Psychological Thriller Boxed Set

by Addison Moore

  Jolene—just looking at her handwriting feels like a nice warm hug—I’m sorry I had to cut the conversation short the other night. He’s watching my every move, listening. I just want you to know that I’ve made up my mind. You’re right. There is only one life and I’m living it. I’ve found an apartment on Spring Street. I just need some air.

  Maybe Teri was right. Maybe there is a monster lying in wait inside all of us. Some of us are just better at hiding it from the rest of the world. Cute as that sentiment might be, it didn’t help my children.

  Your sister,

  Loretta

  Monster. My mother used the word and so did McCafferty. Round and round it spins through my mind like some haunting refrain I can’t evict. What did she mean by it didn’t help my children? Is she implying that the monster was unleashed? I pop the top on the beer and guzzle down half the bottle in one throat burning drag. Then just as quick as I put the tip to my lips, I pluck it back out and land the bottle over the concrete hard and fast.

  Monster. My father is a monster? Antifreeze? Was McCafferty hinting at a homicide?

  She said my father turned my mother’s car into a tin can by noon. No one confirmed the transmission theory. But my mother was lucid. Had a damn good driving record, too. The car was nearly fifteen years old. Shit happens and it happened that day.

  Right?

  But what if…

  I stagger to my feet. It feels as if the sky is spinning up above. I’m no lightweight, but this isn’t the beer taking its toll on me. It’s the unpalatable taste of the shit McCafferty shoved down my throat.

  It’s time to clear things up. I pluck the keys off the table and drive over to the one person who might be able to help—and it’s not my father.

  God knows the respectable judge isn’t going to cop to a couple of homicides.

  It would be ridiculous.

  This entire nightmare borders on ridiculous.

  * * *

  Sherriff Richard Olsen, Concordia County, the sign reads.

  I give a quick knock over the door before letting myself in.

  “My man.” Rich rises from his seat and pulls up his pants by the waist before presenting me with the empty chair before him.

  “Thanks.” The cool leather sinks beneath me as I take a seat. There is something desperately sterile about police stations and hospitals. They feel sanitized, devoid of life and soulless on some level. An irony in and of itself since both establishments are meant to aid us. I toss the letter onto his desk and he pauses a moment before picking it up and reading it.

  “Huh.” His eyes bounce over each line once again. “Monster.” Rich purses his lips.

  “Maybe they had a fight. Who knows.”

  He looks up without moving his head, his chin still planted close to his chest. “You don’t know?”

  A moment of silence slices by as I lean in and press into him with my curiosity. “Know what?”

  “Your mother filed for divorce a week before the accident. I don’t know if your father was ever served—or if he knew about it.” He folds the paper and slides it back my way as I try to digest the words he just shot at me.

  “My parents were happy.” The words come from me numb as I search the floor for answers. “Weren’t they?” That rumored affair Rich tried to sell me still hasn’t penetrated my gray matter. God knows I’m not up for accusing my father. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  “Apparently not. At least not your mother.” He leans into his seat and rocks at a slow and steady pace, but those eyes, my mother’s eyes, they pin me with a look that screams figure it out.

  “What’s going on? Do you know something?”

  “Look”— he wipes his face down with his hand—“you have a lot of shit on your plate right now. You don’t need to go digging up the past, sifting through rumors. There’s no time for this.” He picks up the envelope once again and tosses it to my end of the table.

  “You know something.” A shot of adrenaline spikes through me, and suddenly the only thing I want to do is turn this desk on its ear and bash Richard’s head through the window. “You’re right. I am in a shitload of misery, and I certainly don’t need to add to it. So why don’t you tell me what you know and I won’t have to kick your ass and embarrass you in front of the entire precinct?”

  “They’ll shoot you in the leg.” A smile warms his face as he rocks back, connecting his fingers at the tips in amusement.

