"I've got to go," I say to Beck. "Sorry. I'll get with you tomorrow."
"Is everything okay?" he asks.
"I hope so. I just got an email from Scarlett," I tell him.
"An email?" he frowns.
"Yeah. She never emails me. It just says to come home."
"Let me know everything's alright," he says.
"I will."
I hurry out of the bar, staring at the message again. Scarlett doesn't email me. She has no reason to. I didn't even know she had my email address, but I guess it was on the business card I gave her. Why didn't she call me? Or send a text?
My heart is in my throat as I drive back to her house. It's dark, except for a hint of glow coming from the window of her bedroom.
The tension of fear and worry tightens further in my chest when I realize her car isn't in the driveway.
Parking in front of the house rather than pulling in across the gravel, I start up the walkway. The front door is unlatched. It's not enough to really consider it open, just not all the way closed.
I slip into the house and look around. Everything seems exactly like it was when I left.
Why isn't her car here?
Why is the house so dark?
I've only taken a few steps across the living room when a scream shatters the silence. I run through the house toward the bedroom.
In the hallway, a dark figure comes at me. Before I can grab hold, he shoves his shoulder into my chest, and I stumble back, tripping over a pair of shoes Scarlett left there. She does it all the time. An annoying tendency that just turned into a major issue.
The figure runs through the house and bursts outside. I could follow, but the screaming coming from the bedroom can't be ignored. Running down the hallway, I push open the door and burst inside to comfort Scarlett.
Only, it isn't Scarlett tangled in the sheets in the middle of the bed.
"Eva! What the fuck are you doing here?" I shout.
Eva just keeps screaming, her head swinging back and forth as her mouth opens and closes like a flustered, terrified bird. Or a Muppet. She's alive. She doesn't look like she's been hurt. And she seriously shouldn't be here, so I'm not worried about her. I run back out of the room and out the front door to try to find the dark figure that nearly stomped me in the hall.
Instead of finding a man outside, I nearly run headlong into Scarlett.
"What is going on?" she asks. "Are you alright?"
In a display of impeccably horrible timing, Eva comes staggering out of the house on spike heels that give her the lower body control of a newborn calf. It goes particularly well with the see-through red babydoll with black marabou feathers twisted in strange coils on her chest. I'm sure there's a part of her brain that believes she looks sexy. Instead, there's an uncomfortable science fiction cinnamon roll situation happening.
"Gavin," she gasps out, clutching the doorframe. "Oh, baby, I was so scared. I'm so glad you were here to save me!"
She throws herself toward me, teetering on the edge of the porch. I grab her by her wrists and step back, so she has to come down the steps rather than into my arms. She looks at me with wide, heavily painted eyes fluttering innocently.
"Who are you?" Scarlett asks. "And what are you doing in my house? Predominantly naked?"
"Who am I?" Eva asks, offended at the very thought of her identity being questioned. "I'm Eva. Surely Gavin has told you about his fiancée?"
"No, but he's surely told me about his ex-girlfriend who puts the 'cray' in crazy bitch and has a bad habit of pretending they're getting married. Can I assume that's you?" Scarlett responds.
"Who is this woman?" Eva asks.
She already knows. She has to, or she would have no way of finding the house.
“This is Scarlett. My um…" My what? Girlfriend? "My friend,” I attempt, internally wincing at that. I might just catch an earful later. “Mind telling us why you're in her house? And why you emailed me from her account to tell me to come here?”
"Excuse me?" Scarlett asks, incredulous. She throws her hands up. "I don't have time for this ridiculousness. You get her out of my house and into some clothes. I seriously don't care which order." She stops on the porch and turns around to face me. "And, by the way, you might want to tell her about your baby."
She stomps into the house as Eva turns a distasteful look to me. "Baby?"
"Eva, you've gone way too far this time. You've gone way too far before, but this…" I shake my head. "You need to leave and forget I ever existed. I never want to see you again. I never want to hear your name again."
"You don't mean that," she simpers, coming toward me.
"Yes, I do. I don't want anything to do with you. I love Scarlett. We're going to have a daughter together. She's my life. My future. She is everything, Eva. Do you understand me? You will never be a part of my life. Ever. Go home. Don't ever get near me or Scarlett again."
Before Eva responds, Scarlett bursts out of the house, the book about the mansion and a stack of papers under her arm. She tries to brush past me, and I reach out to stop her.
"I need to go, Gavin," she says.
"Scarlett, you need to stay here. Someone else was in the house. When I got here, someone had just gone into the room with Eva. He almost knocked me over. I didn't get a chance to see his face because I thought her screaming was you and went to make sure everything was alright. It could be dangerous out there."
"Dangerous?" Eva asks. "Seriously?"
Scarlett's eyes lock on her. "Yes. Or didn't he tell you about the murder?"
Eva's face goes pale. "M - murder?"
"I'm coming with you," I say to Scarlett, but she pulls away from me.
"No. You're staying here and cleaning up this mess."
"Where are you going?"
"To Sylvia's house."
