Now that I was living in a new place, I could be anyone I wanted. And I wanted to be the perfect woman. No more cool girl bullshit. I wasn’t going to fall all over myself to be what any old random dude wanted anymore. I was going to be the kind of girl men ran after. Poised, sexy, and confident. From now on, men would be eating salads and doing yoga to please me, for fuck’s sake.
I was going to have to work on that part a bit, though. Confidence was never one of my strengths, as Dr. Zeeland liked to remind me. But somehow, this all felt more like playing a character in a game, and I definitely knew how to play games. I just had to do a little research, memorize a few key phrases, maybe watch some movies with strong lead women, and I figured I could pull it off. Besides, men were easy. I knew all I really ever had to do was flash my tits to bring any man to his knees.
The rest would be a cinch. I could easily cook up some believable references, including one from prominent Liar’s Island resident, Robert Logan. Then all I would have to do is fake my way through the first week until I got the hang of things around the diner. That’s what I’d done for every job I’d ever had, including my last one as Grace’s nanny, and it totally worked.
I knew if I could just get my arms around Jerry again, and give him exactly what he wanted with my lips and my tongue and the rest of my body, he’d realize what he’d been missing out on, and he’d leave his wife. We could even live in Robert’s house in the beginning. I was sure Jerry wouldn’t mind. But eventually we’d need to find a new place. One that was just ours. One where we could build a home together.
There wasn’t much to my plan at first. I successfully got a job as night shift waitress at The Dish. I broke a couple stacks of plates that first week, but they were pretty cool about it. I got the feeling I’d be out on the street if it happened again, though, so I really tried to keep my ‘eyes in front,’ as they say in the restaurant business. At least that’s what James told me when I was being trained … and after I slammed head-first into Mike when he was prepping his station at the beginning of his shift.
I was so surprised I didn’t drop the four plates I was carrying the moment Jerry walked into the diner. It was my second night on the job, and he came in at 3:00 a.m. I was shaking as I waited on him, especially every time his eyes met mine. I was sure he recognized me, but was playing it cool. And my suspicions were confirmed a week later when he asked to meet me on my next night off.
We spent the next couple weeks meeting in secret spots around the island. He never said anything about our night in the bathroom stall at the bar in Seattle, and I wasn’t sure if he knew I was the same person. But it didn’t matter to me. It was all so much fun, like some sort of elaborate game.
Jerry was even convinced that I was the cool, sophisticated woman I was pretending to be. I had to laugh to myself when he stopped ordering pie on nights he came into the diner. He said coffee was enough, and that he had been wanting to be a little more careful with what he ate. I took that as a sign that he wanted to impress me. That I had successfully pulled off the whole confident woman persona.
Once I got the hang of things, and my plan was officially set in motion, things just started to come to me, ideas of how I could make sure Jerry would leave his wife. The most obvious being blackmail. I thought for hours about how to get video of us together. But when Jerry took me to the Spencer & Grant Law Offices, it was too perfect. He didn’t even notice when I propped my phone up on a desk. Typical man hypnotized by a set of boobs. It was almost too easy.
I was so excited when he told me about the note and the video, it took everything I had not to laugh at how serious he was. I was sure the next step would be to tell the blackmailer he couldn’t pay, and that he was going to have to come clean to his wife, but that’s where things started to go wrong. When he told me his friend figured out who sent the video, and that they were going to investigate Robert, I started to feel sick. I guess I should have seen that coming, what with him being a security guy. But honestly, I didn’t.
So I was already in a bad mood when I got home. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do, except put up the Robert dummy I’d made with my crappy old clothes and a bunch of his tighty-whitey underwear. When Stacy called, I was so distracted I actually answered the dammed phone.
“How’s it going, Casey? I haven’t heard from you in a long time.”
I wasn’t in the mood to talk at all, so I tried to get off as quickly as possible. “I’m great! I’m working at a diner. I’ve been seeing Jerry. And just so you know, it’s for real this time.”
“What do you mean for real? Who’s Jerry?”
I laughed and shook my head. “Oh, I mean Fred. He’s here on Liar’s Island. We’ve been dating. It’s serious. We love each other.”
“Wait, Casey, what happened to Robert? I thought you were living with him.”
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t have time for all these questions. “It doesn’t matter, Stacy. Robert is gone.”
Stacy was silent for a moment. “What do you mean, gone?”
“He’s not here. We’re not together. What do you even care?”
“I care a lot. I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay. I haven’t heard from you for a while, and the last time we talked … well, it wasn’t that good.”
“I’m fine, Stacy. I have to go. I’ll call you soon, k?”
I hung up before she had a chance to respond. I just couldn’t deal with the interrogation and the judgmental tone in her voice. Also, I had stuff to take care of. I knew Jerry and his friend were going to show up to Robert’s later that night, so I left. I parked Robert’s car in a grassy area off the driveway and waited, watching the house from the woods. I saw them sneak up and break in, then I watched them poke the dummy on the couch through the living room window.
