Chapter 35
35
FORD
I grab the bag with flashlights, battery packs, and two long sweaters from the trunk.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t do this in the morning?” Dulce asks, looking at the sun as it sets.
“I think if you are closer to the time of day it happened, it would trigger a memory,” I tell her, pointing at the tree line.
She looks down the road. “Remembering the rocks digging under the pads of my bare feet. The stinging pain…” She closes her eyes like she is in pain.
There is nothing I want more than to take it away.
“Danny found me right about here.” She points at the middle of the road and then looks to the right by the embankment, where it isn’t as steep. I always wondered why he was driving down this road.”
“I don’t think it was fate or luck,” I tell her.
“You think he was part of it? That he was involved somehow?”
“They never caught the bastard, and he is a cop. He made it seem like he was your hero. Checking up on you for the last four years.”
“You have a point.”
I hand her a flashlight and one of the batteries for her phone. “Here. So you don’t get lost or lose power on your phone.” I look over at the tree line. “Where do you think it happened?”
She walks toward the embankment, and before I can stop her, she slides down, thankful she is wearing jeans. “I think it was here. Well, where I ran from.” She looks back up and then to her left deeper in the woods.”
I slide down the same way she did and walk ahead. Letting her follow. “Here?”
She looks around like she is trying to find a clue or anything that she can remember. She steps forward, and I give her a minute because she needs this. Closure.
“Take your time,” I assure her softly.
She turns her head and then nods. I wait and watch her, her Vans crunching over the thick brown leaves with every step. Every so often, she looks back as if she is measuring the distance from the road to where it happened.
She takes about ten steps and then stops. Looks at the trees, then at the road, and back.
“I think it was here.” She closes her eyes and continues, “I heard screaming. Like something was being attacked and it was being mutilated… it was dark, and I was stupid for running in the woods instead of following the road, but I turned after they left and thought I saw someone following me.”
“Who?” I ask, holding on to her every word, trying to keep calm even though my heart is beating hard inside my chest.
As much as I want her to have closure, I want to finish this.
“I don’t know. I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me because it was dark. I was alone and scared. I was so scared, Ford. There was someone, and he was following me. They knew I would be out here. They knew. There is no one for miles. I have driven down this road and except for Moody’s cabin, there is no one.”
She looks around, and I lean on a tree, watching her.
A breeze causes the leaves to move. A twig snaps, and Dulce jolts. “I’m right here,” I assure her.
She wraps her hands around herself, and I want to go to her, but this needs to play out. My phone goes off in my pocket from an incoming text.
Trent: It’s all set in place. I see her.
I pocket my phone before she turns around.
The sky is bathed in twilight. Her eyes stare at the ground when the screams start.
She jolts, and I come up behind, pulling her to my chest. “What was that?” She muffles against my chest.
Silence, and then a man screams louder like he’s in pain.
“HELP! HELP! OH GOD!”
Dulce grips my shirt. “Ford?” she cries out.
I stare at her, not moving an inch. Our gazes lock, and I can see the confusion swirling in her eyes.
“Ford, what is going on?”
“Do you trust me?” I ask softly.
Her eyes go wide. She looks scared shitless.
“Do you?” I ask a little louder.
She nods. “Yeah, but…”
Another piercing scream. She grips tighter.
“It’s okay,” I soothe, rubbing her back.
“How. Who’s out there screaming?”
“Who do you think?” I tell her, removing her hand from my shirt and walking deeper in the woods, following the markers I left behind.
“Where are you going?” she asks frantically.
“To find out who’s screaming?” I say calmly. “Don’t you want to know who it is?”
“But…”
I raise a brow. “I’m here. Nothing is going to happen. You can call Officer Mays.” I smile. “I’m sure he would come.”
She glances at her phone and then looks up. “There’s no signal.”
“Out here, no.”
“Ford, you’re scaring me,” she says in a shaky voice.
Another pathetic scream.
“I think someone is terrified.” I nudge my chin for her to follow. “Let’s go investigate.”
She follows me for ten minutes until it’s dark, and we have no choice but to turn on the flashlights. This wouldn’t have worked during the day.
The scream gets louder until we reach the source all dressed in white, hanging from a tree by his pathetic limbs.
“Oh my God?” She looks left and right and then lets out a piercing scream when Trent comes out from behind a tree. “You scared me. What the hell?”
“Sorry,” Trent says apologetically.
Dulce looks up. “Why is he up there?”
“I think you should ask him that yourself, Dulce?” I reply.
Chris kicks out his legs like that is going to get him out of the shit he is in.
“It hurts,” he cries out in pain.
“It should; your guts are hanging out. I’m sure the drugs in your system have worn off by now.”
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Dulce says, placing her hands above her knees.
“He’s ugly, isn’t he?” Trent says with a smile.
“Nice handiwork,” I praise. “I couldn’t have done better myself.”
