Three (Count to Ten Book 3)

by Jane Blythe

  “Why don’t we go out for dinner tonight?” Xavier suggested at last as his hand stroked her hair.

  Annabelle wanted to say no. She hated going out. Had hated it for the last eight months. Although ironically her life had been ruined while she was in her own bed, in her own home, fast asleep. That didn’t seem to matter to her mind, though. Being around people terrified her. She’d been a kindergarten teacher before her assault, but she could no longer work. She went to her therapy appointments and the occasional trip to the store, but that was about it. Instead, she stayed home and baked until they had more food than they could eat in five lifetimes.

  She wanted to get better, though.

  She wanted to get her life back.

  A life that would be so much better than the life she’d had before.

  She couldn’t hide in Xavier’s house forever.

  Annabelle knew this; yet, moving on was so hard.

  “Okay,” she said at last.

  “Really?” Xavier sounded surprised.

  She took a deep, steadying breath. “Really.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “You know I'm never giving up on you, right? However long it takes you to get better, I'm not going anywhere.”

  “I know,” she assured him. “I don’t know why you stay, but I love that you do.”

  “Annabelle,” Xavier’s voice had taken on a slightly reprimanding quality, and she knew he was about to tell her all the reasons why he wanted to stay with her.

  “It’s okay, Xavier.” She reached up on her tiptoes to press a quick kiss to his lips, then gently extracted herself from his arms and went to sort through the mail. There were a few bills and then a letter addressed to both her and Xavier.

  That should have tipped her off right away that something was off. They never received anything other than bills and a few magazines in the mail. Everyone they knew, or rather everyone Xavier knew, would text or email or call them. However, Annabelle was distracted, and she was already opening the letter before she even thought about it.

  Sliding out a single sheet of paper, Annabelle could feel the color drain from her face as she skimmed it.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  And yet she’d known this day was coming.

  It had always been only a matter of time. Not that that fact made this any easier.

  Her knees went weak.

  Her head began to spin.

  Her vision began to go cloudy.

  “Belle?” Xavier suddenly appeared before her, face screaming alarm, arms outstretched as if to catch something.

  To catch her, it turned out.

  “Whoa,” his arms came around her as her legs buckled. “Belle? What's wrong? What happened?”

  Annabelle couldn’t answer. Her lungs weren’t working properly; her chest was heaving in short, sharp gasps.

  He lowered her into a chair. “Head down, deep breaths.” Xavier’s hand on her back bent her over, then he began to rub soothing circles on her back.

  Clearing her head of everything else, Annabelle focused on getting her breathing back under control. Luckily, her therapist had giving her several techniques to calm herself. She forced herself to take as deep a breath as she could manage, hold it to the count of five before blowing it out and then repeating the process. She repeated this several times, and after a few minutes her eyesight cleared and she could draw a near normal breath.

  Xavier sat her back up, then crouched in front of her, and asked, “Belle, what upset you?”

  “It was him,” she whispered.

  “Him?” Xavier looked confused.

  “Him,” she repeated. “He’s back.”

  Understanding flashed in his eyes, quickly followed by fear and anger. “Ricky Preston? Back where?”

  She reached her trembling hand toward the letter on the table. “He sent us this.” She handed it to Xavier.

  Face hard, he took the letter and read it. Then for a long moment he just sat there. “Arrgghhh,” Xavier growled at last, slamming a fist onto the table. “I wish there had been a way for me to kill him, or at least arrest him, when I had the chance.”

  “But there wasn’t,” Annabelle reminded him. “He didn’t give you a choice. It was me or him.”

  “And you know I would never have done anything differently,” he said fiercely, grabbing her shoulders in a death grip.

  “I know,” she assured him, gently placing her hands over his and tugging till he loosened his grip.

  “You were my priority,” Xavier continued, as though he needed to justify his decision. “If I hadn't chosen you, you would have died.”

