Chapter 36
My hands were crusted with blood. My shirt was dry and hard, feeling like stiff paper on my skin.
“I love you,” she’d whispered, her throat gurgling, blood making her teeth red. “I will always love you.”
Putting my head in my hands, I tried to block out the bright white of the walls, the blue chairs. The people. I just wanted darkness, and then I hated it because I saw it again.
“Why is my mother in handcuffs?” I slammed my truck door, stomping to the officer placing her in a squad car.
Wade’s cruiser pulled up behind me at the same time Rowdy and Delilah showed up in his truck. I wasn’t even going to get into what it felt like to actually trust Rowdy. At least for now.
“Ty!” Mom exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
“Do what?”
I looked around for Phoebe, noting the ambulance that sat in the driveway, its lights flashing and partially blocking my view of the front lawn.
I heard her before I saw her. “Gun!”
The police reacted fast, and so did I. But not fast enough.
I was too far away to get to Phoebe. She’d grabbed Jesse, throwing him to the ground, hurling herself on top of him.
I saw the bullet hit her, her back jerking, blood spraying outward like a balloon that popped.
The second bullet hit her lower, and she twisted just as she landed on Jesse with a thud.
“Rowdy!” Delilah’s cry was followed by a third gunshot and a feminine scream that pierced the air.
Wade’s yell to his officers to get the gun was muffled by the roaring in my ears. I didn’t care if I got shot. I raced to Phoebe. Jesse was screaming beneath her, begging for someone to help her. I couldn’t even feel relief that my brother was okay.
The EMS guys were there, forcing me back. Forcing me away from her.
“Ty!” Wade’s arms wrapped around me. “Let them work. Let them help her!”
Helen was similarly holding Jesse back, tears streaming down their faces.
When they turned her over, the EMT started calling her name. And for a second, just one second, she opened her eyes and found me. Her hand reached out, and I shoved Wade so hard he landed on his ass. I didn’t care. She needed me.
The EMT snapped at me to move back. I took her hand anyway. It was like holding a butterfly, soft and precious.
“Baby,” I choked.
“I love you,” she’d whispered, her throat gurgling, blood making her teeth red. “I will always love you. You and Lock are my favorite story. Never forget. Don’t let him forget.”
Then her eyes closed and they didn’t reopen.
I hated seeing it again. But I kept my eyes closed because at least I could see her there. I could pretend that I didn’t have her blood on my hands or staining my shirt. Someone had brought me clean clothes at some point. I didn’t want them. I wanted her. Any part of her.
A loud banging of the door precipitated the shrill voice. “Someone had better tell me who shot my best friend and where I can find them.”
“Why do you have a baseball bat?” I thought Luke asked with a start. I didn’t know he was here.
“You can’t have that in here.” I felt Wade move from my side.
“Touch Wanda, Country Cop, and she’ll be giving something a little more south the mother of all love taps.”
“Can you not threaten people?!” Wade hastily took a step back.
I didn’t want to lift my head. I wanted the image of Phoebe right in front of me. I blinked, recoiling against the sterile lighting to find Alex in heels and a business dress, holding a baseball bat threateningly toward Wade.
“Oh, it’s not a threat.” She took a menacing step forward, her heels clacking on the floor.
She swept the room, and that was when I noticed everyone was here except Louise. She had agreed to get Lock from school and keep him at her house while we waited. Luke, Eric, Helen, Jesse, Wade, and even Mom were here. Though she sat on the opposite side of the room far away from me.
She’d been released on her own recognizance, and with Jesse, Delilah, and me here, she’d come too. I’d endured her tearful apology to Jesse. When she went to try with me, I hadn’t even looked up from the image of Phoebe in the blackness in my hands. “Not now” was all I said.
Alex panned around and then settled on me. Instead of sympathy or even understanding, her face grew hard and a little mean. “She’s going to live. You think anything else and we’re going to have a problem.”
I almost smiled at that. Alex was determination personified. If Phoebe…if she…I couldn’t even think it. All I knew was Alex would find her and drag her back kicking and screaming, if Phoebe...
“I mean it, Tyler. She’s going to live.” Alex rebuked any argument, but I saw it. The fear. The terror.
Alex plays tough. The more scared she is, the more likely she’ll commit a felony.
Phoebe’s words from one night after Alex had done yet another demented thing came back to me. Apparently, she’d gotten bored and glitter bombed Jeremy’s office.
“This was nothing. She’s just feeling petty and vengeful,” my scribbler assured me when I wondered if Alex knew she could be arrested for half the shit she’d done.
“I have a house in France for the true moments when she’s likely to do something that will result in her rocking orange for the next twenty-five years. ”
I’d thought she’d been joking. Then she’d shown me pictures of the quaint cottage she owned in the French countryside. A place she said she wanted me to go with her when I was able to take my vacation.
A place I needed to make sure Alex didn’t have to spend the rest of her life in.
“Put the bat down, Alex.” I got up, ignoring how she tried to fend me off, and pulled her into a hug. Taking advantage of it, I swiped the bat from her, ignoring her outraged shriek, and handed it to Wade.
“I need that,” she declared. “Wanda and I have some work to do once I know what happened.”
I hadn’t been the one to call her. Wade had. I hadn’t been able to do anything. Hell, I wasn’t even sure how I got here. When we’d found out Phoebe had coded in the ambulance but was being rushed to surgery, I’d sat down, put my head in my hands, and hadn’t really looked up since.
