by L.J. Shen
Maria started stuttering, a mish-mash of English and Spanish, throwing glances behind my head, hoping Detective Shithead would walk in and save the day. I was losing my patience, diving deeper into despair. Where the fuck could he be? Where could he take her?
“I don’t know!” she shouted. “I don’t know! He never to tell me anything!”
“You lie,” I screamed into her face, losing every ounce of control I had left in me. Time was not on my side. Hell, no one else was, either. “You lie and Sparrow’s life’s in danger because of the fucker. Answer me now, bitch!” I slammed my open palms into the wall. “Answer!”
I wasn’t proud of it, of course I wasn’t. Maria was twice my age, and regardless, the word “bitch” wasn’t really my style. I was more into the “fuck” business. But I’d lost it. Officially and genuinely lost my shit.
“You no see my Catalina anymore?” She blinked fast, checking me out from underneath her lashes.
Was this blackmail? Was my housekeeper extorting me so I would dump her daughter?
“I haven’t seen her in months. It’s over. Maria. Look, please…” I tried another tactic, pressing my palms together. Hell, I would have gotten down on my knees if I thought it would help. “Tell me anything. Tell me. I need to know where he is. Please. Just…please.”
She looked left and right, ashamed and anxious. Finally, a fucking breakthrough. She was going to give me something. Something was better than nothing. At this point, I would take anything.
“He came on Saturday to home…” She cleared her throat, coughing a little. “My home. He taking the thing.” She started making digging movements with her hands. “Then leave.”
“The what? The what? The shovel? Did he take a shovel?”
She stared at me helplessly, unblinking. I fished my phone out of my pocket, the battery almost dead, and punched the word shovel into the search engine. I thrust the picture in her face.
“Is this what he took? That’s what he left with?”
She nodded slowly, gulping. “This,” she confirmed.
Fuck.
He took her to the woods. More than likely, to the place where I buried any chance of us ever making it as a couple. He took her to the woods, and I knew exactly where, because it was the last place I wanted her to be. Because it was the place that’d hurt her the most.
I stalked out of the guest room, praying that detective Fuck Face hadn’t left the building yet. He hadn’t. He was still in my living room, his arms crossed over his chest, planted on my sofa like a punished kid. Goddamn. This was a guy in charge of finding potential criminals and murderers? No wonder I was still on the loose.
“Can you spare me five minutes?” he asked, darting up and moving in my direction.
I nodded, passing by him as I headed straight for the door. “I can give you even more, but I need your car, and I need it now.”
SPARROW
“ALL DONE.” BROCK stood up and wiped off the coat of sweat on his forehead.
He’d taken over digging the grave two hours or so ago. Finally, he’d realized I was in no shape to do it myself, especially if he wanted that hole deep enough for my body before Thanksgiving.
He’d also found the damn white sheet, throwing it my way, victory printed all over his disgusting face. It wasn’t so white anymore, but it was there.
I tried to smell the sheet, browned by dirt and mud, desperate to feel her, to connect to something that might have still been there. But I couldn’t. All I felt was disappointment. Disappointment in my mom, in my husband.
“Why are you doing this?” I howled.
Brock was leaning against a tall tree, pulling at his brown hair, on edge. Well, he was about to take a life. My life. He was looking down at me while I was sitting on the ground. My forehead had stopped bleeding, the blood gluing my hair to my skin, and my foot throbbed like it was being slowly cut off with a chainsaw. It wasn’t my best moment to say the least.
“I get that you hate Troy. I get that you loath the Brennans. But why do you feel the urge to hurt me?”
“I’m not sure.” He pinched his eyebrows, actually giving it thought. “Maybe it’s just my fragile ego, you know? I’m better looking, certainly nicer than Troy Brennan. Yet he always gets the chicks, doesn’t he?” He snorted. “Yeah, that’s it. Maybe I’m just bitter about you being so obviously blind to what he is and what I am.”
“You’re both as bad as each other,” I shot. “Both monsters from hell.”
