She wagged the gun at him. “But the thing is, when you’re an asshole, no matter how much luck you have, there are going to be women who don’t want to worship at your altar.
“This is where our story takes a sad turn,” she continued. “Because our antihero fresh off the bus in Tampa happened to be told no for the first time in his life. And guess what he decided to do about it?”
Sterling’s eyes were locked on hers, and that’s all she cared about. That he was conscious, that he could hear. Nothing else mattered.
“I’m thinking you can guess, dear Sterling,” she said. “I imagine it’s what happens when someone says no to you as well.”
She got back to her feet, restless. “He raped her and dumped her body, didn’t he?”
Moving behind him, she placed her hands on his thick shoulders. “But our blessed little antihero got lucky again. Come trial day, guess who his judge was? Yup, it was you. Sterling Burke, known far and wide for his leniency toward rich white boys who just ‘made a mistake.’”
She pressed down hard and then let go. “You tossed the case, didn’t you? On some flimsy excuse. And Nathan walked.”
Ricky cleared his throat and glanced at his watch. She wished she had all night. But she didn’t.
“Do you know one of the saddest parts of this story?” She leaned against the desk once more. “I bet you don’t even remember who I’m talking about. Couldn’t pick him—let alone the victim—out if your life depended on it.” She paused. “Oh wait. It does.”
Alice stroked a finger along the gun.
“It’s a shame you didn’t remember him,” she said. “If you had, you would have been able to follow his truly illustrious career of escalating crimes. We don’t have time for the details.”
It was then that her breathing shifted; it was then that her heart rate kicked up. She dipped her fingers into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out the well-loved four-by-six photo, just holding it between her thumb and finger.
“But it brings me to the second part of my story,” she said, her voice hitching for the first time. She swallowed hard. “Once upon a time, there was a girl, and she was the best girl in the world.”
Leaning in once more, she held Lila’s picture up to his face. “Look at her.” She dipped her head so she could make sure his eyes were open. “Look at her.”
“Alice,” Ricky murmured behind her, and there must have been something in her voice. A sob had been sitting deep in her chest that she’d thought she’d managed to tamp down. Maybe some of it had slipped into her words.
“Do you know what happened that day you let Nathan walk free? Just because he reminded you of yourself and all the evil things you wish were forgivable but never will be no matter how many of these guys you let go? Do you know what you let happen?”
She shoved the picture back in her pocket, no longer wanting his eyes on Lila. “He killed her. He stole her from me and kept her for two days. Do you know how many minutes, how many seconds, that is? I do. Because I counted every single one of them. Then he killed her. He wrapped her in a sheet and dumped her body. Just like she was trash. Like she was disposable.”
At that, her hand lashed out, connecting with his cheek. The crack of skin on skin echoed in the room.
“It was because of you,” she said, pressing her palm against her thigh to get herself back under control. “Gone. Because of you.”
Ricky shifted again behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder at him, her eyebrows raised.
He shook his head, not interested in playing a role beyond the one he already had. She’d asked a lot of him. Keeping tabs on Charlotte and nudging her in certain directions when needed had been the hardest. Toward the end, Alice had cut off most contact with Ricky to be safe, but she’d seen it wear on him in the earlier months. There had been other requests, too. She’d sent him to Jacksonville to email Trudy. Why? He’d asked her. She hadn’t answered, but some small part of her thought that she wanted someone to eventually tell this story. To know why it had happened. To know that this had all started in a quiet little house on the edge of a sleepy city in Florida.
After Ruby’s death, she’d thought he would bow out. But, as with her, some grim determination to see it through drove him. Meeting his eyes now, though, she thought it might have broken him to continue on with the plan. For a split second, she wondered what would happen to him next, once Sterling was dead, once there was no longer a purpose there to hide the self-loathing, the shock, the disbelief.
In the next second, she realized it couldn’t be her problem. She blinked, dismissing him from her mind, and turned back to Sterling.
Despite being bound and drugged, he didn’t seem weak. He didn’t seem defenseless. All she could see was a dirty soul the world would never miss.
“There was a debt to be paid,” she said. “You’ll pay it with your life.”
Her voice was quiet now. Controlled.
“More than that, you’ll pay with your reputation,” she said. “Because people will know. They’ll know what you did, they’ll know who you are under that mask. They’ll see the monster. And nothing, absolutely nothing, you can do can change that.”
Alice breathed deeply.
“Her name was Lila Garner,” she said. He needed to know her name. It needed to be the last thing he ever heard. “If you’re wondering why you’re about to die. Her name is Lila Garner.”
She thought this was when he would scream, if he could. The moment she raised the gun to rest against his temple. He couldn’t, though, and satisfaction tasted sweet on her tongue.
These were snapshots that she would remember. The terror in his eyes. The smell of leather and power. The weight of the gun against her palm. The steady click of the grandfather clock. They wouldn’t erase the ones of Lila, but they would join them.
Everything was quiet. The house. Ricky. Even her heartbeat. She’d thought it would be loud in her ears, loud enough to drown out the reasons not to go through with this. But her pulse was a steady flutter beneath her wrist. Her breathing was even and deep.
