Chapter 27
Bobby hated him.
Everett had always known it. But had never fathomed the depths of that hatred and what it would lead him to do.
All because at sixteen years old, Remington had fallen in love with Everett over the summer.
Not Bobby. Or maybe because, when the DEA assigned him to the Palmchat Islands almost a decade later, Everett finished what he and Remington had started as teens.
A real relationship built on unconditional love had blossomed between them.
Bobby tried to undermine it every chance he got, but nothing worked. Nothing could keep them apart.
That’s why Bobby blew his cover.
To get rid of him once and for all.
That didn’t work either because of Ike.
Everett reached for Remington’s hands and brought them to his lips, kissing them softly. He wasn’t okay with any of this. But now was not the time for him to unpack it. The most important thing he had to do was protect Remington. Because she was far from being free or safe.
“I believe you.” Everett knew that was the place to start.
She inhaled a sob as one tear, then another, coursed down her cheek. He kissed them away, then stared into those lovely eyes.
“But the cops still found a second dead body in your home. A woman stabbed to death like Bobby in the bedroom you shared with him.” He paused, allowing his words to sink in.
She frowned and gripped his hands tighter. “I didn’t know anyone else was there.”
“I need you to think, Remington. Go back to that night. Did she catch you? Did you realize someone else had seen what you’d done to Bobby?” The question he didn’t ask lingered between them. Did you kill her to shut her up?
“No,” she shook her head, looking genuinely bewildered. “It was only Bobby and me there. No one else. He was about to flee the islands alone. I saw the fake passports. Just his. No one else.”
“Okay.” He wrapped an arm around her and led her back to the bed. “I need you to take me through everything that happened from the moment you got back to The Bluffs. Every single detail. Do not leave anything out.”
He sat down and pulled her onto his lap. She wrapped her arm around his neck and leaned against him as the story of that night poured out of her. He listened intently, analyzing her words like a testimony for a case, stopping her only to clarify details.
“You saw the machetes before you knew who was inside?”
“Yes, they were leaning against a breadfruit tree along the trail.”
“They? How many?”
“Two.”
She went quiet, eyes unfocused, body still against his as she walked herself back through the night.
“You didn’t reveal you were there until the Marengos were gone.”
“That’s right.”
“When did you grab the machete?”
“After they left, my eyes went to it, and I knew what I was going to do. I walked over and grabbed it, and then I went inside.”
“Both of them?”
“No, just one.”
Everett listened as she described waiting until the Marengos were gone before stepping inside. Bobby had been in the living room, frantic and half-packed, with cash, documents, and fake passports, when she confronted him.
“He was planning on leaving without telling you?”
“Yes. He tried to lie his way out, but then I told him I’d heard everything …”
“What did he do when you confronted him?”
“He didn’t deny it. He tried to explain himself.” She paused. “I was livid, screaming at him. I pressed the blade of the machete against his stomach and asked him why he did it. That’s when he grabbed my wrist and jerked me toward him.”
Everett had seen the bruise that night when he found Remington surrounded by blood on her floor. He’d wondered if Bobby was abusing her, hurting her physically, and he’d missed the signs.
“What did he say?”
She stiffened in his arms, hesitating. The openness she’d expressed as she told him about that night had closed. Not a hasty retreat, something slow and deliberate. She was deciding how to answer. But was she composing herself for this part or composing a lie?
Finally, she said, “Because you have fucking everything and he wasn’t going to let you have me, too.”
Something black and vicious tore through Everett’s chest. He tightened his arms around Remington.
“That’s when I swung the machete and cut a deep gash in his arm …”
He was quiet. He kept his body still, arms wrapped around her, and waited for her to continue.
This had to be the hardest part for her, telling him how she ended up stabbing Bobby fourteen times.
Maybe she wanted him to stop her, but he couldn’t.
The details were important if they were going to piece together how the dead mistress fit into all of this.
