by Lauren Carr
Chris felt a tightening around his throat as Carson looped the reins of a bridle around his neck and yanked back to pull him up onto his knees. “Gotcha!” Carson breathed into his ear.
Cursing, Chris pulled at the reins to get air into his lungs while Carson dug his hand into his bloodied coat pocket. He loosened them enough for Chris to breathe while keeping them tight enough to control him.
“What are you going to do?” Chris asked with a raspy breath.
He knew the answer when he saw the black knife handle in Carson’s hand. He pressed the button with his thumb and the bloody switchblade popped into view.
Carson pressed the cold blade against Chris’s throat.
“Hey, Chris—” Sierra sang out as she walked through the barn door. Seeing Chris on his knees with Carson behind him and a bloody knife to his throat, she screamed. She turned to run only to collide with Doris, clad in her floor length red robe and her high-heeled slippers.
“Carson,” Doris said, “I can see you’ve lost your mind. Did you think you would find it here?”
Carson pressed the blade of the knife against Chris’s throat. “Tell her not to mess with me.”
“Mom.” Chris fought for enough air to talk. The lack of oxygen made him dizzy. The white blotches in front of his eyes made it difficult to concentrate. With every breath, the blade of the knife nipped against his skin.
“Don’t worry, son,” Doris said in a calm tone. “He’s not going to hurt you.
Using the reins, Carson pulled Chris back against him. “He killed my Mabel.”
“You killed her,” Chris said.
“You killed her!” Carson pressed the knife against his throat.
Chris tried not to jump when he felt the sting of the blade slicing his neck and the trickle of blood drip down his throat.
“Everything was fine. I had everything under control. Mom was out of my life. Mabel and I were happy. And then you—you had to come along and start asking questions—wanting my DNA. Like you didn’t think I’d figure it out. Suddenly, Mabel was asking questions. She was looking at me. Then, she saw it.”
“Saw what?” Fighting to stay conscious, Chris shook his head.
“She saw under the mask,” Carson said with a growl that seemed to come from his gut. “She saw the face under my mask. When she saw what I really was—all the love was gone! And all that other stuff was there. Shame! Disgust! Horror! Hatred! I told her to stop! She wouldn’t stop looking at me like that!”
Carson screamed into Chris’s ear. “You made me kill her! The only woman I ever loved, and you did that to me!”
“I’m so sorry, Carson,” Chris said in a soft voice.
“No, you’re not. But you will be. You took Mabel from me, and now I’m going to take everyone you love from you—and you’re going to watch. You’re going to see everyone die in front of your very eyes. Then, you’ll know what it’s like to lose everything.”
“Carson,” Doris said in the same maternal tone she used when reading a children’s book during story hour at the library, “you’re going to put down that knife and release Christopher now.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’m going to put a bullet through your right eye, which will continue through your brain and out the back. It’s going to make a big mess, and the noise will upset the horses.”
“I’m giving the orders!” Carson tightened his grip on the reins. “Not you! I am!”
Chris struggled to loosen the leather straps cutting off his breathing.
“Christopher,” Doris said in a strong voice. “Listen to me. Do you hear me, Christopher?”
The tone of her voice commanded his attention. Shaking his head, he blinked to clear the white spots dancing in front of his eyes. He strained to hear her through the roar in his ears. Across from him, he saw her raise her right hand to aim a Smith and Wesson revolver at them.
“Tell her to drop it.” Carson pressed the knife against his throat. “Tell her to drop the gun now!”
“Mom, do as he says.”
Doris peered at Chris, who nodded his head to her.
Slowly, Doris took her finger off the trigger and knelt to the floor. Keeping her eyes on Chris’s, she placed the forty-four Magnum on the floor with her right hand.
As the gun touched the floor, Chris jerked to the side.
Doris’s left hand shot out of her pocket and she fired off one shot from a pearl handled thirty-eight caliber Smith and Wesson revolver.
Chris felt the bullet whiz past his temple to hit Carson in the right eye, through his twisted brain, and out the back of his head. He dropped to the floor like a bag of feed.
As his senses cleared, Chris heard the wail of the police sirens and the horses shriek at the violence. Doris unwrapped the reins from around his throat and ordered Nikki, who had been lurking outside with Sierra, to get a rag to press against the cut on his neck.
“Christopher,” Doris said in a soothing tone while cradling his head in her lap, “stay with us. Everything is okay. The girls are safe.”
Tears in her eyes, Helen took Chris’s hands into both of hers. “Chris, I’m here! Sierra called me.”
“Mom, you should have seen Doris!” Sierra knelt next to them. “She dropped that guy with one shot—in high-heels, too!”
“The uniforms already told me, dear.” Helen waved to the EMTs hurrying into the barn.
“Doris, how did you learn to shoot like that?” Sierra asked.
“Sharpshooting is my talent, dear.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
You took Mabel from me, and now I’m going to take everyone you love from you—and you’re going to watch. You’re going to see everyone die in front of your very eyes.
The leather straps squeezed around his neck to shut off his oxygen.
Then, you’ll know what it’s like to lose everything.