But even as I said it, I didn’t believe it. Because after all the secrets were out, after knowing what Troy did to my mother and what went down, I still couldn’t hate him as much as I hated Brock. Troy wasn’t malicious. Or maybe he was, but not toward me. Brock, on the other hand…he had every chance to stop the blood bath and everything that had happened, at least most of it, but he kept the freak show running.
“Aw…” He put his hand over his heart. “Now that’s just straight out insulting. Any other last words, Mrs. Brennan?”
“Yeah,” I said, letting go of the white sheet and watching it drop back to the ground. “There’s someone behind you.”
Brock pivoted to see who was coming, He gasped when Troy’s panting figure sliced through the tall bushes like a storm.
He pointed his gun to Brock’s head and shouted, “Don’t shoot her!”
Brock dropped his gun, his mouth hanging open and realization washing over his face. It was over for him.
“Don’t do this,” Troy shouted again.
I was confused. What? Brock wasn’t holding the gun anymore.
“You devil,” Brock whispered, the accusation directed at my husband. “I’ll save you a place in hell.”
“Don’t wait up.” Troy’s voice dropped considerably. “I’ll be late.”
Then, with a smile, Troy produced a panicked scream. “I said drop the gun now!”
A shot rang through the air. Brock fell to the ground, his body hitting with a thud that echoed between the towering trees. My head shot up. Still shaking, everything shaking, I gaped at his prone body next to me. Horror etched his face. I saw the surprise in his eyes as the dark red stain of blood bloomed on his mouse-gray jacket, spreading like an oil spill with every second that passed.
Too stunned and weak to try and get up, I lay there near the hole he dug for me.
Next thing, I saw Troy’s shoes as he stopped inches from my face. Relief washed over me. I sobbed, releasing every single tear I’d been holding all day. He was here. Troy was here, and all of a sudden, everything was okay. Despite what I knew, what I didn’t want to know, despite my life with him being over, it was okay. I knew I’d be okay.
I was so tired of being strong. Being taken care of, even by him, was a concession I was glad to make.
“Sorry, Red.” He picked up Brock’s gun with a handkerchief and walked to where Brock had been standing before the bullet hit him. “I promise I won’t even graze your ear.”
Then he shot me.
Troy Brennan, my husband, shot me.
He missed my ear by an inch, but I still felt the heat radiating from the bullet as it flew next to me. The scent of gunpowder burned my nostrils, and my eyes rolled back in their sockets.
I lost it for a moment, barely noticing Troy’s arms closing around me. The next thing I knew he was picking me up. He carried me like an altar boy, and I was his cross. Swinging my arms over his neck, hugging me tight like I could evaporate at any moment.
I clung to my mother’s white sheet and sobbed. I don’t think he noticed the sheet. I’m not even sure that I noticed what I was doing at this point. So much had happened so fast, it was almost like I was an outsider peeking into a reality that wasn’t really mine.
A second person ran through the trees in our direction. A small man with utilitarian clothes and sharp nose. A cop. He hurried toward Brock’s body and felt for a pulse.
I was still woozy and incoherent, but I noticed Brock’s gun was back in his hand.
My hu
sband, ever the fixer.
“You shot him?” he roared at Troy.
Troy’s arms tightened around my body protectively. It started to hurt. So did my forehead and foot. Everything hurt. Everything felt broken. Especially my heart.
“Self defense,” Troy said, and I felt him through my shoulder pointing his chin at Brock. “He shot my wife, missed only by a few inches, and he was going to try again.”
Not true. Brock never did any such thing. Troy was the one who shot him, and Troy was the one who used Brock’s gun. Of course, I didn’t utter a word to the cop. I let Troy carry me to a black SUV I didn’t recognize, my arms flailing like they were no longer part of my body. I released my hold on the sheet, but he bent down, picked it up and flung it over his shoulder. He knew I knew, and somehow, that made me even sadder.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry, Red.” He kept on repeating it, more to himself than to me.
