Nikki kicks Lizzy in the foot. “How did things get started with you and Neil? I don’t care who’s in the room. I want answers.”
Lizzy looks to me for help once again, but it’s my mother who sniffs hard and straightens.
“This has to do with that porn site, doesn’t it? Is that where he found you?”
Thomas inches back as he looks to Lizzy for an explanation.
“I needed to take care of myself after we split up. I needed to make ends meet.” Her wild-eyed response draws ire from the three of them, me included. “It was stupid.”
“And dangerous,” my mother adds.
“I didn’t mind it with Neil. He was Theo’s partner. With Neil I felt safe.”
“And look where it got you,” I say. “I’m sorry, Lizzy. But you made one wrong move after the next. And, Ashley”—my voice breaks—“the two of you were a pair, that’s for sure.”
Nikki reaches forward and picks up Lizzy’s hand. “I don’t care what you did. I’m just glad you’re home safe, where you belong.”
The door opens and in walks the doctor asking us to clear the room for a moment. I wait for Phoebe to come out of surgery, and when she does, I’m the first to kiss her beautiful face. Both of my girls are safe and where they belong tonight, right here in Wakefield. Right here with me.
* * *
The next evening, the captain calls me in. Phoebe has been released and insists on coming with me. We drive down to headquarters and step into his office.
His expression is stern, but he’s amicable to both Phoebe and me as we take a seat.
“We’ve got surveillance video that puts Harper at Del Sol Park after you claim to have left. We found traces of blood on his club. It looks like you were right.”
“Knew it.” I nod, waiting for more. “Any news on what happened between him and my sister?” I know for a fact Neil was questioned this morning. I want to know what the bastard said.
Captain looks to Phoebe and winces as if he’s sorry he has to discuss such delicate matters in front of a lady. “They met through you. He found her online. They both had their addictions—mostly physical. He claims she wanted to disappear but also claims she was easy to groom. It sounds as if he had been planning her abduction for some time before the event took place. By that time, he was having an affair with Ashley Engle as well. I understand you have a unique connection to her.” He looks downright sorry for me, but I don’t need anyone’s pity right now. “Regardless, she’s being held with aggravated kidnapping charges. There’s a psychiatric evaluation pending. First sweep of the cabin turned up quite a bit of sexual paraphernalia. Your sister mentioned she was forced against her will.” His lips press white. My stomach drops. I feel lower than dirt. I couldn’t protect my sister. While I was roaming free, she was tortured for sport, and I’m not sure I will ever get over that. “DNA evidence places Karen Gilroy in Harper’s basement. We found a toxic mixture of street drugs, enough to put down an elephant down there as well. As soon as he brought Lizzy to the cabin, he got rid of Karen. Neither your sister nor Ashley Engle realized how dangerous Harper really was.”
I offer up a reluctant nod. “But we knew.” I pull Phoebe’s good hand over to me and tell him about our suspicions regarding those cold cases in Abilene. “Neil was the perfect gentleman to everyone he knew. Just goes to show you. Sometimes you can’t trust your gut.”
Phoebe and I take off and step out into a frozen Wakefield night.
“I’m glad I have you by my side.” I sweep her hair to the side and offer a kiss to her lips. “You okay for one more outing?”
“If we’re going where I think we are, yes. I’ve been itching to see Neil myself.”
I pull her in tight as we make our way to the truck. Neil is lucky he’s alive, but I’m betting right about now he wishes he were dead.
* * *
Wakefield General feels like an old friend, one that I have no desire to get to know any further. I’ve been here more in the last twenty-four hours than I care to think. Since Phoebe’s release, I wanted to keep her comfortable, keep her the hell away from this place. But she knew I’d be coming back to see him, and she wasn’t about to let me do this without her. At this point, she needs closure as much as I do.
We take the elevator up to the third floor and head straight for his room, last one down the hall with an armed guard out front. I give the friendly officer a nod as we head on in, and we spot him there in his bed, slumped like the worm he is.