With a gasp, Chris sat straight up in the bed.
“Chris, you’re home.” Helen jumped from his desk where she had been working on her laptop to sit next to him on the bed and take his hand. “Everything is fine. Everyone’s okay.”
“Carson?” Surprised by how raspy his voice was, he touched his neck and found that a bandage had been wrapped around it. He remembered the knife that Carson had pressed against it.
“He’s dead,” Helen said. “Doris took him out.”
“He blamed me for killing Mabel. Was going to kill… everyone.”
Helen slid in closer to him. “It’s over. Everyone is safe.” Her shuddering breath revealed the fear that had gripped her when Sierra had called with the news. “You’re safe.”
“Safe.” Murmuring, he dropped back onto the bed.
She stretched out next to him and rested her head on his chest. “Do you remember the ambulance taking you to the hospital?”
Between Carson ramming his head into the stall door, and then almost being strangled, the events leading up to waking in his bed were in a fog. “What day is it?”
“Saturday.”
“Valentine’s Day.” Chris threw back the blankets. “I’ve got reservations.”
Helen eased him back down onto the bed. “We’re taking care of everything. You got a serious blow to the head. You need to rest.”
“Mom isn’t making her tuna casserole, is she?” He lay his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes. The pounding in his head seemed to bounce from one side of his head to the other.
“I don’t think so. She only does that when she wants you out of the house.” Helen wrapped her arms around him and took in a deep breath. “Chris?”
“Huh?” He focused on the sound of her voice.
“I love you.”
He ran his fingers through her hair. “I love you, too.”
They lay in silence.
Helen lifted her head from his
chest. “Chris?”
“Huh?” He blinked several times until his vision cleared. She was staring at him. “What?”
She cocked her head at him.
“Are you going to dump me again? It’s because I live with my mother, isn’t it?”
“No. I’m just wondering ...” Her voice trailed off. “Why haven’t you asked me?”
“Ask you what?”
“About why—”
“What happened back then is back then. It’s gone—in the past.” He grasped her hand. “I love you. You’ve always been the one. Whatever happened—”
Helen blinked away the tears that came to her eyes. “The thing is we aren’t past it.”
“We’ll get past it.”
“Not until I tell you the truth.”
“If you cheated on me—”
“Chris, I couldn’t drag you into my life because you meant too much to me. You had so much going for you and I—” she hiccupped.
“I don’t understand.”
“You and I didn’t meet until high school,” she said. “By then, my background was a thing of the past. I was settled in with the Lawsons.”
Chris cocked his head at her. “You were adopted. I knew that.”
“But you didn’t know all of it.”
“Cause you never talked about it,” he said. “I assumed that when you wanted to talk about it, you would. Just because you were adopted doesn’t make you damaged goods.”
She looked up at the ceiling. “I never talked about my background because it’s humiliating. How do you tell a loving, functional family, who have good firm beliefs of right and wrong, that you’re a phony?”
“You’re not a phony, Helen.”
“Come on.” She sniffed. “You’d look at me and the Lawsons, and you saw a family just like yours.”
Chris squinted his eyes and shook his head. “Maybe it’s the blow to the head. I’m not understanding.”
“Functional, Chris. Your family is so functional, it’s scary. So are the Lawsons. And since I lived with them, you assumed I was, too.”
“You broke my heart because my family is functional?”
“How do you tell the man you love and his perfect family that you come from the mother of all dysfunctional families?” She swallowed. “That my mother lives under a bridge somewhere, if she’s even still alive?”
“You say it like you’ve just now said it.”
“The Lawsons were good people,” she said. “They’re my folks. With them, I could almost believe I was normal.”
“You are normal, Helen.”
“Now,” she said. “But we had a long hard way to go to get there.”
Unsure if he heard her right, Chris shook his head. “We?”
“I have two younger brothers and a sister who were still in the system when I turned eighteen and moved to Morgantown. They weren’t lucky enough to find permanent homes. I had promised them that as soon as I turned eighteen I would become their guardian, they’d come live with me, and go to college.”
Chris sat up. “You hid your family from me?”
“Because I knew that you loved me enough to take them all on,” she cried. “They were my responsibility—not yours. I couldn’t let them down. They had no one except me and for me to turn my back on them. They were my family. Can’t you see?”
As she started to slump over the pain she had caused, he took her into a tight hug. “How could you keep that from me?” he whispered into her hair. “Couldn’t you see that I’d love them as much as I’ve loved you, because they were your family?”
“You thought I was this perfect, well-adjusted girl from a good loving functional family, just like yours.”
“Have you met my mother?” He chuckled. “She blew a man’s brains out today—wearing a red silk robe with a fur collar. We have a female rabbit named Thor.”
She giggled into his shoulder as he rocked her in his arms. He took her face into his hands. Their eyes met. He kissed her softly on her lips. With a sigh, they lay back onto the bed, wrapped in each other’s arms.
“I love you, Helen Clarke. You and your whole family—functional or not. When do I get to meet them?”
“Soon.” She kissed him on the jaw before whispering in his ear, “I promise.”