She jumps into her car, and the tires scream away. My fingers sting with anger and red colors the edges of my vision. I remain calm, but nothing will take the tension out of my jaw.
It takes far longer than I want to get Eva scooped back into real clothes and on her way to the airport. She's still yelling when the driver's side door slams beside her, blaming me for putting her in danger and threatening to tell everyone we know about the woman I knocked up.
I offer to pay for the announcements.
That shut her up.
She's finally gone. I move toward my car, so I can go after Scarlett. Movement in the shadows out of the corner of my eye makes me stop. I look toward the darker area beside her house and see a figure form out of the shadows.
Rushing toward it, I catch it with my shoulder in the stomach and send it flying before it knows what I'm doing.
The man grunts when he hits the ground. As I pull back away from him, I realize this isn't the same man who was in Scarlett's house. He's much too heavy and isn't wearing all black.
It's Sterling Jones.
"What are you doing here?" I ask him.
"I need to talk to Scarlett," he says. "She needs to know the truth."
Chapter Forty-Three
Scarlett
I had every intention of just going back to Sylvia's house. The only reason I went back home was to get the book and papers so I could show them to her. I wanted to take everything I already knew, add it to the picture she sent me of the papers from Jared's pocket, and bounce my ideas off her. It would be like it always was, with her guiding me through when my thoughts got too tangled, and I knew I was missing something I was looking right at.
And she did. She didn't even realize what she had done.
To her credit, she's here with me. She might be muttering something that sounds like a mixture of creatively linked profanities and various prayers, but she's here.
“It shouldn't be too much farther,” I tell her.
“It's just a haunted house,” she whispers to herself. “It's just a haunted house. Just a preview of a new level of a haunted house we didn't see last year. That's all it is.”
“If that ma
kes you feel better, you just keep right on saying it,” I encourage her.
“It's not working,” she whines.
“You can go back,” I tell her. “You don't have to come. I know this is crazy, and I would completely understand if you want to go home.”
She shakes her head adamantly. "No way. This may be some Ninja Turtles underground lair bullshit that trumps even the alligator park, but I'm not going anywhere. You're not facing this by yourself."
"Thank you." I look ahead of us to where the tunnel is starting to climb. "I think we're almost there. When we get inside, just follow me. I've never been in the mansion before, but I think I can navigate it pretty well."
"And what exactly are we doing here?" she asks.
“I just need to check something. I've been looking at these pictures over and over, and they didn't make sense. There was something wrong with one of them, and I couldn't figure out what it was. It just struck me as strange, but I figured it out tonight. I want to see if I'm right. And if I am, we go to Jimmy and force him to check it out even if that means hog-tying him,” I tell her.
“You know, I don't think you're allowed to do that to a police officer. They frown on people throwing officers around and tying them up,” she says.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures. It's not like I haven't spent a night or two in jail for stupid reasons before.”
“True, but you weren't pregnant at the time,” she points out.
“We'll just consider it her first adventure. But it's not going to come down to that. I am confident if I can bring him this information, he's going to listen to me this time. He won't have a choice,” I tell her.
We reach a door at the end of the dark, dusty stone passageway we've been following. Holding my flashlight in one hand, I reach for the handle. I expect it to be locked, or at least put up a fight. Instead, the door swings easily open.
“I don't know if that makes me feel better, or scares me more,” Sylvia comments, her voice dropping down to a whisper.
“I'm going to take it as a good thing,” I tell her. “It's a sign that this is going to go smoothly.”
“You keep clinging to that, Scarlett,” Sylvia mutters.
The door is actually attached to a narrow set of shelves in a small storage room. We step through the opening and swing the shelves back into place to cover the entrance. It looks like we are in a basement, and I shine the light around us to orient myself.
It's as dark, dank, and creepy as anyone would imagine the basement of an old, abandoned mansion to be. We move through it quickly, avoiding furniture draped in sheets and wooden crates until we get to a narrow set of steps leading up.
They creak under our feet as we make our way up toward another door. Finally, I step out into the house I've coveted. Sticky hot air makes my skin crawl and my nose itch. Sylvia presses up closer behind me.
It's just like when we go through the haunted houses at Halloween. She can never decide if she wants to be in front or behind. In front, she has to go through first and has no one to warn her of what's to come. If she's in back, there's nothing to defend her from what might be behind.
I don't know which would be better in this situation.
Only a tiny bit of light comes through the windows to help the meager beams of our flashlights.
“We should have brought Jackson's camping flashlights,” Sylvia whispers. “They're stronger.”
“Isn't Jackson camping tonight?” I ask.
“I would have called him back for the occasion,” she tells me.
I use my knowledge of the mansion, the pictures I've seen in the book, and days of peeking through the windows to steal clandestine glimpses of what's inside, to move through the rooms until we get to the one I'm looking for. It's a formal dining room, the same room where the family took the picture for the book.
“This is it,” I tell her. “This is the room.”
“It's empty,” she says, looking around.
I nod. “I know. That's the problem. In all the pictures, there's a sideboard against this wall. It has glass inset in the doors and displays crystal inside and a silver tea set on top. The same one throughout the generations. An heirloom. When you look at the pictures, the wall is smooth, and a sideboard sits out from it. But look.”