  She shuddered at the memory of how close she had come to death. Annabelle wished, too, that there had been a way for Xavier to kill Ricky Preston and still find her in time to save her life. She knew that Xavier was eaten alive with guilt some days about allowing a vicious psychopath to walk free, even if he’d had to do it. They both knew that Ricky would never stop killing. Before he’d disappeared, Ricky had told them that he’d be back. And apparently now he was.

  He embraced her. “I won't let him hurt you again,” he murmured in her ear.

  “What if you can't stop him?” Annabelle half whimpered. Ricky had already hurt her twice. There was no guarantee that Xavier could stop him if he came at her again, no matter how much he wanted to protect her.

  “I'm going to upgrade the security system.” Xavier released her and began to make a list. Xavier’s house, into which she had moved after being released from the hospital eight months ago, already had a fabulous security system, but apparently, it wasn’t good enough now that Ricky was back. “I'm also going to ask to have a patrol car pass by the house regularly. And maybe we should consider getting a guard dog. I always wanted a dog.” He shot her a strained smile. “Both my mom and dad were allergic, and once I became a cop I was never home enough.”

  “I like dogs.” She tried to smile back but it was weak.

  “I’ll do whatever I have to, to keep you safe,” he promised, sounding so sincere and confident that Annabelle believed him despite herself.

  She moved back into Xavier’s arms. “I changed my mind, I don’t want to go out to dinner tonight.”

  “I guessed that.” He tucked her shoulder-length brown hair behind her ear.

  Closing her eyes, Annabelle wrapped her arms around Xavier’s waist and pressed her ear against his chest above his heart. The rhythmic thumping helped to soothe her a little. “Hold me,” she begged, desperate to lose herself and try to feel safe and normal. “Don’t ever let me go.”

  “Never.” Xavier drew her closer. “I’ll never let you go, Belle. Never.”

  * * * * *

  4:26 P.M.

  “Please take a seat,” Peter Hitacheel gestured to a white leather three-seater couch.

  Paige Hood took a seat beside Ryan in the Hitacheel living room. It appeared as if Roman Hitacheel's entire family had gathered at his home in support of his widow. It had taken quite a bit of persuasion on her and Ryan’s part, to convince the many friends and extended family members to remain in another room while she and Ryan spoke with Roman’s widow, Eve, and their three grown children: Peter, Cindy, and James.

  A quick survey of the room revealed minimal decoration. A large screen TV that took up most of one wall, three white, leather couches grouped in front of it, and a glass coffee table were the only pieces of furniture. The walls were painted white with a couple of bright abstract paintings breaking the monotonous whiteness of the room. There were no family portraits and no personal accents. All in all, the room was too white and glary for Paige’s liking.

  She turned her attention back to Eve Hitacheel. The woman was perfectly attired in a pale pink skirt suit. Gold earrings dripped from her ears, and she wore a large diamond pendant on a gold chain around her neck. Her eyes were appropriately red rimmed, but Paige didn’t get the sense that the woman was particularly disturbed by her husband’s murder.

  “We’re very sorry for your
loss,” she told the family once again. You could never say that too many times at a time like this, especially when one of the family members was a potential suspect.

  “Thank you,” Peter Hitacheel nodded. Apparently, he was the designated family spokesman. Roman’s eldest son looked exactly like him, minus around two hundred pounds.

  “We’ll need one of you to come and do an official identification later today,” Ryan announced.

  “I’ll do it,” Peter volunteered immediately; no one else in the family offered.

  Exchanging glances with Ryan, her partner gave her a slight nod, indication that she should lead the interview. “I know this is a difficult time for you,” she began, “but it’s important that we ask you these questions now, so we can find the person who killed your husband and father.”

  “Someone really killed him?” Cindy asked, disbelievingly. Of all of Roman’s immediate family members, middle child Cindy seemed to be the only one truly upset about his death. Paige wondered whether she had been a daddy’s little princess. If she had, she was probably the least likely to know anything about his affair.

