Whatever I’m laying on, it’s hard. My face still stinging from her slap, I try to sit up, but my chest and thighs are tied to—I turn my head to see—an upside down flat-bottomed canoe. My gaze darts to take in the space. Surfboards and various one or two man boats and other swimming equipment hang on the walls around us. We must be in the boathouse. “Please let me go, Cynthia. Why are you doing this to a friend?”
“Friend?” Throwing her head back in a deep-bellied laugh, her gaze locks with mine. “I was never your friend. Becoming your best bud was a means to an end.” Her voice is different now. Definitely harsher. Angry. Vengeful.
Is Cynthia the serial killer? I thought the suspect was a man. As fear for my life whips through me, I try to keep my voice steady even though I’m shaking on the inside. “What do you want from me?”
Instead of answering, Cynthia sets her purse on another boat stacked on a holder next to her and opens it. When she pulls out a pair of rubber doctor-style gloves and starts to put them on, I start screaming as loud as I can.
“Scream all you want.” She raises her voice to be heard over me, the thunder, and sand rushing against the building. Pulling a small vial of red liquid from her purse, she continues, “Everyone’s inside right now. Probably already drinking and partying it up on the last day of Hawthorne’s singles’ events. You won’t be joining them, of course.”
I scream a few more times, then let my voice die out. I may as well save my lungs for running if I can wiggle my way out of these ropes she’s tied around me. Cynthia’s so blasé, her utter calmness freaks me out more than if she just railed at me. Panicky, I clench and unclench my hands, and when my fingers brush the knot next to my right thigh, I still my hands. The knot! I slowly move my hand to cover it.
Distract her. Keep her talking while you work on the knot. “I don’t understand. I’ve only been nice to you. What did I ever do to you?”
“What did you do?” She gapes at me for a second, then lets out a trilling laugh. “You seem sweet, but…” She pauses, her blue eyes narrowing to angry slits. “I know how evil you can be. I’ve felt the sting of your hand, the burn of your curling iron, the spikes of a meat tenderizer, the deep bruising of a belt buckle…basically anything you could get your hands on. And when that didn’t work, you made sure I got to experience the darkness of the closet. So yeah, I know firsthand just how vicious and cruel you are.”
Cynthia’s eyes glaze over while she spews her anger. But it’s not me she’s looking at. She’s looking beyond me, her mind wandering in the past. “That wasn’t me, Cynthia. I’m sorry for whoever hurt you, but it wasn’t me—ow!”
She grabs a handful of my hair and yanks hard, her crazy eyes spearing right through me. “It was you! He left me because of you. Abandoned me to your evilness.”
“It wasn’t me. I didn’t hurt you. Was it your mom who hurt you?”
“What? You don’t recognize me?” She sneers, then reaches up and yanks hard at her hairline.
I suck in a gasp when her long hair pulls away. The cap underneath comes next, revealing short sandy-blond hair. After she peels off her fake eyelashes, she wipes her lipstick off on her sleeve. When she turns fully my way, Tommy Slawson’s face stares back at me, his voice turning deeper. “Do you recognize me now, Mom?”
My heart rate jacks and my breathing ramps. “How did you—”
“I become who I need to be,” he sneers. “I borrow, steal, kill…whatever it takes to meet my goals, Mom. Goals! Something you told me I’d never have.”
“Look at me,” I say. Even though I know he’s off his rocker, I try to reason with him, because self-preservation can be its own desperate form of crazy. “I’m your age. There’s no way I can possibly be your mother. I’m not her, Tommy.”
Hearing his name seems to snap him out of his hate-filled haze. Tommy shakes his head and scowls, folding his arms. “How do you know my name? I never told you.”
I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. “I saw you at Columbia.”
Worry fills his expression. “But I was so careful. You didn’t see me. You didn’t! I made sure of it.”
As soon as it occurs to me that Tommy must’ve been the stalker I thought I imagined in college, he starts to pace, muttering to himself. “He told me to follow you. To find out if you were the one who wrote that article that ruined everything.”
