Chapter Twenty-Two
Everyone’s problems boiled down to one issue and one issue only.
Everyone had underestimated a woman.
Lana had realized her mistake first. So she had saved Eve from Jon’s clutches, gambling that the save would also buy Darius more time.
Eve had realized her mistake second.
Maria had been the person at Scott’s side the entire time. The spoiled rich socialite in designer clothes, always looking bored and annoyed and superior. Never in touch with anyone below her status. Always a passive-aggressive word or ten to people like Eve.
A woman to avoided for sanity’s sake.
Scott had probably never seen her coming.
Lana had, and that’s why she had jumped ship once Jon Decanter, ghost from the past, had joined Maria’s forces. Lana knew Maria would be the one to clean house for Scott, and not even she thought she could outrun her forever.
Eve knew Maria had already realized her mistake since she had gone with Jon to the warehouse. If they had wanted to lure Mitchell out, they would have used another location. But Maria wanted Eve, and Jon gave her the quickest path there.
As Eve walked through the unlocked door, she saw the satisfaction pass over Maria’s expression. She stood from her seat on an old box and waved. Darius, behind her, was alive and cuffed to something.
If Eve hadn’t been boiling with rage at the man between them, she would have cried in relief.
“Oh, Evelyn, how sweet,” Maria started. “You really do seem to love the detective. Oh dear, I guess Mitchell was indeed just a match of convenience. Scott is going to be so upset when he finds out he was played like this. Especially when he thought his brother was the one playing you.”
She giggled.
Eve ignored her.
She had taken a few steps inside the warehouse, the door closing behind her.
She had no weapon. No way to defend herself.
No foolproof or safe plan to free Darius and escape unharmed.
No way to trap, disarm or make the secret mastermind behind the investigation that had consumed Eve’s life over the last year willingly give themselves up.
Which might have been for the better.
Because the second she saw Jon, she was suddenly the same little girl she had been when she had seen him last.
Eve locked eyes with Jon.
The only human she had ever hated.
When her voice came out, not even Eve recognized it.
“What was the last thing I told you, Jon?” she growled out.
Darius said her name.
Eve took a step forward.
“Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten,” she added. “Not after I made sure to make it memorable.”
Jon’s nostrils flared. She could see that clearly even from the hundred or so feet she stood away from him. Just like the scar at the side of his face.
It was small, smaller than the one on her hand. Much smaller than the one on Darius’s back.
“You’ve got some nerve,” he bit out.
Eve rolled up her left jacket sleeve. She did the other one next.
“You’re the one with the nerve, Jon. Not even Fate would have been stupid enough to put us back together.
That had to be you.” Eve shared a quick look with Maria.
Her mouth hung open in a confused smile.
“Let me guess. He saw something about me or Darius in the news and begged to be a part of your unnecessarily complicated scheme to frame and kill us. And you decided, why not?”
Maria’s smile faded, but her words still held confidence as she responded.
“So Jon was telling the truth,” she said. “He has a special relationship with the two of you. How interesting.” Maria took a few steps back so she could see both of them more easily. Her shifting gave Eve a clear view of a body on the floor near the opposite wall.
Toby.
His shoes weren’t Italian leather, but she recognized them all the same.
Eve didn’t have time to linger on him.
Just as she didn’t have time to look at Darius.
Instead, she doubled down on a plan that might get her killed.
“If you really want to hear something fun, ask him how he got that scar,” Eve poked. She tapped the side of her face. The same spot Jon was touching with the hand not holding a gun.
A gun that Eve was sure he was about to be itching to use.
Maria, ever a gossip, was already locked in.
“How did you get that scar, Mr. Decanter?” she asked. “Do tell.”
Jon had always looked like a little worm of a human.
As a child, he had never had a redeeming quality to him in Eve’s young eyes.
Nothing had changed. His face pinched, his shoulders tightened with rage, she knew that despite every effort he was most likely employing, the memory of their last meeting was replaying in detail in his head.
He didn’t want to answer Maria, that much was obvious.
But Maria wasn’t a woman used to being disappointed.
Her voice lowered into a command that might have alarmed Eve had it been under different circumstances.
“How did you get that scar?”
Jon’s hand twitched. A smile clawed its way upward from his frown. It was as fake as a sociopath could make it.
His words came out bitter, regardless of the form of his mouth.
“Eve gave it to me when we were kids. She said it was a warning, and that, if I ever so much as showed my face in front of Darius again, she’d make sure it was a face no one would recognize after that.”
Maria whirled around, full focus on Eve. The surprise affected her entire body. She was nearly dancing in delight.
“Eve!” she exclaimed. “Look at you! How vicious! Maybe I should have hired you instead of this one. Who knew you had it in you!”
It was true, and it wasn’t completely true.
Eve had, in fact, tracked the kid Jon down and threatened him.
But the scar on his face had been an accident.
After doctoring Darius’s back and her hand, they had decided to not tell anyone about the incident.
It hadn’t been for Jon’s benefit, but for fear that the incident would get their parents to reevaluate their living situations.
That, because they had been left alone so much, something would need to change.
Darius had a godmother out of state; Eve could have gone to a summer program at the school.
