44
Westport, Connecticut
I’m concerned that Phillip asked Rick to come by and give us an update on what he and the local authorities are doing. Considering how high profile Phillip’s life, business and personal, is right now, I understand why he did. I’m certain he’s worried about the fallout from this mess.
I’m also willing to wager that calling Rick back is not a good thing. In view of the fact that no promised security detail from the local police has arrived, I’m convinced there is nothing to update except whatever plan Rick alone has devised to put an end to this shit show.
However this turns out, it won’t be because Rick or the FBI or the local police dove in to help. No, this will end however it ends because everyone dies, or at least certain characters die. I suspect I am supposed to be one of the latter.
I leave Phillip on a call with his campaign manager and look for Julia. I smell freshly brewed coffee before I see her. She’s at the island, having a cup as if the world isn’t falling apart around us.
She looks up. “Alicia is having another walk around outside.”
I want to ask her if she really trusts Alicia and this Brian. I am 100 percent certain they cannot trust Julia. I suppose the only option is to go along and see how it plays out.
“Good,” I reply as expected, then slide onto a stool.
I consider having a cup of coffee, but I’m already riding on a stream of adrenaline.
“You think Casey will come tonight?”
I wonder if Julia is asking because she fears he will be the death of us both, or if it’s because she has missed him. One is as likely as the other. “I don’t know why he would drag this out. We’re all here.”
If she has tried to contact him since her release from captivity, she failed. I know this for certain.
“Even with your husband around?” She watches me closely as if my response will tell her something more than the answer I give to her question. “And Rick—if he ever shows up?”
“I have no idea. We’ll just have to wait him out.” I stare at her then. “You know Casey better than I do, what do you think he’ll do?”
That’s right, put the gorilla on her back.
“I really don’t know him better,” she argues. “We were only a short-term thing, and I couldn’t wait to tell you the latest after each stolen moment.”
“You’re sticking with that story?” I challenge, can’t help myself. It’s a flat-out lie, and the very idea of it makes me furious.
“It’s the truth.” She says this with such sincerity, most anyone would just have to believe her.
I really can’t comprehend how she thought she could come back here and tell me all the untruths I have spotted just watching and listening to her and think I would swallow them all.
I may not have a PhD, but she will never be as good as I am at running a scam.
She never had to. I, on the other hand, had to perfect my game to survive at a very young age.
In order to do that, you have to be able to read people. And I’m reading her like a book.
The only real question at this point is who will survive this night.
The sound of the doorbell is almost poetic.
So it begins.
“That,” I warn, “is probably Rick.”
I wonder why we didn’t hear from Alicia. Isn’t she supposed to be watching the driveway and giving us a heads-up on arrivals?
“I’ve got it!” Phillip calls out, evidently headed for the door.
Every instinct I possess alerts. The certainty that something terrible is about to happen seizes me, and I start in that direction, braced for the worst.
Phillip enters the code disarming the security system and opens the front door. Rick steps inside, and the two of them shake hands. I tell myself to relax.
As I move from the dining room in their direction, somewhere in the kitchen behind me I hear another door open but I can’t stop watching the scene in front of me. Can’t be certain what Rick will do. He remains a wild card.
I suddenly feel as if I’m far away from what’s happening. I can see it and hear it, but I can’t reach it or touch it. Part of my brain has gone on guard against a descending threat that I cannot identify. Yet I feel it to the marrow of my bones.
What is Rick up to? Was that Alicia who came into the kitchen just now? Uncertainty twists inside me.
Phillip locks the door and turns back to Rick.
A blast somewhere behind me splits the air, echoing deafeningly.
Something flies past my arm, tearing through the fabric of my sweater. My skin beneath it burns. I freeze.
Someone is screaming. I glance back, but then I hear Rick shouting, and I jerk my attention back to the front door. He is hovering over Phillip, who has slumped to the floor.
Another blast rattles the air. I’m suddenly running, but I don’t seem to be moving fast enough. I don’t even know when I started moving, but I have to get to Olivia.
I feel a bullet whiz by my head, and I duck.
