“Shit,” I mutter as a pair of headlights speed this way, and I jog over to safety, to Ree who’s holding herself, shivering. I grip her by the arms and pull her in close. “We can’t do this right now. We need to leave. We’re in danger. We need to get the kids and leave Percy right now.”
“No!” Her voice riots into the night with a level of insanity in it that I’ve never heard before. “We stay.” Her breathing is ragged as plumes of white fog billow from her mouth. “My mother has been waiting for this moment, and I’m not about to deny her. You owe me that, Peter. You owe me so much more than you’ll ever realize.”
My phone bleats with a text once again, and I glance down. Same mysterious number. Same number Mace warned me about. Just four words.
Let the games begin.
My blood runs cold as I give a quick glance around at the vicinity. It’s as if I can feel them—feel her watching me, watching us, and for that reason alone I head to the door.
Ree gives a low and furtive knock. “Open up, Mother.” She does her best to keep her voice even-tempered as not to attract any more attention than our neighborhood has already called to itself tonight. “Lena? It’s me. I have to talk to you.”
A rustle emits from the other side. The sound of footfalls heads in this direction as ominous as steel drums with the skin pulled tight. The door gives a quick jiggle, and the lock releases with a snap.
Ree looks up at me from under her lashes just like that first day we met, and I can’t help but wonder if this will be our last.
“Come inside, Peter. I can’t wait for you to meet Mommy.”
Ree
When I was a child, my mother turned to me one night and whispered everybody hates you. It was matter-of-fact, a hard lesson that a mother had to teach her child, a cold-hearted truth that I needed to swallow down like the syrup she so often poured down my throat.
Lena hadn’t heard it, and I was thankful for that, embarrassed that we had brought so much scorn on our young selves without trying. My mother never quantified her statement, but left me alone to fill in the blanks. And my mind worked nonstop listing all of the obvious reasons a cruel world would look to me with such disdain.
Looking back, as an adult, as someone who has absorbed copious amounts of self-help books, as someone who has listened to psychologists and psychiatrists alike as they tried to untangle the verbal knot my mother employed, I can see now that it was yet another method she employed to mentally restrain me.
But tonight, I’m here to return the favor. Upon her dying breath, I want her to realize that the world never hated me. It was her all along. There are not a lot of justifications for murder. There are not a lot of reasons that I would willingly go to prison for—that is, if I’m caught—but my mother has built up a damned good argument, along with a body count, and she would be worth the risk. I don’t know who killed Peter’s first wife. I do not know who killed those poor women littering his past. But I have no doubt my mother has latched onto the madness, her last desperate attempt to fuck with my mind—to kill me by taking away my husband.
And Peter. What can be said about Peter other than the fact he does not look innocent. Is it a coincidence that I left one feral psychopath, only to fall into the arms of another? In truth, I can’t sort any of it out. All I know is that I need to excise the demons from my life. Both the past and the present must go in hopes that the children and I can have a safer tomorrow.
The porch light ignites as the door yawns open, and Lena stands there hugging her bathrobe.
“What’s going on?” Her voice is groggy. Lena is an early riser in order to open the Blue Chandelier.
I push my way past her, dragging Peter in beside me. Bram. I can’t even bring myself to go along with the Bram farce anymore.
“Where is she?”
A set of soft footsteps heads this way from the hall, and Lena crosses the room just as my mother emerges. Her dark hair is damp from the shower, her skin vacant of the theatrical pancake makeup she’s come to adorn her face with.
“Well, look who’s here.” Her lips curve unnaturally in a vertical manner, something I’ve only seen cartoon villains pull off. It looks downright menacing. “So, you’ve finally brought the hubby.”
“Did you manage to wash all the blood off?” My voice carries across the room like an apparition streaming from my mouth with an agenda of its own. I’m not sure I meant to hit the highlights so soon, but my adrenaline keeps hiking higher to far more frightening levels than ever before.
“Ree.” Peter tries to pull me back a notch, but I wrangle myself free.