He’s naked like he left her with his intestines hanging out. His face smashed on, and his cock half off.
“It was him?” she asks and then closes her eyes.
“You son of a bitch. I’ll kill you, Ford,” he says, gurgling on the blood pouring from his mouth.
“I think you would have to get down first, and I don’t see that happening. Why don’t you start by telling her the truth? Start there.”
“It was… me,” he admits, “I did it. I did it. Christ,” he moans. “It hurts.”
Dulce runs behind a tree to throw up. I walk over and hold her hair out of her face as she retches.
“There he goes,” Chris says between gasps, “we all knew she was your crazy obsession…” He gurgles. “But I had to know…I had to know how good her pussy was and damn…” He gurgles, coughs, and continues while Dulce throws up, “It was good.”
“Shut the fuck up, Chris,” Trent growls. “How long, Ford?”
“Until he gets here,” I reply.
Dulce takes a breath. “Who?”
Footsteps approach. We turn our heads.
“Well, well. The plot thickens,” Trent says in a surprised tone.
“What the hell is going on?” Officer Dickhead says, looking at Dulce and Chris hanging from the tree. “What the fuck?”
“Danny,” Chris says, “you see… they are my friends.”
“What’s going on?” Dulce says, perplexed.
I shine the flashlight on Mays and then on Chris, “Tell her,” I demand.
Mays pulls out his .9 mm and aims it directly at Chris.
“What are you doing, Danny?” Dulce says, looking between Mays and Chris.
“Yeah, what are you doing, Danny?” Trent mocks.
“Not a fucking word, Chris,” Dickhead warns. “You open your mouth, and I’ll put a bullet in you to match the gaping hole in your stomach.”
“Damn, bro. That’s how it’s going to be. You try to move in on my girl, and now you’re going to kill me for telling her the truth?” Chris whines, blood dripping down his chin.
“This goes one of two ways. They kill, or I will,” Dickhead tells Chris, moving closer.
“I’ll take liar for two hundred, Alex,” Chris singsongs, then his voice goes gravelly like sandpaper. “Tell them what you did, Danny.”
“Who are you?” Dulce asks Danny with tears in her eyes.
I shine the flashlight on his stupid face so she can see how much of a lying piece of shit he is.
He squints and steps back from the light. “His family threatened me. I have a dark past, and this was my fresh start. My uncle is Moody. He was out here with him that night,” he admits, lowering his weapon in defeat.
“Moody?” she says in disbelief, and the Dickhead nods with a painful expression.
“It’s why I came back when he asked me…”
“To come and help him with me,” she says, my hand tightens on the flashlight.
Danny nods.
“Motherfucker,” Trent says. “You’re related to that sick old fuck Moody, and you helped this piece of shit rape her?” he bellows.
“I wanted Dulce…but she wanted you, Ford,” Chris says through the pain. “She wouldn’t look at me the way she looked at you,” Chris says like that’s an excuse. “I wanted a family. She was perfect, but she didn’t want me.”
“So raping and leaving her to die was the answer?” I thunder. “Do you know what you’ve done? What she went through. She could have died.”
“I’ve been inside your girl…” Chris spits. “Both of them so that must count for something.”
“Shoot him, or you’ll go down. You’ll be up there with him. Disembowelment was a form of capital punishment, and God knows you deserve it,” I warn Danny.
Mays points the gun at Chris. He won’t shoot all of us. Maybe Trent and me, but not Dulce. I can tell by the way he looked at her, he wouldn’t.
Chris is a dead man hanging. He’ll bleed out and die anyway. I made sure of it, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this lying piece of shit in front of me.
“You lied to me, Danny,” Dulce says with disgust and hot tears streaming down her cheeks. “You knew it was him,” she says, her voice shaking in anger. “That is why you were driving on the street. You were looking for me.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, but I didn’t let him go near you after that,” the Dickhead says.
“The rats?” she questions, glancing at Chris.
“That was me,” Chris says like it’s a game.
“This is all a game to you,” she whimpers.
“Dulce, come here,” I call to her softly.
A sense of relief washes over me when she practically runs over and wraps her arms around me.
“I knew it was only a matter of time before Ford would piece everything together. I thought he didn’t care, and I would’ve made it right. I would have taken care of you. Protected you.” Mays tries to convince her, but it falls on deaf ears.
She glances toward him, gripping me tight like I’m her anchor.
“Like you did for him,” she says, pointing at Chris.
“We all have secrets, Dulce,” Chris says, and my blood turns cold. Chris glances at me, his eyes half open. The drugs are wearing off, and he continues, “Ford has been keeping one from you. One he begged for no one to tell.”
Dulce loosens her grip and glances at me. “What is he talking about, Ford?” she says, taking a breath after a sob.
“Tell her, man,” Trent urges.
I hold her hand. “I have a problem.”
Chris gurgles on a laugh.
