Turned out…I didn’t need to kill anyone.
“Six years.”
“How?”
“Marion Mclary shot Willem point-blank with a shotgun, then turned it on herself.”
My mouth fell open. “What?”
“Murder and suicide.” Martin shrugged. “The case was open and shut. Their estate was placed into the hands of the bank that’d been threatening foreclosure for years, but it never sold.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the farm is untouched, and we might find evidence of what you’re saying.”
“And if you do?”
“Then there is no crime as far as I’m concerned.”
“Are you authorised to make that call?”
Martin stood. “This is my town, and you’re my citizen. I’ve known you since you were a teen, and John has been ringing my phone every ten minutes, demanding you be released. He vouches for you. We can’t hold you for longer than twenty-four hours without evidence, and hopefully whatever evidence we do find absolves any wrongdoing, and this will just be a minor inconvenience.”
I looked up at him, towering like a praying mantis. “So…now what?”
“Now, you and me are taking a little road trip. And hopefully, when we come back, all this mess will be sorted out, once and for all.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
DELLA
* * * * * *
2031
INCIDENT NUMBER ONE.
The first of the five I warned you about.
Ren’s arrest for my supposed kidnapping.
I don’t need to explain the level of panic I faced as the police took him away. How I sprinted after the cruiser, hammering on the window until I couldn’t run fast enough. How I collapsed on the road with my knees bitten by gravel, and my tears tearing air from my lungs. How Cassie picked me up and dragged me into the house and how John got on the phone and made an absolute nuisance of himself demanding information on Ren.
It was the longest night of my life.
Three times, I tried to steal John’s Land Rover keys and drive to where they’d taken Ren. And three times, John had taken them from me with a stern look and sterner wisdom that attacking a police officer and making threats wasn’t the way to end this smoothly.
By the time dawn arrived, everyone was exhausted and still in yesterday’s clothes waiting for news—any news.
And then, the phone call came that Ren was being taken out of town for a while, and I well and truly lost it.
I grabbed the phone from John and threw curse words down the line to whomever was unlucky enough to listen. I threatened and pleaded and cried, only for the stoic voice of authority to say it was a matter that needed to be concluded, and this was the fastest way.
I was hung up on.
I should’ve breathed deep and centred myself.
I should’ve allowed John to talk sense into me and calm down enough to understand that they couldn’t really separate us.
Could they?
I didn’t know if they could. I didn’t know how the law worked, or what they could charge him with, or how long they’d keep him from me.
All I knew was I’d lived the worst time of my life when Ren left me, and I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t sit by and let them do this to us. I couldn’t let them take his freedom.
So, I bolted across the driveway to the disarray of our room and dumped out Ren’s backpack onto his bed.
The last thing to fall out was my manuscript, wrapped in plastic and bound with string, protected at all costs.
It was my only piece of evidence that Ren hadn’t taken me maliciously or held me against my will. My only way of proving this was all a massive misunderstanding.
I despised my parents for what they did to him. As far as I was concerned, they were dead and always would be. They were despicable human beings, and Ren was a freaking saint in comparison.
I expected a fight when I slung on some clean clothes, tied my hair with my ribbon, and flew back across the drive. I anticipated having to run to the police station with no car to make my journey swifter.
But I shouldn’t have doubted.
Cassie and John stood by the ancient Land Rover, keys jingling in anxious hands, a look of going to battle on their faces.
I didn’t burst into tears again, but I did hug them fiercely and climbed into the back seat where Cassie kept flicking glances at my manuscript but didn’t dare ask what it was.
And when we arrived at the police station, we were almost too late.
Ren had been given a clean black t-shirt and black coat that came to his thighs. With his scruffy jeans and weathered boots, he looked like a surly detective about to go study a corpse. He strode from the station with an officer beside him, face unreadable and hands balled.
“Della.”
His look of shock unravelled me, and tears spilled down my face. All I wanted to do was leap into his arms and offer up anything to trade his life for mine. But I did the only thing I could.
Ignoring him, I locked my attention on the grey-haired officer beside him and ran at full speed with my manuscript in outstretched hands as if it held all the answers.
“He didn’t kidnap me. He was a minor. He didn’t know any better. Please—” Shoving the heavy paper into the policeman’s arms, I demanded. “Read it. It has everything you need to know. The only way I can prove I was happy with Ren. Happier than I’d ever be with parents who bought and sold children for their own gain. Please, you have to believe me. Release him.”
Ren pulled me to the side. He wasn’t wearing handcuffs, and his fingers were soft on my cheek. “It’s okay, Della. I agreed to go with them. It’s all right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…something has come to light, and this might be the fastest way to clear this up.”
John stepped forward. “Wherever you’re taking Ren, we’re all coming.”
The officer shook his head. “Sorry. It’s over an eight-hour drive. Mr. Wild has agreed to accompany us, but no others.”
Ren lashed an arm around me, kissing my temple as he turned to face the policeman. “Bring her.”
