Chapter 30
Crime With Me
I wake up on the ground, shivering, with gravel digging into my cheek and my arms pinned beneath my body at an angle that makes me question if they’ll ever work right again.
I roll onto my back, groaning as pain lances through my ribs.
The night is unrelentingly dark, and I lie there, staring up at the sky, panting as I wait for feeling to return to my hands.
I’m still zip-tied, and I have no idea where Garret is, but wherever he is, he’s almost certainly dead.
There was enough Telazol in that tranquilizer dart to knock out four adult men.
There’s no way he didn’t go into cardiac arrest within minutes at most.
Eventually, my hands and arms begin to feel like they’re on fire as blood flows into them and the nerves wake up.
I bite my coat sleeve, using my teeth to pull it up enough to check my watch.
Eight-fifty-six. Almost an hour and a half has passed since Garret ambushed me outside my office building.
I was probably lying on the ground unconscious for over thirty minutes.
I need to find him. I need to get my phone.
I need to get out of these zip ties. And I need to do it all before anyone shows up and finds me next to a body filled with Telazol.
This is obviously self-defense, but there’s a good chance they’ll be able to connect this to Rhys Steichen’s death, and if they do, the whole thing will unravel.
I roll back onto my side, clenching my teeth against the stabbing sensation in my ribs, and shove myself to my knees.
It takes twenty or thirty seconds for the pain to recede.
There’s a human-shaped lump about forty feet away.
It’s got to be Garret. Unfortunately, the zip tie around my ankles makes that forty feet look closer to a mile.
I can either bunny hop my way to his body or try to crawl over there.
Both options suck, but I’ll be less likely to injure myself if I collapse while crawling, and right now, I can’t accept the idea of racking up more injuries.
If this were a video game, my health points would be flashing red on the screen, I think with a snort that sends more pain rolling through me.
I inch my way toward Garret’s body. Every time I move my arms, my abs flex, pulling on my ribs. It’s like being shivved over and over. I have to stop every few feet. By the time I reach his body, I’m no longer shivering. I’m sweating.
But things could be worse. It could be raining. Or I could be Garret.
His eyes are sightlessly staring at the sky, and I’m pretty sure he’s dead, but I kneel next to him, placing my fingers against his neck, checking for a pulse anyway. There isn’t one, and a weight I didn’t realize I was feeling evaporates.
I dig through his coat pocket for my phone and the pages about Mark that he took from me, setting both on the ground beside me when I find them.
I go through every pocket on his body, hoping to find a knife so I can get out of these zip ties.
He doesn’t have one, though. I’m not sure if he was planning on bludgeoning me to death or strangling me, and once again, I’m glad he’s dead.
I turn my phone on, waiting for it to establish a connection, trying to decide what to do.
I could call Vaughn. He said he was going out of town on Sunday.
And somehow, it’s still Friday, so he’s still here.
Or, I tell myself, glancing at the papers on the ground beside me, I could call Mark.
He’s probably home by now. He would’ve returned from the meeting and seen that I wasn’t there.
Most likely, he assumed that was me ending things.
It tracks with what he already believes regarding me not sharing information. Fuck.
If I call him, there’s no hiding anything.
And calling him to come here would be profoundly different from telling him what I was doing.
Just telling him wouldn’t provide him with proof of anything if he decided to go to the police.
But this…? This is undeniable proof. This is me spending life in prison.
I try to unlock my phone, but apparently my face is so swollen and smeared with blood that it doesn’t believe my face is really my face. I sigh and slowly type in my passcode. Then I go to my contacts and tap Mark’s name.
The phone rings. And rings. And rings. It goes to voicemail. I hang up and immediately call back. He doesn’t answer. I go to my messages. “Don’t be a dick. Pick up your phone. Please,” I say, dictating a text. I send it, count to fifteen, and call him again.
The phone rings twice. And then he answers. “What?” he growls.
“I need your help. Please.”
There’s a long stretch of silence. Finally, he sighs and says, “What do you need?”
Relief washes over me, and tears prickle my eyes.
“I need you to load as much of that turpentine and stain that’s sitting in your carport as you can into your car.
Anything else you have that’s flammable too.
And then I need you to take I-84 East until you reach exit eighteen.
Take the first right off the exit and follow the road until you get to me.