“I want to know.” I shrug over at the two of them huddled at the base of the hall as if they thought running were an option. “Did you take pleasure in killing Astrid? Did it thrill you when you dismembered that bird and jammed it down her throat?”
Lena shakes her head as she slowly backs away from my mother. “Did you do this? Is that why you were gone so long this afternoon?”
Our mother balks at the thought, looking to my sister as if she lost her mind. Forever the actress. She has honed her chops. Nearly two decades’ worth of performances. She slayed them night after night in preparation for the literal slayings. It was all leading up to death. I should have seen it coming.
“The emails weren’t enough.” I take a step away from Peter and pull the gun from my purse, pointing it in his direction. “Get over there. It’s time for a formal introduction.” I wave the gun as his hands ride up naturally, his wide eyes focused right over the barrel.
“Ree.” His voice drops to its lower octave.
“Mother”—my voice trembles with rage—“you have always wanted to meet my husband. You have about thirty seconds left of your disgusting life. Say hello.”
Her pie hole opens—the black maw of her mouth that devoured me right along with the thousands of empty calories she spent during my childhood shoveling into her face. She wouldn’t let Lena or me have a single bite, so she ate our share, ate for us. She ate our souls in the process.
“What emails, Ree?” Her eyes glint in this dim light like a coin underwater as the sun passes it by. Forever doomed, sealed off from the world and its purpose.
A dark laugh gurgles in my chest, and I suddenly feel alive, far more in this world than I have ever felt before. “You don’t have to play dumb, but if that’s how you insist to leave this world, with a lie on your lips, then so be it.”
“Lena,” my mother barks. “Are you going to stand there and let her tarnish my good name?”
Lena shakes her head, her body shaking as she looks to her. “Pull the trigger.”
And I do.
Bram
“Ree,” my voice rings out far louder than the silencer allowed on the Glock as I drop to my knees as Cordelia lies dying. Chest wound, right side. Probably hit a lung.
Her body twitches, her lids fluttering as she struggles to fight it. But blood pools rapidly around her. It’s the end for her, and she knows it.
I pluck my cell phone out of my back pocket, and Lena kicks it out of my hand.
“Shit.” I look up at a frail looking woman, eyes alive with fire. I hadn’t seen Lena up close in weeks. She looks like half the woman she was, her face unnaturally pale like a creature who has never seen the light. “Lena, call 911. We can fix this.” I look to my wife, her body shaking aggressively, the gun still waving in my direction. Her teeth are clenched as if she were biting down on an invisible bit and for the life of her she can’t seem to let go.
I would have gotten her help. I will get her help. If only I had known her trauma went soul deep. Hell, I knew it. I just pretended it was over, the same way I pretended my past was over.
“I did it, Mother.” Lena laughs the cackle of a madwoman. “I sent those texts to Ree because I knew she would blame you for it.”
“Lena?” Ree’s voice is as fragile as her state of mind.
The dying woman looks up at her older daughter, her tongue protruding as she shudders and bucks.<
br />
But her sister persists. “When you contacted me, and said you were going to be a part of our lives whether we liked it or not, I knew I only had one choice to make. I never wanted you here. Never in God’s name did I want you as a part of our lives. The hell I was going to let you become the quintessential grandmother to Lilly and Jack.” She looks to Ree. “I knew you would shut her out. I knew you would hold her at bay. I was willing to sacrifice what we have for a little while to get us where we needed to be.” She points hard at the pool of blood forming around her mother’s torso. “I was going to do it.” Lena shakes her head. “You didn’t have to kill her. I was going to take care of everything. I wanted her gone forever, Ree. I wanted it more than you did.”
“Le-na,” Cordelia croaks her daughter’s name out in a broken whisper.
Lena shakes her head at the old woman. “You sold my body to greasy old men. You let them into our home to have their way with me. I was too weak to defend myself, but it was only a matter of time. I knew I wasn’t going after them. They were nameless, faceless bastards who meant nothing to me. Junkies and perverts, the scum you dredged from the forbidden dangerous alleyways.”
