Her voice echoes through the garage. “I told you, I wired it last night, like you asked. Same account as before.”
“No, bitch, you transferred ten million, but that only covers the original amount for Andrew,” the man growls. “You still owe ten for interest on that mark because you made me wait so damn long, and twenty for the newest one.”
Andrew? What does this have to do with her late husband? I thought this was all about Robert…
Slowly, I inch forward, so that I can see around the concrete pillar in front of the elevator. From here, I can see the man’s body, tall and strong, but his face is masked in shadow. Adrenaline spikes through me.
“I was late paying for Andrew. I know, and I’m sorry about that. There was nothing more I could do, and I can get you the interest if you give me more time. But Robert was never supposed to be a mark,” Georgia says, her voice strong, rather than desperate. “You must’ve misunderstood. That’s your mistake. I’m not paying twenty million for that. Just let him come back to me and we’ll forget all about this. Please. We can straighten the rest out later.”
“No, we’re going to take care of this right now.”
In a flurry of movement I can barely track, the man snatches Georgia around the waist and hauls her against him, pointing the gun into her side, just below her breast. She begins to scream, but he whacks her over the head, silencing her, and then snakes an arm around her neck. He’s pinned her back to his front. They’re facing away from me. I could run up behind him, tackle him, knock the gun away. But if something goes wrong—oh God, there’s so much that could go wrong—we could both be dead.
I creep around the pillar, closer, tiptoeing, searching for signs of others who might be able to help, but there’s no one around. Somewhere in a parking level below, tires screech. The sound of a horn blasts through the air. In a level above, a car alarm goes off.
I’m closer…twenty feet away…ten…
My breathing is so loud, it’s going to give me away. Short, shallow breaths punch out of my lungs and my heart races. Georgia’s whimpering now, struggling to get away from him, but he’s strong. Much too strong for her to overpower alone.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he says into her ear. “You’re going to pay me the thirty you still owe. That’s nonnegotiable. But if you want your fiancé back, you’ll need to pay double the original asking price.”
“But it was twenty originally…” she whispers, disbelievingly. “I have to pay you forty million to see Robert again? How do I even know he’s still alive?”
“Because I fucking say he is,” he growls. “You have until midnight to wire the money. You go to the police, he’s dead. You tell anyone anything about me, he’s dead, and I’ll come for you next. You got me?”
“Got it,” she says, breathless, as she fights against him. “Please…”
He relayed his message, now why isn’t he letting her go?
I’m a few steps away, so close. I’m going to hit him upside the head. Knock the gun away. And then we’re going to run as hard and fast as we can away from this maniac.
My phone rings in my purse.
I freeze. He turns, and we lock eyes. Heat flashes through me and my legs turn to lead. Georgia stamps on his foot, and when he bowls over, she knocks the gun away. It hits the ground with a crack and spins over the concrete toward the ledge to the street below. They go for it at the same time.
“No!” I scream. “Georgia, run!”
But as she darts for the gun, her eyes are wild and desperate, like those of an animal that’s been caged for too long. I run hard, and when he crouches to pick up the weapon, I leap onto his back, coiling my arm around his neck. He makes a throaty, strangled sound, and slings me off his shoulders. I hit the concrete hard as the gun goes off. The sound is deafening, echoing on and on through the garage. Birds scatter overhead, flying toward the pier.
Everything goes quiet.
I meet Georgia’s eyes. She’s on the ground, gun pointed in the air as if the man was still standing there. But he’s on the ground beside me, splayed in a pool of his own blood. His body is steaming. Or maybe that’s from the gun.
My hands tremble. “What have we done?”
As if she’s just realized she’s holding the murder weapon, Georgia drops it and scrambles to her feet. “Brooke, get up.”
But I can’t stop staring at the man on the ground beside me. Dark hair the same color as mine. Almond-shaped eyes. Wide chin. Scar slashed across his cheek.
