Chapter Twenty-three – Where Have You Been #2
“Six months after we’d been married, I knew my time was running out.
Eddie was demanding more and more money, and Jacy was watching me like a hawk, with the cameras trained on me.
I took more beatings because I was afraid of taking from the table.
I didn’t know what to do. Dad was in the midst of his first campaign for county supervisor, so there was no way I could bring any of this to his door.
Besides, he’d already made his position clear.
I was shit out of luck if I expected him to help.
“But one day, I was going through an old wallet of mine, hoping for cash to add to my take before Eddie got home, and I found the card Dawson had given me. It felt like a…sign. I called him and spilled my guts. He drove to Clover Lake the next day with an FBI colleague of his, and they worked a deal for me with the tribal leaders. If I could help them catch Eddie and return the cash Eddie had hidden in our floorboards, they’d get me out.
“I’d never felt the weight of my father’s disappointment the way I felt Jacy’s that day.”
Tears flooded my eyes again. Jacy had been so kind, and I’d bitten the hand he’d offered. More than once.
“Things got worse when Eddie’s sister showed up unexpectedly. He freaked out, counting money and disappearing for two days before he came back angrier and more volatile than ever before.
“Marla was… I don’t know… I saw her as shy and meek, and yet she watched everything we did with these scarily knowing eyes. She barely spoke, and when she did, it was this awful, gritty sound because of an accident she’d been in that had ended with their dad dying.
“She didn’t like me. I could see she thought I wasn’t good enough for Eddie. She did whatever Eddie told her to do, waiting on him hand and foot.
“He treated Marla like she was nothing more than an expensive burden. She was enormously overweight, and any time he saw her eating, he’d give her a hard time about it, saying she was costing him a fortune in food. He was cruel with his words to her, whereas he was cruel with his hands to me.
“I felt sorry for her but didn’t know how to help myself, let alone her.
And things had gotten worse for me since she arrived.
I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere unless Marla or Eddie were with me.
One of them dropped me off and picked me up every day.
Finally, one day, after Eddie had gone off on both of us, I tried to convince her to leave, or leave with me when I decided to go.
When I got home that night, she’d told him everything I’d said. ”
Cooper leaned into me, tipping his forehead into mine and running his hands up and down my arms. “You don’t have to keep going, baby. Don’t keep doing this to yourself. Just point me in the bastard’s direction. I’ll make sure he’s put away for life.”
I swallowed over the lump that had grown in my throat. “He’s dead.”
Cooper jerked back, eyes meeting mine. “Jesus…” His brows furrowed. “The other day you said something about a ghost. This is what you meant?”
I nodded.
“After the day Marla told on me, it became her job to shadow my every move. She stayed at the casino my entire shift, eyeing every person I talked to or smiled at. She would tell Eddie who’d won at my tables and who’d lost. If anything seemed out of the ordinary, if I got called into the back room to talk to a boss, I was grilled when I got home.
“I felt like I was losing my mind, losing every piece of me that was left. So, one day in June, I called Nolan, Dawson’s FBI friend, and told him I couldn’t do it anymore. That I needed out. That I needed to leave.”
Even through the numbness I’d tried to surround myself with as I told the story, I trembled so hard that I bit my tongue, knowing what was coming.
Cooper wrapped me in his arms again, holding on to me when I needed it most. I wanted to believe it meant something good. That it meant he saw the real me through the ugliness.
“When I walked in the door that night, Eddie threw me onto the kitchen table, held me down with an arm to my throat, and played a recording of my conversation with Nolan. He broke my index finger in fury, all while ranting that he knew all about my little deal with the FBI and the tribal leaders. That for my lack of loyalty, for turning on him, I was going to pay the price.”
I rubbed my chin, and Cooper cursed under his breath. My next words were a whisper. “I thought I was going to die… When I finally blacked out, I was glad. I didn’t want to live like that anymore…”
My voice trailed off.
Cooper squeezed me tighter. “Andie…” It was then I realized he was trembling too. I held on to that, to him, for several minutes before I kept going. I was almost done with this chapter. There were only a couple more paragraphs left.
“When I woke, I was on the living room floor. I don’t even know how I got there from the kitchen.
But I was covered in blood. Some of it was mine…
but some of it was also Eddie’s. He was lying on the floor next to me.
