by A. J. Aalto
The tension of the night spilled out of her belly and she slapped a hand over her mouth to stop the nervous giggles. Tears prickled her vision.
He paused, clearly debating offering some form of comfort, but that was ridiculous in the space between them, and in the end, he turned, boots crunching down the driveway.
What do you say to a dude who likes to role-play rape but not actually cross that line? Thank you for not being a full-on asshole? Thank you for hearing the word “no” when it’s truly meant? Thank you for recognizing I wasn’t playing? Maybe he had well-honed instincts for that. But Gillian found herself speechless as he went back to his car. He’d parked in her driveway. Yep, he’d been confident that this scenario was wanted by the lady placing the ad, not a crime, no need to hide his identity. But what about the next guy who reads this and shows up to “convince you hard”? She locked the door, leaving the light on, and stood there with her hands covering her face, shaking. When she finally threw herself into action, it was to call Frankie’s landline and make sure she was okay, but her thumb stalled on the phone.
Wake your sister to scare the shit out of her? Again? She dialed Paul instead. He answered on the second ring, sounding wide awake. “Gillian.”
“A man. A m—” She lost her voice to a squeak, which turned into a sob that she tried to choke back. “There’s an ad. Paul, he’s taken out an ad.”
“Call the police if it’s an emergency,” he reminded. “I’m getting dressed. I’ll be right over.”
Not feeling like the police were immediately needed, and embarrassed enough to not want them here, she paced until Paul arrived, afraid to sit down, troubled by her own temper. This was Travis’s doing. The darkness, hot, familiar, and frightening, spilled into her veins. Dad’s rage, not mine, she told herself, an old mantra that had helped her cool down in the past. Helped? Not enough. She chewed her thumbnail viciously, tearing at the nail with her teeth. In the end, you’re just like him, aren’t you? And is that really so bad?
“Dangerous line of thinking, Gillian,” she whispered in the quiet house. “We won't go there again.”
When headlights lit the front of the house, she made sure it was Paul’s Audi before she unlocked the door. She’d had no plans to hug the man, but when he approached, his arms opened, and she fell gratefully into them, not caring if Travis Freeman was out there somewhere watching the fallout of his prank. After a moment, the embrace was comforting enough to make Gillian self-conscious, bringing her back to the ground hard enough to remind her that she was in her robe, and this was a married man, and not her married man. Trembling, she let go of him and stepped back to let him into the house.
She let out a shaky breath and wiped her face with one hand. “I guess this is a bad sign.”
“It’s not an improvement,” Paul agreed grimly, his normally serious face gone stone hard and angular with displeasure. “Tell me what’s happened.”
She explained the encounter with the strange man on her porch, grateful that Paul did not feel the need to say “told you so” about not having a dog yet or getting a security system like Frankie’s installed. Still, feeling defensive about the distress in his cool blue eyes, she capped her recounting with, “I’m not going to be in the house much longer. A few days, tops. I’ll book a moving van.”
“No,” Paul said. “This situation has moved beyond you moving your own shit in a marked van that anyone can follow to your new place, Gillian. If he doesn’t already know where you and Frankie will move, we need to keep it that way.”
Gillian blinked rapidly, feeling stupid. “I don’t understand. What do you suggest we do instead? It’s not safe here for me, and it’s sure as hell not safe at Frankie’s. She’s already had to ask Henry to keep the boys longer.”
“That’s smart,” Paul said, moving past a pile of packed boxes to move into the small pocket kitchen. He pointed at the countertop, seeking permission to start the coffee maker, and she nodded. He got down the few mugs she’d left out of boxes. “For you, too?”
She was going to say no, but after a moment of checking in with her body and finding a warning dullness behind her right eyebrow, she nodded in resignation.
Paul put a fresh coffee filter in the basket, filled the water reservoir, and looked around for coffee grounds. She stepped past him to get them from the freezer. “New bag,” she explained. “Sugar is in the cupboard above your left shoulder.”
