Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Falling in love makes you do stupid things. There was this one time I even got married.
—Cody to Mable
Mable
I turned my phone off as I shoved it into a hiding spot in Cody’s truck that she’d let me borrow.
Birdee shoved hers into the same spot and rubbed her good hand on her good leg. “Are we doing the right thing?”
I clenched and unclenched my fists in my gloves. “We have to talk to her. See what she knows.”
“And you’re sure I have to go?” she asked, sounding glum.
“You don’t have to go, Birdee,” I admitted.
She blew out a disgusted breath. “I owe you this.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” I corrected her gently. “We were both victims here.”
“Yeah, but if I wasn’t such a bitch to you, we might have figured this out years ago instead of now, when shit’s hitting the fan,” she pointed out.
“We both should’ve asked more questions, but I spent a lot of time with her.
Albeit forcefully. I should’ve seen the signs. This is my chance to make it right.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I repeated myself. “Now, let’s get this over with.”
She and I both bailed out of the truck that we’d decided to park several businesses over and walked to the hotel that she and my dad were staying in—her much slower than me thanks to the crutches.
My dad’s friend owned the hotel and had apparently allowed him to stay here for free while they got this figured out.
My dad had a lot of friends like that. Ones that were willing to give him the shirt off their backs.
My dad wasn’t the same type of friend.
If the roles were reversed, he would’ve hung them out to dry.
Once they knew everything, though, I doubted that they stayed. My dad wasn’t a good enough friend for them to stick by.
“What room number did Cody say that they were in?” I asked.
“Three oh six,” Birdee answered. “They have an entrance off the back…there.”
The hotel itself was older. And there were parts of it that they’d turned into long-term housing, giving them separate entrances into the units that meant they didn’t have to go through the main lobby.
The few cameras that were there—which weren’t all that many in the first place—faced the parking area where most of the guests parked to come into the building.
Since we hadn’t entered that part of the building, no one knew we were here.
It also helped that it was late in the day, and so cold that only crazy people were out.
“I hate Montana,” Birdee grumbled as a particularly rough, cutting wind swept through the parking lot, kicking up fresh powdered snow in its wake. “I seriously think I could thrive in Florida. The warm weather. The sun. The beaches. The welcoming people. Does Florida count as being in the South?”
I shivered despite having three layers on under my big-ass coat. “I think so. I think everything below the Mason-Dixon line is considered the South. Why?”
“Because in my romance novels, they always portray ‘good southern boys’ as the crème de la crème. I want that.”
I smiled behind my scarf. “I didn’t know that you read romance novels, Birdee.”
She surprised me all the time.
I also found myself mentally smacking myself in the forehead because we had a lot in common.
Reading was one of those things.
“I like only certain kinds,” she muttered. “There has to be a happily ever after. There has to be no cheating. There has to be at least one baby produced by the end of the story. And there has to be no family drama. Because I have enough of that on my own.”
I snorted out a laugh. “You just hit all of my favorite things, too. Though, I’m okay if they don’t have a baby. As long as it’s a trilogy and they have a baby by the end of the third book.”
We got to the external hotel room and stared at the closed door. “Do we knock?”
“And give her a chance to look and see us and not let us in?” Birdee scoffed. “No. We go in…”
She tried the door and it opened.
We both pushed through the door and came to a stop when we saw almost every single ounce of shit that’d come from my parents’ house in a hotel room stacked to the gills.
And there was our “mother” going through her things frantically, looking for something.
“Jesus Christ, Tom!” Whitney hissed. “It’s in a box, my ass! It’s not in any of these boxes!”
I wondered if she was looking for her laptop.
“Mother,” Birdee called with way more confidence than she had. “We’re here to discuss some things.”
Whitney whirled around, looking startled.
“What are you…” She looked at the two of us, her eyes narrowing when she saw us so close. “What things?”
“First, we need to discuss your reasoning behind stealing both of our identities.” I crossed my arms over my chest, which looked ridiculous seeing as I was still wearing my heavy winter coat.
“Then we need to talk about everything that you’ve done to ruin our lives, and why you thought that you could get away with it. ”
“I did no such thing.” Whitney rolled her eyes. “I paid off every single thing that I took out in your name. Every car loan. Every credit card. You two have perfect credit right now.”
“Perfect credit.” Birdee stuffed her hands in her coat pocket. “I still have a thirty-thousand-dollar car loan in Mable’s name that I now have to pay.”
“If you’d let me pay it, and deal with everything, instead of throwing a fit in the parking lot a few days ago and zoomed off in Mable’s truck, you might not be in this predicament right now.”
“We’re wholly in this predicament because of what you’ve done,” I disagreed. “How about you tell us the reasoning behind everything that you’ve done. You at least owe us that much.”
Whitney rolled her eyes. “I don’t owe you anything.”
Well, I supposed she was right about that.
She didn’t owe us anything.
We were fed and healthy. I mean, our basic needs had been met.
