by Dale Mayer
Gemma studied her sister for a long moment. “No. I’m not satisfied because I’m not sure I believe you. You make up stories on the spot. Maybe you should become a politician,” she said humorously.
“I never make up stories,” she said. “I call them fibs, and he was being blackmailed.”
“Why?”
“It was about the company.”
“No. This has nothing to do with the company,” Gemma said, standing resolute in front of her sister and waited for the next wave of lies.
Rebecca glared at her in frustration. Finally she gave in. “Fine. He was being blackmailed about Becky. But he had dirt on someone in the company. A ledger. About the embezzlement from his predecessor. He wanted to go over it first, then hand it off to the authorities. He figured the break-ins and the thefts at the company were all connected.”
Gemma stared at her sister. Was she telling the truth? There was a ring of it in her words, but that just made her a good liar. However, Becky had mentioned seeing a ledger at home. Possibly the ledger from work. Maybe left behind in Joe’s home office, somewhere no one expected it to be found. Except Rebecca could have easily moved it, since Becky saw it last with Rebecca. Who could be blackmailing Joe’s predecessor, for all Gemma knew. She didn’t know what to think about her sister right now. Or about Joe being blackmailed about Becky. Her take was Rebecca was holding Becky’s parentage over Joe’s head. That would hurt him terribly if he wasn’t the father. But it wouldn’t change how he felt about her. Joe had loved Becky. Becky had loved Joe.
“Me?” Becky asked, staring up at her mother in shock. “What did I do?”
“You exist,” her mother snapped. “Just be quiet.”
Becky took a couple steps off to the side, staring up at her mother, tears in the corner of her eyes. But it was the look on her face that broke Gemma’s heart.
“Rebecca, stop talking to Becky that way now,” Gemma stated in a hard voice. “Becky, come here, sweetie.” And she picked her up and drew her close. Becky was pretty upset about this conversation and yet remained such a special girl. Through all of this, she’d stayed sweet. But what she was watching now hurt. It was the loss of innocence. The first awareness of her mother in a new light. Something else Gemma could relate too.
While Rebecca held her tongue, Gemma asked her, “Let’s go back to what you said. Do you mean somebody thought Joe wasn’t her father, that she was his, and wanted his daughter back?”
Rebecca shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Joe’s brother by any chance? Did you actually sleep with his brother?” Oh, dear God. If she’d told Joe, … the heartache and pain. … Her sister just couldn’t resist destroying anything good around her. It was like a disease, where she couldn’t stand for anyone else to be happy. Gemma shook her head as she patted Becky and gently swayed her in her arms.
“Well, I wanted to know if there was anything different about them,” she admitted, “but all men are the same. All sex is the same. There’s nothing special about any of it.”
At that, Gemma tried to cup Becky’s ears, but it was basically too late. “It’s only about what you can get from it, I presume?”
“Of course. Men are simple. Tools. Everyone knows that. Sex is a business transaction. God, you’re so innocent.” Her sister’s tone of voice was filled with disgust, but, as she’d had a lifetime of practice, Gemma easily ignored it.
“Interesting that’s how you view it,” Gemma said, filled with sadness. “Is that what your relationship with Joe was like?”
“Of course I used him to make life comfortable and to ensure our needs were met.”
“You mean, a fancy house, bank accounts, credit cards, designer clothes, trips, jewelry, and whatever else you might want on the spur of the moment?” The problem was Gemma knew Joe had been happy …
“Of course,” she said. “If you weren’t so stuck-up and cold, you could have had a boyfriend give you things too.”
“Where did you learn that from?” Gemma asked, incredulous though not surprised. “It’s hard to believe Mom thought that way about Dad.”
“Of course she did,” Rebecca said. “She told me to be very careful who I picked for a permanent partner, to make sure they could take me high enough and look after me the way I deserved.”
“So what did you decide to do then?” Gemma asked. “Instead of sticking with Joe, you got rid of him so you could go on to the next one?”
