Chapter Twenty-Four
Charlie
Istayed with Aiden for almost a week. Winters House was familiar. Comforting. And once Aunt Amelia and Sophie moved in, crowded.
It was nearly impossible to be crowded in a house that size, but I felt like crap and I didn't want company.
I adored my Aunt Amelia. She was hysterical and a troublemaker.
As Maggie and I had hoped when we hired her, Sophie was the perfect counterpoint.
Her quiet, shy nature hid a strong will.
She had a dry sense of humor that let her appreciate Aunt Amelia, but her backbone meant she wouldn't get steamrolled. Much.
Aunt Amelia could steamroll anyone, even Aiden sometimes. I was glad my brother had company in the house again. It made it easier to pack my duffel bag back up and come home.
Home. My decrepit house in the Highlands wasn't so decrepit anymore. The floors still needed to be refinished, and I hadn't stripped all of the paint from the trim on the first floor, but I was getting there.
My kitchen was in, and it was spectacular. The bright white cabinets and marble countertops were perfect. The appliances had been hooked up while I was at Winters House and I stopped at the grocery store on my drive home to buy actual groceries for my real-life, full-size refrigerator.
It took a few trips back and forth to the car to unload everything. I had a bad moment after I unpacked my duffel and put the groceries away when I realized that was it. I was moved in, I was alone, and that wasn't going to change.
Lucas wasn't coming back.
I saw him everywhere I looked. Just the thought of getting back to work on stripping paint made me sick to my stomach. Everything about it, the smell, the feel of the heater in my hands, the sound of scraping the wood—all of it reminded me of Lucas.
I had to get over it.
I was the one who'd messed up. I'd told him, promised him, that our hookup was casual. No big deal. Friends with benefits, except without the friends part. He'd stepped in when I was in trouble, done me a favor. I was the one who crossed the line.
It didn't matter that I was head over heels in love with him. It didn't matter that every part of me yearned for him, missed him with an ache that went down to my bones.
He wasn't coming back, not to me, and I had to get used to it. I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life pining over a guy who didn't love me.
I'd had my heart broken before. I could handle this.
I could talk a good game in my head, but in my heart, I knew this was nothing like breaking up with Harrison.
Then, I'd felt betrayed, angry, and yes, hurt. But not like this. Not like something had been torn away from me, like some essential part of myself was missing, a part I'd never get back. A part that now belonged to Lucas, whether he wanted it or not.
Standing in the middle of my gorgeous new kitchen, I took a deep breath, held it as long as I could, then slowly let it out. I'd cried all over Aiden when I'd shown up at Winters House the day Lucas dumped me.
Not since. I was done with crying.
I was Charlotte fucking Winters, and I'd been through worse than some guy fucking me and leaving me. My heart was broken, sure. I'd lived through that before too. I wasn't going to dissolve into some weeping mess of a woman.
Every time my emotions began to get the best of me, I forced myself to stop and take a deep breath. I was moving forward. I had to.
I had no job, and now I had no heart.
All I had was this house. And maybe, possibly, if everything worked out right, another one. I'd intended to keep this house. I loved it, loved every inch of it.
Now that Lucas was everywhere, had seeped into the grain of the wood, maybe I'd just sell it when it was done and move into the next one. I knew people who did that, moved from house to house, rehabbing and flipping as they went.
It was risky. You never knew when you'd run into serious problems the inspection didn't uncover. I'd been incredibly lucky on this job that everything had gone to schedule. Most of the time, between getting subcontractors and delays on materials, that wouldn't be the case.
Time was money on a flip.
The longer you held onto the house, the narrower the profit margin could get. Definitely a risky line of work.
I wanted it anyway. I loved it. Nothing was like the rush of satisfaction at taking something neglected and making it new again.
I made myself a quick turkey sandwich and ate it standing at the island in the kitchen. It was time to get back to work. My stomach full, I grabbed my headphones and shoved them in my ears.
The paint was stripped off the trim in the living room, the front hall, and most of the dining room. I could finish the dining room, but I didn't feel like stripping paint. Not yet.
Fortunately for me, all of that cleaned trim needed to be sanded. It was another repetitive, endless job that would be well worth the effort when I was done.
A half an hour later, I was reminding myself how good it would look as my arms ached. I'd only made it up three steps of the staircase.
The detailed carvings on the banister and the spindles were beautiful, but they'd been a pain in the ass to strip and they were just as irritating to sand.
Music pounded in my ears, a hard rock rhythm that suited my mood. No weepy love songs for me. Not for a while. Maybe not ever again the way I felt. Loud, angry rock? I could so work with that.
