Chapter 9
It really was her, Abigail realized.
“Mrs. Givens?” she said, her voice high-pitched but quiet.
A girl’s voice, she realized she sounded like a confused child.
The woman laughed, “Oh, wow, okay, I haven’t been called that in... well, nineteen years. Please, call me Selene. It’s probably my favorite name I’ve been known by.”
“You died,” Jacob said, choking on his words.
The tone, as well as what he was saying, surprised Abigail.
“Wait, their whole death by car accident wasn’t a witness protection thing?”
Selene laughed again, “Oh, no. No. His father thought we could weasel our way out of trouble.”
“So, Dad... is he?”
Abigail felt a surreal embarrassment forming as if she was a guest in someone’s home and being forced to sit at the dinner table while they had a deeply personal conversation. She watched as Selene smiled weakly.
“He’s actually dead, darling,” she said, “and I can’t imagine you’re too sad about it—he was always so violent.”
The choked sob that escaped Jacob made Abigail’s heart wrench and she placed a hand on his knee.
“Don’t touch him, you never were good enough for him,” Selene spat, “and now you’ve gone and stirred all this up again. Though, I suppose I actually should be thanking you—if you hadn’t started digging, you wouldn’t have led me down the same path and I’d never have found my boy...”
“Wait, what!?” Abigail exclaimed, “You... you’re the one who broke in? You stole the gun.... and gave it to this lunatic? Did he set fire to that parcel van!?”
Abigail pointed at Vincent Clark, who opened his mouth to say something, but Selene cut him off.
“He did… one of the few things I asked him to do that he got right. These days, I tend to work, uh, offshore—shall we say,” Selene said with a catlike smile, “and I needed someone who was very motivated and still had all the grubby little connections on this side of the country—besides, I was nosey.”
As she spoke, Selene tapped her nose and winked at Abigail. The action made everything fall into place, and suddenly, she could see the work Mrs. Givens had done to her face—Botox, micro-bladed eyebrows, cheek fillers, something to her lips. She did look good, but it was blatantly clear now that Abigail was looking that she was starting to fade at—what, she must be in her mid-sixties by now?
“I... I just don’t understand,” Abigail said, “I’m sorry—but what?”
“Oh yes, your little—” Selene motioned to her head, “mix up. I didn’t think it could possibly be real at first, but then... well, it did seem to be sticking. Until this year when you decided it was time to screw everything up for everyone, hm?”
The way her words made Abigail feel scolded was infuriating. She wasn’t a child, and if anything she had learned about Mrs. Givens was true, then she didn’t actually care what this woman thought of her.
“That was hardly my intention,” Abigail countered. “As far as I was concerned, I just didn’t remember a pretty minor car accident and my boyfriend ran away from home over it, never to be seen or heard from again. It’s hardly my fault that the cops did such an average job of disappearing him.”
Selene’s shout of laughter was jolting. “Well, I couldn’t find anything when I looked, so it mustn’t have been too poor of a job.”
It was all she could do not to snort, but Selene still looked at her as if she had.
“Can I speak?” Clark asked, clearly annoyed. “I do still have the gun, after all.”
“Ugh, what!?” Selene replied, rolling her eyes.
To Abigail’s surprise, Clark’s face registered hurt.
“I... sorry,” he said quietly. “Selene, I just—why didn’t you just tell me? I’d have done all this anyway—do you have the papers? Are they really stolen?”
With a look of absolute disgust on her face, Selene waved her hand to silence him.
“Yes, you idiot,” she said. “I needed to get these two out of the house and isolated—honestly I’d have been fine if it was just my lovely son, but I’m not mad that I get to ask her a few things...”
Clark took several steps backward as Selene advanced on them. Abigail couldn’t decide whether he was in love with her or terrified of her.
As Selene came to a stop in front of the pair, Abigail was forced to look up at her. This close, the plastic surgeries were more obvious—some had obviously been botched and covered up. The life this woman must have lived…
“Mom... I don’t understand either,” Jacob said, “that night... we’d followed Dad, not you... are you saying it wasn’t him at all?”
Selene brushed the back of her hand along Jacob’s face, “Oh my poor boy, you never were the brightest, were you? Don’t worry darling, me neither. Your father, well—your dad, did his best with you but you just weren’t enough like him. Your real father, him I could have loved, but your dad was too jealous and just couldn’t let it go. He loved me too much, always wanted to ‘take me away from it all’, and so when he came here to negotiate with Clark and his cronies on my behalf, he thought I was the poor innocent girl taken advantage of.”
A wolfish grin broke across Selene’s face, making her look wild from Abigail’s low angle.
“But you weren’t?” Jacob asked quietly.
“No... No darling, I wasn’t,” Selene said. “I never have been—and if it hadn’t been for him being so easy to follow that two lovesick teenagers could track him, and this idiot hadn’t shot Patrick, I’d have been able to take over his whole operation within a year as well as kept my son—and not have had to disappear for nearly two years just to be able to come back into the States and not be arrested on sight.”
Selene gestured wildly with one hand to her face as she turned her crazed expression on Clark and raised an accusatory finger.
“ME!?” he yelped. “I killed Marelli on YOUR say so! Selene, we were going to take the whole coast—together!”
“Pah! You were never going to be around for long. You were a stepping stone. A tool, as it were.”
His nostrils flared and he raised the gun, pointing it at Selene.
“You bi—”
He cut his own sentence off as a sharp click sounded from the gun and he stared at it, his jaw slackening. Violently pulling the trigger over and over again, the same loud clicking sound seeming louder and louder every time, Clark’s face contorted into a mixture of rage and defeat.
“When an old friend gives you a gun, always check to see if it still has its firing pin,” Selene said sweetly, reaching her hand out for the gun.
Clark did not hand it to her… instead he tossed it to the side.
“And when you screw over an old friend, make sure they thought you were trustworthy, to begin with,” he said, his hand dropping to his side.
Abigail was certain he was moving normally, but everything felt so fast that she was still processing what had just happened when Selene fell to the floor. She was clutching her shoulder, and blood was pooling on the concrete at Abigail’s feet.
She frantically looked to Clark, just in time to see him lurch forward, dark red blood staining his shirt. The gun he had withdrawn from his hip was pointed at her, but as he fell, it listed limply from his hand and clattered to the floor.
From behind him, she saw Michelle standing unsteadily, her head wound bleeding again as she looked down the sights of the weapon she had drawn. She met Abigail’s gaze for one silent moment before shouting filled the air.
It was like a chorus. It was all she could hear.
“US Marshals, everyone on the ground now!”