“Hey, Dad, are you awake?” Nikki yelled from the bottom of the stairs.
“We’ve got your Valentine’s dinner for you,” Sierra called.
Helen climbed out of the bed and pulled the comforter up to cover Chris. “They cooked dinner all by themselves.”
“All of them? Together?”
“Doris spilled the beans about us.” She rolled her eyes. “So much for sneaking around.”
The pleasant scent of Italian cheese and buffalo wings reached the room before the four girls, three large dogs and a rabbit rushed in. They carried two pizza pans, a huge platter of buffalo wings, and two liters of soda. They set the food on the desk and dresser. Emma passed out paper cups, plates, and napkins to everyone.
“Nonni didn’t cook any of this.” Chris was suspicious that the food smelled good. Yet, he found it difficult that his daughters could carry off such a feast.
“No, we cooked everything.” Nikki filled a paper cup with soda.
“With Elliott’s help,” Katelyn said while serving up two slices on a plate. “He made the pizza crust from scratch.”
“Tossed it in the air and caught it like those guys you see on television.” Sierra handed the plate to Chris.
“You need to leave room for dessert,” Helen said. “I stopped at the Dairy Queen and picked up an ice cream cake.”
“And we’re taking you downstairs to watch whatever movie you want, because that’s our gift to you.” Emma placed Thor on the bed. The bunny was dressed in a bright red dress and cape reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood.
“Where’s Elliott and Mom?” Chris asked between bites of his pizza. “Elliott made a great crust. Shame that he’s not getting any.”
The girls exchanged wicked grins.
“Elliott and your mother are using your Bavarian Inn reservations,” Helen said. “They’re meeting another couple. Some guy named Bruce and his wife.”
“Leaves more food for us.” Chris took a buffalo wing from Emma’s plate as she laid down next to him. “They’re missing a great Valentine’s Day party.” He bit into the chicken wing.
“The last thing your mother said on her way out the door was to not wait up.”
“That’s my mom,” Chris said. “Blows a man’s brains out in the morning and goes out dancing in the evening.”
“Speaking of that …” Pizza slice in hand, Sierra sat at the desk. “In the barn, you told your mom to put down that big huge gun. As soon as she did, I saw you jerk to the side and she shot the one she was hiding in her pocket. So you had to know she had a second gun. How’d you know?”
“Because Harry was my dad’s gun,” Chris said. “Mom prefers to use Annie when it comes to serious shooting.”
“Harry?” Helen asked. “Annie?”
“The forty-four Magnum is Harry,” Chris said. “When I saw Mom aiming Harry at Carson, I knew Annie was close by.”
“Annie?”
“The pearl handled Smith and Wesson is Annie. That’s Mom’s gun.”
“Your parents name their guns?”
Chris picked up Thor, splendid in her bright red dress and cape. “And you call my family functional.”
Chapter Thirty
Chris’s mind was clear the next morning. He woke up to find the house strangely quiet and his bed empty. He slipped into his bathrobe and slippers, and made his way downstairs. He found Helen curled up on the sofa in front of the living room fireplace, which had a welcoming fire. She was surrounded by three dogs in various dog beds. Dressed in a pink faux fur vest, Thor was tuck
ed in next to her.
“You’re up.” Helen closed the lid to her laptop and picked up a mug that was resting on the end table. “Coffee is over an hour old. I can make a fresh pot for you if you’d like.” She gave him a hug and a quick kiss.
Chris read the time on the grandfather’s clock. “I missed church.”
“Your mom said to tell you that she’ll teach your Sunday school class.”
“The last time Mom taught my Sunday School class, I spent the next month unteaching the kids what she’d taught them.”
“She is a trip.” With a laugh, Helen tucked her laptop under her arm and led the way into the kitchen, with Sadie and Mocha falling in line behind her. “She offered to take Sierra to church with the girls. She jumped at it—especially when Doris threw in pancakes at iHop.”
She placed her laptop on the kitchen counter on the way to the coffeemaker. “Ever since Sierra found out your mother is a sharpshooter—and was a beauty queen—she is now the biggest thing since texting.”
“Were you elected, or did you volunteer to babysit me?” Chris climbed onto a stool at the counter.
“Volunteered, of course.” With a wink, she lifted the lid of her laptop. “I’ve watched the gym’s security recording of Rodney arriving and leaving the gym the night Felicia got killed a hundred times. He did it. I can tell by the smug look on his face when he looks right up at the camera before he leaves the gym. He thinks we’re too stupid to figure out how he did it and it makes me so mad.”
While Helen emptied the carafe and prepared a fresh pot of coffee, Chris viewed the recording on her laptop. The overhead angle of the film showed the front entrance, service desk, and juice bar of the athletic club. As gym members walked in, they would hold out their key tabs under the scanner to read their membership bar code. The recording had a date and time stamp across the lower right corner.
With his athletic bag slung over his shoulder, Rodney Bell, dressed in sweats, arrived at six-fifty-six in the evening, and scanned his gym key tag. Greeting the attendant behind the juice bar, he sauntered beyond the front desk and out of view.
The scent of freshly brewed coffee wafted through the kitchen.