“What’s this?” Neil struggles to sit up before adjusting the mattress to an upright position. Neil was shot twice, one in the side by Phoebe, clean exit, no vital organs. And once by me, just below the heart. Missed his left lung, fractured a rib on the way out. “No flowers?” He offers his mocking grin. All these years I’ve known him, I assumed it was amicable, affectionate, and here I had been reading him wrong the entire time.
“We’ve heard every angle of this twisted story,” I start. “And now we want to hear it from you.”
His affect drops on a dime. Neil actually manages to look bored with the prospect of having to recount the details. “Your sister came onto me during the Officer’s Ball. You remember the time, don’t you?” He lifts a brow, and my stomach pools with acid. I do remember, early spring before last. She had just left Thomas. She had already bought the tickets and boasted of finding someone new there. “She shared her body with me first, then her fantastic pictorials.” He tilts his head, sarcasm thick in his voice. “We had no reason to make it public. Her friend, Ashley, came onto the scene. They devised a plan that oddly fit in with my own.” He lifts a hand, amused. “Imagine that—the prey volunteering for duty. It wasn’t difficult to get her where I needed her to be.”
Phoebe takes a quick breath. “It’s doesn’t make sense. When Ashley saw that you weren’t releasing Lizzy, why didn’t she turn you in?”
“She loved me.” He cocks his head with a marked level of his own disbelief. “She liked the idea of Lizzy on a chain, pun intended. She had no interest letting her out into the wild. Ashley is as controlling as Lizzy is belligerent.”
“And as you are insane.” Phoebe shakes her head, choking on her disbelief.
His lips curl at the thought. “A perfect storm you might say.”
For the life of me, none of it makes sense, and yet as it stands, it’s our new reality. “When did you plan to kill them?”
He glares at Phoebe a good long while before answering. “I could have kept them forever. Ashley needed to come home soon. I had a room prepared for her. She was down to her last few visits but was too prideful to realize I would turn on her. But as soon as you started poking around, digging into the past, discovering things that quite frankly I thought were undiscoverable”—he points to Phoebe—“I knew time was running out. I stockpiled kerosene in the shed behind the cabin. I was about to line the periphery when I heard your girlfriend outside.” He pauses, letting the grim nature of it all sink in. “I had killed Miles hoping to send you to prison.” He looks to Phoebe again. “And you there as well for stealing Lizzy’s identity. How perfectly romantic. If I had more time, I would have pegged you with their deaths.”
Phoebe and I stand there an unreasonable amount of time staring down the monster who took down so many worlds. We leave without whispering another word, simply walk on out and on with the rest of our lives.
* * *
On a Saturday in February, a week after Valentine’s Day, Paul Richard—Peavey, and Devyn Benedict are given the blessing of the courts to live with Phoebe and me. After the nightmare died down last December, I had Thomas look into Phoebe’s situation, and we were delighted—for lack of a better word, that the cops eventually ruled her stepfather’s death a drug-related homicide. I had never seen a fiercer embrace than that of Phoebe and her siblings—of course, they pulled me in and included me in their circle. We’re family now, just the four of us living in Wakefield in my tiny little house where we belong. Jackson has graciously agreed to mo
ve in with Gabby full-time, and over the span of many weeks, Gabby has opened her entire heart to Phoebe once again.
To celebrate our hard-won victory, Phoebe and I decide to treat our newfound family to where it all began for us, at the Hideaway Café. No formal charges were ever filed against Phoebe. With a little help from my friends on the force, we categorized the identity theft as nothing more than what Phoebe categorized it as all along—a mistake. Joe was willing to welcome her back with open arms, but Phoebe had heard there was an opening down at the public library and she jumped at the chance to spend all day in her favorite environment. But this afternoon we’re happy patrons of the Hideaway Café, sharing French fries and peanut butter shakes—our new normal, the new us. And come tomorrow morning, we’ll all be back for the all-you-can-eat pancakes. A challenge has been issued, and each and every one of us is ready to compete.