When I decided to drive up and enter the house, I just wanted to freak them out a little. Scare them enough so they’d leave and hopefully never want to come back. But the minute I got there, they hid down in the basement. I was trying to get them the hell out, but they went to the one part of the house that had no back entrance. So now I had to get Jerry to come back upstairs without letting him see that it was me.
It was tricky getting around on the main floor without making any noise. I had to step carefully along the walls so I didn’t step on any creaky boards, and I crawled along the counters and on top of furniture so I didn’t make the sounds of footsteps. If anyone was watching me on the surveillance videos, they’d think I was insane.
When I made it to the doorway that led to the basement, I stood there for a while. I had the basement video feed pulled up on my phone and, to my horror, I watched Jerry and his friend open the fridge. The game had now taken a very wrong turn, and I knew I was going to have to do something I didn’t want to do.
When I saw that Jerry had wandered off and left his friend alone, I whispered in a gruff voice for him to come upstairs. That I had found a way out. When he came through the doorway into the kitchen, I hit him over the head with one of Robert’s statues, then ran out to the car.
I knew when Jerry couldn’t find his friend there was no way he would come back up those stairs. He wasn’t that stupid. I imagined he’d climb out a window and go outside, and I wanted to see if there was any way I could keep up the charade. He still didn’t know it was me inside the house.
But when he started asking questions, and started looking at me like he didn’t believe a word that was coming out of my mouth, I knew. It made me really sad, but there was no way I could be with anyone who didn’t believe me. All my life, no one ever believed me. I thought Jerry was different. I thought he was the one. That he felt our deep connection just as much as I did. But if he felt what I was feeling, he wouldn’t be looking at me like that.
I wished more than anything that he’d never come over to Robert’s house. That he’d just done what he said he was going to do—research him on his computer and look in the windows. If he’d just stayed away we wouldn’t be in this mess.
Chapter 11
Jerry
I knew I had to move quick, so even though it was not a smart thing to do, I kicked at Olivia’s hand. Her finger was on the trigger, and immediately the gun went off. I felt the searing pain of the bullet hitting my left shoulder and I fell back onto the gravel, hitting my head on a sharp rock. I was in severe pain, but I was aware enough to roll to the side because I knew this was no joke. Olivia was trying to kill me.
I heard the second shot while I was on my hands and knees, then a third as I ran back to the house—serpentine style as they say in the movies. I made it around the corner before the fourth shot was fired, and I sprinted for the window in the back I’d just crawled through. I didn’t look behind me to see if Olivia was coming. I just dove onto the windowsill and flipped over into pitch-black darkness. The chair was still where I left it, just under the window, and I managed to use it to break my momentum slightly. As I hit the chair with my right hand, I let my lower body fall forward over my head, then came crashing down to the floor on my ass.
“Fuck!” I yelled as I rolled to my right side. My shoulder was screaming in pain, my head was killing me, and now my tailbone felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer. And I was seriously lucky I hadn’t sprained my wrist. For the last few years, I had told myself that taking a four-mile walk around the park a couple evenings a week, in addition to my nightly rounds, kept me in shape. I suddenly came to the harsh realization that I had been kidding myself. I wasn’t in any kind of decent shape at all. I vowed right then that when I got out of this crazy situation, I was going to immediately start hitting the gym.
I heard the front door to the house open and slam shut, and I knew Olivia was coming for me. The only thing I could think to do so that she would have a harder time finding me was to kill the power to the house. I knew I’d seen the panel box down here somewhere, and it dawned on me where it was. In the laundry room. The one room without any windows. The last place I would want to get stuck in this house with a gun-toting lunatic after me.
I didn’t have a choice, though. The minute the lights went on, Olivia would be able to see me, and it wouldn’t matter if we both had our guns out this time. She knew this place a hell of a lot better than I did, so that gave her a huge advantage. And that was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.
I pulled my gun out of my waistband and ran to the laundry room. As I reached the doorway, the lights in the main room of the basement went on. There must have been a switch at the top of the stairs and she hit it on her way down. I pulled the main circuit breaker just as the sound of her footsteps disappeared, which meant she was now on the carpet on the basement floor.
“What the … Jerry!”
She was close. I heard her fumble for a moment, then I saw the beam of her phone flashlight. It scanned the room briefly, then pointed directly at the laundry room doorway. She knew exactly where I was. When I saw the beam, I instinctively backed up and tripped over something on the floor. Luckily, it was a half-full laundry basket, and it broke my fall. But once I was down, I couldn’t get back up. Not with my knees in the air and a hole in my left shoulder. So that meant I was trapped in a very vulnerable position with Olivia quickly closing in on me.
That and my gun had been knocked out of my hand. When I fell backward, I heard it slide across the floor. It couldn’t have been more than three feet away, but as far as I was concerned, with my feet dangling over the edge of a laundry basket, it might as well have been a mile.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and turned on my own flashlight, then directed it at her. Even if it gave my location away, I wasn’t going to give her the advantage of keeping me blinded. I wanted to scan the floor for my gun, but I didn’t want to take the beam off of Olivia.
