A swell of relief hits me. “Is that all this is about?” Neil has his panties in a bunch because Charlie had the balls to grill him. “She cares about me. I enlisted her in helping me figure out what happened to my sister.” I shoot a look to Jackson who suddenly feels like a traitor. Charlie and I were keeping things from Neil because our investigation seemed to be moving faster. It’s become a game to us—see who finds her first. I hope to God it’s me. “I’m sorry, Neil. I never meant to hurt you. I didn’t think—”
Jackson lifts a finger my way. “That’s not what this is about.” He elbows Neil. “Come on, put him out of his misery.” His lips turn down hard as if he’s going to lose it. “I’m sorry, dude, but this is going to make you far more miserable than you ever thought.”
Neil leans in. “I ran your sister’s social security card yesterday. It turns out Lizzy has been gainfully employed right here in Wakefield all this time.”
“What? Where? Is this identity theft or something?”
“It’s exactly identity theft.” Neil swallows hard. “The girl who stole your sister’s identity works down at the Hideaway Café.”
“That’s where Charlie works. I’m sure she’ll help us catch her.”
Neil shakes his head. “I don’t think she will.” He glides his phone across the table my way. “Does she look familiar?”
I glance down at what looks to be a younger version of Charlie. There are a young boy and girl at her side, and they’re all smiling for the camera.
“That’s Charlie.”
“Nope.” Neil takes his phone back. “That’s Phoebe Benedict—runaway from Strafford County. At least that’s what her brother and sister reported to authorities right around the time your sister went missing.”
A knife to the gut. I could bleed out right here and die if I wanted.
“Runaway?” Shit. What if she’s under eighteen? What if I’ve walked into a bear trap unwittingly? I’ll be lucky if I don’t get slammed for statutory rape by her very worried parents. “God.” I press my face into my hands a moment, trying desperately to scrub this conversation out of reality. “This can’t be. Why would Charlie steal Lizzy’s identity? Lizzy, of all people? You think there’s something sinister going on here?”
Jackson clears his throat. “Look, I like the girl. I really do, and Gabby does, too, but you can’t let her get away with this. You’re going to have to press charges.”
“Press charges,” I parrot the words back as if I were clueless as to what they mean. You could hit me over the head with a frying pan and I wouldn’t feel it. I’m numb with shock. “How do you know all this?” I growl over at Neil—inept Neil who couldn’t find out half the information about my sister that Charlie and I have—Phoebe. Hell.
Neil leans in. “I spoke with Joe, asked him a few questions about her. I asked if I could fish around her employee file, and he said I was welcome to it. Charlie Neville. I don’t know where the last name came from, but now that I think about it, Charlie is a play on Charlize. She was purposeful in doing what she did.”
Jackson strums his fingers over the table. “When Gabby found her, she was homeless, eating out of the dumpster behind the Hideaway. She literally appeared from thin air. No sooner did Lizzy vanish than Charlie came into town. I’m not pointing fingers or insinuating she had something to do with your sister’s disappearance, but maybe a part of the reason she’s so willing to help you look for her is because she had something to do with it—an old boyfriend, a twisted pimp. Human trafficking. God only knows what we’re up against.”
Stunned would be too small a word to describe this head-in-the-woodchipper feeling taking over.
Neil starts up again, spewing one theory after another, each one more outlandish than the next, and my mind begs for him to slow down.
“I gotta get out of here.” I get up from the table and nearly knock my seat back.
“Hey!” Jackson barks. “Where are you going?”
“I’m headed to the Hideaway.” I turn abruptly and dig a finger in the air at Neil. “And I’m doing this alone. You don’t say a word about this. You hear me?” There’s a threat in my tone and, damn, if I mean it. “Don’t come after me.”
I take off in a fury, ending up at the Hideaway in a blur, unsure how I ever managed to drive a car across town without incident. I don’t remember a thing. It’s just Charlie occupying my mind. The love of my life. The woman I was so determined would one day be my wife. The mother of my future children.
