by David Bell
His words came back to me, the ones Amanda reported he’d said to her: It was terrible that the girl got killed.
He went on. “But that’s a loose end I’ll have to tie up. That’s something I’ll have to go back and take care of when all is said and done. When I’m finished with the two of you here.”
My bladder felt full to bursting. And every one of my joints ached as a chill passed through me. I considered running, just turning and dashing up the stairs, but unless Aaron was the worst marksman in the history of mankind or he really wasn’t ready to pull the trigger of that gun, I stood no chance of getting away.
And given the way he looked, the flaring hatred in his eyes, I harbored no doubts about his readiness to cut me down if I ran.
I consoled myself with the knowledge that Amanda and Henry remained at my in-laws’ house, with the police there. But I knew the cops couldn’t stay forever. And Aaron seemed to read my mind.
“Even if she isn’t home,” he said, “if she goes to a hotel or a relative’s house, I’ll find her eventually. Hell, there are enough photos of your stupid baby with his grandparents on social media as well. I can find them. You’re such a foolish idiot, you’ve drawn me a map.”
If he wanted to scare me, he did. More than anything in my life ever had. To the point that my body felt dissolved by the combination of cold, adrenaline, and a racing heart. I wasn’t sure I could have moved even if I’d wanted to.
“But first things first,” Aaron said. “It’s time to deal with the two of you.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
“Let him go,” I said.
The words were unplanned. They spilled out of my mouth without any thought on my part. But once they were out, they felt right. And I knew I’d had to say them.
“Let him go,” I said again. “And then leave my family and everyone else alone. I’m the person you want. I’m the one you need to deal with. Okay? Just let . . . just let everybody else be.”
Aaron looked surprised by my declaration. For a moment, he stared at me as though I were an exhibit on display in a zoo, a strange creature who performed some bizarre, unexpected act. I kept my eyes locked on his, so I had no idea what Blake was doing.
“A hero, then,” Aaron said. “Saving the day for everybody.”
“Not that. Not that at all. It’s just the right thing, okay? Your quarrel is with me. I’m the most to blame for what happened that night.”
For some reason, Aaron continued to hold the gun against Blake’s head. Maybe he deemed Blake the greater threat. Or maybe he felt he could keep me from running off by maintaining the pressure on Blake. If I made a sudden move, either to leave the basement or to charge Aaron, he could easily pull the trigger and kill Blake with a head shot. Maybe he figured pointing the gun at me wouldn’t have been as much of a deterrent for Blake.
“Are you?” Aaron asked.
“Don’t you know what really happened? After all these years, don’t you?”
“I know now,” he said. “I was pretty well concussed that night. And drunk. So I went along with what I was told by the cops. What they thought happened. But somebody finally filled me in. But you tell me what you think happened. Let’s see if it matches what I know.”
“Who told you?” I asked. “Was it Dawn?”
Aaron’s face scrunched. “Dawn? The sister? Forget her. Just tell me the story.”
His desire to have me speak first so he could compare stories put me further on edge. I wanted to ask more questions, to know where he’d been hearing things from. But the look on his face, the primal urgency displayed there, told me I needed to speak.
But I remembered the letters . . . what Blake said had been written in them.
Had Aaron read the letters? Had he been in Jennifer’s house?
Had he killed her?
“Go on,” he said, waving the gun.
“Okay, okay. We were all drinking. You know that. And we pushed you to go out of town and take that sign from Gnaw Bone. Look, we knew how much you wanted to get into Sigil and Shield. We played on that. We all did. It’s no different than that gun you have there. That gun can get us to do a lot of things, if you’re willing to use it. We used your desire for acceptance in the same way. I pushed you to do those things.”
“The accident,” Aaron said.
“I was drunk too. And it was fuzzy for me. But we were in my car. And when I woke up in the hospital that night, I could remember that we’d all walked to the car together. I remembered getting in. And I was behind the wheel. And I remembered driving away from campus.”
“You did. You were driving.”
“So it’s me. I’m the one you have the problem with. I should have been arrested. Let Blake go.”
“Let Blake go? What about this . . . ? How did the cops come to think I was driving if you were really the one behind the wheel?”
His words froze me, and I looked at Blake, who was staring at the floor.
“Well?” Aaron said.
“Blake moved us,” I said. “Before the cops came, he moved me to the back and you to the front. He staged the scene. And when the cops arrived, they found you behind the wheel. You were so out of it you had no idea. Blake told me when I came to in the hospital. And we went with that. . . .”
“You went with that,” Aaron said. “You make it sound so fun. So casual. Oh, we just went with that.”
“Aaron, it was wrong. I wanted to tell the truth. My father had died. I was barely paying for school. I covered my own butt because I was afraid I’d lose everything. Everything my mom was working for to help me finish school. She went back to school, worked nights and weekends.
“It was stupid and selfish and wrong of me. And many times I wanted to call the police and tell the truth, but I always found a reason not to. I’m not proud of it. Not at all.” I felt sick just saying the words. But I was also glad for someone else to hear them. For Aaron to know the truth. “Call the police. Bring them here, and I’ll tell them the truth. There isn’t a statute of limitations in Kentucky. I’ll go to jail. I’ll lose everything. Just make the call and end this. . . .”
Something flashed in Aaron’s eyes, something I hadn’t seen in the short time we’d been face-to-face in the basement of the half-completed town house. It looked more like joy than the anger that had been simmering there, and for a moment, I couldn’t understand the reason for the look. And I never would have understood it if he hadn’t started talking and explaining it.
“That’s what happened that night?” he asked.
“It is. Ask Blake.”
Aaron’s eyes trailed down to Blake, who still cowered under the pressure of the gun. He looked small and insignificant on the floor, like a child.
I waited for him to say something, to speak up and interject as he always did, but he remained silent, as if the pressure of the gun against his head cut off his ability to speak.
“I did ask him,” Aaron said.
“And he told you the same thing, right?” I asked. “He had to.”
It took a moment for Aaron to answer, but then he did. “We ran into each other. . . . What was that, Blake? A couple weeks ago?”
When Blake stayed quiet, Aaron pushed against his head with the gun. “Yes, weeks.”
“An accident, really,” Aaron said, not relaxing the pressure against Blake’s head. “I was over in Cave Springs, working my job in a shitty Chinese restaurant. A job as a dishwasher, which is about all you can get when you’ve served time in prison. And never finished college. So I’m outside, taking a smoke break, when I see this one”—he pushed against Blake’s head again—“walking through the parking lot with a beautiful woman. I recognized him right away. He hasn’t changed much since college. A little fatter. A little shorter if that’s possible. But the same guy. Same shit-eating grin on his face, like he didn’t have a care in the world. A rich k
id’s look. That sums it up, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” Blake said.
“You nearly jumped out of your skin when I called your name,” Aaron said. “Like you’d been electrocuted. And I kind of wondered why you jumped so high. You and that woman you were with suddenly looked like you were in big trouble.”
Why would Blake have jumped and looked guilty when someone called his name unless he had been with Jennifer and not Sam?
“At first he didn’t want to talk to me,” Aaron said. “But then he sent his ladylove over to his car so he could speak to me alone. And when we were there talking, and I asked him about that night and what really happened, he suddenly seemed very eager to tell his tale. I just really wanted to know what the truth was. Because I’d started to have my own doubts while I was in prison. I’d replayed it over and over, and I started to remember that you, Ryan, were behind the wheel when we left Sigil and Shield.”
Everything grew silent. The absence of noise felt oppressive, like an unseen force filling the wide-open basement. I waited for Aaron to go on, but he didn’t. I couldn’t stand the waiting and the silence.
“What did he tell you?” I asked. “The truth, right? What I just told you.”
Aaron cut his eyes toward me, and then he nodded slowly, like a man who knew a secret.
“That is what he told me,” Aaron said. “He told me the same version you just gave. The truth.”
But Aaron laughed a little after he said it.
“The truth,” he said again, looking down at Blake. “Is that still the story you want to stick with?” When Blake said nothing, Aaron asked, “Well, is it, Blake?”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
I waited for his answer. Anticipating.
Aaron wore such an eager, excited look on his face, it unnerved me. He seemed like a man who knew something the rest of us didn’t. But for the life of me, I couldn’t guess what it was. So I waited along with Aaron in the cool, dark basement. And I watched Blake like he was an oracle about to intone.
After what felt like half an eternity, Blake nodded his head, an almost imperceptible movement. It failed to satisfy Aaron, who pushed harder with the gun.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Yes,” Blake said. “That’s the story. That’s what happened that night. We kept feeding you drinks. We told you to get the sign. And Ryan was driving when we had the accident. And I made it look like you were driving, Aaron, and you took the fall for it because you couldn’t really remember. And Ryan couldn’t either. I set the whole thing up.”
The words, spoken out loud the way they were, sent a hot wave of shame-induced nausea cascading through my body. The rush came on so strong I almost staggered backward, and I wished for something to lean against to support my body. But nothing was there, nothing nearby. I had no choice but to stand on my own while those awful words and memories swirled around us like angry bees.
“It was Ryan driving,” Aaron said.
Again, Blake was slow to answer. Finally, he said, “Yes, it was. I was in the passenger seat, and you were in the back. Until I moved you.”
“And that’s what really happened that night?” Aaron asked.
“It is.” Blake didn’t hesitate this time.
A look of relief passed across Aaron’s face, as if those were the words he desperately needed to hear. Like that of a doctor giving you the all clear when the test results come back, or a lover responding with I love you.
Aaron looked over at me, some of the fire and glee out of his eyes. “Did you hear that, Ryan?”
“Are you working with Dawn Steiner, Aaron?” I asked.
“Dawn Steiner? What a joke.”
“Are you?” I asked.
“Did you hear what Blake said?” Aaron asked.
