Chapter 34
Annabelle
Dies next to Jack.
Those words ring through my head, and all of a sudden, shit gets real.
Really real.
Before now, it felt like I was walking through a dense fog, where my brain wasn’t quite processing everything the way it should.
Ethan being one of three identical triplets, their dad being a serial killer who killed my mum, their control, my acceptance at just letting them into my life and taking over.
It’s like it happened to someone else, and I have her memories, but it’s hazy.
“Fuck,” I mutter, pulling my hand away from Callan’s. “This is fucked up.”
“Talk to us,” Aidan says, his tone wary. He can see I’m seconds from bolting.
But bolting gets me right where Jack wants me. I’m caught between three monsters and a worse monster.
I laugh once, and it comes out wrong. Thin.
Frayed. “Talk to you about what, exactly? The bit where you all keep casually discussing murder in front of me? Or the bit where a DI just slammed into me on purpose, and apparently that means he’s in on it?
Or maybe the bit where I’m sitting in a café trying not to scream while your father hunts me because my mother made the mistake of existing near him? ”
Nobody answers straight away.
That silence nearly tips me over the edge.
I shove both hands into my hair and stare at the scratched tabletop. “I can’t do this.”
“You are doing it,” Ethan says quietly.
I look up so fast my neck hurts. “Stop saying that like it helps.”
His expression stays level, but I can see the tension in him now. In the set of his jaw. In the way his fingers rest too still beside the bag. “Tell me what you need.”
“I need for none of this to have happened.” The words tear out of me before I can stop them. My throat burns. “I need this to not be real. I need to go back home and find her in the kitchen, dancing to the radio while she makes dinner. I need the last four years of my life back.”
Callan’s eyes darken, pain flashes across his face before it goes cold again.
“I know,” Ethan says.
“No, you don’t.” My laugh breaks apart. “You know your version. I know mine. I spent four years rotting in that house after she died. Four years of being given the run around by the people who were supposed to be helping, barely eating, barely sleeping, barely functioning, and now I find out the man who did it is real, has a name, has sons I’m literally in bed with, has a fucking Detective Inspector helping him, and all of you keep talking like this is manageable. ”
“It is manageable,” Aidan says.
I turn on him. “That is exactly the kind of insane thing I mean.”
His eyes narrow, but he does not snap back. “It’s manageable because we’re here.”
“And if you weren’t?”
“Then you’d be dead,” Callan says flatly.
The bluntness hits me right in the chest. I stare at him. His face gives nothing away. That almost makes it worse.
I drag a shaking breath into my lungs. “You can’t just say things like that.”
“Why?” he asks. “Because they frighten you, or because they’re true?”
I want to tell him to fuck off. I want to crawl under this table and vanish. Instead, I sit there with my pulse hammering and feel tears sting my eyes again.
The waitress interrupts us. She’s different from last time. Older, more hardened. “Keep it down and order or get out,” she says.
“Four cheese salad sandwiches and four Coke Zeros,” Callan states after a beat because Aidan looks like he is about to rip her fucking head off and shove it into her apron pocket.
I inhale deeply, eyes closed for a second, before a strange sense of calm washes over me. Ethan is right about one thing. I am doing this. I have no choice. Running and hiding will get me taken and killed by the same man who took my mother. “This is pointless,” I say, opening my eyes.
“What is? Eating?” Adian snaps.
I give him a vicious glare that forces him to return it with an apologetic expression.
That anger, that pure, hot anger that this man just invoked in me, is the first spark of real life I’ve had in I can’t remember how long.
“Shut the fuck up,” I growl and take pleasure in seeing his eyebrow go up at my tone.
“Going round in circles is pointless. We need a plan. A definitive, no-holds-barred plan. I’m done.
I’m done drifting through life like a fucking ghost of my past self.
I’m sick of you three fawning over me at the same time as controlling every move I make. I’m sick of—”
“Fawning?” Ethan asks, almost like I insulted the first of his line. Mind you, looking at the current generations, maybe he deserves it. “We aren’t fawning. We are caring.”
“Your idea of caring is closer to a fetish than actual care.”
“You wanted it,” Aidan interjects. “You let us do all those things without complaint.”
“I didn’t have a choice. I was drowning.
” But it’s a weak argument. He’s right. I practically begged them to control me.
“That is beside the point,” I say, lifting my chin higher.
“I’m not the same person I was a few days ago.
This has been a rude awakening. A very rude awakening.
Do I want to go back to being semi-functional and weak?
Maybe a little. But I know the truth now.
I have a name and a face, and if the police aren’t going to help me, and all I’ve got is you, I’ll take it. ”
“Gee, that’s really generous of you,” Ethan drawls.
I sigh sharply. I am being harsh, but it’s keeping me moving forward. “I’m sorry it sounds so cold.”
“Never apologise for your feelings,” Callan says.