“The po—the police,” I mumble, trying to make sense of things. “They’re going to come, and they’re going to know what we did. We can’t leave him here.”
She tugs on my arm. “Brooke, we have to go. We can’t stay.”
My legs won’t work. They’ve turned to jelly. It doesn’t make any logical sense because I should be running far from here, especially if the police are coming, but I don’t want to leave this spot. I just need a minute to think…to clear my head. As my vision blurs, I see Georgia move around the scene in a fog. She wipes off the gun and drops it near the lifeless body, then rifles through the man’s pockets, taking what she finds there and shoving it in her purse.
Shouldn’t she dispose of the gun? The bay’s right there. Or maybe cameras are watching. Would tossing a gun into the water make her look too guilty?
In my haze, I can’t make sense of the right thing to do.
She’s at my side again, patting my face. “Can you hear me, love? We have to move or we’re going to be in a world of trouble. We’re in this together. It’s you and me now, so I can’t leave you here by yourself. You have to come with me. Can you do that? My car’s right over there. Come on, girl. You can do this.”
You and me.
We killed him…together.
I’m going to be sick. As we’re pulling out of the garage, I roll down the window for fresh air and hang my head out. The sound of seals barking on the pier gently bleeds into the wail of a siren, reminding me too much of my childhood. I look up to the fourth level, where I imagine the man’s blood circling the parking lot drain.
Guess there are certain things we can’t escape in this life.
Everything really does come back full circle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ERIN
“Let me in!” I rap on Georgia’s front door. I know she’s in there with Brooke, but she won’t come to the door. “Georgia, it’s me! What’s going on?”
I heard the engine of her car rev as she turned onto the street, and I saw the way she raced into the driveway. Mason said I should leave her alone, give her space to make new friends. But he doesn’t know what’s going on.
And something definitely went wrong.
“Georgia!” I bang on the door again. “Come on!”
She jerks open the door, but instead of greeting me, the way she usually does, she storms back into the living room. Brooke’s on the couch, head between her knees, blowing in and out heavily as if she’s fighting off a panic attack.
I lock the door behind me. “What the hell happened?”
“We just need to calm down so I can run through this. I need to hear how it sounds when spoken aloud.” Georgia paces behind the couch where Brooke is having a semidramatic meltdown. “Erin, tell me how this sounds. Danny Johnson—some greedy, crazed man—kidnapped Robert and wanted a ransom for his safe return. He asked me to meet him at the Pier 39 parking garage, told me to come alone, and not to alert the police.”
Brooke lets out a pathetic whimper that sounds vaguely like agreement.
“But I couldn’t bear to go alone because I was too afraid, so I asked Brooke to come with me and watch from afar. We got a table at the restaurant, so she would have a straight shot of the interaction. But it went south fast. I refused to pay him. He pulled out a gun.”
Gasping, covering my mouth with my ha
nd, I settle into the chair across from Brooke. She looks up at me, her eyes glossy with tears. She nods as if she hears my unspoken question.
Georgia stops pacing, gently rests her hands on Brooke’s shoulders, and finally meets my gaze. “She saw what was happening and ran to the garage to save me. She surprised him from behind. We fought. The gun went off. We were very lucky to get out of there alive.”
Brooke nods weakly.
Holy shit, this is bad. I’m so glad I wasn’t there.
“And then,” Georgia goes on, “we didn’t know what to do, having just killed a man, so we freaked out, and left. The detectives were so eager to talk about fight or flight when it pertained to Robert getting cold feet. Now we can claim it for real. We acted on instinct. We ran. It’s understandable. But now—now we have come to our senses and will call the police.”
“Are you okay?” I mouth to Georgia. “This is crazy.”
“I’m fine—we’re fine. A little jumpy, a little spooked, but we’re okay. I’m glad all of this is finally over.”
Her words reverberate in my head. This is finally over.