I hear Julia shouting, but I don’t turn around. I’m on the stairs now. Olivia! I have to get to her. Phillip has been shot, and I’m sorry, but I must protect our child.
Behind me a man is shouting at me, but the words won’t assimilate in my brain. His heavy footfalls thump, thump against the stair treads. The idea that this is Brian, the boyfriend, registers briefly in my brain.
Why is he chasing me?
There are more gun blasts, but I don’t turn around . . . don’t stop running.
I reach the top of the stairs, and Helen is suddenly there. She shoves me toward the floor, and I roll, falling onto my side. I watch as she levels her rifle. A blast makes her shoulder twitch.
The man’s body jerks and sails backward through the air, a rifle or shotgun falling free of his hands as he plummets to the bottom of the staircase.
Then there is silence. Except for the hammering of my heart.
Just as suddenly everything is in motion again. Helen is rushing down the stairs, her weapon still held at the ready. Phillip is moaning. Someone is shouting . . . Alicia, I think.
I clamber onto all fours and scramble toward Olivia’s room. I crawl to my baby’s bed. Mercifully she is still sleeping. I quickly examine her, checking the sheets for blood, then wilt with relief. I kiss her forehead, only then realizing tears are streaming down my face. My body is trembling.
Certain my child is unharmed and remains asleep, I scramble to my feet. I ignore the pain now pulsing through my damaged body, exit the room, and close the door. All is eerily quiet once more.
I take a breath and dare to descend the stairs. I step over the man’s, presumably Brian’s, motionless body. His eyes stare unblinking at the ceiling. He’s dead.
A groan from Phillip has me rushing toward him.
Helen kneels next to him. I join her there.
“Where are you injured?” Before he can answer, I see the widening spread of blood soaking his shirt, and I know this is bad.
Shit. Fear squeezes my chest, making a breath near impossible.
I caress his jaw. There are things I want to say, but the words won’t budge past the thick lump in my throat.
“I’ve called nine-one-one. Help is on the way,” Helen explains. Her bloody hands are pressed against the wound. “The pressure is slowing the bleeding,” she explains.
“Thank you,” I manage to murmur. I need to know what the others are doing. Rick . . . Julia. Alicia. Renewed urgency sends another blast of terror through my veins. They could be plotting on how to finish us off . . . they could be doing anything!
“Stay with him, please,” I urge Helen.
“Mr. Howard is in the dining room with the others,” she says quietly, reading my mind, “I’m not sure you should go in there just yet.”
But I have to.
I squeeze her arm and push to my feet. As quietly as I can, I make my way toward the dining room. I can hear Rick’s voice, but he’s speaking so softly, I can’t make out the words.
At the door I pause and stare at the scene playing out. Alicia stands on one side of the table, the rifle she holds pointed at . . . Julia? Rick has his weapon drawn and leveled on Alicia. Julia hovers at the far end of the table, her hands raised in surrender. What the hell is going on?
I take a breath and reach for the weapon at the small of my back.
“Stay back,” Rick warns.
I jerk when all eyes shift to me. Fuck.
My hands go up in surrender as well. “What’s happening?”
“This is happening.” Alicia swings her aim toward me.
A sudden blast of icy panic gushes through me.
“All this time she told us what a monster you are,” Alicia says, her voice shaking with anger. “She made us do things . . . bad things.”
“Please,” Rick urges, “put the gun down, and we’ll figure all this out.”
Alicia stares at me still, ignoring the man. Tears slip down her cheeks. Jesus Christ, Helen killed her boyfriend. Alicia has nothing to lose.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t want any of this to happen.” A wave of tears glide down my cheeks. So this is it. I think of Olivia upstairs asleep in her bed. Please, God, let Phillip survive to take care of her.
Alicia shakes her head. “But she lied.” She swings the business end of the rifle toward Julia once more.
“She’s the monster. She told us to kill Eleanor—it was the only way, she said.
” A broken laugh issues from her throat.
“Then she wanted us to kill all of you, including the kid. She had me send a text to Phillip asking him to come back. Once he was here and settled in, she ordered Brian to shoot all of you.” Her face crumples. “Now he’s dead.”