Danny’s hand is shaking, but he doesn’t loosen his grip on the gun. “I can’t,” he says.
Silence. I look at Trent, and he gives me a signal with his eyes.
“You bastard,” Dulce finally says.
“I’m sorry,” Danny says in defeat, closing his eyes.
I move swiftly and tackle Danny to the ground. I take the gun from his hand and point it at his head. He raises his hands in surrender.
“Get up,” I demand.
He gets up, and I motion with the gun for him to move toward Chris.
Chris’s head is rolling to the side. He’s lost a lot of blood and will bleed out soon enough.
“What do you plan on doing, Ford? You’ll end your career. And for what, a girl from Airy,” Danny taunts. “You could have any woman on the planet. Why her?”
“Shut up and kneel,” I demand in a hard tone, pointing the gun at his head.
“He laughs. You’ll end up in jail, and her business won’t last a month. How do you think she’s stayed in business this long? She pays the least amount in rent.”
“You never wanted her to leave for fear she would remember and tell the truth about what Chris did,” I point out, piecing everything together.
He needed help.
“We couldn’t tell,” Trent says, standing behind him.
“The nice guy act is a ruse. It was so they would adopt him and get the money we needed to survive. I became a cop, but the pay sucks. I needed more,” Danny adds.
“But why Dulce?”
“We all hated you, Ford. Hell, I hated you. There was something about the way you looked at her.” Chris turns to Dulce. “Do you know he is sick, Dulce?”
Dulce glances at me with a confused expression, wiping her mouth.
“We all wanted to fuck you,” Chris says, above a whisper. “I did, and that makes me your first. You never forget your first, Dulce. We could have been good together— better than Ford. He’s crazy. Obsessed. He knew where you lived, what you ate. He made sure you stayed a virgin.”
“Could you just die already?” Trent cuts in. “You always talked too much.”
I hesitate for a moment, not knowing what is going through her head right now.
“I wasn’t the only one there that night,” Chris says.
Hot fury burns in my gut. I press the tip of the gun to Danny’s forehead. “Speak!”
“I-I was there,” Danny stammers, earning a look of betrayal from Dulce. “I helped him rape her,” Danny confesses.
I pull the trigger. Dulce screams, and Danny slumps over. I wipe my prints off the gun and hand it to Trent. “Take care of it.”
Dulce watches stunned at Danny’s body lying on the thick leaves. His blank eyes open.
“Get her out of here,” Trent calls out as he walks closer to Chris.
I grab her hand. She is shaking uncontrollably. Most likely from the shock. “Shh,” I say in a hushed tone. “I got you. No one will ever hurt you again, but I wanted you to see for yourself.”
Another gunshot. Chris’s body slumps, dangling from the rope. I light the path following the red markers nailed to the tree, finding our way back to the road.
I help her up the embankment. When we reach the road, she sobs into my chest. “They all knew. They all lied.”
I wrap her in my arms. “I know, baby. It’s over. It’s all over. You’re safe.”
“You knew I wouldn’t remember what happened when you brought me here.”
I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t going to let this go. Danny’s involvement made it a huge complication. I had to pin Chris’s death on him. I couldn’t take Chris out and leave Danny to go free and risk him telling anyone. He had to pay, and killing a cop is hard to cover up.
“I love you, Dulce,” I breathe in her hair as I wait for Trent. “Always remember that.”
A gunshot goes off from Trent pulling the trigger, making it look like Danny shot Chris.
“I love you, too,” she says through tears. “What now?”
Katie pulls up in the rented Camry as Trent dashes out of the woods. “Let’s go. We don’t have much time,” she says.
Trent opens the passenger side, and Dulce and I slide in the back. “Where are we going?” Dulce asks.
Katie glances at her through the rearview mirror as she drives us to the airport. “To Italy.”
She looks up at me. “Italy?”
I smile. “Remember that villa we talked about?”
“You have one of those?” she asks, dumbfounded.
“I do,” I tell her.
“Lucky,” Katie says, then glances at Trent, “You don’t have a villa.”
“I don’t live in Italy,” he says like she’s an idiot.
“Oh…that’s right. You live in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere.” She smiles sarcastically. “How romantic.”
“I like it hard and fast. Like my car.”
“You finish fast, like your car,” she fires back.
He leans back in his seat. “I’ve had no complaints.” He shifts in his seat. “You didn’t.”
She scoffs. “Not to your face. You didn’t stick around long enough.”
“I lose interest fast.”
I sigh. “Will you guys just fuck already,” I cut in.
“Hell no,” they both say in unison.
I can tell this is going to be a long ride.
“Are you okay?” I say softly near Dulce’s ear as she looks out the window, oblivious to Trent and Katie bickering like teenagers.
“Yeah,” she says, squeezing my hand.
She hasn’t let my hand go since we got in the car. The Tiffany engagement ring on her finger digs into my hand. A stark reminder that she said yes, and that, finally, she’s mine.