Wicked Whimsy

by Lily Harper Hart

  He was worse than she ever imagined, Ivy realized. He was cold, calculating, and unbelievably smart. It was easy to see how he’d gotten away with what he was doing for so long. “I understand what you are,” Ivy shot back. “And I’m not going to let you get away with it.”

  Ivy turned and bolted into the storm, not as much as glancing over her shoulder to see if Josh gave chase. He wouldn’t have a choice in the matter. They both knew it. Josh’s best chance at survival was to kill Ivy and make sure he was the only one left standing to weave a story of pain and peril. What he didn’t know was that she had reinforcements. She wasn’t alone in this, and that’s what she held onto now as the water pelted her face and she raced through the nursery.

  She had help coming. She simply needed to hold on long enough for it to get to her.

  Ivy didn’t waste time. She raced to the front of the nursery, to the spot where her father usually held court while regaling the guests with stories and jokes. Hopefully she would find him there, she internally rationalized, perhaps only unconscious and not terribly hurt. The small kiosk was empty.

  In a moment of panic, Ivy started yelling. “Dad? Where are you? Please answer me!”

  Lightning flashed in the sky in response, but she couldn’t hear a voice, however weak, accompanying it. When she turned, she found Josh standing about thirty feet away. His right hand was gripped into a fist and Ivy had no doubt what he held there.

  “Are you going to stab me with your knife thing, Josh?” Ivy asked as she pushed her soaking hair out of her face. “How do you think you’re going to get away with it?”

  “The cops never suspect me. They’re not smart enough to figure it out.” Josh took a step forward, his purpose evident. “You’re making it harder on yourself. You should just submit.”

  “I think I’m good,” Ivy said. “I’m not going to let you kill me. And, as for the cops, they already know you’re guilty. They’re on their way.”

  A flash of worry flitted through Josh’s eyes but he quickly masked it. “I think you’re making that up.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. If the cops knew I was the one who shot my father there’s no way they would’ve let me hang out with you. I’m not an idiot. You guys are the idiots.”

  “I guess we are,” Ivy agreed. “That doesn’t change the fact that everyone figured things out this morning.” She left out the part where they assumed Josh killed his father as retribution for what Abraham supposedly did to Melanie. That wasn’t important now. “They’re coming and you’re going to be arrested.”

  “I’m a kid.” Josh was back to being innocent. “You can’t put a kid in prison. It doesn’t happen. Even if they take me in, I’ll be free in five years. I know about this stuff. I’ve read about it.”

  “That figures,” Ivy muttered under her breath. “It doesn’t matter. You won’t get away with this.”

  “I already have.” Josh took a menacing step forward, but he didn’t make it far because a dark figure, one Ivy recognized, moved out from behind the tree to his left. It was Brian, and he didn’t look happy.

  “You most certainly have not.” Brian grabbed Josh’s wrist, the one that held the knife, and firmly squeezed. “You’re done here.”

  Josh, perhaps realizing for the first time that he was in real trouble, widened his eyes. “You don’t understand.” His voice turned breathy, as if he were an innocent child who needed protection from the big, bad nursery owner. “She wanted to kill me. She was the one who killed my father. I didn’t say anything before because I was afraid. It was her and Max, though. They wanted to kill him.”

  “And why would they want that?” Brian refused to lessen his grip on Josh’s wrist even though the boy fought him tooth and nail. “How would that benefit her?”

  “I don’t know.” Josh was solemn. “I’m innocent.”

  “You’re pretty far from innocent, kid.” Brian shoved his thumb into one of Josh’s pulse points, causing him to cry out, and forced him to drop the knife. “I don’t know what you are, but it’s not innocent.” Brian was strong so it didn’t take him long to slap cuffs on Josh and then shift his attention to Ivy. “Are you okay?”

  Ivy immediately started shaking her head as she moved forward. “He has my father out here somewhere. We have to find him.”

  Brian widened his eyes. “We’ll lock him in the car and start looking. I’ll call for backup.”

  “Hurry. I’m really worried.”

  “We’ll find him.” Brian sounded sure of himself. “Have a little faith. This bad guy is done ending lives. I promise you that.”

  Twenty

  It didn’t take long to find Michael. Josh hit him over the head with a shovel and dumped him in the second greenhouse, but he was alive upon discovery. Ivy and Max rode with him to the hospital, leaving Brian and the arriving cavalry to deal with Josh.

  Ivy’s last glimpse of the boy was through the ambulance window. He sat in the backseat of Brian’s cruiser and watched the ambulance pull away. He didn’t look distressed or worried, merely curious. It was that look Ivy knew would haunt her for a long time to come.

  Max and Ivy were forced to sit in the lobby while Dr. Nesbitt tended to Michael. When Luna arrived, there was no force on the planet that could keep her from her husband, though, and the nurse grudgingly let her beyond the swinging double doors.

  That left Ivy and Max alone, with nothing but dark thoughts to fuel them.