There was no haze of rage blinding her vision. There were no tears.
Emotional. Erratic. They would call her that if they saw her now, a muzzle against the temple of a man who had played a part in Lila’s death. But she wasn’t. Nothing had felt more right, more true.
The gun was heavy and familiar. She filled her lungs to steady her hand, the pad of her finger pressing against metal.
She met his eyes one last time, and all she saw was an evil that had tainted too many lives and deserved to be extinguished.
Alice leaned in, her lips a breath away from his ear. “Everyone will know what you did,” she whispered again.
Then she stepped to the side and pulled the trigger.
The shot was muffled, but the aftermath was not.
Both she and Ricky moved quickly and with precision. People saw what they wanted to see. Once they found the suicide letter, most wouldn’t look further. But Nakamura might. The scene would have to look believable enough to hold up to at least his initial scrutiny.
Ricky worked on the special tape they’d used on Sterling’s wrists. It bound to itself but didn’t leave a residue on the skin. She slipped on a fresh pair of latex gloves and went to work arranging his body so that it slumped, like it would have if he’d pulled the trigger. It was a challenge, with his muscles still locked from the paralytic.
In the end, she was satisfied that for anyone who walked in the room and saw the gun dangling from the man’s limp hand, it would look like suicide.
When they were done cleaning the scene for any signs of their presence, they stepped back, their shoulders bumping. She glanced at Ricky’s sharp profile.
In the hours when the night slipped into day and she couldn’t sleep, she wondered why he’d done it. Why he’d said yes. Most of the time it didn’t matter; all that mattered was that he had. But in those moments, she wondered.
And she remembered his hand a
gainst her belly, the silence that followed. She remembered his eyes, deep shadows, when he saw the tiny body for the first time—ugly, bloody limbs, squished face, and rooting mouth. It hadn’t been love but panic in the tightening of his jaw. She remembered the blank look when Lila curled a hand around his finger.
This wasn’t revenge. This was penance. For never wanting something, for being relieved when it was gone.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Once they were outside, skirting along the back of the yard and into the alleyway, she pulled out the burner phone she’d picked up at Walmart weeks ago.
“Report it,” she said after dialing the number to the station. The cops wouldn’t be recording it, not if it didn’t go through dispatch, but still, they couldn’t be too careful.
He cleared his throat and then pitched his voice several tones lower. “Yeah . . . I think I heard a gunshot . . . the Burke residence . . . I was jogging by . . . yeah . . .”
There were a few seconds of silence, and then he nodded once, hung up, and pocketed the phone. He’d ditch it on the first opportunity.
“Are you good?” she asked.
He nodded. He’d be out of the state before the confusion even began to clear.
They weren’t really ones for goodbye, she and him. For too long, they’d been two souls locked together, forced to move through the world bound by circumstances instead of choice. The ghost of that chain would linger far longer than she wanted to admit.
But just as he turned away, she laid a hand on his arm. “Hey. Thank you. I know it didn’t . . . it didn’t turn out like we wanted. But, thank you.”
He glanced back at her, a sad smile on his lips, in his eyes. “She was mine, too.” He shrugged.
She nodded, even though it was a pretty lie, and released him. Then he was gone.
Fading back into the shadows of the garage, she waited.
Minutes later, Nakamura’s name popped up on her screen. The station would have called him once they connected the dots to their case.
“Garner,” Nakamura said once she answered, his voice rough with sleep. It was still so early. “Someone called in a gunshot at the Burkes’. Uniforms are heading over, but we should probably check it out in case it’s not bogus.”
“Shit, okay,” Alice said, going for surprised and slightly annoyed. “Yeah. I’ll meet you over there.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
TRUDY
August 4, 2018
Six days after the kidnapping
Trudy hadn’t moved from where she’d crouched on the cold tile of Judith’s kitchen floor.
“What do we do?” she finally whispered. The muscles in her legs trembled underneath her fingers, and it was only then that she realized how still she’d been holding herself. Everything ached. Everything.
Zeke just shook his head and stared down at her phone screen like it would tell them a different story. Different from the one where a man connected to Sterling had murdered Alice Garner’s daughter.
“Did she kill . . . ?” Trudy trailed off, not even able to finish the question.
There were times she fancied herself old. Old beyond her years. It was a phrase she’d heard on the TV shows that ran after midnight to compete with infomercials. She’d liked the idea of it and repeated the words to herself in her mirror while lining her eyes in black. Old beyond her years.
It was rare she felt young anymore. The last time had been her running across the grass with Ruby at their summer party, sparklers and lightning bugs and the promise of summer and everything that meant.
But now she felt young. So young. She wanted someone to hold her. She wanted the lies, that it would all be okay, that she would be okay.
Trudy breathed in, the dust in the air sticking to the roof of her mouth. “Did she kill Ruby?”
“We have to tell someone,” Zeke said, his voice just as hushed as hers, as if they were keeping confidences. “Call Charlotte.”