I stalled on the words—including the kid—and stare at Julia in disbelief. I don’t know why I’m surprised. Yet the idea that she would order the death of a child shatters something deep inside me. I want to leap across this table and destroy her . . . tear her apart.
Rick is talking again. Trying to persuade Alicia to put down her weapon. Julia is insisting that it was all a big misunderstanding. That I started this . . . that I am the one behind all that happened.
The blast of Alicia’s rifle makes me jump. She jerks with the recoil. Julia falls to the floor. Another blast, and I see Alicia fall backward, a hole in the center of her forehead. Rick lowers his weapon, then glances at me. “You okay?”
I’m shaking . . . I don’t understand. This is not any of the numerous scenarios I had played over and over in my head. I rush to the far end of the table where Rick is now checking Julia’s carotid pulse.
He shakes his head. “She’s dead.”
Some distant part of me regrets that the girl I believed to be my friend never really existed. She was a monster, and now she’s finally dead.
Alicia is dead too. Her boyfriend as well.
Does that mean it’s over? My heart squeezes. Can that possibly be?
“What happened?” I shake my head in an attempt to clear it. “What started this?” I gesture wildly as if I can’t decide what I want to indicate. I walked in, and this was playing out like a bad scene in a low-budget action film.
“The guy came out of nowhere and was firing. He hit Phillip.” Rick shakes his head. “Before I could put him down, Helen did. At that point, I think he was after you. You saw what happened in here.” He gestures to Julia’s lifeless body. “What a fucking mess.”
I hear sirens outside, and I realize I need to get back to Phillip. Rick catches my arm and stops me before I can escape.
“Wendy was a very disturbed woman, Julia. The other woman, the one who called herself Acacia, was working with her. They came to kill you and your family and to take your money.”
I blink. Did Alicia say all this before I came into the room?
“Wendy was put in an institution after killing the man she was living with in Manhattan more than a decade ago,” he goes on. “The story she gave you was nothing more than the delusions of a very unstable woman. Casey Duval was never coming. He was the man she killed.”
I don’t dare speak or even react for fear that I will burst out laughing in spite of current circumstances. That is—every single word of it—total fiction. My body is trembling wildly now. I think I may be going into shock.
First off, the story he just told is a version of mine. I escaped the man in Manhattan ten and a half years ago. Julia did not kill him, and she did not kill Casey Duval.
Rick is right about one thing, however: Casey Duval—Denton, whatever his name is—is dead. Because I ended him just like I did the others.
Not that I’m going to correct him on either count.
“After that article in the Times, she came to me,” Rick goes on with his elaborate fabrication, “with this story about how you stole her life. I knew she was lying from the beginning. That’s why I’ve been showing up at your door every day.
But it’s over now, Julia,” he says, evidently taking my silence for the shock it is.
“There’s no one left from the past to give you trouble.
They’re all dead. Case closed. It’s all over. ”
The way he stares at me as he emphasizes the word, I think I get the hidden meaning he’s attempting to convey.
“No one ever has to know the rest,” he adds in case I don’t get it.
“You knew.” I don’t know why I say the words. I should just be happy this is going my way, but I can’t simply toss it aside that easily. I have to know. Plus the shock is preventing rational reactions.
“The police are here,” he cautions. “Stay with Phillip. Let me do the talking.”
Rather than argue, I go to Phillip and ask Helen to please check on Olivia. If I’m really lucky, Olivia won’t wake up until this is over.
But is it over? I mean, really over?
Whatever Rick Howard believes, there is one thing I know for an absolute certainty: All the players who posed a threat to me are now dead.
There is no one left.
Unless I count Rick.
Somehow I suspect the fact that Phillip is my husband keeps me in Rick’s good graces. After all, who doesn’t want to stay close to the next mayor of New York City? A mega-rich one, at that. The man could end up president one day.
The truth is, I can’t really be certain if Rick is telling me what he believes, what his bureau colleagues have told him, or what he knows because he was or is part of the cleanup detail who protected the keepers. I actually don’t know what Rick is.
Men like Casey Duval and his clients don’t get away with their evil deeds for so long without someone on the inside.
Not really my issue just now.
But if I were Rick Howard . . . I would watch my back.