by Nicole Fox
Vanessa nodded and got up, then left the room. He wasn’t sure what she was getting. He’d never seen any sort of proof. And now that he considered it, the last thing he wanted to see was some sort of evidence of what Jeremy had done. He would never be able to keep from killing this asshole if he saw something that made it even more real in his mind.
“Come on,” Hunter said. “Let’s get some place more comfortable. You doing okay?”
“I’ll probably see a doctor, but I think it’ll be okay. And I’d like to know more before I have to start answering questions.”
Hunter led him into the living room. Now that the bleeding had stopped, he seemed to be doing much better. He wasn’t so pale and had calmed down. The pain must be fading as well. Or maybe he was just going into shock. He sat him down and got him some water.
“Drink this.” He handed him the glass and after Nicholas gulped it down, he refilled it and handed it back to him.
Vanessa came from her bedroom with a box. He met her eyes and tried to get some hint of what was coming, but she looked away. She looked embarrassed, in fact. Her cheeks were pink and she didn’t look either of them in the eye.
She sat beside Nicholas and took the lid off the box. Then she handed it to him.
From where he stood, Hunter couldn’t see the photos, but he watched Nicholas’s reaction as he flipped through the photos. His eyes widened and he looked at Vanessa with compassion in his eyes. As much as he didn’t want to see it, Hunter couldn’t stand not knowing. He walked over and picked up the stack of photos that Nicholas had set on the table when he picked up the next stack.
The photos in his hand were all of Vanessa. He flipped through shot after shot of her. A black eye in this one. A bruise so deep it was green on her arm in the next. Then, a bruise on her shin. Then, bruises on her upper thighs that could be evidence of only one thing. Hunter clenched his jaw and dropped the photos.
He thought he might be sick. He’d only seen a small percentage of the horrible things that this box contained, but he’d seen enough. The rage tore through him, and he had to take several breaths to keep his feet planted on the floor. He wanted to burst out of the room that moment and find Jeremy and kill him in the most painful way possible.
“This has to be enough, right?” Hunter said, a sharp edge of anger in his voice.
Nicholas swallowed hard and set the photos down before looking at him. “It might not be.”
“Why not?” he barked.
“What’s not in this box is the police records of all this,” Nicholas said. “Did you ever report it?”
Vanessa looked down and whispered, “No.”
“Then it probably won’t stand up in court. There’s no way to know for sure that Jeremy was responsible for this. It could have been an ex-boyfriend or an angry lover. It could have been anyone who did this to her. There’s nothing specifically to tie Jeremy to these crimes. There’s nothing to support her claims, and it’s worsened by the fact that Jeremy was the one who called CPS because he was worried about his daughter. If Vanessa had called, it might be different.”
“It was me,” Hunter said.
Vanessa looked up at him suddenly, confused. Nicholas also gave him a baffled look.
“I was the hit man Jeremy hired.”
Vanessa’s face changed to worry, but Nicholas’s grew deeper in surprise.
“He hired you to kill Vanessa?”
Hunter nodded. “That’s how I know he wants her dead and will stop at nothing until he wins. I couldn’t do it, though. When I was investigating, it became very clear to me that Vanessa is nothing but a loving mother and that Opal adores her. She would never hurt her daughter. She stayed in an abusive marriage to give her daughter a family, and she left the second it was unsafe for Opal. She took her on the run, because she was terrified that this very thing would happen. That Jeremy would use his money and influence to lie and accuse her of abusing their daughter, then take her away. That’s how abuse works. You have to understand that. When a woman is that terrified, you can’t expect her to go to the police. Or she might end up dead because of it.”
“I do understand that, believe me,” Nicholas said. “And even if the judge believed her and wanted to lock him up, without proving it, they can’t. That’s what innocent until proven guilty means. You can’t lock someone up just because someone claims they did something wrong. Otherwise, Vanessa would be the one locked up right now. The system is in place for a reason, and it has safety nets to protect people from false accusations. But unfortunately, it also depends on evidence.”
“Well, I have evidence that Jeremy hired me to kill Vanessa. I think with that and the photos and Opal’s testimony, that should be plenty.”
“I sure hope so,” Nicholas said.
“I could get more,” Hunter said. “Jeremy still thinks I’m on the job. I could wear a wire or whatever narcs do to help the cops. I could get Jeremy to talk about the hit. But we’d need to move fast. I’m taking too long, and I think Jeremy is losing trust in me. Being shot at today was pretty obvious proof of that. But we might still have a chance. He might at least say enough to say that he’s firing me. I’m sure I can get him to say something incriminating, because he would never think I’d turn him in or work with the cops since I’d be the one getting in more trouble than him.”
“So, why would you do it?” Nicholas asked. “You might end up in jail yourself.”
Vanessa had silent tears running down her face and gave him a pleading look. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he knew she didn’t want him going away for her, but what choice did he have?
“Because I will do anything to keep Vanessa and Opal safe and away from him. Even if it means incriminating myself along the way.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hunter
“I think I can convince Jeremy to say out loud the original details of the plan he hired me for,” Hunter said. Now that he’d confessed to Nicholas, they were trying to come up with a plan that might work to get the solid evidence they needed. “He still thinks that I’m only spending time with Vanessa to get close to her so I can kill her and get Opal. So long as he believes I’m still doing that, I can get him to admit to just about anything.”
Nicholas nodded thoughtfully. “I think it’s best if we get the cops to set up something. Some sort of sting operation.”
Hunter shook his head. “No way. I won’t have enough control over the situation. If I can’t control everything that happens, it might turn on me, and he’ll know something is up.” Not to mention the fact that he could hardly kill Jeremy if he knew the cops were watching. If they weren’t there, he could alter the recording or make it seem like any gun shots were him being shot at. He could set it up to look like self defense, when the whole time, the real plan was to get evidence, but also to make sure Jeremy didn’t live long enough to go to trial.
“It’s too risky,” Nicholas said. “If we get the police involved beforehand, they’ll be there to jump in if things go wrong. And calling them first cements the fact that you’re the ones who are innocent here. If we just take them evidence, it’s not as good as them getting it themselves. Someone might say it’s been tampered with.”
“I can’t trust the police like that. If he gets any hint that they’re involved, everything will fall apart. Can’t you see that?”
“Hunter,” Vanessa said, “Maybe we should just do it Nicholas’s way. I don’t want to take the chance of you getting hurt or arrested. Going to them first means you won’t be.”
“It doesn’t mean that at all,” Hunter said. “The best I could hope for is some sort of plea deal. And that would maybe reduce my sentence from life to twenty years. Fifteen if I’m lucky.”
Vanessa looked away. He knew she didn’t want to hear that. He wanted her to understand the full danger, though. He wished he could tell her that he’d rather die to get the evidence she needed, or die to kill Jeremy and set her free once and for all, than to take the chance of going to ja
il. From prison, he could do nothing to help her, and she would move on. He could never ask her to wait for him, nor would she. They didn’t have a commitment like that and going to jail would only prove everything she’d said about why she couldn’t have him in her life—that he was too dangerous, and she didn’t want a criminal as a step-father for her daughter.
“Let me call Jeremy and see if I can get him to meet me,” Hunter said.
Nicholas and Vanessa watched as Hunter picked up the phone. He took a moment to get his mind set, then hit send. When Jeremy answered the phone, it was easy to let the rage into his voice. All he had to do was picture one of the photographs of Vanessa bruised up, and he was seeing red.
“What the hell are you doing?” Hunter shouted. “Are you a completely incompetent idiot?”
“Me?” Jeremy shot back. “You’re the one who can’t manage to put a bullet in one stupid woman’s head. How hard is that?”
He ignored the insult to Vanessa and went on. “Because of your little stunt today, the social worker who’d been poking around got injured. And what do you think he’s thinking now? I’ll you what he’s not thinking. He’s not thinking Vanessa is a horrible mother who beat her daughter. He’s sitting right now with her, listening to her story. Is that what you wanted? For CPS to turn their attention to you, because that’s what you’ve done.”
“He’ll never believe her.”
Hunter laughed. “I was standing right there when Vanessa told him that you were the one who had shot him. And he asked a lot of questions about you. Questions I’m sure you probably don’t want Vanessa answering truthfully. If he believes her, you’re screwed.”
“He won’t,” Jeremy said stubbornly. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“Right. And you better be sure that you erase any conversation he records and any notes he takes and any reports he submits. Or didn’t you know they do all that? I guess I knew that because I’ve been spending all this time getting close enough to find out. Or maybe you forgot how it worked. You’re so damn impatient to get it done, you’re going to mess the whole thing up. But hey, it’s no skin off my back if Vanessa’s story comes out and people believe it. She’s claiming you did all sorts of things to her and that little girl. Even if they’re proved to be false, your name won’t be worth shit after this stuff hits the media.”
Jeremy was quiet for a long while. “Fine. What do you propose we do?”
“First of all, stop sending fucking killers after me and Vanessa. I’ll take care of it properly. You’re being messy as hell, and it’s already backfiring. Meet with me, and we’ll go over the next phase of my plan. If you can manage not to get your panties in a bunch for five minutes, this can be done like we planned. But I’m not discussing details over the phone. There’s already far too much heat on this job.”
“When? Where?”
# # #
When he hung up a few minutes later, Vanessa and Nicholas were still watching him. “He went for it perfectly. I’ll meet him, get him to agree to all the details and state them clearly, and then we’ll have him.”