Or, if their parents hadn’t decided to shuffle them off somewhere to be safe, there was always the possibility that the two of them spending so much time together would have been frowned on.
So little Eve and Darius had kept the assault and its brutality to themselves.
But that hadn’t meant Eve had let Jon off the hook.
She had gotten him out of his house that night and made it sound like she would tell the adults if he ever tried to get near them again.
That had got Jon mad.
He had lunged at her. It was only good luck on her part that his grandmother’s backyard was uneven and covered in dirt. He had slipped and fallen. Eve, knowing this was the only advantage she would get, had jumped on him.
Only a few minutes later, with blood covering her hands, did she realize that a rock had embedded in his cheek. Instead of pointing this out to him, instead of panicking, instead of going for help, Darius’s scream of pain had echoed in her mind, and she decided to get herself one more advantage.
She had pushed the rock into his skin.
Not a lot but enough to make him scream.
Then, she had threatened him with those vicious words.
As an adult, Eve knew that she had been wrong to do it. That there were better ways to avenge violence.
But there was nothing she could do to change it.
So she did as she had done and leaned into the idea that she had caused the scar on purpose.
“Yet here you are,” she said now. “Despite my very clear warning.”
Jon let out a sound that was between a growl and a yell. He sounded possessed. Maria seemed to enjoy it all the more. She actually clapped.
“Wow, you just have to love small towns,” she said. “They really are like soap operas. Everyone has some kind of tawdry back story. Surely there’s something you want to add before we end this episode, Detective Williams?”
She started to turn back around, but Eve was faster.
“Maria,” she called out, quickly, “do you want to know one more secret first?”
Maria paused but nodded, still clearly enjoying herself like they were at some kind of party or weird double date.
“Of course! Get it all off your chest now.”
This time, Eve mirrored her smile. Her voice rang clear throughout the old warehouse.
“The tractor-supply business who owned this place? They might have gone out of business, but you want to know what they didn’t do?” Eve’s leg muscles tensed in anticipation. Her heartbeat started to gallop.
Maria was completely unaware of the change about to rock her world.
She simply raised an eyebrow in question.
Eve was happy to give her the answer.
“After all of these years, they never repaired that window.”
Jon understood first. He whirled around, gun raised, but it was too late.
Eve ran for cover behind the collection of dust-covered crates closest to her just as two shots rang out.
Maria yelled.
Jon made a noise.
Then silence.
Eve scrambled to her feet again, already yelling Darius’s name.
MARIA HAD BEEN RIGHT. Living in a small town sure felt like watching a soap opera sometimes.
Darius, handcuffed to a random metal pipe in an old, abandoned warehouse, kept in check by the source of his childhood trauma, while the love of his life was in danger?
Well, it all felt very dramatic.
And maybe if the main villain had been even a little bit less dramatic and her lackey less emotional, Maria would have noticed that Eve wasn’t just talking to talk.
She wasn’t trying to twist the metaphorical knife into the old wound of Jon Decanter just to remind him of the scarring defeat he had suffered by the hand of the little protective girl down the street.
Not that Darius had understood that himself at first, though. It wasn’t until he realized Eve was purposefully not looking at him that he started paying attention to what was happening outside their past’s retelling.
Someone had climbed through the window that Eve had broken during her rescue when they were kids. And it wasn’t until he felt that person fiddling with the lock on his handcuff that he understood that Eve hadn’t just run in as a sacrifice to try and save him.
Instead of making herself bait like she had done the day before in the meeting room in front of Scott and Toby, Evelyn Myers had made herself different once she had walked into that warehouse.
She had made herself a distraction.
And by God, it had worked.
Darius had run through Jon like a sledgehammer through a thin piece of paper.
Jon managed two shots, but they were just the last cries of a dying man.
Darius heard the crack of Jon’s head hitting the cement floor before he felt it.
He knew Jon was gone as he secured the gun and turned it on Maria. Still, his body couldn’t help but stay alert while standing.
“Move and I shoot,” Darius yelled at the woman. The warning came out at the same time Eve yelled for him.
She didn’t wait for him to answer her.
Not that Darius expected that she would wait.
The sound of her shoes slapping against the floor echoed around them as she ran past Maria and right to him.
Darius was about to warn her to get behind him when the person who had freed him spoke up instead.
“Dang, Eve, let’s make sure our villainess doesn’t have a weapon first before you go all gooey on our hero.”
Darius tensed as he recognized the voice.
The woman known as Lana stepped slowly into view next to them. Her arm was still in a sling from where he had broken her wrist. She had a Band-Aid on her forehead.
The most surprising detail?
Eve rolled her eyes at the woman.
“Listen, I’m the one who is usually sneaking in through windows,” Eve said. “Being out in the open like this is new for me.”
In another surprising turn of events, Lana actually sighed.
“I don’t know if anyone has told you this yet, but there are these things called doors, Miss Myers. And I’m sure no one, not even Detective Williams here, would blame you if you started using them.”
Maybe it was the adrenaline wearing off, maybe it was shock at everything that had happened since he had woken up that morning or maybe it was because of the sheer amount of relief flooding his system at knowing that the woman he loved was okay that he did something out of character for the situation.
Despite himself, Darius laughed.