Her Best Friend's Keeper (Finley Creek Book 1)

by Calle J. Brookes

  “Are they? Or just one in particular?” Mel hugged her. “If it’s any consolation, I think you have him just as tangled and confused as you are.”

  “I’m not confused.” Brynna refused to let herself be. “We made a deal that it was just sex. No ties. And just until we got out of the cellar. I don’t understand why he thinks he has the right to tell me what to do. If I don’t want to take a pain pill, I shouldn’t have to.”

  Gabby wiped off the island and stared at Brynna. She couldn’t put it into words, but something was bothering her friend, wasn’t it? Sad, Gabby was sad, wasn’t she? “Bryn, I think he just didn’t like seeing you hurting.”

  “I’m going to hurt for a while. Someone sliced me up. But I’d rather feel that and still be able to think, than be all foggy brained and useless.”

  “I know the feeling. Just don’t push yourself too hard,” Mel said. “You’ll get better in time.”

  “I know.” And the best way to distract herself was to get back to normal, wasn’t it? “Gabs, when am I back on the schedule?”

  Gabby gawked at her. “When you want to be, I guess. Benny has you blocked out for the rest of the month. Probably just need to call him.”

  “When do you go back?”

  “I’m off the whole weekend. I got the ten shift on Monday.”

  “I’ll see if I can go back when you do, then.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, why not take some time off?” Gabby asked. “Until Elliot finds them.”

  “I can help find them better at the TSP.” Help find them and end this for all of the people she cared about. Gabby. Chance. All of them. “I’m going back. I’m going to work on that video until I have the answers.”

  “It’s your choice,” Mel said. But Brynna knew what her sister was thinking. Mel still wanted her to hide. To keep safe and let the rest of the world handle everything. Her eyes landed on the crutch that went with her sister everywhere, she saw how her sister had to lean against the counter just to throw the pasta in the boiling water. Remembered how fierce and strong her sister had once been.

  Mel wanted to save the world, to protect her family no matter what.

  But when was she going to see that Brynna could stand on her own when it counted? When would she understand that the need to protect her family was just as strong in her as it was in Mel?

  “I’m doing this. I’m going back.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE.

  ***

  GABBY didn’t want to do this. The thought of watching that video again made her almost sick. She’d avoided it for ten years. Brynna curled up on her double bed, her laptop in front of her. Gabby took the left side of her friend. Mel took the right.

  She wouldn’t be watching it alone, would she? “We weren’t supposed to be there that night, either.”

  “No,” Mel said, shifting on the bed to get more comfortable. “But the three of us were going. For Sara.”

  “I was just waiting for my mom to get home from work to drive me.”

  “We were five minutes away. But Brynna threw a fit at the last minute. A ten or fifteen minute fit. She saved our lives that night.” Mel leaned her head on her sister’s shoulder. “I’ve never forgotten that. How…random our very lives were in that moment.”

  “Why did you throw a fit?” Gabby asked.

  Brynna was quiet for a long moment. “I don’t know. I remember just sitting in the back seat and thinking that we couldn’t go there. That we needed to be at home with Jilly and Syd and our mom. I wanted my mother so badly. By the time dad had me calmed down, Mel was inside the gas station, and sirens came. After that, I just remember Jarrod carrying me inside our house.”

  “Dad followed the responders. We knew…when they turned off at the Marshall’s driveway that it was something bad. Dad handed us off to the first patrol officer he saw. It was Jarrod,” Mel said. “He was twenty-two and grass green. It was his first week on the job. First time he’d ever seen a murder scene.”

  “When…when dad realized they were all dead, he yelled at Jarrod to get us out of there fast,” Brynna said.

  “That night was when I decided to follow Dad into the TSP—as soon as I could.”

  “And she recommended me to Benny after I got my Associate’s and decided not to go on for my Bachelor’s. I already knew more than my professors at that point.” Brynna wasn’t bragging, Gabby knew. Her friend had surpassed the professors of computer sciences at Finley Creek University.