I shine the beam of my flashlight onto the wall across from us, highlighting a section built out away from the wall. It looks like a window seat, but older and deeper. The cushion on top looks far too vibrant to be in a home that hasn't been lived in for decades.
“That's built into the wall,” Sylvia says. “It must have always been there; you just didn't notice.”
“No,” I tell her. “That is where the sideboard was. I'll show you.” I take the bag from my shoulder and scramble through it to pull out the book, so I can show her the pictures.
I'm flipping the pages open when I hear the sharp sound of footsteps scraping across the floor. Shards of ice go through my veins. My stomach turns, and for a moment I think I might get sick.
“You don't have to show her,” a voice says from behind us. “That is where the sideboard was.”
I turn around slowly to face Jared. He has a sledgehammer in one hand and a drawn, pained expression on his face.
“Jared,” Sylvia gasps. “What are you doing here?”
“Ask Scarlett. She knows,” he says.
Keeping my eyes locked on him, I shift until I'm slightly closer to Sylvia. Taking out my phone, I pull up the image she sent to me earlier and turn it toward her.
“Priscilla and Matthew’s marriage license,” I show her. “She was eighteen years old by one day when she married him. He disappeared two weeks later. Harlan McVey wasn't happy about his daughter falling in love with a carnival worker, was he, Jared? He wanted Priscilla to marry into one of the wealthy families. To have a husband with a title or a successful career. He told her she had to stop seeing him, but she refused. And as soon as she could, she married him.”
“But Harlan couldn't stand for that,” Jared said. “He wanted to make sure his family's reputation was preserved, no matter what it took.”
“Especially when he found out she was pregnant. Isn't that right? That's what made it even more important to make sure Matthew went away. Priscilla was pregnant, and Harlan didn't want any chance of anyone finding out about that baby,” I say. “I did see a murder last year. Only it was one twenty-five years in the making.”
Sylvia makes a sobbing sound beside me. “Jared, what did you do? What did you do?”
Heavier, more frantic footsteps pound through the house. I grab onto Sylvia, ready to push her through the nearest exit to get out. I'm not expecting the two familiar faces that step into the light of my flashlight.
"It wasn't him," Sterling shouts, holding up a hand and crossing the room frantically. "Jared didn't kill anyone."
"Gavin," I cry out and rush to him.
He meets me and gathers me into his arms.
"Are you alright?"
I nod against his chest. "I'm fine. What's going on?"
"Sterling, I told you I could handle this myself," Jared growls angrily.
"It's not safe here," Sterling says. "For any of you. You need to get out of the mansion."
"Not until we know what happened," I tell him.
"Scarlett, please," Gavin says. "Sterling will explain it all to you, but you can't stay here. It's too dangerous."
Jared lets out a sudden angry scream and runs across the room, swinging the sledgehammer over his head. We all flinch, but he isn't moving toward any of us. Instead, he's aiming directly for the buildout in the wall. It was that feature that's been bothering me so much. A similar shape and size as the sideboard. The same enough to not call too much attention. But so different I couldn't stop thinking about it.
"What are you doing?" Sterling cries out. "Jared, stop!"
But he doesn't. The sledgehammer smashes into the wall, and it crumbles away. Instead of resisting like the firm, strong walls of t
he rest of the house, the flimsy shell of a structure collapses under the pressure of each blow. The sounds boom hollowly, echoing up to the eerie, tall ceilings.
It only takes seconds for the entire front of the wall section to be gone and a horrible smell to fill the room. I cover my nose and mouth with one hand, but I can't pull my eyes away from the wall. I turn my flashlight to it, illuminating Jared, his shoulders heaving under ragged breaths, standing beside a nearly decomposed body.
"Who the fuck is that?" Sylvia shouts.
"Harlan McVey," I tell her. "He's who I saw get murdered at the corn maze last year."
"He got what he deserved," Jared growls. "For what he did to my mother. For what he did to me. And especially for what he did to my father."
"You're Priscilla and Matthew's son," Sylvia whispers, in a trembling voice.
Jared nods. "And this piece of shit killed my father."
"No," Sterling says, taking a step toward Jared. "Jared, that's what you don't understand. You never gave me the chance to explain it. Harlan McVey didn't kill your father."
"No, but he certainly tried. He was just too shortsighted to do it correctly." I gasp and whip around toward the sound of the voice coming from the other side of the room. A tall man walks toward us in a slow swagger. I didn't even hear him coming.
He gestures toward Sterling. "Oh, I'm sorry. Don't stop on account of me. Go ahead. Tell Jared how it all really happened. Then we'll add a little fun to this family reunion."
His voice is casual, almost playful. Of course, I'd probably feel that way, too if I was the only one standing in the room with a gun in my hand.
Chapter Forty-Four
Gavin
Fear unlike anything I've ever experienced snaps inside me, and I rush to get in front of Scarlett.
“William put the gun down,” Sterling says. “These people don't have anything to do with this. Leave them alone.”
Baby and the Billionaire Page 25