Secondhand Sinners

by Genevieve Lynne

  Everything came into focus. Not Miller. Alan. She chucked his hand away. “Get away from me!”

  He turned on the lamp beside her bed and stood over her wearing street clothes, his expression unreadable. Emily reached behind to push the call button on the bed, but Alan stopped her when he took hold of her wrist.

  She snatched it away. “What do you want?”

  “I always told myself that if I ever became like Hoyt, I would kill myself. I was so sure I’d be better than him. I don’t know what happened.” Alan rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, and when he looked at Emily again, tears pooled in his eyes. “I am sorry about everything, but…what I did to your boy with the gun? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get over that I did that. I wanna make this right.”

  “Really?” Emily felt hope again. He was going to tell her where Jack and Abby were.

  Alan’s eyes rose to meet hers. Then his contrite pout slowly morphed into a sneer. “No. Not really.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “That was good, though, right? I just spent ten minutes practicing in my car.”

  “I hate you.”

  “You should’ve seen the look on your face. So hopeful, so eager.”

  “I thought you were going to tell me where the kids were.”

  “Jack’s fine. I told you that. Abby’s okay too.”

  “You can’t believe that. Not after the way you terrorized both of them. You know, the longer this day drags on, the more damage you inflict on anyone around you.”

  “I can kill you now and claim you were trying to get my gun.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, calling his bluff. If he wanted her dead, he would have already killed her. Pain was Alan’s game. He liked hurting her. He liked holding her hostage, separating her from her son, destroying her reputation in town and her relationship with Miller. Although it was impossible for her to know when it happened, somewhere along the way this had ceased being about finding Hoyt’s money. This was a game to Alan. He hit her, took Jack, terrorized Abby, and taunted Miller all for his own pleasure. That’s why he was back now.

  “You really are like Hoyt, aren’t you?”

  “You’re no better than me. You wouldn’t be so fucking superior if you knew what I know.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know your mom has gone off her rocker and is now on a killing spree.”

  “No she’s not.” There was some vague recollection of the policeman and the nurse talking about her mom, but she couldn’t keep up with their conversation. Now, after some concentration, she remembered the word murder. “Who’s she supposed to have killed?”

  “Your dad and your grandmother.”

  “No. How?”

  “She stole four syringes from the hospital, filled them with bleach, and has as of now killed both your dad and your grandmother by injecting their IVs with bleach.”

  “Dad and Ma’am are really dead?”

  “As doornails.”

  It was hard to comprehend. Why would her mom kill the two people in life who were always there to tell her what to do, what to think, and what to feel? Maybe she didn’t like that as much as Emily thought. Even so, why’d she kill them now, when they were so close to dying? Why did she herself feel nothing except for a small amount of relief? Because she was more like her grandmother than she wanted to admit.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know, yet. Owens has been looking for her all day. He’s pissed too. He’s had to put off his golf game twice now because of your family. So see? I do know some things.” He jerked the blanket off her. “Get up…” He pulled on her arm until she was standing. “I’ll show you what else I know.”

  “That officer outside is not going to let you take me out of here.”

  “Wrong. I’m the officer outside now.”

  “How could Owens let you guard me after what you did to me?”

  “I explained it all to him a few hours ago. How your poor kid went missing when we went to Levi’s to rekindle our romance. He tends to wander off like that. I feel awful that we weren’t watching him more closely. Oh, and I sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, apologize for the black eye and bruises. We’ve always liked to keep it rough between the sheets. I guess I didn’t know my own strength.”

  “Owens fell for that?”

  “Hook. Line. Sinker.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Has that concussion made you forget about your own son?”

  She knew going with him was a huge mistake. That other policeman said people were looking for Jack, so did she really need to go along with Alan anymore? If she could reach the call button on the hospital bed, she’d get some help.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Alan said. “If you push that button, I’ll go straight to where I’ve got your kid stashed and I’ll smother him with a pillow.”

  “People are looking for him. They may have already found him.”

  He scoffed. “If I didn’t have them looking miles away from where he really is.”

  “How are you going to explain taking me out of here?”

  “I didn’t take you out of here. You escaped.” He drew in a deep breath and shook his head as he released it. “I guess I wasn’t on top of my game, you know, cause I’m so worried about you and your kid. I turned my back for one second to get you a bottle of water from the nurses’ station, and you ran away.”

  “You can’t honestly believe you’re going to get away with this.”

  “Don’t you get it?” He pulled her closer to him and gazed into her eyes as he brushed her hair behind her ear. Then he kissed her on the cheek, put his lips to her ear and whispered, “I already have.”

  Was there was no other choice than to go with him? Emily knew she was defeated, like when every google search on delayed speech, tantrums, and lack of eye contact produced pages and pages of articles on autism. She knew there had to be a study out there somewhere that had discovered that little boys with blue eyes and a birthmark on their thigh couldn’t possibly be autistic. It was her desperation that kept her up all hours of the night, looking for a way out of the dark cloud that was closing in on her. She never broke free of that fog, she simply learned to trust her gut and navigate her way through it. That would be the only way through this ordeal with Alan. He’d been ten steps ahead of her all day, and now her gut was telling her to go with him. The best chance to get out from behind, and hopefully away from, Alan was to walk beside him.