He halts and turns back to me. “But when I saw you for the first time, I knew you were more. Honestly, I was glad I didn’t have to write those notes and deal with slipping packages in the mail anymore.” He lowers his voice, his eyes traveling over my face. “You were so much more than he ever knew. So I lied and told him you didn’t write it, even though I knew you did.”
Notes in the mail? Oh God, Tommy must’ve been the one who put the drug packages with the drop instructions in the students’ mailboxes at school. “How did you know I wrote it?” I whisper, realizing that the “he” Tommy’s referring to had to be Professor Jacobson, the man who blackmailed his students and ran the whole drug operation at school.
As Tommy moves closer, suddenly all smiles, I try not to shrink back from him. The last thing I want to do is set him off. He’s too unstable. I can’t imagine it would take much to send him over the edge.
Stroking my hair reverently, he says, “I knew you wrote that article, because I read everything you wrote. The cadence of your voice, your word patterns, they were there if anyone took the time to read them like I did. Even after college, I followed your career at the Tribune and then moved on to your books.”
“My—” I swallow to keep my voice from cracking. “My books?” When he looks at me this time, I see the shy guy who handed me towels and water bottles these past few days. Oh God, now his comment about me drinking more water when I first woke up makes sense. He most likely drugged those water bottles with the same stuff he must’ve put in my beer at Spurred. If it hadn’t been for Sebastian, Tommy would’ve gotten to me long before now.
He nods. “I’m a huge fan, Miss Lone. I even joined your fan club. Following your career helped me stay focused for a while.”
A sudden dark cloud floats across his calm features as he reaches in his pocket. Pulling out a knife, he flips it open, his voice turning angry. “But then you gave the Hawthorne trip to Delia. That should’ve been mine!” Clenching his hand around the knife, he jabs the blade into the side of the canoe, rocking it under me.
I bite back my scream of terror while tears of relief silently trickle down my temples.
“So I took care of the old bat,” he continues as if the knife isn’t currently jammed just three inches from my head. “And it all worked out, because I discovered where you liked to relax, Talia. Here at Hawthorne, I knew I’d get my chance to be alone with you eventually.”
I swallow to keep the rising terror locked inside and try to sound calm. “And Mr. Sheehan?”
Tommy smirks, smugness settling on his features. “He thought he could take over the club once Delia died.” Bending close, he speaks next to my ear. “No one was going to have access to you, but me. Period.”
A heavy layer of guilt for Delia and Bradley’s deaths slathers on top of my fear. God, Tommy’s so unhinged! He can’t decide if he despises me, worships me, or thinks I’m his mother. One thing I know for sure. He hates her memory and has marked me as his punching bag for his abused childhood.
Distract him! Redirect. “Why don’t you let me go and we can talk books all you want.”
“Now why would I do that?” Barking a pleased laugh, he steps back a little bit and begins to unbuckle his belt. “All the fun’s about to begin.”
“Please, Tommy!” I beg and shake my head frantically as I struggle against the rope. I’ve almost released the knot on the bottom rope. I just need to yank a little harder.
He pauses for a second, confusion in his face. “Oh, you thought I was going to…” Wrapping the leather end of the belt around his hand, he laughs. “You need to know what you did to me. You n
eed to feel what I felt.”
Before I can say anything, he whips the belt around and slams its buckle against my hip. I scream as pain splinters through me, sobbing, “Please stop, Tommy. I’m not your mom.”
As he rolls the belt back up once more, he pauses and looks directly into my eyes. “Oh, I know that. I’m punishing you, Talia, for all the pain you caused me. You’re responsible for everything that happened to me.”
This time he hits the belt high on my thigh. I try to curl inward to soften the blow, but I can’t move. All I can do is moan through the pain.
Excitement fills his features. He smiles then leans close once more. “The next one will be on your bare skin. That’s when the real fun begins. The sight of your blood is what will really do it for me. The pleasure of it spewing everywhere.” He jerks his chin toward the bottle he set on the boat behind him. “Know why I bring that?”