“What?”
“Please,” Ren said. “She has a right to see it.”
“See what?” Cassie asked.
The officer ignored her, staring at Ren. “I don’t think that would be wise.”
Ren pointed at the manuscript weighing heavily in the cop’s hands. “That is our tale. That is our truth. Della is my truth. And she deserves to know.”
I couldn’t stop shaking, cuddling into his side. My future hung in the balance, and the officer looked at John as a friend rather than a law enforcer. “I can’t take you all. There isn’t enough room.”
John’s chest puffed up. “We’ll drive ourselves.”
“No.” Ren shook his head. “This is something Della and I need to do on our own.”
“Do what?” Cassie asked, finally earning the attention of everyone.
The officer shot a look at Ren then me, before he admitted, “The Mclary’s are dead. Their estate is still untouched, and Mr. Wild has agreed to help us with this investigation.”
Dead?
I shuddered harder.
Parents who gave me life.
Parents I hated more than anything.
Gone.
“She’s coming.” Ren straightened. “Or I’m not.”
How were they dead?
How long had they been dead?
All this time they’d been a dark, devilish stain chasing us across the country.
Before I could ask what any of this meant, the officer slowly nodded. “Okay. She comes.”
Marching toward the cop car with my words in his hands, and the second officer who’d arrested Ren last night sitting patiently behind the wheel, he added, “Let’s go. We have a long drive ahead of us.”
* * * * *
I can’t explain the feeling of being chauffeured in the back of a police ca
r for eight hours.
Every traffic light we stopped at, people peered inside, sneering at us, believing we were criminals. Every bathroom break and snack grab were met with leery stares and confused looks as to why we weren’t handcuffed.
Six hours into the trip, we found a diner on a lonely stretch of road and shared an awkward dinner. As we ate our meals, the waitress couldn’t take her eyes off Ren as if he were some infamous outlaw that only made him all the more attractive.
I don’t want to mention how jealous that made me. How petty I was, even then, to be angry with women for finding Ren as handsome as I did. Little did they know I still had his kisses on my mouth and his orgasm inside me.
Those were my secrets, and I clung to the knowledge…doing my best not to fear what we were driving to, and what would happen when we got there.
Martin Murray, who introduced himself as we pulled away from the police station, was quiet in manner and talk, leaving his fellow officer, Steve Hopkins, to fill in the gaps.
Not that there were any gaps to fill as no one was in the mood for conversation.
Ren and I shared a few lingering looks, a few whispered sentences, but silence had infected us, too, our thoughts already in the past—the past we were driving across country to.
When we finally arrived in some quiet country town with a bedraggled Main Street, sparse unloved houses, and a church with a wonky cross, Officer Murray drove straight to the small satellite office of the local law enforcement, and together, we all sat down with Bob Colton and Remy Jones—two more officers who were the first to the scene of my parents’ death—and chatted about tomorrow’s adventures on no sleep, lots of coffee, and a long journey.
Bob Colton had already collected the keys for the Mclary farmstead from the bank who were looking at possibly demolishing the house and sub-dividing the land—seeing as no one was interested in buying such a big place that needed so much work.
Then again, we were there to enlighten everyone on what truly happened at that farm. And it would be yet another reason it wouldn’t sell.
On the drive over, Martin had filled me in on what he’d told Ren.
About what my mother did to my father.
About the empty house where two corpses had lain rotting for weeks before someone reported the stench.
About how, when the forensic team combed the house for clues on why my mother had murdered my father, they hadn’t found a single shred of missing children, malicious abuse, or a barn full of bought employees.
That worried Ren. I could tell.
The crease between his eyes never stopped frowning. His eyes dark and turbulent.
If they’d been alone when they’d died, where were the kids? Had they sold them or killed them?
Those questions squatted in my mind, making sleep impossible as we were put up for the night in some dingy motel with only cold water in the shower and a single towel to share.
At least, they’d given Ren and me the same room.
There was no talk of what we were to each other, or if it was illegal for us to stay together, or what the hell all of this meant. For now, everyone was focused on finding out where we’d truly come from and just what Ren had endured.
A policeman sitting outside our door was the only sign we weren’t just guests on this little foray and Ren was still a suspect.
When Martin had surveyed our room and stepped outside to leave us to it, he pointed a finger at Ren and said, “I’m trusting you not to run, boy. You came here freely. Continue to be cooperative and this will be smoother for all of us.”
Ren nodded as the door closed, and I whispered under my breath, “His name is Ren…not boy.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
REN
* * * * * *
2020
THE FIRST STEP onto Mclary’s property filled me with a complex recipe of emotions.
Hate.
Horror.
Rage.
It felt as if I’d only left yesterday, yet the house was smaller than I remembered, the tractors not as scary, the barn not as huge and hungry for tiny children.
With our entourage of two officers from home, two officers who’d overseen the murder/suicide, and another two for good measure, Della and I were as popular as we’d ever been.