Nicholas and Vanessa exchanged a look.
“This would be a perfect time to get the police involved and have them at this meeting,” Nicholas said.
“I told you. No. There’s too much risk. I need to be in complete control of the situation.”
“You still could be,” Vanessa insisted. “We can make that part of the plan. That they don’t interfere unless you say some sort of code word or something. They could just be listening and waiting for you to tell them to jump in.”
“You’re putting far too much trust in the police,” Hunter said. “And in a system that came very close to taking your daughter away from you. Nicholas was convinced you were beating your child and that you coached her to lie. And he was wrong. What if these cops think they know what to do and they’re wrong? Or they decide not to believe us?”
Nicholas hung his head. Good. He should be ashamed of how he reacted. Hunter didn’t care if Nicholas had only been doing his job. How in the world could he have thought Vanessa was the abuser in this situation? What an idiot. It took about two seconds of being around her to see how sweet and caring she was. Anyone could see it.
“Nicholas, will this definitely get us enough evidence?” she asked.
“If Jeremy admits it on tape, with your testimonies and Opal’s and mine, and the other evidence we have that’s not as strong, I think it’d be enough,” Nicholas said. “I’ll do everything I can to help.”
He better do everything. Or maybe Hunter would consider taking him out as an annoyance hit. He’d made things so much harder on them. If he’d seen the truth from the start, maybe this would have gone differently.
“I’m going to have this wound checked out,” Nicholas said. “I don’t want to let it go too long, and it’s starting to hurt again.”
“Do you need a ride to the hospital?” Vanessa asked.
“I think I’ll manage, but thank you.” He stood, and she rested his jacket over his shoulders. “Let me know what else I can do. Do you still have my card?”
Vanessa nodded and held open the door for him. They watched him walk out, and she closed and locked the door. Then she turned to Hunter.
“You’re making a huge mistake, and this is far too risky.”
Clearly, she had been holding back while Nicholas was still there, and now she was letting her true feelings show.
“We just went through all this.”
She shook her head. “You think I’m trusting the cops too much, but we have to! They’re the ones who will either lock up Jeremy, or me and you.”
“They’re not going to lock you up.”
“You don’t know what else Jeremy might pull. And you said the system almost took Opal, but it didn’t. We got him to see the truth and now he’s on our side. So, it did work.”
“Barely. Eventually. And maybe. I don’t trust Nicholas fully, either. He might turn on us or make a report that doesn’t quite state things how we need them to. If he decides that being around a hit man isn’t the best thing for Opal, I’m sure he’s going to report that. He might say you haven’t hurt her, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t still recommend that Opal go elsewhere.”
She must not have considered this possibility. Her mouth hung open. After a long pause, she said, “Do you really think…”
“Anything is possible. That’s why we have to do the one option that works. Get the evidence ourselves. We can only trust each other.”
“But what if it’s a trap? Jeremy has already sent other people after us. What if he only agreed to meet you so he could kill you? That’s just as possible. And it’s probably more likely than the cops messing up because he’s already sent people. More than once. If he’s already tried, why wouldn’t he try again to kill you? We need the police to be there. We can’t trust Jeremy to just show up and not try to pull something.”
“Vanessa, it will be fine. Why in the world would he try something like that with me? He knows my record. Do you think he’d be so stupid to walk into a place with a known deadly killer? It’s not like he’d win in a gun fight against me. And he knows that. So he won’t try it.”
She shook her head and the dread bloomed in her stomach. “You’re giving him too much credit. He is stupid and reckless. He would try. Even if he failed, he might hurt you first.”
Hunter came to her and took her hands in his, kissing them each. “I’ll be fine, I promise. If I’m dead or in jail, I can’t protect you and Opal, and that’s the most important thing to me. I’m not going to do anything that would jeopardize my life, and by extension, yours and Opal’s.”
“I know that’s how you feel,” she said softy. “But I have a bad feeling about this. I haven’t had much good in my life. And I feel like I’m about to lose the second-best thing that ever happened to me.”
A glimmer of surprise flickered across Hunter’s face. “Me?”
She nodded. She closed her eyes and leaned
closer to him. If she looked him in the eye, she might not be able to speak the words. Her throat was already thick, but she managed to say what she felt. “I love you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. And that’s why I want you to let the cops handle this. I’ve known Jeremy for too long, and I can’t stand the feeling that he’s going to ruin my life again. Please, baby.”
She looked up at him. He leaned down to kiss her.
“We don’t have time to wait for the cops. Jeremy is past impatient. He wants you dead yesterday. If I wait even another day to do it, he’s going to act. I have to meet with him now, and get what we need. If I don’t, he’s going to send someone else. And I love you too much to let that happen.”
A smile slowly spread across her face. “You do?”
“Yes.”