I shake my head, hoping he’ll stop, but I know he won’t.
“When blood dries it turns dark. I want it to stay red, Talia. I want it bright. As bright red as it always felt to me when my own was spewed everywhere!” he finishes on a hateful hiss.
Straightening, he calmly unrolls the belt. “But you won’t be alive for that part. That’s the after stuff.” Stepping close, he slips his belt around my neck. I struggle against the bindings, begging him to let me go, but he puts his mouth against my cheek, his jaw holding my head in place as he slides the leather through the buckle. “I consider it my own special signature.”
When I feel the bindings on my legs finally start to give, I attempt to slide my legs off the other side of the canoe, hoping the shift in my weight will free me, but the rope around my chest continues to hold me in place.
Just as Tommy grabs my legs to keep me on the canoe, the sound of the door handle rattling jerks Tommy’s head up a second before Sebastian calls out, his deep bass overriding the howling wind. “Talia!”
Grabbing the knife, Tommy jerks back and cuts the rope around me just as the heavy metal door swings open.
Sebastian enters the room, handgun raised, his voice calm and deadly. “Let her go, Slawson.”
Tommy pulls me in front of him and jams the tip of his knife against my throat. He laughs and presses the blade just deep enough to pinch. “Back off right now or I’ll jab this deep. How will you save her while she’s bleeding out?”
Sebastian doesn’t blink. He remains perfectly still, his focus only on Tommy. “Release her or die.”
Chuckling, Tommy shifts behind me even more, using me as a shield. I can barely feel my arm where he’s squeezing it so tight to hold me in place. “She’s everything. The whole reason I’m here. I’m not giving her up. She has to die.”
Sebastian shifts his bright blue gaze to me. I see the question in his eyes. I’ve seen it before. Do you trust me? I hold myself perfectly still and slowly close my eyes.
The single gunshot deafens me, and I feel the bullet whiz past my cheek before it slams Tommy back into the stack of boats behind us.
Sebastian hauls me into his arms before Tommy even hits the floor. “Fuck, that was close,” he whispers harshly against my temple.
As I stare at Tommy’s unmoving body, I know he’s dead. Sebastian’s sniper skills assured that. “Are you talking about the bullet that came with an inch of my face or the fact I almost died?” I ask in a shaky voice, lifting my hand to the belt around my neck.
Sebastian slides the belt off for me, then turns my face toward his, his voice a rough rasp. “I’m talking about how close I came to losing you. I’m sorry, Talia. For everything.”
Knowing we still need to talk, I nod. “How did you know where to find us?”
He snorts and shakes his head. “Your shrewd mind helped me piece it together, while your stubbornness saved your life.”
When I raise my eyebrows, he nods. “It’s true. If you hadn’t left your phone behind in my room, I wouldn’t have known where to start looking. Your phone had all the info I needed to connect Cynthia to Tommy.”
“It did? But I didn’t connect Cynthia to Tommy. How did you?”
“Your notes on Tommy’s folder, the background picture of that fan club event on your phone, and Cynthia’s text and selfie with you was all I needed to head toward the beach, where thankfully the impending storm hadn’t fully erased your tracks leading here.”
“Okay, so that’s how you found us.” But when I pause and eye him skeptically, he shrugs.
“I did have some great facial recognition software that plots the entire face. Tommy making himself a geek girl in your club was ingenious. The long straight black hair and glasses definitely threw me off, but he didn’t change the structure of his face. The software saw past his disguise. And if he played a woman once before, he could’ve done it again. That’s how I matched his face to Cynthia’s.”
I stare at him, a bit awed that he figured it out. “But I still don’t see how you even thought to check the photo on my phone?”
He flashes a confident smile. “Where had Tommy worked at Columbia? Do you remember?”
“He worked in the main office and the theater department.” I let out a half-laugh. “The theater…that must be how he learned to disguise himself so well.”
“If you hadn’t highlighted his employment at Columbia in your notes, I might not have looked twice at his background there.”