  “I was just about to make my move when Brian showed up,” Max explained, causing Ivy to shift her eyes to him. He looked bedraggled and tired but otherwise fine. “He saw me coming out of the shed and motioned me off. I wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do, but I figured he knew better so I hung back.”

  “It turned out fine.” Ivy dragged a restless hand through her snarled hair. “I just can’t believe it was him all along. I mean … I knew he killed his father. I accepted that. Mistakenly I thought he did it out of some sort of misguided loyalty to his mother.”

  “Yeah. It turns out he was a lot more messed up than we thought. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  “I think I should’ve seen it.”

  “Why? You’re not omnipotent.”

  “I still think I should’ve seen something.” Ivy was mired in guilt and grief. Blaming herself seemed to be a natural thing. “I can see other things. Why couldn’t I see this?”

  “Because you weren’t looking for it,” Jack answered, appearing in the doorway. He was wet, obviously had been working alongside Brian in the rain, and his expression was fierce as he strode toward her. “You can’t always know everything about everyone. You’re amazing, but no one is that amazing.”

  “Jack.” Even though she’d been struggling for what felt like forever to rein in her emotions, the second she saw him, Ivy burst into tears and threw her arms around his neck. She didn’t care that he was soaked to the bone. She only cared that he was with her. “I wasn’t sure when I would get to see you.”

  “I worked as fast as I could.” Jack held her close, smoothing her hair as he met Max’s steady gaze over her shoulder. “Are you guys okay?”

  “I wasn’t even in the thick of things this time,” Max replied, his heart constricting as Ivy continued to blubber against Jack’s shoulder. “I knew Ivy was in trouble and was going to attack Josh from behind but that’s when Brian showed up. He was quick and efficient.”

  “Yeah. I saw Josh in the back of the cruiser.” Jack swayed back and forth in an attempt to lull Ivy. He understood this was something that would take her a bit of time to bounce back from and was in no hurry to force her to come to grips with any of it. “I talked to him.”

  “You did?” Ivy pulled back and swiped at the tears coursing down her cheeks. “What did he say?”

  “He said a whole lot of nonsense,” Jack replied. “He tried to run a story about you and Max threatening him. He said you guys killed his father and he didn’t tell us that first day because he was afraid of you
guys.”

  “Why would he say that, though?” Max challenged. “It’s pretty easy to poke holes in that story.”

  “It is,” Jack agreed, leading Ivy to a chair so he could sit and pull her on his lap. He was exhausted, working in the rain and emotional upheaval draining energy from him. He was relieved it was over, though, and knew things would be better once they could put this day in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think he cares. He even owned up to stealing money from Ivy’s purse so he could buy his knife, although he said it was for protection. He’s used to people believing him simply because he’s a kid. He’s about to get a rude awakening on that front.”

  “What did the pathologist find?” Ivy asked, struggling to pull herself together. She didn’t want anyone to see her break down, and that included Jack.

  “She’s still working, but I think she’ll get enough that we can charge Josh with Melanie’s murder. Jenny’s might be more difficult, but we’ll see. Brian said Josh admitted all of it to you, so you’ll probably have to testify.”

  “Gladly.”

  Jack knew that was the last thing she wanted to do, no matter what she said, but he didn’t push her on the matter. “I talked to Ellen Woodbridge. She admitted Josh saw her having sex with Abraham. I thought that propelled our first theory – that Josh was out for revenge against his father – until she described the way Josh reacted. Right then I knew something was wrong, that we were missing something.”

  “I didn’t realize until he started acting weird in the greenhouse,” Ivy admitted, running her fingers over the hand Jack held at her waist. “I still thought we were dealing with a misguided kid until he opened his mouth.”

  “You must have been afraid.” Jack kissed her temple. “I’m sorry. I was too far away to get to you. I felt a bit of your fear when I was driving. It killed me knowing that I wouldn’t get to you in time.”

  “You can’t always be the hero.” Ivy offered up a rueful smile. “Even if Brian didn’t arrive in time, I would’ve figured out a way to take him down.”

  “I know you would have. You’re my strong girl.” Jack snuggled her in close. “Still, that was a lot for you to deal with. Brian said you found the gun.”

  Ivy bobbed her head. “I did. He hid it behind the tree in my fairy ring. His father was killed fairly close to that location. He didn’t go far to hide the gun. He must have realized he only had a limited timetable to work with.”

  “How did you even know to look there?” Max asked. “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I told you about the flash I had at the lumberyard, though,” Ivy reminded him, digging in her pocket for the ties. “By the way, you’ll need these for your case.” She dropped them in Jack’s hand. “Josh cut one of them because he wanted to hurt Max. That was his intent from the start the day Max took him for the afternoon. He said Max was a distraction.”

  “I think Josh didn’t like distractions because he desperately needed to be the center of attention,” Jack offered. “He’s a messed-up kid.”

  “I think he’s a sociopath,” Ivy countered. “I don’t think he has any emotions, although he’s good at mimicking them. That’s what I saw in my vision, although I didn’t understand it at the time. In addition to seeing him cutting the ropes at the lumberyard, I also saw a face I recognized. It was the face on the tree. That’s how I knew where to look for the gun.”