  “It will be worth it.” My voice shakes when I say it and Rich blows out a breath, gets up and shuts the door before settling back into his seat. “You just remember, you asked for it. When you can’t sleep at night? Remember that I had no intention of breathing a word.”

  “You think I sleep at night?” I lean in, rabid with anger. “What the hell are you keeping from me, Rich? Did my old man do something? Is he a killer?”

  His Adam’s apple rises and falls. That doughy, pasty face of his takes on a fight-or-flight expression. “People have wondered. Your mother was a brilliant woman, always stifled by that man. My mother’s words, not mine, but I happen to agree.”

  “You think he killed her.” My body goes numb. My ears grow a heartbeat. “My mother was alone. She could have gotten out of the car. Why the hell was she on the railroad tracks to begin with?”

  “It’s a common pass through Donaldson Avenue. Witnesses say she was on the tracks a good five minutes before the train came.”

  “She had time to escape.” Is he implying a suicide?

  “She did have time. She had help, too. A gentleman got out of his car and tried to get her out, but he said the door was jammed. He narrowly jumped off the tracks before the train came barreling through. According to him, she was panicked, screaming that she couldn’t get the door open.”

  “Makes no sense. Car stalls on the railroad tracks and the door fails to unlock?”

  Rich keeps that iron fisted stare planted over me. “That’s not the part I found odd.”

  My head swims with the dark possibilities. “Let me have it.”

  “The gentleman said she wasn’t sitting on the driver’s side—she still had her seat belt on.”

  The floor sways beneath me.

  “Anything else?” My voice comes out hoarse, but Rich simply closes his eyes a moment. I slam my hands over the desk like a gavel. “What else do you fucking know?” I roar it out so loud my voice comes back as an echo.

  The door swings open, ushering in an icy breeze right along with two beefy officers with their hands on their weapons.

  “It’s fine,” Rich assures the cavalry, and we wait until they seal the door behind them before getting back to this hell I’ve dragged us into. “My mother has always been a little suspicious of what happened with Wilson.”

  There it is again. A knife in the gut. First McCafferty, now Rich—Aunt Jolene by proxy.

  I lean in. “She thinks my father killed him.” Shit. I sink my head into my hands for a moment. “Do you even know who my father is?”

  Rich nods. “He knows his way around the law.”

  “He is the law!” My father would have destroyed this office long ago. He prided himself on his perfect little family. His perfect wife, his perfect children. And then it hits me like a semi-truck. “Wilson wasn’t perfect.” I flashback to those hazy days before his death. They fought. They outright hated one another. “McCafferty said he was poisoned with antifreeze—said they found ethylene glycol in his bloodstream.”

  “Shit.” He sits up a little straighter. “And Rachel?”

  “What about Rachel?” My God. Has my father been offing his imperfect children? His imperfect wife?

  “What did she die from?” Rich opens his laptop and his fingers start dancing over the keyboard.

  “I don’t know. Female issues. My mother mentioned it once, and that was all I cared to know. She was dead.”

  He shakes his head at the screen. “I’ll talk to my mother. She made a comment once about it being enough already. That some people weren’t
above the law.”

  “My father.” A wound so deep, so inherently painful spears through me. It tears my heart from top to bottom. How could this be? How could any of this be?

  I shuffle out into the bitter cold night, my body anesthetized by the sting. Everything I’ve known, everything I’ve ever felt has been challenged tonight, challenged over the last few months, stretching as far back as that fateful summer day in L.A.

  The wages of sin is death. My father beat that mantra into each one of us. And if what Aunt Jolene suspects to be true is a reality—my father appointed himself God over the lives of my mother and my siblings.

  Shit. I slump against the side of my truck. He couldn’t have gotten away with this. He didn’t do any of it, did he? Why would he kill Rachel? It doesn’t make sense.

  I drive home dazed, out of my mind, enough adrenaline pumping through me to shoot me to the moon.

  Just when I didn’t think life could dole out another curveball my way, wham, right in my face.