He got everything ready, and Gillian flashed back on the disgusting coffee maker in the McIntyre house. “Paul, I need to tell you some things. You deserve that. I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
Paul didn’t turn around. “I know. You will when you’re ready, if you choose to. Gillian, you’re not obligated to tell me the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I’m not a jury of your peers. I work for you.”
He added four heaping spoons of sugar to his mug and then glanced at her. “One, please.”
“That being said,” he continued, adding a bit of sugar to her cup, “I can probably work a lot more efficiently for you if I have all the information I need. You can trust me. You pay me to have your back. Gillian, I’ve got your back.”
“You have to understand. They’re not just my secrets.” She pulled out a chair from her tiny dining table and sat. She caught herself cupping the right side of her neck, and dropped her hand guiltily. “And none of this is the way I’d have done it, if I’d had the choice.”
“How serious is it?” he asked. A spoon clinked in the mug while the heady fragrance of brewed coffee began to fill the small room. He did not look back at her.
Gillian recognized this tactic. It was easier to confess if you didn’t have to look into someone’s eyes; Greg had used this method when trying to extract sensitive information. Even seeing the method, Gillian admitted she felt safer saying it to his back. “I anonymously reported Bobby McIntyre to the police for poisoning her sister with antifreeze. I suspect she’s done the same to Frankie on a smaller scale. Just a tiny bit, to make her sick. The hospital has taken samples of blood tests and urine for a toxicology screen, but they weren’t able to do it on site, and had to send it out to a different lab for results. The immediate antidote was medical-grade ethanol. They were able to report that her electrolytes were balanced and that’s a good sign. Likely, the tests will come back okay, which means it was a tiny dose, not large enough to do lasting damage to her kidneys. This time.”
Paul turned now, handed her coffee with the milk, and then leaned his hip on the counter, taking the pressure off his bad leg. He measured his next question. “Why would Bobby do this to her supposed best friend?”
“Whenever Frankie has pulled away from her in the past, Bobby has melted down. I was there once when Frankie had told Bobby their friendship wasn’t working anymore,” Gillian said. “Bobby showed up sobbing and wailing, throwing things, snot running down her face, crawling on the porch, clinging to Frankie’s skirt, shaking and begging. It was such a scene that the neighbors came out to see what was happening. I was surprised no one called the police.”
“And this was just a friendship?” Paul asked.
Gillian hesitated and see-sawed one hand. “In Frankie’s eyes, yes. They met in art class, did a few projects as partners. Bobby gets… attached. Neurotically so. Frankie was so mortified by Bobby’s extreme reaction that day, she back-pedaled and convinced Bobby that she hadn’t meant to break up their relationship, that she was just having a bad day and that everything was going to be fine. I was alarmed. I’d never seen anything like it. It was…” She wrapped both hands now around her hot cup, and sipped her coffee tentatively. “Like a tsunami of emotion. Bobby came completely undone. According to Frankie, they hadn’t even been all that close. Bobby has always taken the friendship much more seriously than Frankie did. Bobby clung to Frankie like her life depended on it. That made it more alarming, in my opinion.”
“Forgive me,” Paul said, “but your sister does collect some rather strange people around
her. And I in no way mean this is her doing. What I mean is, strange people are drawn to her.”
“Everyone is drawn to my sister. My father always said she was the pretty one and I was the smart one. You know, when he first said it, it had stung. That wound was deep.” Gillian stared into her coffee. “What thirteen-year-old girl wants to hear she’s the plain sister and always will be? Dad said looks were a burden, though. That brains would get me farther in the long run. Not at first, no. The beautiful ones tend to float through youth where doors are opened to them, where jobs, drinks, and love are freely offered. That was never easy to watch, Mr. Langerbeins. It took me a long time to find a man who loved my brains. Had my share of disappointments, while Frankie seemed to flounce from love affair to love affair, juggling men without a care. I was envious. But I'm finally wondering if Dad was right. Frankie loves to be the flame that moths flutter around, I assure you,” Gillian said, smiling a little, “but it does cause her a certain amount of grief.”