“No.” Ree retches as if she might vomit.
“Yes.” Lena nods over at her. “I begged her not to use you, too. I volunteered to take on whatever load she brought home for you, Ree. I loved you more than I loved myself. And I never thought I’d share this with you. But I need her to know that I wanted to kill her first.”
“Oh God.” Ree bucks, her entire body convulsing as she begins to sob. The gun dances in her hands like it’s trying to fly away.
“You killed Lena!” Ree shouts as Cordelia's listless eyes shift slowly her way. “You killed those women. You never deserved a breath on this earth.”
Lena looks to me. “And now we are going to excise the second demon from our life.”
A second gunshot flits through the air and Lena falls to the floor. Head shot. Dead on contact.
Shit.
I turn back, but it’s not Ree who has my attention.
Holy hell.
This is it.
Ree
“Lena?” My voice sounds disembodied, otherworldly as I glance to the gun still wavering in my hand. “Did it go off? Did I kill her?”
“I killed her,” a voice drones from behind, and I turn just in time to see a gun pointed at me, a steady hand, an unfamiliar redhead standing with her feet in a defiant stance. “You’re going to live, Ree. Put the gun down.”
“Ree,” Bram barks. “Shoot.”
I look to him as he rises to his feet, his hands right back in the air.
“Hello, Simone.” Bram’s voice is strangled, his eyes focused right over hers, and my heart detonates in my chest over and over, my adrenaline spiking anew as if it had never even crested this evening.
“Simone,” her name expires from me like a collapsing tire. “You killed Lena.” I take a stumbling step toward what’s left of my sister. Her hair is clotted with blood, her face torn open on the right, her teeth splayed out unnaturally.
A horrible wailing sound rips from my throat.
“Ree!” Peter roars, and I turn to Simone, my gun shifting toward her.
Her face, her beautiful face, she looks exactly how she did in those pictures. I had worshipped her for so long, admired her from afar, felt sorry for her, grieved her as if she were my own blood.
Her lips turn upward as if flirting with a wicked grin. “You’re going to kill Bram.” Her green eyes pin to mine, her steady aim sending my own limbs bucking all the more.
“Shoot her,” Peter riots so loud the windows reverberate.
“Don’t do it.” Simone’s voice wavers with anger. I can feel the rage emanating off her like a heat from a radiator. “You’ll miss and I’ll be forced to kill you. I don’t want to do it, but just know when you pull that trigger it’s you who will die.”
“She’s lying.” Peter takes a careful step forward, and Simone twitches the gun his way.
“You’re going to die, Peter. You will meet your maker. You will live forever with Isla and Henry.”
My eyes widen in disbelief. What has happened? Was Bram right all along? This monster had laced my mind against him. I was nothing more than another one of her pawns.
“All of this because he had an affair.” I shake my head in disbelief. “Then it’s true. You killed your children. Did you have the third? Or did you kill it, too?”
Simone lets out a barking laugh, her cackle unnaturally dark. “I have Peter, my Peter.” Her eyes flit to Bram. “He is strong and beautiful and smart, and you will never know him. You could have, though. We could have had it all, but you had no desire to love me. You were going to leave and take my babies. I gave you everything!” Her voice thunders as she looks right at him. “And you destroyed it all for a cheap fuck. Divorcing you would have been too easy. You didn’t deserve my children or me. I watched you once I was gone. I lived where you lived.” That smile reprises itself on her lips as she glances my way. “I was right there out in the open, dancing through life, laughing at how easy it all was.”
“And then he met me.” My voice trembles lower than a whisper. “You left us alone. You watched us build a family.”