  “That night changed all of our lives, didn’t it?” Gabby looked down at Brynna’s laptop. Glass and plastic and components she’d helped put together herself. Just a tool, but a laptop had changed her life so many years ago, hadn’t it? “We were going to be there. Chance and Elliot were supposed to be there, too. The five of us could have died, as well.”

  “Sara and Anne would not have wanted us there. They would have wanted us safe,” Brynna opened a search box and brought up the videos. “But they would want the answers so none of us get hurt again. None of us.”

  Sometimes Brynna just nailed things dead-on, didn’t she? “They’d want all of us safe. We’re not safe now. Not like this. Not living with this constant fear, these shadows.”

  “Chance isn’t safe. He’s not going to ever stop. And I’m terrified they’ll catch him and kill him,” Brynna’s whisper broke Gabby’s heart. The fear…she understood it. “So how do we find the answers first?”

  “By using our heads. Our skills. Even our hearts,” Mel said almost grimly. “Combine what we know has happened now, with what happened then. We knew the vic—victims really well. We may have been children when we did, but we were never stupid. So load the damned video, Bryn, and let’s do this. Together.”

  “I have two videos. The altered one and what I think is the original.”

  “Then we watch them both.” Gabby pulled in a deep breath. The Play button was waiting on the screen. She reached over and brushed the mouse. Clicked.

  The video started to play.

  She hadn’t recorded the first part of her conversation with Sara. The part where she’d been complaining about her two older brothers not coming home to her. That was a good thing—Sara’s last words about her brothers didn’t need to be remembered forever. That would just serve to hurt Chance and Elliot more than they deserved, wouldn’t it? But she had hit the record button on her webcam just after she’d heard Slade scream.

  She wasn’t even sure why she’d hit that button. But she had. Slade had called out for his father to help him. His young voice was full of his fear. Gabby felt the tears start. She looked over at Mel and saw her friend wiping her own eyes.

  She and Slade had been classmates and friends their entire childhoods, hadn’t they? Gabby reached for Mel’s hand. Anne screamed, yelled her children’s names. Sara’s terror had Gabby crying even harder. Brynna paused the video for a moment. There were tissues on the nightstand behind Gabby. She grabbed one and passed two more over to her friends. Gabby reached out and hit the button again. “Let’s do this.”

  She forced herself to watch every second of the video. To try to detach somehow. The killers dragged Slade out of his bedroom. Pulled Sara away from the desktop they’d kept in the dining room. The webcam on Sara’s computer had faced the rest of the great room. Faced everything.

  The men argued. And then one shot Sara first. Then Anne and Slade together. Elliot’s father stopped fighting then. They shot him next to his wife. He fell over his daughter’s body.

  He looked so much like her Elliot.

  And then…a man leaned in front of the webcam and looked at the girl on the other side.

  The fifth man.

  His lips moved. But no real sound came out, just a static-filled whisper. What did he say?

  He reached out and yanked the webcam from its perch. The video ended forever.

  “Rewind that last part, Bryn,” Mel said through her tears. “We need to know what he said.”

  It took them a few tries, but finally Gabby figured out wh
at the fifth man said.

  Fuck it all, Gabby!

  The fifth man had called her by name.

  Gabby had always thought they’d learned about her from witness reports or the media. But they’d known who she was all along, hadn’t they?

  Mel darted to the bathroom that connected her bedroom and Brynna’s as fast as she was able—just in time to lose her lunch. Gabby curled her knees up to her chest there on the bed. Brynna just kept staring at the laptop.

  Brynna still hadn’t looked away from the screen. “I knew the fifth man said something. But I couldn’t figure out what. I think I was more focused on who could erase a man from the file completely. I didn’t realize…”

  “It wasn’t completely,” Mel said from the bathroom. “You could sometimes see the shadows.”