Both Neil and Ashley were slammed with murder and kidnapping charges respectively, already locked up and awaiting their sentences. Lizzy is back to her old self, and dare I say, better. She’s mellow, reserved, centered in her own contentment of simply being free, being safe, being with family. Believe it or not, she’s agreed to give it another shot with Thomas, and that boy is walking on air. I hope they make it work. And I really think they will.
That night as Phoebe and I lie in bed, after we compete beneath the sheets for one another’s affection, I hold her tight and press a molten kiss to her temple.
“It could have been true,” I assure her. “Howard Hunter was a very bad man. He had enemies, more than one. I don’t want you to carry that guilt with you. I want you whole and happy and able to sleep well at night.”
She bubbles with laughter as she spins into me, her hair splayed over the pillow like dark shards of glass. “It could have been.” She tucks a kiss just under my chin. “But I’m whole and happy and able to sleep very well in your bed at night. So don’t worry about me. I promise I’m fine.”
I give her sides a quick pinch. “Good. And that brings me to my next point. I don’t want you to see this as my bed. It’s our bed. This is our house. And”—I slip my hand into the nightstand and come out with a small velvet box—“I want you to be my wife, Phoebe.” The moonlight washes her silver as tears pool in her eyes.
“Theo!” She wraps her entire body around me. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” she shouts, and someone down the hall thumps against the wall.
We share a quiet laugh.
“Thank you.” I land a soft kiss over her lips and linger. “We’d better clarify with them what went on in here tonight. You do realize Paul Richard is built like a linebacker. I’d hate to get on his bad side.” He let me know early on during our first meeting that Peavey was a nickname strictly for Phoebe’s use, and I happily complied. “One more thing,” I whisper, brushing my finger over my new fiancée’s cheek. “I bought four tickets to see Jeremy Newton at the Rock House in two weeks. I thought we might go as a family this time.”
She sucks in a breath and holds it. “You are magic, Theodosius Stavros, you know that?”
“You’re magic.” I dot her nose with a kiss. “And full disclosure, Theodosius is my middle name. My first name was changed once my father left the picture. My mother was gunning for Theo the entire time.”
“Really? So by all means demystify yourself. Who am I really looking at?” She takes a quick bite out of my bottom lip.
“Randal.” I can’t help but groan with the admission.
“What?” Her face bleaches out a moment. “Oh my God. Really? Randal?”
I offer up a sheepish nod. “Why? You’re not allergic to the name, are you?”
“Actually”—she tilts her head, her brows lifting as if she might be—“you are never going to believe this.” Phoebe tells me all about her morbid reoccurring dream, her future husband named Randal, already dead and waiting to greet her, and I can’t help but laugh.
“I guess that means we’re going to have one hell of a future.”
“We already are.” She pulls me in gently by the back of the head, her glowing eyes pinned to mine. “Welcome to your future, Theo. I’m ready to make all of your dreams come true.”
And she does.
Acknowledgments
Thank you for reading A Sublime Casualty. I hope this adventure was everything you wanted it to be.
Huge shouty thanks and praise to Jodie Tarleton for scouring through this book for me. I am forever indebted.
A very special thank you to Ashley Marie Daniels for taking the time to pick through this manuscript. Your input was invaluable!
To the amazing, magnificent Kaila Eileen Turingan-Ramos who is truly a ninja word warrior. You are invaluable.
Thank you to Shay Rivera. You are a wonderful beta, and I’m glad I know you!
Many thanks to Lisa Markson. You have an eye for detail, and I love that about you. And a great big thank you from across the pond to Anastasia Lantilou Steele for gracing it with your eyes! Much appreacaited.
To Paige Maroney Smith, the master of all words. You are simply the best.
And last, but never least, thank you to Him who sits on the throne. Worthy is the Lamb! Glory and honor and power are yours. I owe you everything.