“Jerry,” she said as she stood in the doorway. “Or should I say Fred?”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but honestly, at this point, it didn’t surprise me. This wasn’t the woman I’d been meeting with secretly over the last few months. The sexy, seductress who undressed me with her beautiful eyes, and made all my fantasies come true. The woman in front of me looked almost completely unhinged, like she was barely able to hold herself together and might shoot at any moment.
“Yeah?” I responded, hoping to buy myself a little time by going along with the crazy conversation.
“So, you don’t deny it?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. Which word would calm Olivia down and keep her from shooting? Yes or no?
I took a stab in the dark, hoping it would work. “Yeah, you got me,” I mumbled, then held my breath and waited for her response.
She let out a sigh, and a deep sadness spread across her face. “So you’ve known all along? This really was all a game to you?”
I had no idea what to say, but that didn’t matter. She took a couple steps toward me and immediately barraged me with a bunch of questions.
“But, why, Jerry? Why did you do it? That’s all I’ve wanted to know. After all this time. Why did you give me a fake name and number?”
I still wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but I suspected it had something to do with the women I’d been seeing. Every single one of them, until Olivia, a one-night stand. I couldn’t risk anything more than that, and I usually made sure to keep it that way by giving out the wrong name and number. I might have used Fred. That made sense. It was a simple, one-syllable name that would have easily popped into my head.
I couldn’t imagine that I’d had sex with this woman and not remembered her, though. But when I thought back, I’d been drunk many of those nights, and in dark clubs. I had a string of nights when I took a girl into the bathroom and got down and dirty right there. She very well could have been one of those girls. I had absolutely no idea.
Before I had the chance to respond to her questions, she continued. “You know, I never wanted any of this to happen. I was so happy to find you. And you have no idea how elated I was when we started dating again.”
Again? I thought as I stared at her. In what universe have we dated before?
“All I wanted,” she said as she let the gun droop down ever so slightly, “was to push you a little. To get you to see that your life would be so much better if you just left your wife. I knew I could make you happy, Jerry. That we would be happy together. I’ve known it from the very moment I met you. That night at the club, I could feel it. And I know you could too. Couldn’t you, Jerry?”
As I listened to Olivia, or whoever she was, ramble on and on, I thought about Annette. There was no way I was ever going to leave her. Not for Olivia, or for any of the countless women I slept with. I never actually articulated it to myself. I never thought those exact words out in my own head. It was always just a feeling … a knowing.
But now, hearing the insanity spewing from this crazy woman’s mouth, it was all clear. I wanted Annette. I wanted my wife, and I was so sorry that I had let things get this far. I had been selfish and I had been a fool, and I had almost let the most important person in my life slip away.
I was still very much in danger of that happening, though, because Annette might very well leave my sorry ass when she found out about this. And she would find out. I couldn’t lie to her, not anymore. I vowed if I got out of this laundry basket alive, I would tell her everything, and beg her forgiveness, and I would never let things get so bad between us again.
“Olivia,” I said quietly, when there was a break in her babbling. “I’m sorry. I didn’t ever mean to hurt you. I’ve just been so confused. You’re right. I felt it that night, but it was too scary. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around … around …”
“Around how perfect it was?” she asked, a glimmer of hope in her tear-glazed eyes.
“Yes, exactly. But we have to figure out how to move forward now. This is very delicate, and complicated with my daughters and everything.”
Olivia nodded. “I know. I thought of that,” she said, her eyes growing wide. “I—“
Suddenly there was a loud knock at the front door—more like pounding—and the sound of police preparing to enter. Olivia looked up at the ceiling, then back down at me. “What are the cops doing here? Did you call them?”
“No!” I said, shaking my head. “I didn’t call anyone!”
“Then why are they here?! What’s going on, Jerry?!”
There was a loud crash, then a dozen or so footsteps pounding throughout the house. Olivia just stood there with her flashlight and gun trained on me, like a stunned deer caught in headlights. Even when the cops came down the stairs and ordered her to drop her weapon, she stood there. With the beams of at least four flashlights on her, Olivia dropped both her gun and her phone, but it wasn’t until I saw that she was securely cuffed that I was able to breathe.
“The breaker is up there,” I said to one of the cops. “Right behind you.”
When the lights came on, there was all kinds of commotion and questions and orders being called out, then the medics came down to stabilize my shoulder and get me ready for transport.
What I learned during all the chaos was that some neighbors heard the gunshots and called the cops. But not only that, Olivia’s sister was there. She had traveled to Liar’s Island from Seattle, and arrived just before the cops did. She told them that her sister hadn’t seemed right for a long time, and that she had a feeling something bad might have happened. But when she learned about Robert and everything that had gone on here tonight, she was shocked. She couldn’t believe that her little sister would ever kill anyone.
While I was being bandaged up, Stacy told me what she had told the cops earlier. That she had never been to Robert’s house before, but that she’d been keeping tabs on her sister’s phone with a friend location app they’d synced after she got out of the hospital. Stacy said she was alarmed by the conversation they’d had earlier that evening, especially since Olivia (who I found out was really named Casey) said she wasn’t living with Robert anymore, and Stacy could plainly see she was in the same location she’d been at for months.
Infidelity Inlet: A Liars Island Suspense Page 8