Paul said nothing, just watched his client speculatively and sipped his coffee.
The seriousness of the night rushed back in to wipe her smile away. “I’m just glad that asshole isn’t sending strange men to Frankie’s house. She’s softer than I am, you understand. I can’t bear the thought of some pervert throwing his body in her back door, forcing himself on her. Or me, of course. I suppose it could be worse. It could be Travis himself. God, what if he does show up here? What do I do then?”
“Travis Freeman is a coward,” Paul said. “That’s what this advertisement means, Gillian. He’ll convince other men to try it. But he’s not going to hurt you. He’s not going to do it himself.”
He’s not going to hurt you. This was amazing to her, and she clung to it. He’s a coward, face to face. He needs other men to do his dirty work. And suddenly, she knew she had the upper hand. Because you can hurt him. You won’t need anyone else to do it. And on the heels of this: You’ve already gotten away with it once.
Paul looked like he was watching the gears click in her head and the furrow in his forehead deepened. “You let me handle this, Gillian.”
“Of course,” she lied coolly. “There will be other ads. This is just the first we’ve found.”
“Lucky the guy who showed up was merely kinky and not a rapist.”
“Probably a real rapist doesn’t wait for permission via a sex ad,” she reasoned.
“There’s a lot of grey area, there. Don’t count on that,” he warned. “And don’t for a second think the guy who showed up wasn’t dangerous at all. He has a predilection you won’t enjoy. Don’t open the door for him again.”
“I won’t.”
“Or anyone else you don’t know.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ll put a man outside Frankie’s place for a bit from second shift onward, just to see what crawls out of the woodwork.” He paused. “Any idea why he’d send these creeps to your place and not hers?”
“Doesn’t want Frankie ruined for him by some random rapist?”
Paul nodded. “Maybe.”
“Wants me punished? He does think his break-up was my fault.”
“Wants to scare you into backing off and letting him get back into Frankie’s life.”
“If Frankie knew he’d sent someone to rape her,” she said, “she’d never take him back.”
“But sending someone to rape her sister would be excusable?”
“In his brain, maybe. He’s delusional. He thinks he can convince her I’m some horrible influence in her life; maybe he thinks he can convince her I made this ad myself. That this is some indication I’m secretly kinky?” Gillian gave a sad sort of titter and shook her head. “She wouldn’t shun me if I had a kink. And Frankie knows I have no secrets from her. Sisters tell each other everything. Travis Freeman should know that about us by now.”
Paul finished his coffee and put the mug in the sink. “You gonna be okay here tonight?”
“I don’t think I'm,” she admitted. “I want to go to a hotel.”
“Grab an overnight bag and I’ll drive behind you to make sure you’re not followed there,” he said. “You’ll use my credit card and register under my surname.”
“What for?” Gillian asked. “You don’t think he can check things like that, do you?”
“I have no idea what he’s capable of, and I’d rather not have him pull a fast one on some overtired front desk clerk,” Paul replied. “Bag, bedtime stuff, maybe a few things in case you decide to stay another night.”
“How can I ever repay you for all this?” she asked tiredly.
“It’ll be on my invoice,” Paul said quietly, and she went to pack a bag.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sunday, November 2. 6:00 A.M.
It was only upon waking in a strange bed — floundering for her glasses in the dim room with a beam of sun slashing through the poorly designed curtains that did not keep out nearly enough light — that Gillian considered the possibility that Bobby had set up the advertisement. Maybe it wasn’t that Travis Freeman wouldn’t rape her, it was that Bobby McIntyre physically couldn’t, and needed a male surrogate for her crime.
And if Bobby did it, Gillian thought, that meant she knew I called the police about Barb and the poison. Or suspected that I’d cause a bigger rift between her and Frankie. Either way…
She wondered how to safely check on Barb without further fanning the flames. She didn’t dare go over, not until she was sure Travis had sent the midnight mystery man. She rolled over in the hotel bed, burying herself under the too-many pillows piled all around her.