I grimace. “It turns out you were right about our cases crossing too.”
“They did connect?”
Nodding, I tell him how Tommy was involved in the drug ring I stopped back in college.
Sebastian rolls his shoulders. “I thought it was crazy that the two cases could be connected, but the overlaps just felt too coincidental.”
“Tommy had to have been the redhead who paid Hank to buy that Hawthorne voucher.” Sighing, I blow out a relieved breath. “At least it’s over.”
“Not quite.” Sebastian sighs. “We still have to go over all this with Simon and the police. Are you ready?”
When I nod, he pulls my phone from his jean pocket and dials.
After a whole day spent at the police station, including a quick dinner of pizza while signing tons of paperwork, I’m exhausted by the time Sebastian and I reach the resort.
“I feel like I could sleep for a week,” I say as I lean against the elevator wall and close my eyes. “At least I don’t have to be back until later tomorrow night. I can sleep in.”
Sebastian grunts and pushes the elevator buttons. When the bell pings, I open my eyes and frown when I see we’re on Sebastian’s floor. “I’m on five.”
“Why don’t you stay in my room? You can take a shower and go to bed early if you want.”
I tilt my head. “I can do that in my own room.”
“Do you really want to be alone tonight?”
No, I don’t, but I also don’t have the brainpower for a battle of wits with you either. “I’m all questioned out right now.”
Just as I lean over to push the button for my floor, Sebastian captures my hand, his eyes searching mine. “Do it for me, Talia. I almost lost you today.”
The concern in his voice melts my heart, so I nod and follow him to his room. Once we walk in, I say, “I’m grabbing a hot shower to wash off all the sand.”
When I start to move away, Sebastian’s fingers lace with mine. Rubbing his thumb over mine, he says softly, “What made you angrier? The fact that I invaded your privacy, or that I didn’t do anything with the information?”
“Both made me equally mad.”
His gaze searches mine. “I only bugged your phone to know where you were at all times. I wasn’t taking a chance that I might’ve missed something and you were still in danger.”
“You should’ve told me.”
His mouth presses in a stubborn line. “I don’t regret the time we had together without the case getting in the way, Talia.”
The emotion reflected in his voice softens my anger. I don’t either. And if he hadn’t bugged my phone,
I never would’ve been pissed enough to leave it in his room in the first place, and I’d be dead, so his instincts weren’t off. When I nod and he starts to smile, I add, “Just don’t ever do that again.”
I move to pull away, but he holds fast. “What did I say to you when you wouldn’t tell me your name that night at the party? Do you remember?”
“I remember you chose my body over my name,” I say, smirking.
His expression hardens. Releasing me, he walks toward the desk, saying over his shoulder, “While you’re in the shower, try to remember.”
I take an extra long shower, doing everything I can to scrub the experience with Tommy from my mind and body.
While I blow-dry my hair, my gaze locks on the pearls for the hundredth time since I walked in the bathroom. Sebastian had returned them to the hand towel where he’d found them this morning and apparently hadn’t touched them since.
The answer to Sebastian’s question pops into my head as I’m finger-combing my hair into a tousled style.
Sliding back into my underwear, tank-top, and shorts, I open the door and step out of the steamy bathroom, saying, “I remember—” But I cut myself off when I see him sitting on the end of his bed, elbows on his knees, his watch dangling between his fingers. I step closer and touch his bent head. “Is everything okay?”
Sebastian sets the watch on the bed and stands to cup my jaw, his blue eyes tracing my face like he’s seeing it for the first time. “That was you that night eleven years ago?”
My attention snags on the white box and my note sitting on the desk next to the open brown box. He said it was stuff from his sister. Guess she finally found the box and sent it. Blinking back tears, I nod. “I was telling you the truth the night of the party. I was Red.”
“I knew you recognized me.” He shakes his head, frustration flickering as his thumbs trace my cheekbones. “Why didn’t you tell me we’d met before?”
Scarlett Red: A Billionaire SEAL Story, Part 2 (In the Shadows) Page 16