He’d been shot in the chest…and the gun was in my hand…
But I swear…I don’t remember pulling the trigger.
I didn’t own a gun, and I’d refused the one Dawson had offered me.
Eddie had been deathly afraid of them since he was a kid.
He wouldn’t touch them, and he certainly wouldn’t have spent money on a fancy one with a pearl-handled grip. ”
Cooper placed a gentle kiss on my lips, and tears welled, rushing down my cheeks unstopped.
“Stop. Just stop.” Cooper’s voice was raw. Thick with emotions. Pity. Anger. Sadness. “The bastard got what he deserved, Andie. No. He didn’t get even a tenth of what he deserved.”
I rested my forehead on his chest. God… Maybe, just maybe, I could have something good. Maybe this purge would actually lead to something wonderful. Something perfect, like a family with Cooper and Luca and Akela and the Wylees. A dream world. A beautiful life.
“I don’t understand why you’re hiding. The cops had to know, even if you pulled the trigger, it was in self-defense.”
“I panicked. I tipped the gun inside the hole with the money Eddie was hiding and passed out again. When I woke back up, I was in the hospital, and a very scary man was in my room. He handed me a phone. The woman on the other end…” I shuddered.
“Her voice was ice…no…it was pure evil. She told me if I didn’t hand over the money Eddie and I owed her, she’d kill me just like I’d killed Eddie. ”
My heart was beating so fast I thought it would fly away from my chest.
“I didn’t know if I’d killed Eddie, but I knew she thought I had.
I didn’t trust the FBI after Eddie had found out about our deal.
I wasn’t sure I could trust anyone. So I told her where the money was.
She said the man in my room would remain until she called back once she had what was owed to her. ”
“Where was your dad? The police? How did this man even get into your room?”
I scoffed, “I didn’t see Dad. I knew he had to have been called to the scene. He had to know I was at the hospital, but not a single person from the department came to question me.
“When the man’s phone rang again, he handed it to me…and the woman…” I gulped, remembering with absolute horror the deadliness of her voice. “She said the money and the gun weren’t there. She thought I was lying. That I was hiding it somewhere else. She said the man was going to bring me to her.”
The fear that day could still evoke in me was sharp and harsh. The bulky man in his black suit and flat eyes had smirked at me and given my body this sleazy once-over, as if he was going to like taking me to her. As if he was happy at the prospect of what was going to happen to me.
“I don’t have a single doubt that I would be dead today if Marla hadn’t shown up at the hospital, inconsolable and ranting.
Eddie had sent her to Sacramento to pick up his new suit, and she’d come home to the crime scene tape.
She ranted to anyone and everyone about how I’d told her I was going to kill Eddie.
That it was premeditated. The scene she made drew security, and someone called the sheriff’s office.
In the confusion, the man who’d been in my room slipped out.
“With everyone’s backs turned, I ran. I ran and called the only person I could think to call.”
“Dawson,” Cooper said, and I nodded.
“He took me home with him to San Francisco, swearing the entire way that Nolan wasn’t dirty. That if someone at the FBI had turned, it wasn’t his friend, but I told him I couldn’t trust anyone. I wanted to just forget everything. That I wanted to leave.
“When Dawson had worked for the FBI, he’d been undercover for a long time, bringing down a Japanese cartel, and he had connections still to that underworld. He helped me obtain a new identity.”
Cooper frowned. “But you couldn’t have come here. If you were only twenty-one or twenty-two…you’ve only been here for eight years.” His eyes widened. “Unless you’re not thirty-five.”
For some reason, that struck me as funny. The fact he was worried if I was younger than thirty-five.
“I’m not thirty-five… I’m really thirty-one. But you’re right, I didn’t come here first. I went to Idaho. I worked at a dude ranch there…and that was where I met Ben.”
Cooper stilled. “Ben?”
“He was nothing like Eddie. Sweet. Timid. Shy. But an amazing dancer. We were friends. Just friends at that point. But someone thought we were already more…because things started to happen at my apartment, like here. Things were moved or dirtied. Things occurred that made me question my sanity and whether I was doing it all myself. Eddie… He’d hated it when I cleaned and tidied up after him.
He’d said he refused to live in a museum.
That a house wasn’t a home unless there were things out of place.
If I cleaned, he purposefully made a mess.