It was turned up too loud. If I'd had it lower, even just a little, I would've heard something.
I would've been ready.
My only warning was a shadow crossing the side of my vision. Then he was there, sinking his hand into my hair and yanking me back.
I fell on my ass at his feet and looked up to see Bruce Hayward standing above me, a gun in his hand, the barrel pointed at my chest.
"You fucking bitch," he spat out, his eyes wide and wild, the hand holding the gun shaking.
Not good.
I assumed he was here to shoot me, but if he wasn't, I didn't want to be hit accidentally because he couldn't keep his hand steady.
My first instinct was to argue with him, but that would be stupid. As unhinged as he was, I didn't need to push him any further.
I needed to calm him down if I wanted a chance to get away. The panic button was in my purse. Which was in the kitchen.
Stupid, stupid Charlie.
Marissa was in jail and everything had been quiet. I'd thought I was safe.
Suddenly, it occurred to me—my alarm was on and the doors were locked.
"How did you get in?" I asked, trying to keep my voice level and non-confrontational.
Hayward sneered down at me. "You left the door unlocked while you were getting your groceries. I snuck in and hid in your laundry room. Now, we're locked in together. Just you and me."
"What are you going to do?"
I didn't really want to know what Bruce Hayward had planned for me. Still, keeping him talking was a better option than whatever was going to happen when he was done.
"I haven't decided," he said. "I was thinking about killing you."
"Any chance I can talk you out of that?" I said.
Hayward laughed, high-pitched and grating, the gun in his hand wobbling back and forth as his body shook with amusement.
"My wife left me today, had me served with divorce papers. My kids won't speak to me. My lawyer says I'm going to jail for a long time. What does it matter if I kill you? You think a few more years is anything on top of what I'm looking at?"
"I think murder one is an entirely different thing than a few counts of white-collar crime."
Another unhinged fit of laughter. "It's not a few counts of white-collar crime. That's what you uncovered. Once the FBI started digging—"
"Look, I'm sorry," I lied. "I didn't realize it would be this bad. If there's anything I can do—"
"Shut the fuck up, you stupid little bitch. You and your family, you think you run the goddamned world. Think you're better than everyone else. So I was bending the law here and there—everyone does it. Everyone except you and your perfect fucking brother.
"But you had to turn me in, do the right thing, and ruin my fucking life. And now you think I'm gonna buy your fake offer to help me out? Fuck that. When I'm done with you, you and your brother will never forget what you did to me."
That gun swinging back and forth was not good. Hayward was going to shoot me. Either on purpose, or because he lost his temper, or maybe his finger would slip.
It didn't matter.
The shot was coming unless I could figure out a way to escape him. Or call for help. My headphones had been yanked out of my ears when he grabbed my hair, but my phone was still in my back pocket, pinned beneath me. And on my phone was the security app Evers had installed.
There was no way I could pull the phone out and call for help, but if I could turn it on, I might be able to press the app and hit the built-in panic button.
It was a long shot, but it was all I had.
Carefully, I slid one hand beneath me and tugged out the phone, leaving it hidden behind my back.
Hayward started ranting about his son taking over his company, calling him an ungrateful bastard.
Good. The longer he raved about his problems, the more time I had to get myself out of this.
My eyes flicking between Hayward's rage-filled face and his gun, I pressed the Home button on my phone, leaving my thumb in place so that my fingerprint could unlock the screen.
It was impossible to tell if it worked without looking. Hoping with everything I had that the phone was unlocked, I pictured the screen in my mind. Evers had put the security app in the center of the bottom row, just to the right.
Feeling my way, I tapped where I thought the app would be. If it had opened, the panic button would be dead center.
The trick was, the panic button in the app needed my fingerprint to activate, a safeguard against calling for help when I just wanted to set the alarm. I tapped the button in the middle of the screen, then pressed my thumb to the Home button again.
If it worked, the phone would vibrate twice.
Nothing.
Either I'd never turned the phone on, or I'd hit the wrong app, or it hadn't read my thumbprint.
There was no way to tell.
Hayward was starting to run out of steam, now bitching about his lying, cheating wife and the lawyer who was sucking them dry.
Any minute, he'd be done with talking. He'd be ready to act.
I clicked the button on the side of the phone to put it to sleep and started the process again.
A click to the home button.
My thumb pressed again for the fingerprint scan.
My heart raced in my chest. Sweat pooled in my armpits and ran down my spine.
I was running out of time.
Again, I pictured the home screen in my mind and tapped where I knew the security app had to be.
One more tap for that red circle that was the panic button and one more press of my thumb.
Nothing.
I squeezed my eyes shut to fight back the rising panic and tried again.