“Yes.” She nods, incredulous, as if there was no other way. “You had one boy, one girl, and I was hoping it would be so. I thought of killing the kids, waiting until they were as old as Isla and Henry were when Peter killed them.” She glances his way. “You did, Peter. When you killed our marriage, you killed all of us. My hands were your hands the day I held them under. Do you realize how disciplined you need to be to hold two children fighting for their life underwater? I only had minutes before Kelly finished her blubbering conversation. It was the only time in my life I was thankful for teen angst. I made it look as if I were trying to save them and, of course, she believed me. The world believes me. No one believed you, though, Peter—did they? You don’t get to keep your horny girlfriend and get the kids on weekends. You don’t win because you cheated. You don’t get to rid yourself of me and the so-called misery I inflicted on you. I loved you the only way I knew how. I warned you the night we were married.” She nods his way. “What did I tell you? Pop quiz. Pass and I might make it quick for you.”
Peter closes his eyes. His chest bucks a moment. “You said, ‘you may never leave me.’”
“And you left. Emotionally first and then physically. You brought home her filth and defiled our bed with it. You thought you could do it again and again and your stupid wifey would be none the wiser.” She scoffs my way. “All you are, Ree, is just another fling I’ve allowed my husband to have. When he met you, when you built your family, I knew the perfect revenge would come in time. Make Peter suffer a little bit more, let him live with the uncertainty of what might come next, just like I did. Lilly and Jack are just about the same age that Isla and Henry were when they died. Newsflash, Ree, your fake family has reached its expiration date.” She looks to Peter, and her lips curl unnaturally on the sides. “Your wife, who you love so very much, is going to kill you. My hands are clean. I am a living, breathing ghost in this world, new identity, great job, great new man in my life. Peter and I are doing just fine. Ree will go to prison, unfortunately.” She manufactures a frown my way, and I try my best to steady the gun her way. “Ah-ah! Remember, Ree, you pull the trigger, you die, Peter dies. Murder-suicide, such a bad romance. At least in prison, you might see your children’s faces again.”
“Ree.” Peter’s voice shakes. “She’s wearing a vest. You’ll have to hit her head or shoot the gun out of her hands. Look at me, Ree. I want you to look right at me. I have to tell you something important. Simone, you’re going to want to hear this, too. There’s—”
A gunshot goes off behind me, the same stifling whistling sound the silencer made, and Simone’s head explodes like a piñata.
Oh God. The blood.
It’s everywhere.
So much blood.
The
world goes gray as I fall softly to the floor.
Bram
As soon as I saw Mace lurking outside the window, gun drawn, I knew I had to think fast. It was him I was alerting to Simone’s Kevlar vest, him I was barking out orders to. As he entered the room, I knew I needed to keep command of both Ree and Simone’s attention.
“Call the police,” I say as I roll my sleeve over my hand and take the gun from Ree’s listless hand. I wipe down the handle before sidestepping over to Simone and rubbing her fingers all over it, making it look like a struggle ensued before depositing it to the floor.
“Mason.” I pull my brother to the side, his wild eyes meeting up with mine. “It’s time to get our stories straight.”
No sooner do Mace and I hash it out than a squad car pulls up in front of the house with flashing lights. Soon, the entire room is determined a crime scene. The medics give Ree oxygen and roll her out on a gurney as she extends her hand to mine.
“Bram.” Her voice breaks as she calls to me, calling me by the only name she has ever truly known me by.
I lean over and kiss her firmly on the lips. “I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”
“Bram.” Her voice is threadbare as she sheds silent tears. “I love you.”
“I know. I love you more than life, Ree. And I mean the hell out of it.”
There are moments in your life when you feel blessed beyond measure. Moments when you realize that the proverbial sun is shining warm on your back, and the dark, cold night of the soul is over. For as long as I have known Simone, for as long as I thought she was out of my life for good, I felt unsettled, my bones ached with misery, they resounded her name, and I never understood why until now. She was here, lurking in the corners of my life, orchestrating her next murderous move. There was never any leaving her. I understood it then, just the way I do now. I was trapped, bound by her insanity. We both were.
Psychological Thriller Boxed Set Page 14