Chapter Twenty-Eight
Regan
I sit on a vinyl bench in the dark hallway at the hospital, waiting to hear how Jack is doing, if he’s okay. When I called
the medics, they came fast considering the location, and now I just sit and pray, over and over again, that he’ll make it.
I just got him back, please, God.
I told the police everything he said—that Tom Blanc is the brother of the man Jack put in prison and the family has a criminal
history. I can’t prove it was him, though. I didn’t see his face and I had never seen the truck before. I was running for
my life, so it’s not like I stopped to take down plates. It’s just like Jack said. They can do something like this and get
away with it, but that seems impossible.
All they can do is question him, so they’re headed to Sasha and Tom’s house now.
I tried to call Sasha—to warn her—but her phone goes right to voice mail.
I told my mom to pick up Hallie from school, and I didn’t answer all of her questions because the less she knows, the better.
There’s nothing more I can do to protect my family at this moment unless the police find something, anything, and can make an arrest. How likely is that if this family has gotten away with unthinkable crimes for years? Is Sasha a part of this? Does she know?
When my phone buzzes, it echoes down the hollow corridor and jolts me out of my thoughts. I fish it out of my bag and see
a message from Andi. I stand up and my hand instinctively flies to my mouth. There’s no actual message. It’s just a location.
It’s almost forty miles away near the cliffs in Pine Bluffs. But there are messages from earlier I didn’t look at. She tried
to call me, saying she was heading to Sasha’s. Said she needs to talk to me about Jack and sent a series of photos from her
phone. A photo of Jack’s real name, a photo of Dominic Terreli, who I now know is Tom’s brother in prison. Does Andi know
that? She didn’t give an explanation . . . just said that it’s urgent we talk. Oh, my God. Jack was right. None of this is
coincidence. It’s all connected.
She’s left a voice mail just now. I’d ignored any calls or messages that weren’t about my daughter getting to her grandmother’s
or about Jack, so I just now click to listen.
There’s no message. It’s just white noise until I hear her in the background. She’s muffled, but I hear her screaming. “Why?
What do you want from me?” Holy shit. My pulse races. Then there are sounds of a struggle and I hear her say, “I won’t tell
anyone I was here if you just let me go.” Jesus.
I call the police, who tell me I have to call the police in Pine Bluffs.
When I do, they tell me the best they can do from my statement is a welfare check, but they need an exact address.
I don’t have one. I have an area to look in, but Andi’s phone didn’t send an exact address.
Maybe because it’s so rural, or because Andi’s signal strength wasn’t great.
And the photos are meaningless to the cops.
I babble, trying to tell them how I think this string of events is related, and they tell me to come in to make a formal report. I don’t have that kind of time.
I tell a nurse I’ll be back in a little while, because there’s nothing I can do sitting here right now anyway. What if this
is my only chance to catch the son of a bitch? This could be my only opportunity to avoid running for the rest of my life
and leaving my family and always living in fear. What if this is the only way out? I could be wrong, but I have to at least
try. Is my life more in danger doing nothing and waiting to be picked off? And what about Andi? The police can’t send someone
out to an approximate location, and they don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about when I spout about drug lords in prison
from an arrest ten years ago, and they can’t exactly act on my conjecture. It’s up to me.
I take a taxi the few miles to my house, and when it drops me off, I move quickly. I open the garage and take the Remington
870 out of the safe. Jack’s old pickup, the one he always wanted to fix up but never had time for, is still sitting here—I’m
so glad now that I didn’t have the heart to get rid of it. I shove the gun onto the floor of the truck and screech out of
the drive to find the place on the map Andi sent me.
It takes me to a rural road lined in evergreens and boney oaks that have shed most of their leaves.
The location she sent indicates this road, but I have to find out where she is exactly.
There are only three houses on the whole mile stretch.
It’s dusk now and a light rain starts to fall, but I can still see down the long driveways as I pass in the afterglow of the sunset, and I can make out the shapes of the houses and see movement.
The first house is 12091 and there is a mother with a baby on her hip closing the car door in the drive and hollering into the house for help with her bags.
She looks down the drive at me with something between a scowl and confusion at my presence.