  My phone bleats and lights up. I pull over in the event it’s an emergency. In the event this nightmare has reversed itself and Reagan is home where she should be. But it’s a text from my father.

  Pick up some milk if you can. Need to take my medicine with it.

  Pick up some milk.

  Would you like a side of antifreeze with that?

  * * *

  The Sunshine Market is open late—open from sunshine to sunshine the slogan reads. Reagan and I read it once together in sync. We found it hysterical and engaged in a good old-fashioned belly laugh over it.

  It doesn’t sound so damn funny anymore.

  A small gray sedan makes the left on Imperial at the same time I do and I frown. Now that McCafferty has all but let me in on the fact Allison and I have a stalker, I’m mindful of shit like this.

  I pull into the Sunshine Market parking lot, and sure enough, about a minute later they do the same. Long hair, lots of it. Full double-handed grip on the steering wheel. My money is on Monica. Although she wouldn’t technically qualify as the stalker who took that picture of us. She’s a stalker of another color.

  I get out of the truck and pretend to tie my shoe as the scuttle of heels click-clacks from the distal end of the parking lot moving in this direction.

  “Pssst!”

  I get up and stride back there, fully expecting to find my ex wearing her crazy out in the open like a straitjacket. Something that I’m pretty certain she’ll be wearing sooner than later—and my heart stops.

  Unless Monica has traded her harsh midnight hued locks for something softer with a touch of auburn, her full, tall frame for something far more petite, this isn’t her—and if I’m right about the alternative—I strongly wish it was. I start to back away just as the girl comes into the light.

  “Hailey?” My heart climbs into my throat as I grab her and stalk off to the nearest bushes. “Are you insane? What are you doing here?” My body riots as adrenaline takes over, and I’m pretty sure I’m on the cusp of having a stroke.

  That megawatt smile of hers goes off and some moronic part of my dick starts to respond.

  “I’m here for you.” She cups her hands over my cheeks. “God, I’ve missed you.” Her voice is breathy, taming the night into long white plumes. “Look!” She takes my hands and leads them to her stomach, bulging and hard, the size of a basketball under her sweater.

  “Holy shit,” I mumble.

  “It’s yours. Faulk knew it, and I had to move out.”

  “Move out?”

  “He wanted me to.” She shrugs her shoulder into my chest. “I need you. I need your help. I don’t have any money or anywhere to go.”

  “What?” I slap myself over the forehead, trying to will myself out of this nightmare with no end. “I can’t help you. My daughter—she’s missing.”

  “Oh, I know. And I’m very sorry about that. But it’s been a month. So I guess that’s it, right?” The whites of her eyes shine like flashlights. “I mean, it’s pretty much over. Eventually, you’ll have to move on. And what better way than with a fresh start?” Her finger curls under my chin as she forces me to look at her. “With me—and our baby.”

  My breathing becomes labored, and my body shakes like a dog at the vet. Never mind that I’m still not over the last trauma.

  “Stay here.” A rife panic begins to fill me. “I’ll get some money.”

  I head into the store, bedraggled, scared shitless at the trajectory of how fast this disaster has mutated. It all started with Hailey—with my dick. If I were smart, I’d do away with both of them.

  I pick up the milk in haste, pay, then head straight for the ATM. Five transactions and a thousand dollars later, I head back to find her near her car, milling around, just inviting that nutcase that’s been stalking me to snap another picture.

  “Here.” I practically thrust it at her. If it had fallen, I wouldn’t have picked it up. “Get a room for the night. In the morning head to your mother’s, a friend’s, anywhere but here. I’ve got too much to deal with right now and I can’t handle”— I lift my hands in a fit of frustration—“this.”

  “This?” She places her hands gently over her swollen belly. “This happens to be your child, James.” Her voice pitches an octave and panic fills me.

  “Shhh!” I try to calm her down, but it’s too late.