“I didn’t kill Joe!” Rebecca roared. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”
Just then something poked her in the back of the neck, and Gemma realized she’d been so focused on her sister that she’d completely forgotten about the guy outside.
The gun at her back said that the guy hadn’t forgotten her.
“Move into the cabin. Enough of this BS sister crap,” the stranger snapped. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”
Gemma slowly moved into the cabin, the gun at her neck, her hands secured around Becky, Gemma’s body in between Becky and the gunman. Gemma wasn’t sure where Galen was, but she was grateful he was here somewhere. When she was deeper inside the cabin, she turned sideways, still protecting Becky, to study the gunman, who even now was relieving Rebecca of the gun hidden at her back. She couldn’t help but wonder if that was the same gun that had killed Joe?
Wow. Even this guy doesn’t trust Rebecca. “So, you’re the man who tried to break into Rebecca’s house twice,” she said. “So I suppose now you’ll tell me that you didn’t shoot Joe either? With that gun?” She was desperate for clarity here.
“I was to shoot Joe, and she was part of it.” He tilted his head toward Rebecca and smiled. “And yes, this gun.”
“I was not. I told you that,” she shouted.
“You told me to do what needed to be done,” he said. “Don’t think you’ll get out of this now when your hands are as dirty as mine.”
“You weren’t supposed to kill him,” she said resentfully, glaring at the gunman.
“What were you supposed to do?” Gemma asked the man curiously. Her heart sank as she realized what the turn of events meant for her family’s future. If any of them survived this.
“I was supposed to kidnap the little girl and hold her until big daddy-o paid the ransom. And get the damn ledger at the same time and make it look like a robbery, all tied to the brewery.” He pointed the gun at Rebecca. “She told me where to find it in his home office.”
“Will you keep your damn trap shut!” Rebecca yelled at the gunman, despite him having both guns.
“Ah.” Gemma turned to look at her sister. “So you didn’t want to divorce Joe. You wanted to bankrupt him first and then divorce him?” Yet that made no sense either, for her sister loved her creature comforts. She’d get less in a settlement if Joe was broke beforehand. Although it would maximize the pain she inflicted on him.
“Not really,” her sister said, looking around, ignoring Gemma to speak to the gunman. “We need to get out of here before anybody comes. Zack and Galen will be lurking here somewhere.”
“Yeah, like where is your lover?” Gemma asked. “Joe’s brother. I’m sure he’s somewhere here too.”
At that, there was silence. “What do you know about that?” Rebecca finally said in a shrill voice, glaring at her sister.
“Well, if you were after the ledger, you could blackmail whoever was desperate to find it, take the payout money, and run for a new life, then divorce Joe and take everything you could from him, probably putting your daughter in jeopardy at the same time to twist that screw, and, of course, you’d have another guy to go to. I figured Joe’s brother was probably lined up as the right one for the moment.”
“As usual, you don’t know anything. You’re just guessing,” her sister snapped in an ugly voice. “And you think you’re so damn smart. But you’re stupid, always have been. I’m way smarter.”
There wasn’t any love in her tone or even joy at the idea of now glomming onto James’s coat
tails. Odd. It seemed like she had more animosity toward Joe’s brother. Interesting. And confusing. Gemma still hadn’t quite figured out how this was supposed to work, but she was getting there. She turned to look back at the gunman. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, then motioned at Rebecca, “but you’re both shit for terrorizing a child.”
“I didn’t terrorize anybody,” he said. “I just followed her plan.”
“You did not,” her sister snapped. Rebecca turned to study Gemma and, in a sly voice, said, “I told you that you should have left us alone, Gemma. But you never listen and always go where you’re not wanted.”
“Well, I was more concerned about Becky than you were, obviously,” Gemma said. “You’ve always landed on your own two feet. Or somebody else’s penis,” she said.
The guy with the gun sniggered.