“He was shocked that I cut him. He grabbed me. We fought over the machete, and it fell to the floor out of my reach. I tried to get it, but he was holding me. I struggled to get away, hitting and kicking him. Then he shoved me down,” she said.
“Hard. My head hit something. I saw stars. It hurt so bad. But I kept my eyes on the machete. I had to get to it. I tried to move, but it was like I was in quicksand.”
She stopped. He watched the effort as she searched her memories.
“I was close to grabbing it … and then the rage took over.”
“What does that mean?”
“I stabbed him and killed him.”
“I need details, Remington.”
Her grip on him tightened. “I … don’t have … any.”
“You don’t remember stabbing him?”
She shook her head. “I was so angry, I snapped. It’s like I blacked out.
I wasn’t fully conscious of doing it. I didn’t have a clear thought again until it was over.
I remember looking at my bloody hands. Bobby’s dead body was across the living room, and I knew I’d done it.
I killed him. That’s when I called you.”
“You swung the machete and cut him on the arm … but you don’t have a clear memory of how you got the upper hand? How you stabbed him fourteen times?”
She winced. “I’m sure I blocked the worst part from my memories. Everything went black, and when I came back, it was over. I don’t know how I turned the tables. He was so much stronger than me, but somehow, it happened …”
He thought back on their first night at the bungalow. The nasty bump on her head. The strange gap in her memories. The certainty that she’d killed Bobby without any of the details of the actual act. She told every other part of that night with intricate detail, except that crucial moment.
“And because you don’t remember stabbing Bobby, you don’t know if the mistress was there. If she saw what you’d done or not?”
“I guess that’s possible … “
If Remington was in a blind rage, killing her husband, and the mistress witnessed everything, the woman would’ve had plenty of time to escape, call the cops, or both.
Maybe she’d tried to intervene and stop Remington from stabbing Bobby and got killed in the process.
But if that happened, why wasn’t her body found downstairs near Bobby?
In the state she was in, would Remington have dragged a dead woman’s body back upstairs to the bedroom? For what reason? It didn’t make sense.
“But I never went upstairs. I was covered in Bobby’s blood and so close to freaking out. I needed help. I needed … you.”
“You didn’t move. Not after you called me. Where I found you when I got to your house, that’s where you were the whole time.”
“Right. My phone was in my pocket. I called you and sat there waiting. I didn’t move until you got there.”
The pieces that weren’t fitting suddenly rearranged. He could see the full picture now, and it was one he hadn’t contemplated.
“You said you blacked out when you were reaching for the machete?—”
“I was so angry that the rage took over.”
“What if it didn’t?”
“What?” She pressed away from him, her gaze locked onto him.
“What if you blacked out from hitting your head? Passed out. Didn’t get to grab the machete …”
“No, that’s not possible. I did it. I killed Bobby … right?”
He went back over the details. Bobby’s cut arm.
The cut she’d made with the machete in the first seconds of the confrontation.
The shove. The knot he’d found on her skull with his fingers that first night.
Everything before that moment was crystal clear.
Specific and sequential, every detail carried the texture of real memories.
Everything after was muddled and fuzzy, assumptions more than facts.
Then there was the missing murder weapon. A bloody machete … gone. He couldn’t find it. Neither could the cops.
He’d taken enough statements from enough people in enough violent situations to know the difference between a gap someone constructed to deceive and a gap carved out by trauma.
The shape of the entire night locked into place, cleanly and without resistance. The puzzle pieces aligned, fitting together to create a new picture.
“Everett … “ She trembled in his arms.
“Remington.” His voice broke for the first time all evening, slipping out of the measured register of a trained investigator. “You didn’t kill Bobby. You didn’t kill his mistress.”
She pressed both hands over her mouth.
“You’re not a murderer.” Everett cupped her face, making sure she saw the certainty in his eyes. “But Bobby’s real killer wants the world to think that you are.”