still…” He took my phone and slipped it inside my breast pocket. “I’ll always protect you. We’ll go dispose of Mr. Miller together, you can go home, and we’ll never speak of tonight, or Green Street, again.”
His boys started to drag the body back up to the grass, beyond which their cars were parked.
“I have no interest in the Falls,” Drew explained, meeting my eyes. “I like a nice clean town to work in, and maybe set up a wife someday. Madoc can stay. For now. But you will never set foot across the river again, and when we run into each other, you be fucking civil as I pass by.”
Like it’s so easy, right? Just move on and live my life, and ask others to invest their love and friendship in me when he could turn my life upside down at any time and ruin theirs in the process?
Not to mention leaving a man in some lonely grave without any explanation to the people who loved him?
He fixed my wet collar, and I shoved his hands away. “If you tell Caruthers—or anyone else—” he warned, glancing at the dead body being carried away, “well, I’m capable of more than this. Just so you know.”
So many times, I almost broke the silence. My mom knew something was wrong, and so did everyone else. They thought it was a girl. Maybe I’d been cheated on or I got someone pregnant. Jax even asked me if it was gambling at one point. I laughed. I wish.
I told myself that I was scared for the family and what he might do to them. That even accusations are taken as truth these days. The taint of a rumor could ruin Madoc’s career.
I worried about their safety and Quinn’s association with me. What if I were out with her, teaching her how to drive or picking her up from school and we ran into Drew? I can only imagine what he would’ve tried with her if he’d gotten Madoc or her father under his thumb.
But the truth was, I was simply ashamed.
Disgusted with myself for being stupid. For being selfish and greedy for something of my own when I already had so much.
Even if I felt that I didn’t want to stain Madoc’s future with a dead body I’d helped bury, I should’ve stayed and protected them.
I should’ve figured out a way to make it right, even if it took years. Even if it made me sick every day.
I ran to hide. To pretend that Shelburne Falls and Weston didn’t exist.
The shovel hits something hard, the tip grating over a rigid stone. But I know it’s not a stone. Nausea roils through me, the feel of the raw, porous material vibrating up the handle and into my hand.
I tighten my jaw and close my eyes. Oh, Jesus.
I grip the shovel, the days and the years and the snow storms that raged here flashing through my mind as he faded away under the ground.
Biting the inside of my mouth, I tip the shovel back, peeling up the soil and unearthing his bones.
I know I should leave it for the police, but if Hugo gets to David Miller, his body could disappear forever. Or just indefinitely until Drew decides the best time—maybe two years, or ten years, from now—to use it against Madoc and me.
I may go to prison, and I’m fine with that now because I can’t live with it anymore. As long as I take Drew Reeves with me and get him away from everyone I love, like I should’ve done in the first place.
The moist soil turns up easily, and so gently, I rake my gloved hand through the earth.
Closing my fingers around piece after piece, I place each one in an open canvas bag, the tears streamlining down my face of their own accord.
Fragments of clothes dangle, and my gut shakes with the need to throw up.
I breathe deep, squeezing my eyes shut when I feel the skull.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur again as I set it in the bag. I’m sorry you ended like this. I’m sorry I challenged Drew. I’m sorry I didn’t anticipate him. I’m sorry I helped hide you here.
And I’m sorry I was quiet for too long.
Farrow arrives back at the train tunnel in no time, and I wrap the bones in the bag, letting him put it into the bed of his truck as I take another small envelope from him.
“Are you sure he didn’t have family?”
Farrow takes the shovel from me. “Yeah, I double-checked. And the girlfriend left town years ago with her husband.”
“Tell them to prepare the grave and headstone.” I start to walk away. “Don’t bury him yet, though.”
The police will want to see the remains.
Digging out my keys, I walk to the car and open the door. I stop and face Farrow once more.
“I know you want Green Street,” I explain, “but I can’t give it to you.”
I just need to clear the air on that.