Not the one. The next house is dark, so I pull in and creep up the drive with my light off.
I see the figure of an elderly man in the front window.
The television illuminates the dark front room, and I see his silhouette.
He stands and comes to the front door, peering out at me.
“Hey!” he says, standing in his baggy sweatpants, holding a beer in one hand and shaking a finger at me with the other. This
is not it. I back up and make my way down to the last house, a quarter mile down the dark, woodsy road, my heart in my throat
because I know this one is it. Andi is there. Tom Blanc must be there. I glance behind me at the gun on the floor, anxiously
making sure it’s still by my side.
When I pull up to the edge of the drive from the street, the mailbox says Carro on it, and in the back of my head, that reminds me of something, but I can’t figure out what—no matter how hard I think,
I don’t know who the fuck’s house this is. I thought something might make itself clear, but it’s just that feeling of something
being on the tip of your tongue or the edge of your brain—things aren’t coming together. I instantly make the decision not
to drive up. I don’t want anyone to know I’m here. Whatever’s going on, I want to sneak up on it and be prepared. See them
before they see me. I pick up the gun and hold it by my side as I walk carefully and quietly up the dirt drive, and when I’m
close enough, I see lights on inside the house and my heart almost stops when I see the truck—the pickup truck that followed
us. It steals my breath. He’s here.
I stand frozen for a few moments, trying to decide how to proceed, but before I can make a next move, I hear something.
A small sound like a cry or a faint whimper.
I pad silently, gun in position and ready as I inch toward the sound, and when I see it, I have to suppress a scream.
I cover my mouth and lay the gun in the wet grass and fall down on my knees next to her. It’s Andi. She’s hurt. Shot.
“Jesus,” I say. But her eyes are closed and she doesn’t speak. She only utters a soft moan of pain, and her pulse is weak.
I pull off my jacket and wrap it around her waist, trying to add compression to the wound, and then I call 911. I tell them
we need a medic right away. I tell them the man who shot her is still on the loose and that he’s dangerous.
“Oh, God,” I say, stroking her hair. “It’s okay, help is coming, okay? You’re gonna be okay. I’ll wait with you. It’s okay.”
But then I see the back deck light come on and a screen door fling open.
“Who’s there?” a man’s voice says. Jesus. It’s Tom. This is really happening. Why is he here? I don’t even know where I am
or how Andi got here. It all swims in my head and I stay down on the ground with her, trying to remain unseen. Then I hear
the screen door slam and footsteps down the back stairs.
“Run,” I hear Andi say in a labored whisper. I turn my attention back to her.
“Medics are coming, Andi. Okay?” I say again so she doesn’t feel abandoned, and then I duck into the shadows of the sycamores
and move quickly to the front of the house while Tom looks for me out back. I crouch down in the bushes and listen. I hear
him shuffling around. Then the shed door opens and closes. He flashes a light around and then goes back inside and the screen
door slams again.
Inside, I hear someone crying. A woman. Muffled voices. I plead quietly to myself, praying hard to hear the sound of sirens coming down the road, but nothing. Then, suddenly, the front door swings open and the porch light comes on.
“Hey!” Tom’s voice yells. He’s heard me but he can’t figure out where the sound came from. My truck is hidden behind the trees
on the road. I try to stay hidden and wait it out until help comes, but I hear him rush down the front steps and start coming
in my direction, and at this point I have no choice. I hold up the shotgun, readying myself, and then I move out from behind
the brush I’m hiding behind with the aim of catching him off guard. He’s holding out the flashlight on his phone in one hand.
His back is to me as he flashes the light toward the other side of the yard, near the parked truck. I see a handgun stuffed
in the back of his waistband, his free hand poised to grab it.
I step out, and he hears me and whips around, grabbing for his handgun as he does, but he’s met by a shotgun, only a few feet
from his face. He drops his gun and holds his hands up.
“Regan?” he says, and I’m afraid of dropping the gun because I’m shaking so hard. I have never done anything remotely like
this before, so now that I have control, I don’t know what to do with him. I don’t want him to run, and it’s freezing out
here, so while I still quietly beg the universe to let me hear the sirens coming, there’s nothing, so I tell him to go inside.