When She Left: A Thriller, page 2
Of course, she’d suspected Chris of doing the same, even if she had no proof. But the idea of blaming Chris made her feel better.
All the justifications, desperate to appease herself, those hot mornings after sweltering evenings.
Now there was no hiding who she was or what she had done.
Melissa flushed, left the stall. She glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror as she soaped her hands. Pulled a wrinkled brown paper towel from a dispenser, dried off, dropped it on top of an overflowing wastebasket. The paper fell to the floor and Melissa grimaced, delicately picked it up by an edge, set it back on the trash pile.
She stepped out of the restroom, and her breath vanished as quickly as a hook yanking a small fish from the water.
A stranger was sitting across from Jake, in the same spot where she had been, a large paunchy man with a ruddy complexion and curly brown hair. The stranger smiled and waved to Melissa, ushered her over. Jake’s camera was in the stranger’s other hand, tiny in his palm, a toy.
Jake’s back was to her, his head bowed like a child being punished.
She thought about her gun, sitting in the glove compartment of their car outside.
“Your boyfriend kept trying to take my picture,” the stranger told Melissa as she walked over, fear slowing her steps. “I had to take his camera away.”
Jake looked miserable.
“Sit down.” The stranger patted the seat next to him.
Melissa glanced around the diner, hoped someone was paying attention, that she could catch another person’s eye. No one noticed her.
“Sit,” the stranger said again.
Melissa did, felt his large body next to her.
“Chris wanted more than a note,” the man told her.
And with those words, everything Melissa feared came true.
There had been a hope she hadn’t fully realized, a chance this man wasn’t connected to them, just someone upset that Jake had photographed him as he had walked into the diner. That happened, Jake had told her. Often.
This wasn’t that. The stranger knew Chris Winters.
“How’d you find us?” Melissa asked.
He ignored her question. “The good news is Chris wants you alive.” The stranger inclined his head toward Jake. “Doesn’t much care what happens to your boyfriend. But I’ll let you finish your dinner first. The pie looks delicious.”
Melissa stared sadly at the pie, retracing every step she and Jake had taken, every mistake they’d made. Using his car. Not running farther away. Charging credit cards at gas stations. His insistence that they stop at this diner.
Leaving the gun outside.
Too many mistakes.
“Can I have my camera?” Jake asked.
The stranger turned it over in his hands. “I’ll bury you with it,” he said. “Good enough?”
The door to the kitchen swung open, and the waitress approached their table. A jolt of hope went through Melissa.
“Get you anything?”
“Darling,” the stranger said, and Melissa noticed the waitress’s back stiffen, her face tighten. “Your pie looks delicious. I bet I could eat it all night.”
The waitress glanced at Melissa.
Melissa wanted to communicate everything she could in her eyes, her fear and desperation, the secret empathy between women. This man isn’t with us. Please help. But the waitress just looked annoyed.
“So you want the pie then?” she asked. Her tone was impatient but practiced. She’d dealt with men like this before.
“I said I could eat your pie,” the stranger replied. “But not tonight. We’ll just take the check.”
“Fine.” The waitress left, and Melissa’s hope left with her.
The stranger turned back toward her with a smile.
But his smile abruptly changed as he looked down, saw what Melissa had snatched off the table and pressed against his leg.
“Well,” he said. “Look at you.”
Jake half rose to peer at the steak knife Melissa was holding against the stranger’s thigh.
“You really think you’re going to stab me?”
“I can’t go back,” Melissa said.
The stranger rubbed his bristly chin.
“The knife will hurt,” he admitted. “But not enough to stop me from pulling my gun. You two won’t make it out of here. And, in the end, Chris won’t care.”
The table fell silent.
The stranger stared at Melissa, his eyes clocks winding down.
“We can give you money.” Melissa didn’t know if this was true. She couldn’t keep her thoughts clear enough to recall how much money she had, what remained in her purse. She and Jake had run off and taken nothing.
“There’s no money that can save me,” the stranger said, “if Chris learns I let you go.”
“But we can give you—”
“No.” Those twin clocks ticking. “You two jumped off a cliff. There’s nothing to grab on the way down.”
Melissa couldn’t maintain the stranger’s gaze, couldn’t keep staring into his utter confidence. Jake hadn’t moved since she’d grabbed the knife. Melissa looked at the kitchen door, hoped the waitress would reappear. The door stayed closed.
Maybe, she hoped, the waitress had somehow understood their situation. Sensed the fear emanating from Melissa, decided to tell someone. Called the cops. Of course, the Winterses had the cops, but at least it would give them time to—
“Time’s up,” the stranger said.
“Melissa,” Jake told her, strained. “Give him your money.”
“You tune out just now?” the stranger asked. “I don’t want your—”
“Give him your money,” Jake repeated, “and get out of here.”
“What?” Melissa asked.
“Leave without me,” Jake said. “He can take me, but you go.”
“Sorry?” the stranger asked.
“You get me,” Jake told him. “And she gets a chance. That’s what we’re buying.”
“I’m not leaving you here,” Melissa said resolutely.
Their gazes wrestled across the table.