I step in and spot her behind the counter. A rag sits over her shoulder as she bustles about, and I can’t help but watch her for a moment, mesmerized by her. This, right here, is the last normal moment the two of us will have. Just like with Lizzy, there was a before and an after. Two very different worlds. The after always sucks. These are the final moments of our before.
Her eyes light up as she spots me. “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Handsome himself.” Her smile rings true, and it’s like a dagger to the heart.
“Hey, Phoebe, can I get some coffee?”
“Sure thing!” She starts to take off, then freezes. Her gaze slowly meets with mine, those hazel eyes filled with horror. And that’s when I know. Neil wasn’t full of it. Jackson wasn’t trying to sabotage something good and right in my life. This fresh hell is real, and the flames have long since consumed me, but I was too stupid to notice.
Why? Why is this true? I ask her through my heavy gaze.
How is it possible, and more importantly—what have you done with Lizzy?
Charlie
Run. It’s the haunting refrain that possessed me all those months ago. It’s what landed me here. And now, with Theo shooting me with venom, annunciating my given name as if it were a curse, my mind screams the very same thing.
My mouth opens, and a choking sound emits. My feet take a few staccato steps forward, and he glides a hand across the counter. His eyes stay trained on mine, holding me hostage with his gaze as effective as a steel trap.
“I will outrun you and outgun you if I have to.” His voice shakes low and steady as if it took everything to grit the words through his teeth. His beautiful face is locked in fury. It exudes from him like a toxin. “Take off your apron. You’ve just worked your last shift. You are coming with me.”
“No.” I shake my head, backing away, my muscles vibrating out of control. “I can’t, Theo. I can’t go with you.” I steal a glance out the window, half-expecting to see the SWAT team with guns drawn, an entire infantry out to arrest me. Oh God, I used his sister’s name. He knows. He probably knows everything at this point. “This isn’t what it seems, I promise.”
His eyes slice through me with a fiery contempt. Gone is the kindness, the joy they once exuded in my honor, replaced with cold hardness that lets me know exactly how he feels about me—whoever the hell I am.
“Move slowly,” he instructs. “Keep your hands level to your chest and walk backward.” He takes a few steps over until he’s covering the cutout that has me penned in at the moment.
I do as I’m told. Hands up, slow gait as if I were a common street criminal. I’m far worse, but it feels sacrilegious coming from Theo.
“That’s it. Hands down.” He’s whispering, not causing a scene, and I’m thankful.
I glance back at Dena, and she winks over at me, hitching a thumbs-up to what must look like kinky shenanigans to her.
Theo pulls my wrists behind my back. “You’re coming with me.” He walks us right out the door, and for a second I glance back mournfully at the place I called work for the last year and a half of my life. Ironically, this false life of mine, this borrowed life of Lizzy’s was the closest I will ever get to normal. Theo pushes me into the back of his patrol car, and a hard wail escapes my throat.
“No.” I groan so hard I think I’m going to be sick. “Please. You have to hear me out!” He slams the door shut, and it’s too late. I’ve tasted my last breath of freedom. The one I thought would keep me safe has entombed me in my misery. Peavey a
nd Devyn run through my mind. I can only imagine how disappointed they’ll be that I screwed things up so badly. They’ll visit me in prison when they’re able, and that alone is enough to split open my chest with grief. My heart turns into an entire coven of bats and flies away. I don’t need it. It was never there to begin with.
Theo gets into the driver’s seat, and we peel away from the curb. His partner isn’t with him, but then she’s not half the time. He’s driving with his emotions, stopping hard and abrupt as if his mind isn’t into the details of the road. He speeds us past Main Street, past the library, past Conrad, and the condominium I once shared with Gabby. It’s all over for me. And then in a strange turn of events, he bypasses the police station altogether and heads farther up north toward the mountains. My God, he’s going to shoot me like an animal and leave me in a ditch. Deep down, I think I deserve it. It’s what I did to Howard. I was livid with him. I was just as angry as Theo. Anger can burn a hole in your good judgment. Blow a hole right through your sanity and leave you with nothing more than the smoke rising from a gun. The discharge feels so satisfying. A culmination of blinding rage satiated in a moment of rage. It’s almost poetic. The deafening sound of relief.