  “That’s because the tech ten years ago wasn’t as good as it is today. If we hadn’t already known, we wouldn’t be predisposed to look.” Gabby forced herself to straighten on the bed. To pull in some air. To remember that she was safe right then. “I never could remember how many men because they weren’t always visible at once. I think I blocked out that man at the end.”

  “You were traumatized. Hell, so were we—and we didn’t see anything. Except for Slade being loaded into the ambulance. Brynna practically went catatonic, Gab. For the whole next week.” Mel settled into the desk chair next to the bed. “It was her first exposure to death at all. Except for a hamster or cat. Mom and Dad kept her sheltered from anything like that.”

  “Mine, too.” Gabby pulled the quilt at the foot of the bed around her shoulders. “So. The fifth man knew me by sight ten years ago. What do we do now?”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO.

  ***

  ELLIOT was a few minutes late to get Gabby at the Becks. When he walked in, along with his brother, the three women and Kevin were grim. Pale. Elliot tensed and looked at Gabby quickly.

  Her eyes were bright red. She’d been crying, hadn’t she? Brynna had her sunglasses on, but her normally pale cheeks were even whiter.

  Mel just looked sick.

  Kevin was tense and kept looking between the three women with a worried expression on his face.

  “What the hell has happened now?” Chance asked, his attention on Brynna where she sat at the dining room table, with her laptop in front of her.

  Gabby and Mel were cooking spaghetti in the adjacent kitchen. Gabby stopped what she was doing and threw herself against Elliot’s chest. He looked over her head at Mel. “What’s going on?”

  “We watched the video from that day. Both the altered and unaltered.” Mel dumped the dry pasta into the water. “And we found something.”

  “What?” Chance stepped up behind Brynna. He put a hand on her shoulder and leaned down. “Show us.”

  “No need. Not yet. After dinner.” Gabby pulled in a deep breath. “It’s simple. The fifth man.”

  “Explain,” Chance said. “You.” He pointed at Mel. “Not these two. You’re the cop, boil it down for us.”

  “Not any longer, I’m not.” Mel stepped away from the counter. “The fifth man looked into the camera and called Gabby by name, boys.”

  “I’ve probably known the killers all along. And I didn’t remember.”

  Kevin patted her on the shoulder. “We probably all have known them, then, kiddo. Not just you.”

  “So there was a fifth man?” Chance asked.

  “I wasn’t wrong when I said so before.” Brynna glared up at his brother. “There was a fifth man and a very sophisticated bit of editing. You can see him occasionally, even in the altered video. If you know where to look.”

  “I’m not doubting you. I’m verifying.”

  “Unh huh. Anyway, how does this help us?”

  “You not at all. I think your participation is over,” Chance reached out and closed Brynna’s laptop. “I think you, Gabby, and the rest of your family need to get out of town for a while. I have a cousin with a large spread eighty miles from here—complete with armed cowhands, if needed. He’s already agreed you could stay there. Let Elliot and I finish this.”

  Elliot had to admit that sounded like a good idea. If he had his way, he’d hide Gabby away until the threat was completely gone.

  “Not happening. I’m going back to work Monday when Gabby does. I want my life back. I have goals. I’m not going to hide.”

  “Screw your goals. I want you safe. As far from these bastards as I can get you.”

  “I make my own choices, Chance. Not you.”

  “Don’t start, you two. We’re not having another food fight in here tonight.” Mel put her hand on her hip and glared at them. “It took Gabby twenty minutes to get all the wet Cheerios up this afternoon.”

  Chance flushed.

  Gabby giggled.

  “Ok, apparently I’ve missed something.” Elliot looked at his brother for clarification.

  “Never mind.” Brynna stood and went to the kitchen, completely missing the look of hunger on Chance face when his gaze followed her. “How much longer until the spaghetti?”

  “A few more minutes. You going to make purple sauce?” Mel asked. She touched her sister’s shoulder and squeezed. Comforted.

  “I’ll warm some up in the microwave for me.” Brynna nodded, then grabbed plates from the cabinet. “I suppose you’re staying, too?”