“You don’t have a choice,” the stranger said. “And—”
He didn’t get to finish speaking. Without any of them realizing it, the waitress was back. Standing next to them. Looking wide eyed at the steak knife Melissa was pressing into the stranger’s leg.
“What are you doing?” the waitress asked.
Photography is all about the moment, Jake had once told Melissa. You have to know the right one to capture.
And Melissa chose that moment to shove the knife into the stranger’s thigh.
He swore in surprise and bent over while the waitress screamed.
The middle-aged couple in the back rose, a shriek from the wife.
The two men in the front turned, their eyes and mouths dark, wide circles.
Melissa heard her own screams as she rose and saw the stranger’s gun in one hand, his other grasping the handle of the knife in his thigh. Blood spread over his jeans like evening shadow. He lurched out of the booth and grabbed the waitress for balance. She jerked away, and he dropped his gun. Grabbed the knife handle and fell to the floor.
Hands on Melissa’s arm, pulling her. Jake telling her something lost in the commotion.
Melissa felt light headed and unsteady. But she couldn’t stop looking back as Jake tugged her, the waitress stumbling to her feet, the older man standing like a shield in front of his wife, the two lanyard-wearing men in front still staring.
The stranger on the ground, trying to wrench the knife free.
Jake let go of her hand halfway to the door. He hurried back to the booth, stepping around the stranger as the wounded man frantically searched for his gun.
Jake grabbed the camera.
Then he and Melissa ran to the door, the waitress behind them. The first shot exploded like a giant angrily slamming its hands together.
Melissa turned and saw the waitress fall.
Jake pulled her to the door. Melissa looked down. The waitress’s face was a stark white as she tried to crawl.
Another shot, and the diner’s front window cracked.
One of the men who had been in the front booth lunged forward, his lanyard swinging. He reached the door at the same time as Jake and Melissa, but the doorway was too tight for all three of them. At the gun’s third shot, that man’s hands slipped from the door handle. He fell heavily to the ground, his left hand waving as if desperately calling for attention, his right hand clutching the bullet wound in his neck. On his knees, he crawled back to the safety of the table.
The diner door swung open and Melissa ran out, felt the cold rush of December, heard the heavy silence of night. Jake spent too long at her car door but finally forced it open. The cloth seats, the dust-stained console, the interior light a halo. Jake’s door slammed closed and the old silver Honda Accord jerked backward.
The parking lot receded somewhere behind them.
After a few minutes the car slid to a stop on a hill, off the road. Jake’s hands stayed tight on the wheel. He was breathing loudly, in spurts.
“Jake?”
Moments later, Melissa sat alone.
She watched Jake’s silhouette in the dark, a tall figure with a camera just outside the light from the car, snapping endless pictures of the carnage in the diner below, like an artist standing on the edge of the earth and painting a picture of hell. Melissa closed her eyes, desperately wanting to run, even as Jake made this moment last forever.
CHAPTER TWO
LUCKY
“You know he drank!” Sheila Banks exclaimed to whomever she was talking with on the phone. She was sitting on the living room couch, an outdated floral-print sofa the homeowner had refused to place in storage for the open house.
Lucky Wilson gazed at Sheila from the kitchen, his hands absentmindedly spreading his Lucky Wilson: An Agent You Can Trust! business cards in a fan on the linoleum counter, stacking them like a blackjack dealer, fanning them out again in a practiced wave.
“I heard it was a lot!” Sheila shrieked.
To Lucky, her voice felt like a drunk bear stumbling inside his skull.
The first time Lucky had murdered someone—well, someone he hadn’t been paid to kill—was when he had just started working for the Winterses. This had been a car accident late at night on an empty road, a minor fender bender, and the man driving was belligerent, yelling a stream of expletives so colorful that Lucky was impressed. But the man hadn’t stopped there. He’d engaged Lucky physically, and Lucky had ended his life with a single gunshot.
The other unpaid killing happened nearly a decade later. A new teacher at his daughter’s day care had been fired after it was discovered he was inappropriately touching the children. A week after he had been fired, Lucky had gone to his house past midnight, slipped inside wearing a ski mask and gloves.
Only two occasions.
So far.
Sheila’s irritating manner was driving him to a third, and Lucky’s dejected state of mind didn’t help. In addition to everything else in his life that troubled him, Lucky hated holding open houses. He especially despised neighbors strolling through only to judge and gossip. He’d known Sheila was going to be trouble, could tell by the way she’d hurried over to introduce herself as one of the heads of the homeowners’ association.
“I’ll make sure you get the right buyers,” she’d promised and winked.
He fanned his cards again and stared at Sheila through the kitchen pass. Her phone was tucked between her shoulder and ear. A long brown coat wrapped tightly around her, even though Lucky had kept the house invitingly warm, almost as if she wore it to shield herself from the unflattering surroundings.
Sheila glanced up and met his eyes. Surprise or concern crossed her face. Lucky wasn’t sure which.
He picked up a bottle of water from the counter, twisted off the top. Sipped and stared.
Sheila looked away. He heard her clear her throat and continue. “I’m sorry?”