  She flings the bills in the air and makes it rain twenties. “I don’t need your stupid money. What I need is a little respect from the father of my baby!” Her voice trails into the sky like a razor sawing through steel, making my ears wish they could bleed, my soul wish it could vacate the premises.

  “Look”—she hugs her belly, annunciating its girth that much more—“if you’re afraid of what Allison is going to say, don’t worry. I’ll talk to her woman to woman.”

  “Allison isn’t going to take well to this news no matter if you or the Pope talks to her. She’s going to be furious. She’s already out for blood. She is in no way going to welcome you or this child into our lives.”

  A quick, angry huff escapes her lips. “Then tell her you’ll see her around because you have a new family to deal with.”

  “I’m not dealing with this!” I whisper so loud I may as well have screamed it. “Are you that dense? My God, I thought you were a brilliant woman, and here you are not seeing the forest for the trees.” I grip her by the arms and shrink down to eye level, begging her to see my point. “If you just find somewhere to stay, I’ll get in touch with you. I’ll help you with the baby. I’ll help you with money, anything you want. Just for the love of God, do not show up on my front doorstep. Don’t follow me around town. There’s a good chance we’ve already been spotted.”

  She growls at me as her fury grows. “I hate this. And right now, I hate you, James Price.” She stalks off, and I watch as she gets back into the seemingly innocent car and peels out of the parking lot with a hostile squeal.

  “Shit.” I fall to my knees and pick up every last bill I can find.

  I’m going to be a father. I’m not sure I quite believe it. I’m not sure I quite believe anything anymore.

  Allison

  “I have someone looking out for you.”

  Words you never want to hear your sister say—not when she’s spending the rest of her foreseeable future in a private correctional facility—not when you just got off the phone with your mother who keeps threatening to come out and complicate an already complicated situation. I can only take so much familial meddling. Normally, familial meddling would be welcome under such circumstances, but with my sister’s bloodstained history and my mother’s psychotic need to control the world—familial meddling is very much unwelcomed.

  “What did you do?” Blood rushes through my veins so fast it heats me up, feels as if I’m burning alive from the inside.

  “That’s not for you to worry about.” Jane’s voice comes in clear and measured. “Just focus on getting my niece back where she belongs. How is that husband of yours? Does he n
eed his nut sack rearranged?”

  “No.” I stomp my way into the closet and shut the door. “God no. Please, please, please, Jane—call off your dogs. The public hates me. My mailbox is brimming with notes confirming this fact on a daily basis. They think I sold my daughter into sexual slavery. People have accused me of chopping her up and eating her. They think I actually care about that GoFuckingFundMe.”

  “You should care. It’s at a hundred seventy-two thousand.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want it. I won’t touch it. I want Reagan back.” I sink to the floor amidst my collection of wool jackets, their ghostly arms petting me softly over the head. It reminds me of Reagan and her feather-like hair, her velvet skin. A horrible choking sound comes from me instead of a cry. I’ve lost all ability to do so, cried so many damn tears I’m fresh out of them these days. A strangled sound breaks free. “Janey, I need you. Dammit, why aren’t you here? Don’t send someone else—come yourself. Why can’t you be here with me?”

  A hard sniffle comes from the other line, and it sends a sobering alarm through me. Janey doesn’t cry. She doesn’t whimper or feel emotions on the same level as other human beings. It’s a part of her charm as much as it is a part of her disease.

  “Don’t cry.” I pull it together enough to evict the words past that painful fist lodged in my throat. “She’s coming back to me. I can feel it.”

  Silence. That’s almost as bad as hearing my sister sniff back her emotions.

  “I have to tell you something, Ally.” Her voice sounds strangled, huskier than usual, as if she were ashamed of what comes next.

  “You got knocked up by the guard?” I had to go there. I think we both needed some comic relief, and yet neither of us bothers to laugh.

  “Heather came to see me.”

  “What?” I squawk so loud that I bury myself further in the forest of coats I’ve yanked down from their posts. “When? Today?”