She means more than this single event. She means no more death threats. No more someone following her around, trying to scare her. No more having to worry whether this man is going to continue blackmailing her for additional money, beyond their spoken contract.
Georgia can now close the book on Eli’s and Andrew’s deaths. Put a period and move on. I would consider the entire process successful.
It’s not that we were excited to be rid of Eli and Andrew, but once they became abusive, Georgia knew she had to do something. She couldn’t go on living that way, and since they’d signed prenups, divorces would’ve left Georgia with nothing. They left her no choice, really. They couldn’t have expected her to live in fear that way forever.
I’m simply thankful I was there to assist in her time of need. All it took was joining a few abusive spouse chats and forums on a handful of social media outlets. People who get out of dangerous situations are always eager to talk to others about what they “should” do to be free themselves. When I’d mentioned divorce wasn’t an option, and that my husband was incredibly wealthy, one woman in particular was very supportive and helpful, asking to meet me at Starbucks. After talking briefly about her own situation, she gave me a slip of paper with a row of digits written on it. I’d texted the number right away, thinking it was for a divorce attorney or battered women’s shelter.
Instead, I’d been given something far more powerful. It’d bonded Georgia and me. We’d been friends before, of course, starting from the day we bought our homes in Presidio Terrace, one month apart. But after we held her husbands’ lives in the palms of our hands, our fates became forever intertwined. She can’t turn on me, and I can’t turn on her.
We’re in this together.
“Have you told her…” I ask Georgia, even though my gaze jumps to Brooke. “…everything?”
Georgia nods. “She’s in the thick of it with us now. Through and through.”
I exhale heavily—secrets are heavy things to carry—though my chest tightens with nervous energy. How did Brooke take the news when Georgia told her that we hired Danny Johnson to kill Eli and Andrew? Did she tell her that Danny was supposed to kill Mason this time, but royally screwed up by taking Robert instead? Damn that guy. Danny had been such a thorough hitman before, so careful to make both Eli’s and Andrew’s murders look like an accident and a suicide. Why would he suddenly disregard the plans to take Mason? Did he think Georgia would pay more money for his return? Or was he truly a moron?
I’m not sure of the reason for his mistake, but now I’m left with Mason, who is alive and well, and Georgia’s panicked that the only man she ever truly loved is gone from her life forever.
Talk about karma.
I’ll ask Georgia exactly how much she revealed to Brooke later, in private, because in this moment we have to focus on locking down our story.
“The police are going to ask for the ransom note,” I say quickly.
“That’s the easy part,” Georgia says. “I can use the latest one with Robert’s finger in it. In that note, Danny asked for thirty million and he told me not to go to the police.”
“Good,” I say. “Your story will check out.”
Brooke blows her nose into the tissue she’d been tearing apart in her lap. “The police are going to bring us in for questioning. They’re going to try and arrest us for murder.”
“You can’t be that naïve, Brooke. They’re not going to arrest you if you were defending yourselves.” I drag a piece of hair over my shoulder and fiddle with the end as I think about the police poking their noses around here again. “According to the story you’re going to feed the police, that guy attacked an innocent woman. And he kidnapped her husband. Georgia’s the true victim in all this—it might be the way to clear her name once and for all.”
“Exactly.” Georgia sits beside Brooke and rests her hand on Brooke’s knee. “We have to call the cops, because now that our adrenaline from the attack has worn off, our consciences must kick in. We have to show we’re good people who do the right thing.”
“Are we?” Brooke asks wearily. “Are we good people?”
Georgia better not answer that.
“We’re trying, and that’s all anyone can expect of us.” Georgia sighs deeply. “Now that I’m able to think clearly, the parking garage must have video footage of us leaving around the time of the incident, so we have to call not only for that reason—they’re going to come knocking anyway—but because this means Robert is out there somewhere, being held captive, and his captor is dead. Who’s going to bring him food and water? Robert’s not going to last long now.”
