The Rule of Three, page 27
“I figured you might need a drink,” she says.
I sidle onto the couch next to her.
“What should we toast to?” I ask.
“To second chances?” she says cheerfully.
“Cheers.” I take a large sip and let the bubbles work their way around my mouth.
“Your event with Sawyer Selwyn was impressive. You seemed to win over a very skeptical audience and in the face of some difficult questions.”
“Thank you. I’m glad the audience was receptive to my message.”
“Your energy is different from your last tour,” she says knowingly.
I make an effort to keep my eyes on hers. “Have you been following my career long?”
She has a peculiar smile when I ask this.
“You don’t recognize me?” Her expression is indecipherable.
“Give me a minute,” I stall. “I’m terrible with faces. Was it at one of my events?”
“More than one.” She laughs lightly. “I’ve been following your career since the beginning.”
“A little more champagne and I bet you my recall will come back online.”
She pours me another glass. I feel my tired muscles releasing into the couch and lean back and yawn.
“I’m not boring you already, am I?” she teases.
“Not at all. I just feel really comfortable with you.” I feel my body melting into the upholstery. “Feel free to fire away with your questions,” I push.
The sooner we get it out of the way, the sooner we can go to bed.
A serious expression overtakes her face. “There have been rumors that Terry Barnes and Spencer Nichols were involved in the sex-trafficking ring that Randall Hemmings was just indicted for. And that Vicky Barnes and your ex-wife and Monica Nichols found out about it.” She searches my face and I feel it growing hot.
She continues. “Were you involved with that?”
My heart speeds up.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” I say shortly.
“I’d like to get your side of the story before—”
“Dawn.” I rest my hand on her arm and remove it quickly when she gives me a withering look.
“I operate on the philosophy that if we don’t leave our past where it belongs, it will destroy the future,” I say, irritated that she appears distracted. “Aren’t you going to start recording?”
“I never forget anything,” she says pointedly.
“I thought this was going to be a feature about my book,” I say testily.
“I’m interested in why you think it happened. And since the case ended before your testimony—”
“If that’s what you’re interested in, you can read my deposition. I hear it has been leaked online.”
“I read both and I was surprised how much was missing.”
I’ve started to feel nauseous. “What do you mean?”
“There was quite a bit of revisionist history,” she says coldly.
When I try to sit up taller on the couch, I only sink in deeper.
“If you would excuse me for just a minute,” I say, trying to stand.
“The book is garbage.” She smirks. “It is derivative, schlocky, and your worst one yet.”
I double over as a wave of stabbing pain hits me.
“Oh my God,” I gasp.
“Are you okay?” Dawn says, her words trailing off. “Maybe you should cool it with the champagne.”
“Yeah,” I say weakly, and see my empty glass. I feel like I’ve drunk way more than two glasses. I scan the room for my phone. I should call Margarite from the bathroom to get this woman out of here. And maybe get an ambulance. The last thing I want is a reporter present for that.
I stand up and am immediately baffled as to why my cheek is against the carpeted floor.
“Uh-oh,” Dawn singsongs. “Looks like you’re having some trouble there.”
“My phone. I need it.”
“Hmm. I think I saw it in the fish tank.”
“What?” There’s a terrible pressure in my chest.
Sure enough, when I’m able to pull myself a few feet closer to the fish tank in the entryway, I see my iPhone submerged. I lift my head from the floor and look for the room phone and see that it is unplugged and moved out of my reach.
“I think I’m having a heart attack.” I gasp as the pain expands to an alarming degree.
“You aren’t having a heart attack,” she replies unsympathetically.
“It might be a bad reaction to my pills,” I manage.
“What did you take?” she asks, confused. I can’t speak and just point in the direction of the bathroom.
I close my eyes and hear her walking away. Then laughter.
I watch her pointed boots move closer to me until I’m nose to toe with her. I roll onto my back and look up.
“Well, that’s a twist.”
“Hmm?” I gurgle. The pain is excruciating.
She shakes the bottle of Cialis. “Laura never mentioned these.” She begins typing on the screen on her phone and lets out a little whistle. “Uh-oh.”
“Help.” My chest feels like it is going to explode.
“If I had known, I never would have used so much ketamine. I’m afraid this is going to be much more painful for you than I had planned on.”
Cold sweat is breaking out all over my body and the pressure has mushroomed to my head and my bowels.
“Ketamine?”
“Oh, Gil, you arrogant dickhead.” Dawn kneels down next to me. Her voice is different, her glasses gone, and her big eyes look surprisingly blue now. She tugs at her hair and removes the long silky black wig, making way for a mass of curly blond underneath. She gets all the way down to the floor and lies next to me. A flicker of this face getting her head shaved onstage flashes in between the searing pains in my chest. