Chapter Twenty-Two #2
When he got back to the crap box where his mother slept, he popped a beer, chugged some.
Then using the excellent luggage she’d bought him, he packed all his new clothes.
She slept on while he took the travel case that held her jewelry, took the cash from her purse, and the few hundred more she’d kept in her underwear drawer.
He’d stop by an ATM in the morning, pull a couple more thousand out of her account just to tide him over.
Since he knew the passcode for her phone, he opened it, checked her texts. As expected, she’d texted her fuckwad of a second husband twice that day, and he’d responded.
He studied the style, the shorthand, then sat and wrote a text of his own.
Long, terrible day, but it’s over now. I just woke from a much-needed nap.
I’m writing this, then going back to sleep.
Sweetheart, I need a break. I’m taking Dustin to a spa for a few days.
Mitzi leaned on us both hard, poor thing, and I really need some quiet and some pampering.
So does Dustin—he’s really been a rock through this.
I’m going to turn off my phone and just be.
I hope you understand. We’ll drive home from there, and be rested, relaxed, and ready when we’re all together on the 23rd.
I miss you so much and love you even more.
“Yeah, that sounds like her.” He added the heart emoji as she did to all her texts to the asshole.
He set the phone aside, then turned to study his mother. He’d wanted her awake and aware when he did this. But he was ready to get some sleep himself.
He walked to the bed, shoved her onto her back. She barely made a sound. So he straddled her, began slapping her, just firm taps at first, than sharper, harder.
He saw her eyes rolling behind the lids as she moaned a little. So he kept hitting her, palm of the hand, back of the hand, palm, back. A trickle of blood slid out of the side of her mouth.
Her eyes, heavy, glassy, opened. “Dustin.”
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s the son you didn’t care enough about to keep the family together.” He closed his hands over her throat. “The son you had locked away for nearly five years.”
She struggled, weakly, and the weak was a disappointment. But her bloody mouth tried to find air, and her feet drummed on the bed.
And that was satisfaction.
“You had this coming. Payback for every time I had to pretend you mattered.”
He eased his grip so he could hear her draw one last painful breath. So he could hear her try to choke out his name.
Then he squeezed until the fear in her eyes went dull, until those eyes fixed. Until her convulsing body went limp.
“I never loved you, not even a little.”
Looking down at her, he felt the same desperate excitement he’d felt when he’d strangled the girl he’d picked up hitchhiking in Nevada, who wouldn’t put out even after he’d given her a ride.
He was so hot and hard it was nearly painful.
He took it to the shower, jerked off under the spray and steam. And felt renewed. He felt free.
He dressed, then took the jewelry off the body. The flash of her wedding set, the emerald ring on her right hand, the Cartier watch, the discreet diamond studs in her ears.
As he packed them, her phone signaled.
Just getting up for the day and saw your text, baby.
I know you’ve had a brutal time of it. I hate being away from you, not there to help you through it.
Take the time you need. You know I wish you’d go on your own, but I understand why you feel you should take Dustin.
I just don’t want him to break your heart again.
Tune out the world for a bit. I can’t wait to see you again, hold you again, be there for you again.
Until Christmas Eve Eve, my love. You’re my everything.
“Fucker,” Dustin said even as he composed a last text.
What would I do without you? Thank you for understanding. I only waited for your response before I turned off my phone. Travel safe, and come home to me.
He added the heart, waited until Lester acknowledged the text with another stupid heart.
Dustin shut off the phone, tossed it aside.
After setting the alarm on his own phone, he went to his room to get a little sleep.
He, a man who’d accomplished the first steps of a mission, slept dreamlessly and well.
When the alarm woke him, he rose, made coffee, took a long, hot shower.
He glanced in his mother’s room.
Yeah, still dead.
After he dressed, he boxed up what food and drink from the kitchen interested him. He loaded up the car, then let out a sound of anticipation when he got behind the wheel.
He’d hit that ATM, pick up his gun, then head west!
Yippee-ki-yay!