We turn off into the woods, and my stomach knots up. I try to memorize the colorless sky, the exact shade of Theo’s eyes. The Theo that I loved, the illusion, not this reality-based version out for vengeance. Maybe I should blame my love of fiction on the mess my life has become. Point the finger squarely over every author who has hand-fed me their bullshit, making me believe in things that were too good to be true anyway, like love and power to overcome hell on earth. Maybe hell is earth, and the only escape is death. My insides grind because not an ounce of me believes any of it. I have to fight for what’s good. That’s what I learned in literature. You have to fight and persevere, and if you lose a few good people like Theo along the way, then it wasn’t meant to be. You have to cut the cancer of disbelief out of your life. Fiction trains your brain, rewires your neural pathways so that you can imagine a better place, a better way and infuses your cellular structure with hope.
“I can’t die like this.” My voice shakes, lower than a whisper as I study the trees as they melt by in a blur. “I have people to live for, people who need me. You don’t know what I’ve been through.” I meant for him to hear that last part, but fear has paralyzed me and my vocal cords are on lockdown.
Theo parks the car, and before I know it, he’s in the back seat with me. His gun and billy club both still in the front, and I breathe a sigh of relief until I realize he’s just as lethal with his bare hands. This is personal.
“I’m sorry.” I edge my way to the window on my side, wishing desperately that I could press through steel and run like hell into the woods. “I’m so sorry.” My entire body shakes in a series of seizures as Theo lunges at me. His arms collapse over me as he wraps me in a hard embrace. His chest bucks as his tears run down my neck. My own tears baptize his shoulder.
He pulls back, sniffing hard, his heated gaze still very much stern and angry. “Start from the beginning. We have left the bullshit zone. I want only the truth, and if you omit a single detail, I will not hesitate to lock you up for life. You will not fuck with me. You owe me that much.”
My lungs struggle for air as his threat wraps itself around me like a noose woven of his sister’s hair.
My gaze hooks into his, and I can’t look away. The guilt, the fear I’ve felt for the last few months vanishes, and suddenly I feel lighter than air. I don’t have to pretend anymore. It’s over. I was holding the weight of the world, the weight of his missing sister’s body, and it was too much for me. I never should have fallen for him. As soon as I saw that my interest was piqued, I should have packed my things and never looked back.
“My name is Phoebe Benedict, and I killed my stepfather.” Something releases deep inside of me. The cinching of my soul comes loose, and I swear on all that is holy, if Theo wasn’t holding me, I would float right out of his arms, out of this car, and off of this planet. The truth is so beautifully freeing.
His head ticks back a notch, the expression on his face still stiff with terror as if he were watching a horror movie unfolding.
“I planned it.” My voice shakes hard, begging me to stray from the truth, but I don’t dare. He’s right. It’s the least I owe Theo. He loved me once. I owe him everything. “He raped me. He threatened to touch my baby sister, and I couldn’t let him do that. My mother died a few months before. We thought he would take care of us, and we were wrong. I was pregnant, and I lost the baby. That’s when I found out he was already doing things to my sister. I hated him. I could have run, but Peavey and Devyn, they were too young. I couldn’t support us all. He said he’d fight to keep them—his playthings. He said he’d hunt me down and kill me. I should have gone to social services. I wasn’t thinking straight. I was out of my mind with anger and disgust. He was a liar and a master manipulator. He promised that anyone would take his word over mine, and my fatal error was that I believed him.” My chest bucks with a hiccup as Theo presses his lips tight, his eyes glossed with anger. “I had a plan. The Fourth of July was coming up. I waited until that night. I knew where Howard kept his gun. He was dangerous. He knew dangerous people. I couldn’t stand knowing Peavey and Devyn would live in constant fear. There was no other way for me.”
Theo nods. “And then what happened?”