“Is it not the truth?” Gemma said, trying to provoke her sister into telling the truth. How Gemma hated that Becky was hearing all this. But only now did Gemma worry about all the poor child had already been through these last eight years with her mother. “Did Joe know about your activities? Did you break his heart before you shot him? He loved you so much. To know what you are would have killed him without the aid of a bullet.”
Rebecca straightened up. “Joe was done with us.” Her glare getting even hotter.
Then that was no surprise. Rebecca had a hell of a temper. So maybe now they’d find out the truth. “You mean, you were done with Joe, and you were just looking for your next mark, but, at the same time, you couldn’t just leave him heartbroken at you leaving him. You had to twist the knife and let him know you were having affairs all over the place, right?”
“Like I said, it’s none of your business, and you don’t know anything about it,” Rebecca said. “Besides, you wouldn’t understand. You’ve always hated me. I mean, I’m so much prettier and better at dealing with men than you. Your jealousy is understandable but wearing. You’ve always been like this. The ugly duckling of the family. We couldn’t wait to get rid of you, and, like a bad penny, you kept coming back.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Gemma said with a smile. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve killed any husbands or had affairs where I screwed multiple men in the same night, brothers even. You know what? Where I’m kind of old-fashioned that way, I like to think of one man at a time, whereas you don’t care. You don’t even know who your daughter’s father is,” she said, shaking her head. “And that’s nothing to be proud of, so keep your high and mighty BS attitude away from me.”
“Mother always said you were such a prude.”
“Obviously I didn’t know them at all,” Gemma said. Inside, she was more than a little heartbroken, and yet she shouldn’t be. She understood her mother hadn’t been anyone she could relate to. It had sent her to bed to cry herself to sleep many nights. It took her a while to realize it wasn’t her fault. It was her mother’s.
“Well, you should understand that because you’re not hers and Daddy’s child anyway.”
“Yeah, I am,” she said. “You might want to think that I don’t belong to the family, but you’re wrong.”
“No. That’s not true,” she said, as if privy to a secret. “Mom told me.”
“Of course she did. She was as much of a liar as you are. That was her way of disassociating from having to look after me as being hers. She never related to me, but we were blood.”
“No,” she said. “You’re just thinking that you are.”
“I had the DNA test done, Rebecca,” she said. “Dad told me that, if I wanted to, I could, but that I belonged to them. That was after I threw it back at them, saying I wasn’t even theirs, after Mom had told me the same thing. He just laughed and said absolutely I was. So I had the test done. It didn’t take much, and he paid for it, but then money was never a big thing to him, was it?”
“No, which is one of the reasons Mother was setting up to leave him.”
“Ah,” she said. Gemma thought back over the years to the car accident. “And Dad was driving. Don’t suppose she told him that she was leaving him that same night, maybe in the car, right before they died, huh?”
An odd silence came as Rebecca looked at her. “You’re not saying that he killed her, are you?”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised, but it’s also possible they had a hell of a fight, and a terrible accident stemmed from that,” she said. “When you start wrapping people around and making yourself so dispensable to these people who are lovesick, overwhelmed, and caught up in making your life happen, cutting them loose with that same bitterness, well, it’s not hard to imagine that they might snap.”
“Well, Joe did,” she said resentfully. “He didn’t want a divorce, and then he told me that he would let everybody know what I was like.”
“Ah. I see. So you had already asked for a divorce. So, more lies. Layers and layers of lies.” She looked over at the guy holding the gun on her. “What are you, her next life?”
He shrugged. “I fucked her a few times. It’s nothing special. But then getting laid is getting laid.”
At that, Rebecca looked at him with a glacial gaze that would have cut him in two if she could have. “Well, you won’t be doing it again.”
“Until you need something,” he said. “One thing about bitches is that you just have to put them to good use. And they’re only good for one thing.” Then he waved the gun at Gemma. “Still, I got the ledger I was after, so it’s all good.” He glared at Rebecca. “And it’s mine, not yours. Oh, and let’s not forget who’s holding the gun.”