“I know everything,” I whispered into his chest. “How could you have done that to my mom? How could they have done this to us?”
His muscles tensed around my body. Chest, biceps and even his fingers stiffened.
“Sparrow—”
I fainted the second he placed me on the seat, and for the first time since everything happened, I truly didn’t give a damn if I woke up or not. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Nothing.
I didn’t come to until I was at the hospital, and even then, everything was a blur. The first few minutes, I thought I was still in the woods, still with Brock, or even worse, dead. Then I felt the needle in my wrist and the scent of antiseptic and anesthetics attacked my nose. Blinking slowly, trying to gain some control over my vision, I saw a hazy figure sitting by my bed. I realized it was Pops, his head between his hands. His body shook, and I figured he was crying.
Lucy perched on the window sill, looking out, but mostly looking worried.
Daisy was digging dirt from under her fingernail absently, leaning against the wall, popping pink bubblegum.
I found comfort in the simplicity of everything around me. The walls were naked and everything was white or pale. The linoleum on the floor, basic furniture, blind-covered windows. It was boring, it was bare, and I loved it. My current self couldn’t handle detail, or stomach anything more complex than what was in front of me.
And most importantly, I was surrounded by the three, only important people in my life.
My husband was no longer a part of this short list. Not after what he did.
Pops and Lucy must’ve heard me gasping when I tried to move my foot—unsuccessfully, by the way—because Lucy jumped from where she was sitting and appeared by my bed.
“I’m sorry, honey. You broke your foot.”
“Actually, Brock broke it for me.” I winced, but stopped trying to move my leg. It was so sore, no amount of morphine in the world would be able to subdue the pain.
By the looks on their faces, they were confused and still in the dark. I wondered how much they knew.
“Where’s Troy?” I licked inside my mouth, trying to fight the dryness.
Lucy and Daisy exchanged glances, and I didn’t like what was written on their faces. It pained me to admit that even though Troy did unthinkable things to a lot of people, the woman who gave birth to me included, I still cared about him. Still didn’t want him to get into trouble. Even if I couldn’t be with him, that didn’t make him any less important.
If anything, it made me worry for him even more. The cancer has successfully taken over my whole body. I was infected head to toe. Resistant to any medicine, immune to anything he might do. In fact, I knew that even if the bullet he shot at me pierced my skin, I would still love him. Very much. It sucked, because I knew that I couldn’t forgive him.
It also sucked to know he might be a free man, but he wasn’t in the room, because he didn’t want me anymore.
Pops was the one to break the news, since Lucy and Daisy were too empathetic to do such thing.
“He’s at the police station,” he said, unblinking. “Giving his statement about what happened.”
I looked out the window. It was pitch black outside, a street lamp illuminating the fog and rain.
“What time is it?”
“One a.m.”
Damn, it’d been almost twenty-four hours since I ran into Brock, but it felt like it was years ago.
“And Brock?”
This time Lucy had no trouble delivering the news. “He’s dead. Don’t worry. You poor thing. You were in quite a state when Troy found you. I can’t believe Brock kidnapped you because he fell in love with you and couldn’t stomach the fact you were married. What a psycho.”
Ah. He now had a cover story, too.
“How did Troy find me?”
“The housekeeper,” they answered in unison. Maria.
I let my head sink back into the pillow, closing my eyes and fighting the tears stinging the back of my eyeballs. Why was I crying now? Because I had my life back. Because I had my family around me. Because everything was supposed to be okay now, yet it wasn’t. Never would be. Troy was right—I was bound to run away from him. I needed to run away from him. There was no repairing our relationship after what he’d done.
Even The Fixer couldn’t fix this.
“Can we get you anything at all?” Daisy pulled at her gum, twirling it around her finger. I almost smiled. Almost.
“Hot chocolate,” I said, and before I knew it, she dashed out of the room.
“Your forehead looks nasty,” Lucy commented, brushing her hand along my temple in a motherly gesture.