“I waited until sundown. I told Peavey and Devyn to go down the street to a friend’s. And if anyone asked—I told them to say I ran away a few weeks back. The neighborhood exploded with fireworks, and I blew a hole through him.” I swallow down the grief begging to pour out of me. I’ve just reopened a wound that had never fully healed, just festered, infected my bloodstream with poison. “And then I took off.”
“That’s how you got to Wakefield. Then what?” His voice is hard, unsympathetic, but something in his eyes is softening and I can breathe a little easier.
I soak in the weight of his body over mine. My mind stubbornly trying to memorize his face, the way his hair shines in the light. That’s exactly what I’ve done with every good thing that has ever been stripped from me.
“I came here, and I was lost. I was hungry, empty. I had left my soul at the Strafford County line. I turned a few tricks to get by.” There is no shame in the truth—just in the details that birthed it. “I was emotionally empty by that point. Just a few days without my brother and sister took a far worse toll on me than I could have ever imagined. I found a spot behind the dumpsters at Joe’s and slept there at night. I feasted off the food he threw away, and I enjoyed every bite. When you’re starving, even a meal fit for a rat is something to look forward to at night.”
“Shit.” He grinds his palm into his eye as he sits up, and my body cools with relief. “Go on, all of it.” He nods my way, a sad smile curling on his lips. For a split second it comforts me.
“Joe let me wash dishes for money. I cleaned up in the bathroom, and he let me wait a few tables. I bought clothes at Goodwill. Gabby befriended me and—she’s so trusting.” I almost feel sorry for her. Hell, I do. “She took me in, and it felt as if I was pulling myself up from the bootstraps. No sooner was I enjoying my life again than Joe started to harp on me about identification. He said he didn’t want any problems, that working under the table was growing old, so I had to cough up what he needed.” I plunge my face in my hands a moment and take a deep breath. This, right here, is unspeakable. If I could telepathically say these next words to him, it would still be too awful to convey. I come up for air and meet with those steely eyes once again. “I went for a walk one day. I was headed to Conrad to meet with Gabby. I stumbled upon a wallet. I took the IDs out and threw it back. A few steps later, I found a corpse. I knew I couldn’t say anything because I couldn’t give my name. I didn’t have one at that point. Everyone called me Gem, the nickname my mother had for me. I hid, and less than a few seconds later, the body was discovered by a couple of coeds. As for the H
ideaway, I filled out the information Joe needed with your sister’s social security card, and Joe was none the wiser. It was over in a whimper. If anyone ever questioned me, I was going to say it was a mistake—then run.” I nod because running is very much still on the table.
He lifts his head, his eyes still filled with suspicion. “What’s with the fibro message board?”
A breath gets caught in my throat. “How do you know about that?” It’s as if this lone detail makes me feel invaded. How dare I. Clearly, it’s me who does the invading.
“Ashley mentioned it.”
“Ah, yes, the spying little bitch.” I wipe down my face as I lean up against the window.
Theo’s chest rumbles with an idea of a laugh, and a flicker of hope enlivens. My hand glides over the seat halfway to him, a meager effort to let him know I’m still here. I’m still me, deep down where it counts. He glances down at my fingers, and the silence is deafening. Slowly, he reaches out and clasps my hand with his. He brings it up to his lips and kisses my fingertips.
“Tell me about it.”
It’s hard to gauge if he’s playing me. If he is, it’s masterful, and with all my heart I welcome it.
“It’s how Peavey, Devyn, and I communicate.” I dive into a detailed explanation of the mechanics of it all, and his eyes widen a notch. “I couldn’t risk getting caught.” I press my lips together, trying to stifle my next confession, but it’s no use. “Peavey mentioned he got tickets to see Jeremy Newton at the Rock House and that he’d be taking Devyn.” I shrug as his eyes widen the size of the sky. “I met with them that night in the hall and again when we left.” Tears pour from me, falling like hot rain, like lava burning a hole through me, erasing who I once was, erasing all of me. It’s time to start all over. There is nothing in me I recognize anymore. I had become someone new while I pretended to be Charlize. And even she is gone.
Psychological Thriller Boxed Set Page 29