“As soon as the police ID the body,” I say, “they’ll use their resources to track down his last known residence, contacts, everything. If Robert’s out there, the police will find him.”
“If?” Georgia parrots. “I can’t think about a future without Robert. He’s out there. He has to be.”
“But you took Danny’s wallet,” Brooke says. “Identifying a body takes time. According to some of my book research, identification can take weeks.”
Georgia drops her head in her hands. “If Danny was telling the truth, and Robert’s still alive out there, he won’t last that long. Damn it. I shouldn’t have taken the wallet, but at the time, I thought it’d be better if the police couldn’t ID him because he’d be just another dead guy in a parking garage. I thought there’d be no way to link him to us.”
“Where is it?” I ask, and twist around when Georgia breaks away from Brooke to run to the kitchen island.
Digging furiously through her purse, Georgia removes a dusty brown wallet and holds it up for inspection. She pinches the leather between her fingers as if it’s a putrid piece of trash she’s removed from the gutter. “What should I say? Why would I have taken it?”
“Panic,” I blurt. “Say you freaked out and lost your mind. People do all kinds of weird things when they’re under extreme stress.”
Disgust curling her upper lip, Georgia opens the wallet. “He’s changed a lot from his picture. Time has not been kind. Fort Walton Beach, Florida, address. Wonder what he’s doing in California?”
“Extorting you for millions of dollars, that’s what,” I say.
“He wanted forty million to bring Robert back! Can you believe it? Greedy bastard. How could I have come up with that kind of money by midnight?”
“You didn’t owe him a penny more, Georgia.”
Eli’s murder was $10 million, paid through a fake charity account called World Wish Foundation. Andrew’s murder was the same price, if you don’t count the $10 million in interest Danny was demanding, which Georgia refused to pay. Mason’s death was supposed to cost $20 million, and I’d planned to make a “donation” for that amount through Georgia’s c
harity. If Georgia and I had paid Danny everything, he would’ve banked $50 million.
Quite the entrepreneur, that guy.
Too bad he’s dead. Who’s going to take care of Mason for me now? After Robert’s discovered dead or alive, and some time has passed, I’ll have to deal with Mason in my own way.
Brooke’s phone goes off. She checks the name, and then looks up innocently, a deer caught in headlights. We’re going to have to groom her a lot more if she’s going to be talking to the police. “It’s Jack. What should I say?”
“Nothing,” Georgia and I say in unison. Moving to sit beside her, I take the lead. “Nothing more than the story Georgia just told you. Don’t add or omit any other details. Your stories have to be solid.”
“I’m calling the police now,” Georgia says, “so if they check the timing of the calls, they know we called the police at the same time she told her husband. Erin?”
I turn to her. “Yeah?”
“Still want that interview?”
“Yes, but you don’t have to—”
“Think there’s a possibility we can run it late tonight? Show everyone that I just survived a terrible ordeal, right before what was supposed to be my wedding day. It’ll garner a lot of sympathy. Then, when the police find Robert, you can cover our heartfelt reunion. Tie everything up with a bright red bow.”
“I don’t know, Georgia. I’m not sure the timing is right. Are you sure you’re up for it? I mean, after what just happened don’t you want to take a Xanax and bury your head under the covers until Christmas?”
“I’m sure.” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “People will watch because they love to hate me. They’ll hear Robert disappeared and think the Black Widow has struck again. I’ll use the gossip and morbid interest that swirls around me to get people to tune in to the show…and then we’ll make the focus on what happened to us today, and the fact that Robert is still out there, missing. Maybe people will feel bad for me. Maybe they’ll see a photo of Danny’s face and say, ‘I saw that guy leave this area or that’ or ‘I saw something strange happening at this address.’ I know I’m grasping at straws, but if there’s a chance someone has seen Danny or Robert, and this show brings my fiancé home sooner, it’ll be worth it.”
The Sinful Lives of Trophy Wives Page 16