“I heard it,” I said. “I heard it today, and I knew it already. That’s why you can let him go. Just be done with him. Yes, he staged the accident . . . but I went along with it. I should have spoken up back then. Or anytime since. It’s on me, okay? Not my family. Not really Blake. He’s about to get married. Let him be. And let my family be.”
Aaron leaned down and spoke close to Blake’s ear. “Is that what you want, Blake? You want to get out of here and get married?”
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” he said.
“But you want to get married, right?” Aaron didn’t wait for an answer before he continued talking. “You want to get married, even though you were spending time with another woman. The one who is now deader than a doornail. You see, I’ve watched all of this unfold. Blake running around with other women. Ryan, I’ve seen your happy life all over social media. The vacations and the nice dinners. The fancy drinks and the concerts. The wife and baby and house and business. I see it all. The whole house of cards is there for everyone to see. One little puff might blow it down.”
“Ryan’s right,” Blake said. “Leave everyone else out of it.”
“Leave Samantha out of it?” Aaron asked. “Is that what you mean? Samantha? Isn’t that her name?” He leaned even closer, so close I saw spittle fly out of his mouth and land on Blake’s face. “She might be interested to learn about this Jennifer. She might be interested to learn a lot of things. See, that night when you left the Chinese restaurant, I followed you. It was easy. I’m sure you were more interested in your date than who might have been driving behind you.”
Blake cut his eyes at Aaron but didn’t say anything.
“And I saw where she lived,” Aaron said. “Jennifer Bates.”
His statement struck me like a jolt of electricity. And our encounter started to move in a direction I’d already suspected—It was terrible that the girl got killed—but wished and hoped it wouldn’t. Because if it moved that way, if Aaron was the one responsible for Jennifer’s death, then the line from that death to Aaron’s accident led directly back to me.
“Aaron,” I said.
“Shhh. I went there, and I saw where she lived. And I found out her name. It’s not hard to do. Isn’t the Internet a remarkable thing? You can see how wonderfully other people’s lives have advanced while you’re stuck in neutral. You can learn the name of a woman you want to talk to. So I went back another night, and I talked to the lovely Jennifer.”
“Did you know her already?” I asked. “Had you met her through her job, Aaron?”
A look of recognition spread across Aaron’s face. “Oh, I get it. I see. You think I knew her because she worked with prisoners as they transitioned to the outside. It’s that simple, right? Blame the ex-con.”
“You know what her job is,” I said. “Is that how you knew her?”
“I know what her job was because she told me when we talked,” Aaron said. “And yeah, we talked about my record a little. But mostly we talked about the two of you. I told her I was good friends with Blake from college. And with you, Ryan. She was suddenly very interested. And willing to talk. We talked. . . . We even had a drink. She said a few times, ‘This is totally nuts, me talking to you like this.’ But she didn’t send me away. I’ll give her credit. She was a ballsy chick. Not a shrinking violet at all. And eventually I explained the whole thing to her. How I knew you two in college, and what happened the last time we saw each other. The drinking, the hazing, the accident. How Ryan was the one behind the wheel, and how I took the fall because I couldn’t remember. Did you know we talked about that, Blake?”
Whatever color remained in Blake’s face drained away. He shook his head. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “But she and I . . . We weren’t . . . close anymore. We’d broken up. That night you saw us at the restaurant, we’d already broken up. I was letting her know that things were really over, once and for all. That’s why we were there together. The relationship was over, and I was engaged. She didn’t know me as well as she thought she did. She—she didn’t understand everything about me anymore.”
“I guess she didn’t,” Aaron said. “She didn’t seem to.”
Blake looked uncertain. His eyes narrowed, but he remained quiet, waiting for the next shoe to drop.
“Because,” Aaron said, “she told me a very different story about what happened that night, the night that ruined my life.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Blake’s posture stiffened. He moved his head up, pushing against the gun Aaron still held in place. Blake suddenly seemed injected with more energy than he’d displayed at any time since I’d been in the basement with them.
“You killed her,” Blake said.
“Don’t change the subject,” Aaron said.
“No,” Blake said. “You killed her. You just said you knew where she lived. You wanted to hurt me, so you hurt her. And then you went over to Ryan’s house and threatened his family. That’s why you won’t let that go. That’s why you say you’re going to hurt Amanda and Henry if you leave here.”
“Don’t be simple,” Aaron said.
“Hold it,” I said.
They both looked at me as my voice bounced off the walls, silencing their bickering. They’d been acting like I wasn’t there, like they were deeply engaged in their own private spat.
“What do you mean, Jennifer told you a different story about that night than Blake told you?” I asked. “Jennifer wasn’t there. We didn’t even know her in college. She didn’t know what happened that night.”
Aaron looked at me like I was simple. He shook his head. “Somebody in this room told Jennifer all about that night.”
My eyes went to Blake, and our gazes locked on each other for a moment. I wasn’t sure what I saw there—shame? fear? anger?—but he quickly looked away. And he remained quiet, as though ceding the floor to Aaron.