  “Yes, I'm afraid someone did,” Paige answered gently. “Have any of you noticed anyone or anything suspicious over the last several days or weeks?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Peter replied. “Birthdays and Christmas are the only times I see my father.”

  Paige wondered about the reason for the estrangement between father and son, but now wasn’t the time to ask about it. Tucking it away for later, she turned to the others. “What about the rest of you?”

  Youngest son James shrugged and looked away. Widow Eve fiddled with the clasp of her diamond bracelet, refusing to make eye contact.

  “Mrs. Hitacheel?” Ryan prodded.

  “No,” she answered briefly. “Nothing suspicious.”

  “Are you sure?” Paige wasn’t sure whether the woman was being truthful or just didn’t care.

  “Of course, I'm sure,” Eve snapped. “Nothing unusual has happened. No one suspicious has been hanging around here. No strange phone calls or emails. Roman never mentioned anything out of the ordinary.”

  “James,” Ryan turned back to the youngest son, “are you sure you haven’t seen anything?”

  “Like Peter, birthdays and Christmas is it for my family time,” James replied. “I would be the last person to know if anything was going on with him.”

  Wondering what had caused such a rift in the family, Paige made a mental note to call her parents and siblings tonight and make a time for all of them to catch up. Paige loved her parents and her brothers and sister, but for all of them, life was so busy that they rarely had a chance to spend time together outside family celebrations. But looking at the broken Hitacheel family, if anything happened to someone in her family, she didn’t want to be sitting there telling the detectives that she didn’t know what was going on in the lives of her loved ones because she only saw them for birthdays and Christmas.

  Her partner, on the other hand, saw his family all the time. They were close; they made the effort to set aside time to spend together. Paige wondered whether the fact that Ryan’s nephew, seven-year-old Brian, who had successfully fought and won a long battle with leukemia, had pushed the family to realize just how important the people you loved really were, and that seeing them regularly was worth making the effort to do so.

  “Cindy?” Paige turned to Roman’s daughter. “What about you? Do you see your dad regularly?”

  Brushing at tears, Cindy gave a shaky nod.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Paige pressed.

  “Yesterday.” Cindy clasped her trembling hands tightly in her lap. “We had an early breakfast.”

  “And did your dad mention anything unusual, anyone suspicious, or anything that was worrying him?”

  “No,” Cindy whispered.

  “What about you? Did you see anything that seemed odd?”

  Cindy shook her head.

  “All right, is there anyone you can think of who might want to hurt Roman? Anyone with a grudge against him, or anyone who might stand to gain something if Roman were dead?” Paige moved on to the next question in her mental checklist.

  “My father didn’t have any enemies,” Peter answered for everyone.

  When Paige glanced at the others, they all nodded their heads in agreement. For people who had just had a loved one murdered, they weren’t very forthcoming with information, Paige thought irritably, but kept her face calm and neutral. “Any ideas why Roman might have been out at a hotel in the middle of the night?” She watched each family member closely for signs that they were aware of Roman’s affair.

  Cindy shook her head, but all the others averted their gazes. They knew. Paige was sure they knew. All three of them.

  “It was too late for a business meeting,” Paige continued innocently. “And Peter and James, you both said that you don’t have much to do with your father, so I'm guessing he wasn’t meeting you.”

  Peter and James both gave reluctant nods when she paused and fixed them both in a stare.

  “Cindy, were you meeting up with your father last night?” Paige asked.

  “No, Dad would never ask to meet me so late. I have a newborn at home, but even if it was an emergency, it would never be at a hotel; he’d come to my house,” Cindy rambled.

  “Mrs. Hitacheel, did you and your husband have plans last night?”

  Eve simply glared.

  “Could he have been meeting a friend?” Paige pressed on.

  More glares from Eve, Peter, and James.

  “Or maybe…”

  “He was meeting his girlfriend,” James finally snapped.