I tried to get her to sit down, but she stubbornly refused, demanding answers.
“What do you know?” I couldn’t stay standing, so I retook my seat.
“Just that Amber-Rae shot Phoebe and something about a head injury.”
I sought Mom out in the corner and felt rage ignite inside of me.
She was my mother. I loved her. I just didn’t know if I could ever forgive her for what she’d done to Phoebe.
To Delilah. To me. I knew not all of this was her fault.
I had my own share of blame here. I just couldn’t help thinking that if Mom hadn’t cornered Phoebe in the first place, forced her to hide, she’d be here right now. In my arms. Where she belonged.
To her credit, or maybe because she thought I wanted her to admit her role, Mom spoke up, with Helen adding in what she could.
By the time she was done, Alex was vibrating with rage. “You put your hands on Phoebe? You smashed her head off the floor?” This was asked quietly. Far too quietly.
Mom hung her head in shame. “I did. I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what came over me.”
Alex stalked forward, and I was on my feet.
“You’re going die.” Alex delivered this in that way you knew she was serious. Not loudly. Not angrily. Calmly. Almost serenely. “I told Phoebe you weren’t to be trusted.”
Wade muttered, “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“Alex!” I tried to pull her back. She wasn’t going for Mom, though. No, she was standing over her, and that had me more than a little concerned. “You’re angry. I get it. I’m furious, too.” I didn’t feel anything when Mom flinched at my words.
Alex ignored me. “You and I aren’t finished.” She pointed between my mother and her. Then, as if she hadn’t just channeled a serial killer, she turned to me. “Where is Amber-Rae?”
“She’s in the ER getting her arm set in a cast under police guard.” Rowdy meandered in, wobbling a little. Delilah steadied him, nagging him about sitting down.
“I’m fine, Lilah.” He sat down anyway, looking ashen. The arm of his shirt had been cut off and a bandage was wrapped around his shoulder. It was a testament to the shock I was in that I didn’t feel anything about seeing him sitting with my sister.
Wade and I threatened him at my apartment while Delilah was in the bathroom, which helped. Rowdy had made it clear he saw her only as a kid, and surprisingly, I believed him.
“Rowdy’s not who you think he is.” Phoebe propped her head on my chest, the sheet around her slipping down to reveal her naked back. “Maybe if you just talked to him, you’d see he’s sad. Lonely. He’s hiding. I don’t know what, but I know it.”
I’d told her he was hiding all right. Now, I had to wonder if my scribbler hadn’t been right all along. She saw people in a way the rest of us didn’t. What I’d learned about Rowdy today certainly had me second-guessing everything I thought I knew.
“Are you here to defend your mother?” Alex crossed her arms over her chest.
Rowdy snorted. “Hell, no.”
“Fine. Then maybe you can explain why she shot Phoebe.” Alex was far less hostile to Rowdy. Probably because he’d gotten shot tackling Amber-Rae to get the gun away from her, which happened to break the woman’s arm in the process.
“Because she’s batshit crazy!?” Rowdy said.
“Rowdy!” Delilah shot him an annoyed look.
“You sure are bossy,” he teased her.
“Ah, children.” Alex waved her hand in front of them. “Time to tell the big people what happened.”
“What do you know?” Rowdy asked, leaning back in his chair, his long legs splayed.
Wade knew if I had to say it again, it would be my undoing.
“So we know Cady-Jo found the documents in Jesse’s room because Delilah hid them there so Amber-Rae wouldn’t find them.
Amber-Rae showed up at dead-woman-walking’s house and showed her photos of Phoebe and Ty, making nasty insinuations about Jesse.
Then she decided to shoot Phoebe for what… shits and giggles?” Alex clarified.
“She shot her because she’s a cokehead and wanted Winterbourne Manor back.
” Rowdy closed his eyes, not bothering to open them as he explained.
“Mom and Jerome were using Winterbourne Manor as their secret stash house. When Phoebe bought the house, it became harder for her to get her fix. There are too many eyes in this town. And when you guys”—he lifted his hand and waved it in my and Wade’s general direction— “found the stash of coke, she was worried you’d find the rest she had hidden and that her dealer wanted back.
If she got rid of Phoebe, the house would be for sale again, and then she could buy it and not only get the coke but also continue to get her fixes. ”
“How does that make any sense?” Helen asked.
Rowdy snorted again. “My mother’s brain is a crazy-assed place to be, so beats me.
Cokeheads don’t exactly think logically.
The only other thing I know is she found out about Phoebe’s identity from the cameras she had hidden upstairs.
She’d put them in when she was using the house as a stash house to make sure no one got her stuff. ”
“We found the cameras in a couple of different spots in the house.” Wade grimaced.
“I still don’t know how C.S.U. missed them the first time around.
The good news is they became nonfunctional when the flood happened, which fried their wires.
They were linked to the internet, so Amber-Rae was able to watch them for a while at least.”
And that was how she knew about who Phoebe was, how she knew about us, and how she knew the combination to Phoebe’s safe. She’d been listening.
“That’s crazy,” Luke said, flabbergasted.
I agreed with him. It was all crazy.
“So she’s here in the hospital, too?”
I didn’t like the look in Alex’s eyes. “You aren’t doing anything to end up in jail.” Phoebe would need her here.
“We’ll see. But first, I want to know how she is.” Alex looked back down the hall at the people moving around. “Which white coat do I introduce myself to?”