But still, I would say she’d barely met the bare minimum when it came to us.
“If you’re not willing to talk about that, how about you explain why you thought it would be a good idea to set Mable’s boyfriend’s barn on fire?”
“I didn’t do that.”
“You didn’t physically do it. But you blackmailed a desperate man into doing it for you. Which is all on tape, by the way,” I pointed out.
“You’re being extra.” She settled one arm across a tower of boxes. “Where is your boyfriend, Mable?”
I didn’t rise to the bait.
“Or, we could talk about why you’ve been stealing from the coffers, so to speak,” I said. “You and Dad are going to owe a lot of money.”
“We won’t be paying a dime.” She smiled smugly, as if she had a little trick up her sleeve.
Which, she validly did have one.
She thought that I’d drop everything now that she had dirt on Romeo.
And I might have.
If I knew that dropping it would make her stop.
But I had a feeling she’d just found a way better cash cow than whatever the hell she’d been doing before. She could use me for the rest of my life.
Every last bit of my trust fund would be gone if I let her do what I had a feeling she wanted to do.
“How about this,” I said. “You leave town. You promise to never contact us again. And we leave it at that.”
“Or.” She smiled like an evil villain sure of her next move. “We could talk about your boyfriend’s extracurricular activities. Let’s talk about how he faked his own death in order to escape…prison?”
My belly clenched. “You are very wild. You know that? What in the world makes you think that he would do something like that?”
“Fingerprints are forever, my dear.” She grinned.
“You can change the face and appearance. You can fake the death. But you can’t get rid of fingerprints.
And I was able to lift those from a glass at the resort and run it through the system.
Do you know that it’s damn near impossible to not make enemies? Everyone has them. Even Romeo.”
God. Dammit.
“You’re so crazy.” Birdee shook her head.
“Do you honestly believe that Mable would be with anyone like that? I mean, she wouldn’t even sneak out to get away from y’all’s overprotective parenting.
She stuck with her ex-fiancé until the bitter end because she is such a pleaser.
Do you truly believe that she would be with someone like that? She wouldn’t.”
“Oh, she has.” Whitney all but preened with excitement. “This is all so exciting. I’ve been waiting for years to find something I could use to take what I want. But you’re right about her do-gooder act. She really was a Pollyanna. But then she met Romeo.”
But then she met Romeo.
Irrational anger hit me like a sledgehammer straight to the chest.
And before I could stop myself, I charged forward and pushed her into a tower of boxes.
She bounced off of them, knocking several to the side, and came charging at me like a bull in a china shop.
Before she could get to me, though, Birdee stuck her crutch out and tripped her.
I helped her along to the ground and rammed her body to the side.
And just as she fell forward to the floor, the main door swung open and Cody came inside.
Or she would have had my stepmother’s head not hit the door at the perfect angle.
And I do mean the most perfect angle.
With a sickening thud, Whitney hit the floor and went utterly limp.
Birdee, me, and Cody all stared in shock at the sight.
“Did we just kill her?” I whispered in horror.
“I think I did,” Cody admitted.
“No, I definitely pushed her,” Birdee said shakily.
“Yeah, but I was the one to shove her to the side with my body…”
“We need to get out of here,” I whispered.
“It was an accident,” Birdee pointed out. “Maybe she’s alive.”
She went to bend down, but I stopped her with a hand on her jacket. “No. Let’s go.”
Birdee didn’t ask twice.
She stepped over her unmoving mother, and we all went outside.
“I thought you were staying in the car?” I asked in shock.
“I was, but I had to move it because some cop asked me what I was doing.” She cleared her throat. “I told him I was going for a run.”
“Which they believed because you’re a nut job,” I whispered, my voice slightly quivering.
“I like to run. That’s not a bad thing,” Cody murmured. “Come on. Let’s go.”
We left the door open. We left everything exactly as it was. Then we ran.
Well, Cody and I ran. Birdee moved as fast as she was able due to her crutch and broken leg.
It was only an hour later when I got back home that I finally turned my phone back on.
It dinged, and my whole entire heart seized in my chest.
Panic and excitement and shame warred inside of me as I hit the text.
When it opened, a wave of pure shock rolled through me.
One text was all it took for me to feel my entire world spiraling.
Romeo:
Just leave me alone, you crazy freakin’ weirdo.
The “Sent with Siri” was the least of my worries as I read and reread the text message he’d sent.
Was that what I was doing? Hounding him to the point that he’d finally had to respond?
Was he pushing me away on purpose?
And had I just killed the woman that I was supposed to love—even though she’d gone out of her way to kill that love—for a man that thought I was a total creep?
I walked to the kitchen and picked up a bottle of wine.
I didn’t drink much, but if anything called for an occasion to do so…it was this one.
It also helped that Birdee and Cody arrived on their own, without my inviting them, to join me.
If there was ever a time to gather and drink, it was when you killed a woman who was a threat to your very existence.
Right?