Little Girl Lost
Addison Moore
Prologue
We were good people, my husband and I. We had everything you could ask for—successful careers, a stunning home with the requisite, yet clichéd, white picket fence, a precious daughter to call our own. We had secrets, my husband and I. Not many, so few, all of them lethal.
I watch as James clasps his hands around the girl’s bird-like neck, squeezing hard until her flesh goes white—so hard you can see his bones bulge severely, stretching thin the skin at his knuckles.
We were good people, James and I.
It was true until it wasn’t.
Allison
Three Months Before
“Your husband is having an affair with my wife!” Faulk Oden stands in my doorway, creating a shadow over me with his enormous German frame. His red hair coils around his neck the color of burnt leaves in the fall. His freckles are loosely masked from the slap of a Los Angeles summer still raging like a fire over his features. Faulk once said he received his coloring from his mother, an Irish woman who would no sooner incinerate in the sun if she ever saw daylight. I’m rather hoping the same fantastic fate would befall him at the moment. But here he stands, in his sopping wet swim shorts, his shirt sticking to his flesh creating an X-ray of the misshapen fat rolls draped over his belly. His toes press desperately into the porch, white as paper. The tops of his swollen feet are blotched pink as if they were embarrassed for him on some level. And yet here he is, drenched in water as if he had decided on the confrontation during his afternoon swim.
“Did you hear me?” His ears pique like flames. Faulk Oden is on fire, and all I can do is open my mouth wider as if expecting him to fill it with pearls. But these were no pearls—this is feces flung in my face, the excrement of my husband’s stupid, egregious mistake coming back to haunt me at three in the afternoon.
Strange thoughts fill your mind at horrific times like these. God waited until the cool of the day to walk with Adam—some believe that three in the afternoon was the accurate time of day for that. Jesus gave up his spirit at three, tore the veil in two, and opened the holy of holies to all who believed.
But the one pressing thought that congests my mind like a blood clot is that ridiculous sweater I wore time and time again. My sister warned me not to shop from the West Winder, a catalog that caters to menopausal women of an impressive economic standing, either of which I’m not. At thirty, I’m hardly menopausal and we are certainly not in any impressive economic standing. The sweater is white, crocheted in granny squares, thick and bulky, with scalloped edging that does nothing for my figure, but I wear it often and at this moment that depressing pile of acrylic is where I’ve chosen to finger the blame. It was too homely and by default so was I. My sister, Jane, promis
ed me that a man like James Price would need to be wooed long after he was wedded and bedded. Too good looking, she said. Pretty boys are more trouble than they’re worth, she lamented. She should know. She’s in prison for dismembering one of her own.
My silent scream continues.
“I know this is difficult to hear.” He shifts from side to side as the pressure alleviates from his voice. “It’s a shit ride for the both of us, you know. Hailey isn’t home right now. I don’t really want you to bother her about it. She’s not well.”
My head ticks back as if he had struck me. I don’t need Faulk and his male-oriented prehistoric bullshit telling me what I can and cannot do. I haven’t cared for Hailey from the moment they moved in, with her thick wig-like hair, her dark olive skin set to a suntanned perfection, that Hollywood smile, the flash of destruction hiding behind it. She’s a perfect ten by anyone’s standards and certainly James is not impervious—but an affair? Perhaps his mistake was returning what he thought was kindness. A mild flirtation at best.
“Mommy!” Reagan calls from her bedroom. “I can’t find my bag!”
“Ballet.” I clear my throat. “I have to get her ready.” I begin to shut the door in the poor man’s face before pausing. “Keep that lying little bitch away from my husband. And if you’re smart, you’ll get out while you still have your head attached.” I glance to his sopping crotch to signify which head exactly before slamming the door between us.
My heart pounds in jagged spurts as the past comes back like a haunting refrain. James and I have been married for six years, the exact age of our daughter, Reagan. He and I had dated on and off before getting serious, but it was Reagan who cemented the bond between us. We had split for a time, and then just like that, we were back on. What had once been fragile as blown glass had become impenetrable steel. At least in the beginning.
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