  Chance nodded. “I want you to show me everything you found after we eat.”

  “Of course.”

  “Give me those.” He took the plates from her. “Sit your ass down.”

  “I’m not helpless. And you don’t have to curse all the time.”

  “You’re stubborn, hard-headed, and contrary.”

  Kevin suddenly broke out into a coughing fit. Elliot looked at the older man and caught the humor in his eyes. Kevin was apparently enjoying the sparring, wasn’t he?

  “You forgot obstinate and determined.” She smirked at him and Elliot laughed

  Gabby was still next to him. She stood and returned to the kitchen to drain the pasta for Mel.

  Gabby was completely comfortable here, wasn’t she? These people were her family. The love was something he definitely missed. His family had loved one another. For always. The ache to have that again slammed into him. The ache to have it…with her.

  He slipped into a free chair as the younger two Beck daughters came in the back door. Mel tossed a head of lettuce at the elder of the two. “I think you know what to do. Syd, drinks.”

  “Crud, Mel, at least let us take off our jackets,” Jillian said. Family. So normal. And so much like he and Chance belonged. Were welcomed.

  Elliot hadn’t felt quite so overwhelmed in a very long time.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE.

  ***

  “LOOK out your window.”

  “What?” Benny stood and looked out into the alley that ran behind the annex. What he saw had his heart filling with horror.

  “Get it set up, Russell. Get it done, and then I’ll have Chuck let her go. Don’t make me wait too long. You know how he likes young women.”

  He got just a glimpse in the backseat of the sedan waiting just outside the window.

  His Alyssia. His baby girl.

  In the hands of a sexual predator. One who had killed before.

  Benny had shot Sara Marshall himself ten years ago—to keep that little girl out of the hands of the monster who now held his Alyssia.

  The sick irony in that told its own story. What would Chuck do to Alyssia?

  It didn’t bear thinking about. He couldn’t.

  “I’ll do it. As soon as Brynna returns to the TSP. She’ll be here tomorrow. Don’t…don’t let him hurt my daughter. She’s as innocent as you can get. What would come of it?”

  “I have no intention of letting him harm her. We don’t need any extra attention on you, or on him. You see to it that those two bitches are taken care of, and then we’ll just let your little girl go with a very strong warning. She’ll be just fine, and back in Mommy and Daddy’s arms as
soon as you uphold your part of the deal. Very simple, really.”

  ***

  BENNY spent the rest of the night after Nora retired thinking and planning. He’d covered Alyssia’s absence by telling her mother that his daughter had stopped off at the TSP and told him she was going down to the Gulf with some friends from college for a few days. He’d told her that he’d given Alyssia some money and told his daughter to call if she needed her parents.

  He hated lying to Nora, and had rarely done so.

  Worry for his daughter nearly consumed him. Love for his wife nearly destroyed him, and Benny couldn’t stop himself from touching her, holding her, for one last night.

  He saw his daughters off after breakfast with uncharacteristic hugs and proclamations of how much he had always loved them.

  Benny knew he’d surprised them, but he brushed it off, stating he was just feeling his age.

  Addilyn laughed at him, then hugged him a second time. Allana just grinned and told him that he was the handsomest old guy she had ever met.

  Benny stood at the door and watched two of the four most important pieces of his life drive away.

  He hit his knees when the fear for Alyssia overwhelmed him again.

  Nora had left an hour earlier for her shift at the hospital.

  It was just him.

  He had less than an hour to do what he had to do at the house before he had to head to the TSP.

  Brynna and Gabby would be coming in for the ten a.m. shift.

  Everything needed to be in place long before then.

  The supplies he needed were already in his car. He wasn’t stupid enough to wonder how they had arrived there while he slept. Benny knew what he had to do.

  But first…he needed to write to Nora, to tell her the why behind everything.

  To tell her…that no matter what happened he loved her and the girls.

  And to tell her about Alyssia and how he was trading Brynna and Gabby’s lives for that of their daughters.