“I bet my foot doesn’t look too good either.”
“No,” she agreed.
I frowned. “You mean, my foot modeling days are over?”
“Afraid so.”
The three of us laughed—me, Lucy and Pops—and the smile felt good on my lips again. Not natural, but good.
It would take a long time until I laughed again, really laughed, or felt genuinely happy, but this was a start.
I was taking baby steps, but with a broken foot and a shattered heart, this was something, too.
TROY
I FIXED EVERYTHING.
That was me. I was The Fixer.
Sparrow was safe again. I managed to both kill Brock and stop the stupid Flynn investigation from happening—two birds, one stone. Fulfilled my promise to my dad. Crossed the final name on my list. Flynn’s grave was found by the police, but so did Brock’s sloppy fingerprints all over the cabin where he took care of him.
It wasn’t so hard to convince them he was also the one to dig the grave. Especially as his mother in law confessed he had taken a fucking shovel to the woods.
The decaying remains of Robyn Raynes were found – and Detective Idiot and his crew were only too happy to dump the blame on Brock along with everything else.
And I made Brock’s death look like self-defense. There was still a ton of paperwork to be done, and I knew it will cost me a pretty penny, but I fixed it. Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be. I had a reliable witness—Detective Stratham— who saw the gun Brock was holding in the woods, and the grave he dug for Red. There was no denying the man intended to harm her and me, and my intentions were well within the eyes of the law. I was bulletproof. Sparrow, though shaken, would be on her feet soon.
Everything was fixed.
Well, other than what was important.
I walked down the hallway of the hospital like I was on death row. Every door I passed brought me closer to the door I didn’t want to knock on. I wasn’t scared, I was petrified.
For the first time in my life, I was going to do the right thing, and I wished it felt better, because the truth was, it felt like fucking shit. It felt like hell, like torture, like a sharp butcher’s knife digging into my chest, piercing into my heart and pulling it out slowly, breaking each and every one of my ribs on its way out.
I knocked on the door softly. If she was asleep, I didn’t want to wake her up. She’d looked so frail when I fou
nd her. With blood running from her temple all the way down her face like a veil, her leg completely fucked and twisted, her foot the size of a basketball. She was freezing, too, in nothing but thin yoga pants and a Dri-Fit shirt.
An injured Sparrow.
The first thing I wanted was to tend to her, and then and only then to kill Brock slowly and painfully.
But I couldn’t do it the way I had wanted it to happen. Because Brock needed to be finished before he could give away the fact that I buried Robyn and Flynn right there, in the woods. I had no doubt he’d spill the beans to Stratham the minute the cop took him into custody. Every moment he was alive and at a close proximity to the detective, my life as a free man was in danger.
That was fine. By the time I stopped Detective Impotent’s vehicle in the middle of the woods and bolted out, all my urges and need for vengeance were irrelevant.
My quest was useless and irrelevant.
There was no time for revenge.
Everything darkened, and the only thing illuminated was her.
So I killed him quickly, coldly, efficiently, but not merrily. Still, I wouldn’t change it for the world, because I managed to save Red, and that’s all that mattered.
“Come in,” she said from the other side of the door, and by the edge of her voice, I knew she figured it was me who came to visit.
I let her keep the rotting rag I wrapped her mom in before I buried her. In a way, digging holes for her mom and for Flynn were the darkest moments of my life. They both didn’t deserve it. Even if I wasn’t the one to kill them, I denied them a proper burial, and that was a lot.
In fact, it was so much, that in a way, not paying Robyn Raynes respect had cost me everything.
More specifically, her daughter.
I pushed the door open and walked to her bed. She had shit load of tubes in her wrists, and her leg was in a cast. And she was still nothing short of divine. My girl, my lovebird. The prettiest. Not because she had the pinkest lips or the greenest eyes, but because she was made for me. Tailor-made to make me laugh, to piss me off, to make me lose my shit. Hell, to make me feel.