“Oh, absolutely not,” Rebecca said with a sneer. “Let’s not forget you’re the one who broke into my house and stole that ledger and killed my husband.”
“Is that your line? We’ll see how that works in the future. Besides, you brought the gun that killed him here and kept it for more of your dirty work, but I have it now,” he said with a smirk. “Let’s not forget that too, sweetheart.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “No judge will believe you over me.”
“Well, maybe if we got a female judge,” Gemma chimed in, both her and the gunman chuckling at her quip. Relaxing, Gemma shifted with Becky, stepping a little farther back into the cabin, to the side, where she had last been with Galen.
A shot was fired into the cabin, slamming into the wood at the far end. She stared at everybody, for a fraction of a second, grabbed her niece firmly, and dropped to her knees, hit the floor on her back, rolling gently to shield Becky.
*
Galen bailed out the bedroom window and came around the back, looking for this guy’s partner. But he saw no sign of him. He headed back at a fast clip to the small pickup and found Zack waking up. Galen quickly explained the scenario and sent Zack up to get Tim; then Galen came racing back around the cabin. He didn’t know what the hell was going on. That baby sister deserved to be six feet under as far as he was concerned. The little girl, Becky, was a sweetheart, but her mother was a piranha.
Just as he was about to make his move to take out the gunman without getting the women hurt, somebody fired a shot from the far side of the compound. He did an about-face. Now he was tracking through the darkness to find the shooter, praying to God that Gemma and Becky were unharmed.
He heard his phone buzz, likely Zack sending him a message, but he didn’t take the time. After a short detour into the trees to hide him, to take in his surroundings, Galen was on the move again. As soon as he approached the area where he thought the shot had come from—which was between the chicken coop and the barn—he slid up against the wall and listened. Up ahead he could hear somebody running through the brush. No one near as quiet or as stealthy as Galen was. Likely another of Rebecca’s stooges. And hopefully the last one. Had he been the shooter into the cabin? Had he planned on killing his partner? Or had he finally seen the light with Rebecca?
Or maybe he figured it was all a bad deal, and he just wanted to get rid of them all.
Galen pulled out his phone and checke
d Zack’s message, which said Tim was coming with sentries. He typed a quick note back, alerting Zack to his location. The last thing Galen wanted was to get shot by friendly fire.
Footsteps pounded the ground ahead. Galen went low into the brush and raced after the footsteps. Almost as if the shooter understood he was no longer alone or had heard Galen or maybe just saw a clear path ahead of him, the source of the footsteps broke into a run, and all of a sudden the shooter raced away. Galen picked up speed, and suddenly he heard a vehicle door slam shut and an engine start up.
Swearing to himself, he picked up the pace, going faster and faster in the dark. But it was damn hard to see anything at this hour. He saw the lights up ahead, as a vehicle headed out of its hiding place. He wasn’t even sure if it was on a road or if it was stuck on the side of the road. Apparently it wasn’t on a road because he watched it do a series of awkward maneuvers, trying to turn around to go in the opposite direction.
Galen came up just as it made a pivot, and he grabbed the driver’s door. It swung open, and the driver looked at him, startled. Reaching for a hold on the shooter’s jacket, Galen dragged him onto the ground, jumping on top of him, and slamming his fist hard into the guy’s temple.
When the man collapsed underneath him, Galen sank on top of his captive, gasping for breath. He pulled out his phone and sent a message to Zack. Quickly he took a photo of the shooter’s face and sent that afterward. With the phone in his hand, he called Gemma, who quickly answered.
“I know you have a guy with a gun in there, but you may want to tell him that I’ve got his partner.”
Her voice was calm as she said, “Will do.”
God he loved that about her. He could hear her saying, “Yo, gunman, Galen’s got your partner and the getaway vehicle.”
Galen could hear the man swearing in the background. But his voice was too muffled to hear the conversation.
“No, I don’t want to tell him that. If you want to talk to him, here.”
Galen heard a muffled sound as she handed over the phone.