He lifted a middle finger to the house and the woman lying dead inside it. He found a station on the satellite radio that suited him before he drove away, singing along.
After a fun, casual meal at her cousin’s house to welcome her aunt and uncle for their holiday trip, Arden drove home in the shimmering dark.
It had rained, of course, most of the day, but now the skies held clear and star filled.
Uncle Doug and Aunt Jen had extended their trip, and the next day would start scouting the areas she’d earmarked for their retirement.
They’d find their place, she knew it. And felt a rush of satisfaction that she’d have played a part in helping them.
As she drove up to her own home, she felt another wave of satisfaction.
“Look, Zorro, at our pretty lights, our pretty tree in the window. Let’s go in, put on some sweet and silly Christmas movie, and wrap more presents.”
She gave it two hours, took time to fashion elaborate bows. With more presents tucked under the tree, it felt like Christmas.
As she stood enjoying the lights on the tree, the simmering fire, the candles adding the scents of cranberry and pine, she thought she already had her Christmas wish.
A home she’d come to love where she felt safe and happy. A man she loved, and as he’d admitted to being more than half crazy about her, maybe a future there.
She could let herself want a future now. She wouldn’t wish for it yet, but she could want it. A future with Gideon, someone she loved, someone who loved her. Children. A family like she’d had before that horrible night she’d lost her parents. A family like she’d been given after.
More stockings hanging from the mantel.
“We won’t ask for it yet.” Because he sat beside her, she put her hand on Zorro’s head. “The New Year’s not far off. Let’s see what it brings.”
She readied for bed, planning out her next week.
Work, bake Christmas cookies. Work, shop for her first-ever Christmas dinner in her own home.
And enjoy every moment.
When he woke in the morning, energized to begin, Dustin held his new Glock. He couldn’t wait to use it. Though he felt it wiser to start his way west, he saw no reason some opportunity to do so wouldn’t arise along the way.
But for his first stop, he headed to the airport, and long-term parking.
He switched plates with a Toyota SUV. He figured to put a few hundred miles between him and Columbus, then switch them out again.
He really wanted a big-ass, muscular truck for his new life with Arden, but that could wait. Maybe when he felt ready, he’d find a chop shop, sell the Mercedes on the cheap.
Money wouldn’t be a problem.
Then he could buy a truck with his new ID.
And he should probably stop somewhere, find a firing range. He wanted to practice with the Glock because when he used it, he didn’t want to miss.
At the end of her day, Gideon brought pizza.
“This is just perfect. I had such a good day, and now there’s pizza. And how was yours? Your day.”
“Not bad. Pretty quiet, actually. The biggest thing involved a couple of women fighting over a pink cashmere sweater—twenty percent off, and the last in a size medium.”
“Twenty percent off cashmere’s nothing to sneeze at. Pink’s not my best color, but I might have tussled over a mossy green or lapis blue.”
“Lapis blue’s pretty specific.”
“Which is why I might have tussled.”
He angled his head. “You look good.”
“I feel good.” She poured wine, then sat with him at the island.
“The new book’s moving well, my editor’s high on the one I turned in.
Aunt Jen and Uncle Doug spent today touring the three locations I picked out for them.
They’re leaning toward Myrtle Creek, which is just what I imagined for them. And?”
She picked up a slice of pizza, bit in. “It’s almost Christmas. I’m going to bake cookies. I could start on those tonight if you want to help decorate them.”
“You don’t want me to do that. As a kid, if I came here, I’d do that with my grandmother. My skills there, just sad. In LA, the cook would rope me into it, same results. Once, my mother and I did cookies.”
“Movie star cookies.”
“Hard as rocks and not nearly as pretty. We did laugh our asses off though.”
“I’m sorry you won’t see them for Christmas.”
“They’re traveling.” He shrugged. “It’s how it goes. We’ll catch up after the New Year.”
“Well, it’s Christmas Eve at Zoey’s, and Joe’s coming. Then it’s Christmas dinner here. And I’m going all out, so I need to bake those cookies.”