He just slams the tailgate shut, shrugging. “Then don’t. I’ll take it.”
God, I hope I never have kids. Or sons, at least. He’s so fucking annoying.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask, not expecting an answer. “You don’t need it.”
He has a loving, successful family with connections. If he chooses to make himself known to them. I know now how valuable that is and how stupid it is to risk it. People who don’t actually have options would envy him.
I start to climb into the car when I hear his voice behind me.
“My mom was a fling of Ciaran’s twenty years ago,” he calls out. “She was afraid he would take me away—or both of us, if he knew about me—and she didn’t know how to be someone she wasn’t.”
I look back at him.
“She didn’t want to be rich or live anywhere else,” he goes on. “She didn’t want me seduced by his money and private schools, so she kept me to herself.” He pauses. “I went looking for a family too. Same as you.”
So we both lost our fathers, in a way. I did the same thing he’s doing. I had it all, but I felt pulled to something I didn’t need. For him, he got something he never wants to lose.
“Green Street is still what you tried to make it,” he points out. “Even just a little.”
He found a family there.
He has people he cares about there, or maybe the whole town, but I’m almost grateful to hear it wasn’t all a waste. That there is some good there.
We leave the shallow grave open, exposed, for the police when the time comes. Heading back into town in our own cars, I continue to Quinn’s shop, watching Farrow fly by, continuing to Weston.
With my eyes peeled, I scan for Hugo. For Reeves. My blood cooks, making the hair on my arms rise. If Hugo is true to his word, he’s coming tonight.
Parking on the curb, I see her inside, through the window in the door to the kitchen.
Hugo doesn’t have the bones now, but that won’t stop him from dealing with me. I’ll need time to draw Drew out. Until that happens, Quinn stays with me when it’s dark.
She moves around her tables, heading toward the kitchen, and I follow, into the alleyway.
After two knocks, the door opens. She peers up at me with a messy ponytail and flushed cheeks and lips that look like pink gum. And instead of chastising her for answering without asking who it was, I step inside and sweep her up, kissing her as the door closes behind us.
Wrapping my arms around her thighs, I tip my head back, letting her have complete control.
“How are you doing, not running on any sleep?” I almost accuse. She looks bright-eyed as she kisses me like she’s not exhausted too.
But she simply grins. “I feel good. High as a kite.”
To be honest, I don’t feel the same. A weight sits on my shoulders, and I could sleep for a year, but I don’t deserve rest. If I can just hold her for one more night…
I set her back on her feet. “I have a present.”
“Number seven?”
I cock a brow at her, remembering what number seven was on her birthday wish list.
Instead, I pull out the envelope with the title and the car keys I had Farrow acquire while I was busy at the tunnel.
Handing her the keys, I gesture toward High Street. “It’s old, but it has character.”
She takes the keys, looking confused. Holding her hand, I lead her to the front of the shop where she can see the old Jeep at the curb. Farrow had the owner drop it here before he gave him a ride back home and then returned to me at the tunnel.
She looks between the keys to the car. “You bought me a car?”
I don’t get nervous at the fact that she’s not smiling. Even if she doesn’t use it, I need her to have options.
“Just a starter one,” I tell her, cradling her face in my hands. “You need something for the business, and you can’t ride your bike back and forth to Weston in the dark. I’m putting my foot down.”
She cocks her head. “Oh, are you?”
I plant a kiss on her mouth. “Be good and drive it.” I turn to leave through the kitchen again. “Or I won’t do number seven to you tonight.”
She might not remember what it was, but I do. Wear a collar.
I have no interest in anything but being as gentle as possible with the most precious thing in my life, but…I can do what she wants and still be tortuously sweet.
And I’m not worried about the car. Once she realizes how much easier life will be with a vehicle, she’ll drive it.
“Where are you going?” she calls out.
I glance back. “Pet store.”
I face forward again before I see her smile appear, but I know it’s there. Number seven requires props.