  ***

  Fifteen minutes later, they were in sitting in the parking lot of a hardware store in a car Emily guessed was Alan’s personal car.

  “What are we doing here?” she asked.

  Alan pointed to two police officers a block away who were standing in front of their cruisers in the parking lot of the Sunny Horizons Nursing Home. “Waiting on those piss ants to clear out. Damn fools shoulda been gone by now.”

  “Are they there for Ma’am?”

  “Yep. Coroner’s already taken her body, and Owens has put everyone else out looking for your mom.”

  “Are we going in there?”

  “Yep. I have a little something special to show you. If those jackasses don’t leave before they find out you’ve escaped, I might have to move on to Plan C.”

  “Which is?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m working it out.”

  “Kinda seems like the more plans you have the more goes wrong.”

  “Nope. This plan is even better than the first one. I have to get something out of this day, and if I can’t have his money, this will be just as good or even better.”

  When the officers left about ten minutes later, Alan pulled Emily out of the car and led her to the long brick structure down the street.

  “What’s going to happen?” she asked as she walked into the building with Alan’s hand on her back. Nursing homes made her nervous because it was where people went to die, and she couldn’t imagine
anything worse than dying in a nursing home. Scratch that, she could think of one thing that was worse—not knowing where Jack and Abby were.

  “You’ll see,” he answered and escorted her down a hallway that was deserted except for the lone man with a long silver braid who was sitting against the wall in his wheelchair, singing in Native American.

  Alan pushed open the door to a room with Hoyt’s name in the placard on the wall and ushered her in. It had been years since she’d seen him. They had not been kind years. He was a skeleton, lying in his bed, sleeping and slowly dying. Alan locked the door, reached behind him, and pulled a gun out from the back of his waistband. “Here. Take this.”

  “No. You said you’d tell Owens I tried to get the gun from you.”

  “Now I’m saying that if you don’t do what I’m telling you to do, the next time you see your kid, you’ll be locked up for drugs and escaping custody and anything else I can think of.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  He motioned toward Hoyt. “Aim and shoot.”

  “No way.”

  “Take it.”

  “Look at him. He’s nearly dead. What good will killing him now do?”

  “I didn’t choose to have Hoyt in my life. That was my mom’s doing. After I came back and discovered he still had that box at the bank, I spent years thinking there was going to be some kind of payoff for having him in my life. That bastard didn’t just cheat me out of a stash of cash. He stole years of my life. I can’t think of anything more fucking poetic than for the bastard to die by your hand…your perfect, oh-my-poor-Daniel, self-righteous hand.”

  “No, I…” Up to now, Emily had thought he was messing with her, and now it was clear that he was serious. Everything around her started to move in slow motion. “I can’t kill someone. That’s not me.”

  “It is you. Hey. Wake up, old man.” Alan poked Hoyt in the shoulder with the barrel of the gun until he opened his eyes. He looked around the room as though he couldn’t see anything, then when his gaze fell on Emily, recognition hit. Emily could swear he had a smile on his face. “It is you, and you don’t even know it. Hoyt knows it, don’t ya?” He poked Hoyt with the gun again.

  “I’m not going to kill someone.”

  “You think you’re so much better than me, that you wouldn’t do anything it took to get what you want.”

  “You’re right. I wouldn’t.”

  “I’m going to show you how right I am.” He tucked the gun back into his waistband, reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and dialed a number.

  “Yeah?” a woman’s voice came over the speaker.

  “You ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go ahead and send them. Then start the timer.” Alan stared at the screen until an alert sounded. Then he smiled and rotated the phone around and showed her a picture of Jack.

  “Oh my God.” She grabbed the phone and stared at the image of her little boy lying on a blanket, eyes closed, on what appeared to be some kind of cot.

  “There’s another one.”

  Emily gasped when she scrolled over. It was the same picture except for one detail—next to Jack’s head was a syringe. “What is that for? Wait. What timer?”

  “You still there?” Alan asked.

  “Yes, and it’s all set,” the woman said.

  Alan took the phone from Emily and laid it on the table beside Hoyt’s bed. “My friend, the one who took those pictures of your son, has set a timer for five minutes. If she doesn’t hear a gunshot and then my voice saying Hoyt’s dead, she will inject your brat with a syringe full of bleach.”

  Emily could feel the blood drain from her face. “You can’t. You’d never get away with it.”

  “Think about it. Your kid went missing right before your mom went on a family murder spree. When they find him dead with bleach in his system, they’re going to know she did it.”

  “What will they think when they find Hoyt dead from a bullet that came from your gun?”

  “This ain’t my gun. It’s Hoyt’s. You must’ve stolen it when you were at my house. You know…after you escaped my custody.”

  “I haven’t been to your house.”

  “Well your purse is there.”