We all moved down the muddy driveway past rotting bales of hay and around a pile of scrap iron to the front door where I’d bolted with a baby Della clinging unseen in my stolen backpack.
Della slipped her hand into mine as we crossed the threshold into the house, and just like that, I was a ten-year-old kid again.
My world narrowed to terror.
My throat constricted.
My body reacted.
Bruised and beaten, starving and sad. Ghost images of a screeching Della ripped my head toward the kitchen. Long ago echoes of a TV program showing what a real family was wrenched my head to the decrepit lounge.
Della felt my tension and squeezed my fingers, dragging me back to the present.
Coughing, I gave her a grateful look, forcing myself to stay in the now.
“How do you want to do this?” one of the officers asked. I didn’t know which one, and I didn’t care. I merely drifted forward, clutching Della’s hand, taking comfort in the thud of my boots and the reminder that I wasn’t ten anymore.
No one could hurt me again.
They were dead.
Good fucking riddance.
“Where’s the box of evidence that you guys gathered in the murder/suicide investigation?” Martin Murray asked, leading the officers into the kitchen where notepads came out, and a box was brought in from a cruiser and placed on the well-used bench.
“This is all we took. Some bank statements. A few IOUs from a local feed store. An unpaid invoice for a tractor service, along with this.” Remy Jones, a middle-aged pot-bellied man held up a red notepad that had been curled and rolled with an elastic band and a pen jabbed in the pages. “We figured she killed him and then herself because they were up to their eyeballs in debt, and it was only a matter of time before they lost everything. She blamed him for their lack of fortune; couldn’t be bothered struggling anymore. Bang, bang.”
My eyes locked onto the notepad as he waved it around with his stupid conclusions. Mrs Mclary didn’t shoot her husband for something as useless as money. She shot him because she’d had enough of him raping girls. Maybe in her twisted mind, she thought he cheated on her, or perhaps, she’d finally woken up to how fucking horrible they were and what they were doing to kids.
Either way, she’d killed pure evil and then done the world a favour by eradicating herself, too.
I tried to look away from the notebook as the officer flicked through its pages with a scowl. “This thing makes no sense, though. It’s just a bunch of numbers with prices beside it. Four hundred here. Two hundred there. A thousand dollars a few times, but that’s rare.” He shrugged, tossing it back onto the counter with a slap. “Must be another IOU book, or maybe how much they paid for stock?”
No one seemed interested in answering him, but I couldn’t tear my gaze off that damn red notebook.
Something familiar…something tugging me to tumble backward through time.
Red.
Pages.
Pen.
The farmhouse fell away, replaced with an older version—a version where Marion Mclary still lived, and she sat rocking on her rocker by the grimy window, her spindly hand scribbling.
I’d been tasked at lugging in firewood. Load after load until my arms shook and my shoulders threatened to pop from their sockets.
She hadn’t cared.
On and on she rocked, writing in that little notebook before creaking her way toward the bookcase that lived in a shadowy part of the living room.
The past and present blended as I followed the tug of my feet, leading me toward the bookcase that still groaned under the weight of cookery books that were never used and auto mechanic magazines that were torn up as fire kindling.
> “Ren?” Della asked softly, but I wasn’t really there with her.
I was in an in-between world. A place where I was neither thirty nor ten. I was plasma, merely a figment as I reached for the book where I’d seen Mrs Mclary stuff cash that afternoon before swatting me around the head for spying.
Pulling the Bible free, a few coins tinkled inside as I released Della’s hand and flopped open the Book of God. Inside, instead of silky pages of testament, someone had hacked away and created a box—a carved out section for secrets.
Martin Murray came up behind me, muttering something to his colleague as I gingerly reached in and held up a matching notebook to the red one he held, except this one was black, sinister, and dripping with filth.
Someone reached over and pinched it from my fingers, leaving me to stare at a few measly bucks and a chewed-on pencil in the Bible. Placing it back on the shelf, I shook my head clear from memories and re-settled into my current existence.
I expected the same hum of conversation from before. The same beat of footsteps as cops trawled the house. The same knowledge of safety that comes from hustle and bustle when you aren’t the main attraction.
Only, I kind of was.
Bob Colton scanned the notebook pages then gave me a strange, almost scared look. Snapping his fingers, he commanded, “The red notebook. Now.”
An officer scrambled into the kitchen, darting back with the matching notebook to the black one he held.
The moment Bob had it in his hands, he strode to the sideboard, shoved aside an old candelabra with decades’ worth of dripped wax, and spread out both booklets, his finger trailing one line of text before matching it with another.
“Oh, my God.” He flicked me another look. “Do you know what this is? How did you know where to look? You’ve been in this house five minutes and already found more than we did.”
Della gave me a worried glance, staying silent beside me.
This was the house she was born in, yet it was as foreign to her as it was familiar to me. I shook my head, swallowing a cough. “I saw her one day. Writing something. She stored cash in the Bible.”
The Girl and Her Ren Page 32