She didn’t just look good, he thought. She looked happy.
“Into it, aren’t you?”
“With a vengeance. My apartment was an apartment, the house in Columbus a stopgap. This is home. Plus?” She smiled over another bite of pizza. “I have a boyfriend.”
“Aren’t we a little old for that term?”
“Gideon, a woman’s never too old for that term. And because I have a boyfriend who makes beautiful things, I hope he’s made me something.”
Now he frowned over the pizza. “Like what?”
“If I said like what, it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
“I’m still making you bookcases.”
“Uh-uh.” A firm headshake. “Contracted, Chief Riley, doesn’t count.”
“Now she tells me.”
“You’ll think of something. And because I’ve given you a challenge, you can sit here, drink wine, or go watch some sporting event, read a book, whatever while I make cookies. These are like a test-drive. I’m doing the real thing on Christmas Eve.”
He sat there, finished the wine, switched to coffee. And eventually she coaxed him into decorating a few.
He hadn’t lied. His skill in that area barely reached abysmal.
She had to laugh. “How can you make and build beautiful things, then glomp icing and sprinkles on innocent cookies so a snowman looks like a terrified and tortured prisoner of the North?”
“I warned you.” He picked up the glomped-on cookie, had a bite. “Tasty though.”
And as with the disaster he and his mother had baked, he found the fun was in doing it together.
“You can take what’s left into the station tomorrow.”
“All of them?”
“Sure. Test-drive checked off.”
Turning, she wrapped around him. “Thanks for indulging me.”
“I got cookies out of it.”
She’d looked and sounded too happy, he thought, to have spoiled that by telling her he’d found another woman Dubecki had harassed. Another redhead.
He wouldn’t keep it from her. He’d tell her.
But not tonight.
Dustin decided to take a little more time at O’Hare’s long-term parking than he had at his stop in Indianapolis. He thought of it as a double switcheroo. He put his plates on a Lexus, then put those on a Subaru, and took the Subaru’s for the Mercedes.
He didn’t mind the cold, even though the wind blew bitter and sharp. He did mind the couple who drove up in a Ford Escort so he had to pretend to load luggage in his trunk.
They took so long unloading theirs he considered using them for target practice.
Could be fun. He’d shoot them—bam-bam—then dump their bodies in their car. But they hauled their bags away with their voices carrying on the wind.
I can’t wait to get out of this freaking cold!
Aruba, here we come!
He watched them go, thinking they’d never know he’d had the power over their lives. If he’d chosen, there wouldn’t be sun and surf, but a deep freeze in a Ford.
It perked him up so he whistled into the wind as he made the last switch.
He decided he’d earned a night in a decent hotel, so sat in his car, heater running, and pulled up on his phone.
He booked a room for the night, plugged the address into the GPS. A hot shower, he thought, room service, a movie, plan out tomorrow’s route, and yeah, find a firing range along the way.
Maybe he’d do some shopping before he left Chicago. Pick up some clothes for Arden. Something sexy, just for him.
She’d wear what he chose, what he paid for, what he wanted her to wear.
He checked in, made some mouth noises to the bellman about driving to Iowa to spend the holidays with his family. And shrugged off the warning about a storm coming in.
He ordered a steak dinner, capped it off with a slice of chocolate cake while he watched an action movie.
He played with his gun awhile, miming shooting the good guys, and when he tired of it, set the gun on his nightstand and turned off the lights.
He slept the blameless sleep of the sociopath. And woke to thickly falling snow. Looking out his window, idly scratching his balls, he said, “Fuck it.”
He’d book another night if he had to. And if he had to, he’d do some of that shopping.
Over his room service breakfast, he checked the weather along his plotted route. Something he admitted he should’ve done before.
Adjustments for bad weather forecasts added time, and that frustrated.
But better more time on the road than sliding off into a ditch or having some asshole slide into him.
He called the front desk to extend his stay.
He’d get there when he got there. Arden would wait for him.