All she wanted was to run a cute little bed and breakfast at Higgins Point, a retreat for artists and writers, a quiet place near Derby Harbor where she could stare out at the vague shape of Toronto across the water through the fog on the horizon. On a clear day, you could see the CN Tower and the bright skyscrapers on the other side of the lake. She just wanted to share that peace with other artists. How had things gotten so complicated again?
She checked her messages. Text from a blocked number. Did you enjoy your date, whore?
Travis was her first thought, but again, suspicions about Bobby snuck into her mind. And the darkness pushed it out, the rage. She was under one of their thumbs, and she was not accustomed to being made to feel small and intimidated.
There was also a message from Paul. Frankie thinks you may have picked up her phone by accident?
She texted back, Let me check my purse, though she knew the answer. Not an accident. A few seconds later, she thumbed in, Dammit, yes I did. Tell her not to worry. I’ll come by the new place today and bring it.
Paul replied, When I got here last night, there were pages of a diary taped to the front door. I photographed it in case we need evidence of harassment then removed them before Frankie could see them.
Gillian’s heart nearly stopped in her chest. “He’s got your back,” she told herself aloud. “It’s okay. You can trust him.” Her heart didn’t believe her, and panic clawed at the back of her throat. Did he read it? She called him, sitting bolt upright in the sheets, wrapping them around her tightly for comfort. When he answered curtly with just her name, she asked, “Did you put them somewhere safe?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m assuming they are something we want concealed?”
We. Gillian felt her breath rush out. “They’re Frankie’s. I meant to tell you last night, I really did. I was just so tired and frazzled… He—someone broke into Frankie’s house Thursday night, early Friday morning, and stole several diaries.”
Paul was quiet for a long beat. “That’s something I should have known about immediately,” he finally said, and Gillian didn’t feel chided, but rather validated. It was as serious as her gut told her. She was not overreacting.
“Was she home when this happened?” Paul sounded winded. “Was there a confrontation?”
“She slept right through it,” Gillian barely breathed, horror constricting her chest. “Whoever it was came int
o her bedroom and took them from a box under her bed.”
“Goddammit,” he swore. “I really wish you would both just tell me everything. You can’t go home, she can’t go home, her kids must stay with their father for now. We need to consider contacting the police.”
“There’s one who has been tailing me around,” Gillian admitted slowly. “Tall guy, broad through the shoulders…”
“Constable Dean Jagger,” Paul supplied. “He spoke with me about you. Wednesday.”
“Now who’s keeping secrets?” Gillian said tightly. “You might have mentioned.”
“It wasn’t anything to worry you about,” Paul said. “He’s just clearing an old cold case, you’re not serious suspects. Had some questions, is all. I told him nothing he didn’t already know. You and your sister had hired me, that it had nothing to do with his case, and that neither of you were capable of shady shit. Though frankly, the way you Hearth sisters keep secrets, maybe I spoke too quickly.” She heard the frustration in his voice and grimaced as he continued, “Jesus, Gillian, he broke into her house while she was sleeping, and you didn’t think it was important that I know?”
Gillian felt the beginning of a throb, the warning weight of a brewing headache in its infancy, behind her right eyebrow. She agreed with Paul, placating, submitting, saying whatever she needed to in order to end the conversation. He wasn’t fooled, but he let her off the hook after suggesting that she not come directly to the new house; he would pick her up in a new car and talk about his plan for moving her things. She negotiated and they agreed that she’d be fine to drive to her home to box up the last few things, and he would meet her there. She promised to only go in the house if she was sure it was secure, that she was alone, that the house was empty, that at least her single neighbor to the west was home.
Gillian hung up and dragged her purse into her lap to find her pills. She shifted things — pocketbook, hairbrush, lipstick, notepad, contact solution, glasses case — and didn’t find the bottles. There was no way she’d have left them at home.