  “Why would I go to your house if I had just escaped from you?”

  “Who knows what kind of crazy thoughts were running through that head of yours? Maybe you’re obsessed with me. I mean, anyone who deals drugs and lets her kid wander off while she’s having rough sex can’t be all there, you know? Not to mention the fact that your mom is out there killing people. Doesn’t insanity run in the family? That’s it! You can make an insanity plea when you go to trial. Tell you what. I’ll testify for you.” He offered her the gun. “And don’t forget, she has to hear me say I’m okay, so don’t even think about trying to shoot me.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I think the more important question is why are you still talking when the timer is running? How many minutes?”

  The woman on the other end of the phone answered, “Three.”

  It took everything in her not to throw up as she took the gun and closed her hand around the grip. “How do I know she won’t hurt him anyway?”

  “Jen? What happens if she shoots?”

  “I drop the kids off at the nearest gas station.”

  “Swear it,” Emily pleaded with Alan’s accomplice. “Swear it on your life.”

  “Yes,” the woman said.

  “Say it.”

  “I swear on my life. Your kids will be safe.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” she tried to appeal to the sincerity she heard in the woman’s voice that gave her hope she didn’t want to hurt Jack. “You can hang up now and call the police. You don’t have to wait for me to—”

  “That’s enough,” Alan said. “Jenny’s not going to listen to a word you have to say. She’s got incentives of her own, don’t ya, Jenny?”

  “Two minutes,” the voice said.

  Emily tightened her grip on the gun. Alan was right. About everything. No one was looking for Jack, not in the right place. She would do whatever it took to keep him and Abby safe. Alan’s words, It is you, and you don’t even know it, pulsed in her ear, like they had somehow gotten into her bloodstream and were working their way through her body straight to her hands, causing them to shake uncontrollably.

  “Here. Let me help.” Alan led her to the foot of the bed and stood behind her. He pressed his body up to hers, pinning her between himself and the bed. He ran his hands tenderly down her arms as he lifted them and pushed them together, forcing her finger on the trigger as she pointed the gun at Hoyt. “Think about all those times he made Daniel go without his medicine,” he said in a low voice into her ear. “If he hadn’t been such a sorry excuse for a human, Daniel would probably be alive right now. Think about your boy. Abby. Everything you love can be saved by one squeeze of a trigger. That’s it.”

  Hoyt was staring at her. The recognition was gone. Now he was silently pleading. She couldn’t tell if it was for his life or for his death. It didn’t matter. Emily took a deep breath, knowing that within the next few seconds, Hoyt would be dead. And she’d be a murderer.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  Miller

  Leaving Emily alone in that hospital room was one of the hardest things Miller ever did. Probably because he knew how impossible it would be to keep him cooped up in a room while his daughter was missing. As bad as not knowing where Abby was, at least he was able to get out there and look for her. Emily was stuck in his worst nightmare. Not knowing where his child was and not being able to look for her…or him…was on his Please God, No list, right up there with Alan being in his home again.

  The man was either a psycho or a sociopath. Or both.

  His first stop was Dr. Nichol’s office to talk to the Capricorn.

  When he raced into the office, she looked over her shoulder quickly. She stood up and whispered, “Wha
t are you doing here?”

  “I need Jenny Abernathy’s address.”

  “I said I’d get it to you.”

  “I need it now.”

  “I tried, okay? I almost got caught.”

  Miller had no idea how far he could push this girl until she recanted her offer to help, so his only strategy was to take it easy and appeal to whatever it was in her that wanted to help him in the first place. “I don’t want you to get in trouble. It’s just that my daughter is missing, and I think Ms. Abernathy might be my best chance of finding her. You are my best hope for finding Ms. Abernathy. I don’t think it’s merely a coincidence that your horoscope told you to help me.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “The universe works that way sometimes.”

  “Exactly. I’ve always believed there’s no such thing as a coincidence.” Abby would be laughing at him if she was there, listening to him discuss the ways of the cosmos with a girl who had a streak of pink in her hair and a stack of Glamour magazines at her desk.

  “I’ll try again. He has one more appointment left. He should be out of here by five-thirty.”

  “That’s a whole hour away.”

  “I’m sorry. Did you try Facebook?”

  “I’m not even on Facebook.”

  “If she’s friends with someone you know, they can send her a message.”

  If Miller had any friends, and if these hypothetical friends were on Facebook, he doubted they’d be friends with a nurse in her early-twenties. “Thanks, anyway. I’ll have to wait to hear from you.” He walked out of the office, out of the hospital and went to his car with no idea where to go next. Owens said he had been to Alan’s and didn’t see a trace of Abby there, which wasn’t a surprise.

  Alan was smarter than he had given him credit for. He’d been three steps ahead of them all day, and Miller was sick of it. It was time to get his hands a little dirty.

  “Tit-for-tat, asshole,” he said to himself as he pulled out of the parking lot of the hospital and went in the direction of Alan’s home. He was going to find his daughter, even if he had to tear the place up. He owed Alan a little home invasion payback, after all.