“No, what if we’re wrong?” There was panic at the thought of calling her aunt with the information, panic at what the woman would do. “We have to go back. We need to be there.”
He ran his hand over his mouth and nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
But they stayed where they were, frozen. Eventually she began to read the articles her phone had pulled up on Nathan Beckett, because there was nothing else to do.
“Come on.” Zeke finally snagged her beneath her armpits and hauled her to her feet.
She swayed, drunk off the rush of fear and panic and adrenaline. Zeke laid a palm against her spine and gave her a gentle push to get her moving. Her limbs followed his unspoken order, but her brain was still foggy.
They murmured excuses to Judith, who watched them with eyes that saw too much. Trudy thought the woman must have noticed the mascara tracks on her cheeks.
“Did you get what you needed?” she asked as they turned toward the door.
Trudy paused, but neither of them answered. And then they were outside, putting space between them and those watery blue eyes, the store-bought cookies, the bitter tea, the answers they’d been looking for.
Zeke had been right. She hadn’t actually wanted to find them.
They drove the first twenty minutes in silence, the miles beneath the wheels bringing them closer to a decision that would have to be made.
“Nathan Beckett took Lila from the mall,” Trudy finally said. Her breathing had turned ragged, each breath shallow and nearly useless. The mall. Something flickered at the edge of her memory. The mall, a week before Ruby’s disappearance. How had they found her? “A nice lady” had helped her, Ruby had said. Trudy closed her eyes and was back there crouched on the linoleum, her feet sticky from melted ice cream. She remembered the soft fall of brown hair against a sharp jaw as the woman turned to look back at the scene before she rounded the corner out of sight. Had that been the detective? Trudy’s stomach heaved at the thought. Had that been a test run? “God. She’s sick.”
Zeke might have said something; she didn’t know.
“Her murder was five years ago,” Trudy said, her thumb finding the edge of her teeth and pressing down. “Has she been planning this the whole time?”
They flew past three semis, and Trudy glanced at the speedometer. It held steady around ninety miles per hour.
“It was the choice she could live with,” Zeke said, his slow, steady words salt against an open wound.
“Fuck you,” Trudy said, and it was a whisper at first, startling in its intensity as if it were pulled from the deepest part of her belly. It didn’t stay a whisper. “Don’t you dare throw those words back in my face.”
He kept his eyes on the road, his teeth clenched.
She undid her seat belt, shifting toward him, not really knowing what she intended to do. “This isn’t us bullshitting out of our asses, Zeke. This isn’t a game.”
“My mom isn’t a game, either,” Zeke said quietly, as if he couldn’t keep the words in his mouth.
She lashed out then. Her fingernails slashed at his face, leaving angry marks against his cheeks. Pain. It ached in her body, a live thing that pulsed and twisted and bruised, and she wanted it to ache in his.
He winced, but she didn’t back off.
She pressed her fingers into the hollow of his throat and felt the skittering of his pulse beneath her palm as she cut off his air.
There was no logic for it, but she didn’t know logic in that moment. In that heady, dangerous, desperate moment. All she wanted was to make him take back those words.
The choices you could live with.
Only after he realized she wasn’t relenting did he lift his hand to slap at her arm. It was a quick downward slash, hard bone against hard bone. It broke her grip on his neck, but it deterred her for only a second.
When his attention was back on the road, she launched herself at him.
He snagged her wrist in one large hand, then twisted so that a sharp bolt of pain shot along her forearm. She whimpered.
“Stop,” he said, and she was reminded of that hulking giant in the park who scared everyone including her, even though she pretended he didn’t.
Maybe there was a monster in everyone, lying dormant. There was one in her. It roared and frothed at the lips and prowled, a caged beast now that Zeke had her pinned against the car seat. Zeke’s monster looked back, its eyes quiet and steady. “Stop,” he said again.
He felt the fight go out of her; he must have. But she didn’t relent, because that would be a weakness she wasn’t ready to lay bare. He tugged her wrist just a little farther in the wrong direction, a warning that sent fire up to her shoulder, and then he released her.
When she was free again, she curled her body into the corner of the car, tucking her legs up against her chest, her body begging her to protect her vulnerable organs.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Zeke said, back to the gruff man who didn’t have a monster to keep tamed. “She couldn’t get to Beckett, right?”
She didn’t answer.
“I’m guessing she would have killed him otherwise,” Zeke said.
“He was arrested before she could, though,” Trudy said.
He nodded. “She couldn’t get to him.”
“So she decided to kill a child?” Her voice was wobbly again, on the edge of screaming, but not quite there.
“I’m not saying it’s okay,” Zeke said, in that same measured tone he’d been using since they’d got in the car.
“But?”
“No ‘but,’” he said. “It’s not okay, it’s not justified.”
“Everything can be justified. Isn’t that what you’ve said?”
He had. He’d said that.
He lifted a shoulder and pressed on the gas. “Life’s about choices.”
She sat on her hands so that she didn’t gouge his eyes out with her fingernails.
They didn’t say anything else, and it took a long time for her muscles to stop shivering from some indistinguishable mix of fury and despair.
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