And bring scissors. Or a knife. And matches. ”
“What’s going on?” Mark asks, now seeming more worried than pissed.
“I’ll explain when you get here. Please just come.”
“Right off exit eighteen,” he verifies over rustling in the background.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
“Okay,” I say, and the phone call ends. I momentarily consider trying to make it back to the van, but without being able to get these zip ties off, it’s so far away that it’s not worth the effort.
Instead, I lie on the ground and spend the next forty-five minutes staring at the sky, worrying about what’s going to happen when Mark arrives.
This is not a position I ever anticipated being in.
I didn’t expect that I would ever have feelings for him.
And I certainly didn’t anticipate being abducted or asking Mark to come help me while I waited zip-tied next to a corpse.
I’m wondering how I managed to fuck things up so colossally.
Was it when I decided to act on the idea of getting justice for Katie after the courts didn’t?
Or when I poisoned Joey Carmichael? Or maybe when I fell for Mark.
I’ve been trying to put my finger on precisely when that happened for days now, and I’m still not sure.
I told everyone again and again that I knew exactly what I was doing.
And clearly I was wrong. I’d definitely fallen for Mark by the time I told him about Katie.
But I’m pretty sure it was well before then.
Maybe after he told me about his brother.
Or maybe when I realized how nervous he was about the dinner with Vaughn and Marjorie.
It doesn’t really matter, because here I am—on the darkest night, in the most fucked-up situation—having to deal with the consequences of my actions. I wonder if this is what my dad felt like when the police handcuffed him and shoved him into a cop car.
I should’ve asked Vaughn what telling Marjorie the truth was like. I got her perspective, but it would’ve been helpful to hear his too. To know if it felt this awful.
Eventually, the sound of an engine drawing closer fills the night, and when I tip my head to the left, headlights are illuminating the trees in the distance. Hopefully it’s Mark and not someone else. Otherwise, I’m screwed. I can’t move fast enough to get up and hide.
Twenty seconds later, the car pulls to a stop about fifty feet away. The door opens, but the headlights are on and the engine is still running.
“Alyssa!” Mark shouts, and I’m so relieved to hear his voice I practically sob.
“Over here,” I yell, leveraging myself to a seated position. Pain rolls through me, and I gasp as I sit upright.
He jogs across the parking lot, backlit by the headlights. “What’s going—” his words cut off as he drops to a crouch in front of me. “Jesus Christ. What the hell happened to you?” he asks, extending his hand toward my face before retracting it and letting it fall to his knee.
I jerk my head over my shoulder, trying not to feel rejected by his reaction. “Garret Fischer happened.”
Mark’s eyes move past me and widen when they land on Garret’s corpse, apparently only now noticing it. “How did you…?” he questions as his eyes land back on me.
“I’ll tell you everything. Can you just get these off me first?” I ask, raising my wrists.
“You killed Fischer while your hands and feet were zip-tied?” Mark pulls out a pocketknife and flips the blade open, sliding it between my wrists and through the plastic binding my hands.
“Yes,” I answer as I rub feeling into my wrists.
“How?”
“With an overdose of an anesthetic they use to tranquilize bears.”
Mark huffs. “I fucking knew it,” he mutters.
“I know. Here,” I say, picking up the folded papers that are on the ground next to me.
“What’s this?” he asks as he takes them.
“Everything I knew about you before we met. Everything Vaughn dug up about you.”
“Vaughn. Of course. How much does he know?”
I shrug. “Everything.”
“So why not call him? You already left. Why call me?”
“You were mad earlier when I lied about being home all night last night. You clearly knew it was a lie. You wanted me to tell you the truth, and I didn’t.
I panicked, and I fucked up. That’s on me.
So this is me apologizing. Saying sorry.
Trusting you. And also asking if you want to help me cover up a crime. ”
Mark’s eyes are boring into mine, and the papers I gave him are clenched in his fist, seemingly forgotten. “Why. Call. Me?” he repeats slowly, enunciating each word.
“You’re really going to make me say it?”
“Yes.”
“Fine!” I shout, throwing up my hands, ignoring the pain that’s just… everywhere. “Because I fucking love you, okay? I’ve been in love with you for weeks! That’s why I told you about Katie! That’s why I invited you to meet my dad!”