  “What? No!” Cindy shook her head vehemently. “Dad doesn’t have a girlfriend!”

  “Yes, he does.” Peter frowned at his sister. “For years now. Lots of them. The current one is Mango LeSeur.”

  Cindy stood and begun to pace frantically. “That’s a lie!” she shrieked. “Dad would never cheat; he would never do that to Mom. I know you don’t like Dad, Peter, but that’s no reason to say that about him. He’s dead, he can't defend himself. Someone murdered him and you're accusing him of having affairs.”

  Eve stood, the first flash of real emotion crossing her face, and went to her daughter, taking Cindy’s arms and stilling her.

  “Dad wouldn’t cheat on you, Mom,” Cindy stated adamantly.

  “Yes, honey, he would, and he did. He has been for years,” Eve told her daughter. “I'm sorry. I know you love him, but he’s been unfaithful our entire marriage.”

  “No,” Cindy whispered, tugging herself free from her mother’s grip and dropping down onto the sofa, her face a mask of disbelieving shock.

  “You knew?” Peter was staring at his mother in surprise.

  She nodded. “For years.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I didn’t know that you knew.” Turning to James, she said, “I didn’t know you knew, either.”

  “I'm sorry, Mom.” James went to his mother and hugged her tightly.

  Eventually, Eve lifted her head from her son’s shoulder. “He would go to hotels at least once a week,” she told them. “At first he used to get prostitutes or women he picked up in bars for one-night stands,” she explained. “Then he moved on to mistresses. I know of at least three; but there could have been more. The older he got, the younger he liked his women. I think Mango LeSeur is only nineteen.”

  Eve’s blue eyes seemed to darken as she spoke of her husband’s unfaithfulness, and Paige could feel the anger rolling off her. She knew about the affairs. Had she finally had enough and just snapped? Then again, both sons knew about their father, and neither seemed to care much about him. Perhaps one of them had decided to kill him.

  “We’re going to need alibis for each…” Ryan started to say when Cindy bounced to her feet.

  “Alibis?” Cindy repeated incredulously. “You want alibis from us? Why would one of us kill him? How dare you even suggest that!” she yelled. “He was m
y father. I loved him.” She shrugged off the hand Peter placed on her shoulder. “Get away from me,” she screeched at her older brother. “You never loved him. But he was a good dad. He used to take me to the ballet. He used to come to my room and have tea parties with me and my dolls, and he came to every one of my music recitals,” she broke off into hysterical sobs.

  James went to her, wrapping his arms around her, and Cindy buried her face against his chest. “Shh,” he soothed, “it’ll be okay.” Cindy continued to cry, and after a few more minutes, James turned to the rest of them. “I'm going to take her upstairs and give her a tranquilizer.”

  “All right,” Paige nodded. Her gut said Cindy and James weren’t involved in their father’s murder. She was leaning toward Eve, but anger and disdain toward his father was rolling off Peter in almost tangible waves. She wasn’t sure where this intense hatred seemed to come from, but Paige was going to find out, and having the over-emotional Cindy out of the room might help.

  “I’ll come see you when we’re done here.” Eve gave her daughter a quick kiss.

  Once James had led a still-crying Cindy from the room, Peter immediately offered apologies for his sister’s tears. “Sorry about Cindy. She’s always been a daddy’s girl. I think she’s probably the only one of us who really loved my father.”

  “Why don’t you love your father, Peter?” Paige asked quietly.

  He shrugged fitfully. “Let down too many times, I guess,” he finally answered.

  “How did he let you down?” Ryan asked.

  Another shrug. Peter was trying too hard to appear nonchalant about his relationship with his father, but Paige had seen the genuine pain and regret in his eyes and knew that Peter didn’t so much hate his father as he felt hurt by him.

  “Peter?” Paige prompted gently.

  “He was obsessed with younger women,” Peter snarled. “Much younger women.”

  “How much younger?” Ryan asked.

  “Illegally younger,” Peter answered.