  “Well, you did a good job.” Jack gave her another kiss. “I kind of wish you hadn’t approached him yourself, but I understand why you did it. You were still toiling under the assumption that what happened to Abraham Masters was some sort of tragic accident or revenge scheme, something that Josh could explain away.”

  “I didn’t think he could explain away his father’s death,” Ivy clarified. “I just thought that with counseling … I don’t know … I thought maybe he could get better.”

  “I don’t think getting better is in the cards for Josh.” Jack stretched out his long legs and kept Ivy flush against his chest as he reclined in the chair. “How is your father?”

  “He’s awake,” Max replied. “We found him in the second greenhouse. He was hazy but said Josh smacked him over the head. He thinks it was with a shovel. I have a feeling Josh was probably going to go back and finish him off later, but he was more interested in getting to Ivy.”

  “Yeah, he seemed to hone in on her from the start,” Jack agreed.

  “I think it was because he thought he could manipulate me,” Ivy admitted. “He thought I was an easy mark.”

  “I don’t think that,” Jack countered. “I think he looked at you and saw something interesting. By his own admission, the kid liked to learn. He thought you could teach him stuff. He thought you had time and attention to give. That’s all he really cared about.”

  Ivy rested her head on Jack’s shoulder, allowing herself to breathe and absorb some of his warmth. “What will happen to him now?”

  “He’ll be locked up in a state facility and observed for a bit,” Jack answered, moving his hand to the back of Ivy’s neck so he could rub away some of the tension accumulating there. “There are going to be a lot of doctors and therapists studying him for the foreseeable future.”

  “He might like that,” Ivy noted. “He likes learning things. Maybe they can teach him something about his own nature.”

  “That is a frightening thought.”

  The trio lapsed into amiable silence, allowing it to stretch until Luna returned to the lobby. She looked relieved, a warm smile on her face as she regarded them. “He’s going to be fine.”

  “That’s good.” Ivy blew out a sigh as she straightened. “Is he angry? It’s my fault he got dragged into this.”

  “He’s not angry.” Luna’s smile never wavered. “He does insist that you make him morel soup, morel salad, and morel pasta with Alfredo sauce during his convalescence, though. It seems Max comes by his need to be babied while injured naturally.”

  Ivy laughed. It felt good to let some of the pain wash away. “I’ll get on that tonight. Are they keeping him here for observation?”

  “They are. After that, he’ll be home.”

  “I’ll have the soup and salad ready for tomorrow. The pasta the next day.”

  “That sounds good.” Luna moved closer to her daughter, perhaps sensing that Ivy was at her limit and needed something to pick up her spirits. “Your father said to tell you that he wasn’t worried even after he was knocked out. He knew you would come to his rescue.”

  “How did he know that?” Ivy was honestly curious. “When I couldn’t find him, I was so afraid that it was already too late. How could he possibly know I would come through?”

  “Because you’re you.” Luna tweaked her nose. “Like it or not, Ivy Morgan, you’re strong and people have faith in you. There’s no reason to blame yourself for what happened here. You couldn’t have possibly known what that child was.”

  Ivy wanted to believe her. “I think it’s going to take me a little bit of time to let it go.”

  “Oh, I know.” Luna’s eyes twinkled. “That’s what you have Jack for, though. He’ll help you through this.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he will,” Max drawled. “It will involve kisses … and heavy petting … and me wanting to blacken his eye for being a pervert.”

  Rather than being offended by Max’s words, Jack merely smiled. “It sounds like we’re going to have a nice couple of days, huh? Relaxing.”

  Max scowled. “That’s not what I said.”

  “And yet it’s what I heard.” Jack smacked a kiss against Ivy’s cheek. “Come on, honey. Let’s see your dad and then I’ll take you home. I think we both need a quiet night together.”

  The notion was enough to elicit a genuine smile from Ivy. “I think that’s definitely the best offer I’ve had all day.”

  Jack offered her a flirty wink. “I aim to please.”

  “And you rarely miss.”

  “Ugh,” Max groaned. “Can I be unconscious again, too? I don’t want to hear thi
s.”

  “Live with it.” Jack drew Ivy to her feet. “It’s not going to change. You’re stuck with me for the long haul.”

  Max made a face. “I guess I can live with that.”

  “We can all live with that.” Luna beamed. “We’re one big, happy family. Who doesn’t want to live with that?”

  It was a simple question that didn’t need an answer, but Ivy had one all the same. Josh didn’t want to live with that.

  Yes, the boy with the angelic face and the cold heart was definitely going to haunt her. She would have to find a way through it. Thankfully, she wouldn’t be alone.

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  Acknowledgments

  I’m a romantic at heart. A true romantic. I love the idea of a happy ending, so much so I have trouble writing a sad one. The world is sad enough. I like escaping in fiction. That’s just me. I like sarcasm and snark – but I’m not sure a sad ending is in me. If you’re looking for an edge like that, you’re probably looking in the wrong place. Just FYI.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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