“I just want this over so I can figure out who I am now.”
The waitress slaps down four plates of food, then returns with the cans of pop, which she dumps on the table with four paper straws.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “We are in the middle of something.”
“Clearly,” she snaps, but her gaze softens a bit when she looks at me. “Eat up and go.”
“We will,” I say with a nod.
“Annbelle,” Callan asks as I crack open my can. “We are going to do everything in our power to get you the closure you need. But what happens after that?”
I go still because it’s the exact question I asked them. What happens afterwards?
The answer is one I don’t even have to think about. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The words settle over the table and change the air.
Ethan goes very still. Aidan looks at me like he wants to drag me over his lap and shake the rest of the truth out of me. Callan only looks at me, but something in his face eases.
I take a drink of Coke because my mouth has gone dry. “Don’t make a thing out of it.”
Aidan snorts. “You just told us you’re staying. It’s already a thing.”
“I’m staying because the alternative is death, trauma, or both. Let’s not get sentimental.”
“Liar,” Ethan murmurs.
I ignore him and pick up half a sandwich. My stomach twists, but I force myself to bite.
The first swallow is hard. The second is easier.
The mood relaxes a little until my phone buzzes on the table between us. I blink, sandwich at my mouth before swallowing and placing it back on the plate.
I reach for it at the same time as Aidan does.
“My phone,” I say and snatch it up. The screen lights up with a withheld number.
I know before I even read it that it’s him.
I open the message.
Enjoy your lunch, Annabelle.
Ice floods my veins.
A sharp sound leaves me. Not quite a gasp. Not quite a sob.
“Show me,” Ethan says, voice low.
I hold the phone out because my hand is shaking too hard to keep it steady. Ethan takes it. Aidan reads over his arm. Callan doesn’t move for a second, then he turns his head and scans the café in one swift, brutal sweep.
“He can see us,” I whisper.
“No,” Aidan says. “Callan followed him out of town. He knows where we are because of the DI.”
“Phone clone.” It’s Callan who says it. “He didn’t leave anything behind. He cloned your phone.”
“What?” I frown. “How is that possible?”
“It’s possible,” he says. “If you are technologically savvy enough.”
“Fuck,” I whisper. “So he can read everything? See where I am? Hear calls?”
“Potentially location, messages, data,” Callan says. “He can’t hear us talking now.” His face has gone cold in that frightening, measured way.
I look around the café, and suddenly every person in it feels wrong. The couple by the window. The man stirring his tea. The waitress glaring at us from behind the counter. Any one of them could be looking for too long, reporting back, watching me shake apart over a cheese salad sandwich.
“Okay,” I say eventually. “How do we deal with this?”
“We kill the fucking phone,” Callan says.
“No,” I say, shaking my head.
“No?” Ethan asks.
“No. Let him taunt me and try to frighten me. Let him keep thinking he has me pinned where he wants me. Let him call me up if he wants to. If I hide behind a new phone, it’s giving him what he wants.”
“Are you sure about this?” Callan asks with a frown.
“Yes,” I state with more determination than I think I’ve ever possessed, ever had to possess.
A muscle jumps in Ethan’s jaw. “You don’t need to prove anything to him.”
“I’m not proving anything to him. I’m proving it to myself.”
“That’s not better,” Aidan mutters.
“It is to me.”
Callan is still looking at me with that unnerving, precise focus of his. “If we leave the phone live, we control what he gets.”
Ethan turns to him. “You’re agreeing with this?”
“I’m saying if she keeps it, we use it properly.”
Aidan lets out a harsh breath. “I fucking hate this plan.”
“You hate every plan that involves not cutting someone open immediately,” Callan says.
His eyes meet mine, hot and dangerous. “That’s because cutting someone open usually solves the problem.”
It is so unhinged, my breath catches. I rub my damp palms against my thighs under the table. “Can we please stay on track?”
Ethan sets my phone down in the middle of the table like it’s evidence. “Fine. We keep the phone active. But from now on, nothing sensitive goes through it. No calls that matter. No messages that matter. It becomes a line to him and nothing else.”
I nod. “Fine. Business as usual then. It’s not like I’ve got a busy social life, is it?” I’m bitter. I can’t help it.
Callan reaches for his Coke and takes a measured drink. “He wants a response,” he says. “He wants a reaction more than anything else. Fear. Panic. A mistake.”
I look at my phone in the middle of the table and feel a strange kind of hatred for the stupid cracked screen. “Then he can choke on disappointment.”
Aidan gives me a look. “You say that now.”
“I mean it now.”
“That’s what matters,” Ethan says.
I drag in a breath and force myself to pick my sandwich back up.
My appetite is gone, but I eat anyway because I am sick of being the woman who falls apart and forgets food while men tell me what I need.
The bread sticks in my throat. I wash it down with Coke and hope that I’m prepared for this to get worse.