Lucky turned and gazed at the dismal kitchen. White paneling needing a coat of paint, sluggish yellowed appliances, loose knobs too worn for a screwdriver to tighten. The houses in this Falls Church neighborhood of northern Virginia had been built in the 1940s but, given their proximity to DC, still sold near or over a million when renovated. But this owner, a widower in his eighties who had reluctantly settled into an assisted-living center, had no interest in spending a dime on updates. Lucky would be fortunate to get 90 percent of its worth.
Sometimes, of course, there was a surprise. Full ask or higher on a property that didn’t warrant it, the new owners harried because of the competitive DC-region housing market. Properties sold in almost complete states of disrepair. Imaginative buyers seeing promise in a shining rebuild.
Lucky imagined the excitement of a young couple in a house they’d just bought, and tears welled in his eyes.
He forced himself to focus on the job, and not his marriage.
“I don’t know who would buy it!” Sheila exclaimed into her phone, and, with that, Lucky walked to the knife rack and pulled out a long chef’s knife.
“He’s in the kitchen!” Sheila shrieked.
Lucky hadn’t even heard the front door open. He slid the knife back into the rack. Wiped his wet eyes on his sleeve and left the kitchen for the living room.
A couple waited in the entrance, watching Sheila as she beamed at them from the couch, like rabbits warily regarding a leering wolf. Lucky sized them up. White, late twenties or early thirties, wearing Sunday church clothes, the man clean shaven, the woman in heels.
The man, still slim before the softening effects of middle age, wore a dark-blue suit with tan leather shoes and a matching belt.
She was pretty with a thin, sharp face and looked around the house with quick birdlike intensity. A dark-blue ankle-length dress. The princess-cut diamond on her wedding ring glinted.
Yuppies, Lucky figured, who rented in DC or Arlington and were looking for a bigger home to fill with family.
Young and married and happy.
Lucky hoped he’d be able to speak past the lump in his throat. He used to be so much better at compartmentalizing.
“Is the open house still going on?” the man asked.
Sheila watched them appreciatively from the couch. Lucky figured this couple fit the bill for her, especially after a Black family had come by a half hour earlier, and Sheila’s face had held nothing but distress. Lucky had cheerfully imagined slapping her with a hammer.
“It is,” he answered. “Come on back to the kitchen and sign in. My name’s Lucky.”
“Lucky?” the woman asked.
Sheila barked out a laugh.
“My father was a gambler,” Lucky explained. He’d done this his entire life. “He said that having a son was like—”
“And I’m Sheila Banks.” Sheila rose from the couch. “President of the homeowners’ association. Do you mind if I join the tour? This is such a lovely neighborhood.”
“Well . . . ,” Lucky began.
“Only three houses in the neighborhood share this model,” Sheila said, and the couple followed her into the kitchen. “And this is such a great community for families like yours.”
Lucky’s hands tightened into fists.
There was no way to get rid of Sheila Banks. If he asked her to leave, then he risked offending her and losing any shot of selling homes in this affluent community. He’d heard stories of that happening to other agents.
So he and Sheila guided the couple up the carpeted stairs to the second floor, Lucky hoping they didn’t notice the loose railing.
“Watch out for the loose railing!” Sheila told them.
They stopped in the primary bedroom, a bare narrow room that Lucky knew could be salvaged with a nice clean coat of paint.
“The bedrooms are a little small—” Lucky began.
“And in desperate need of new paint,” Sheila added.
“But smaller bedrooms were the style at the time this house was built,” Lucky continued. “Now, you knock out the second bedroom, expand this room, connect it to the bathroom at the end of the hall? That gives you a sizable primary bedroom with an enclosed bath and—”
“But they’d lose a bedroom,” Sheila interrupted.
“Right, but they’d still have two, and if they convert the basement—”
“I’m sorry, but that doesn’t seem like a good idea.” Sheila smiled at the couple. “I can’t imagine losing a bedroom is going to help resale. Can you?”
“It gives the house a more modern look.” Lucky’s voice was strained. “And you have to consider—”
The phone in his left pocket buzzed.
Lucky always carried two phones. The phone in his right pocket was for family and real estate. It was the phone where Lucky kept photos of his wife and daughter and a bulging library of real estate and puzzle apps.
Lucky loved puzzles.
The phone in his left pocket had nothing on it. It was a generic phone that had been given to him by the Winterses last night, buried in a plastic bag next to a certain tree in the woods behind his house.
He stopped talking, pulled out the new phone, stared at the screen.
“You take that,” Sheila told him. “I’ll continue the tour.”
He gazed at the message for another minute, then slipped the phone back into his pocket.
The young couple and Sheila were heading back to the stairs. “The basement,” Lucky said as he hurried behind them, “is right through the kitchen. In the door next to the pantry. Now, it’s not finished, and there was a possum, well, more like a community of possums, but—”
In his rush, Lucky’s foot slipped on the stairs. He caught himself before he fell, but nearly yanked the old banister from the wall.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” the husband said. He and his wife glanced at each other.
Lucky knew that glance well.
“Are you sure?” he asked. He could tell the sale was lost, but, after fifteen years in real estate, pushing back was habit. “The basement isn’t finished but—”
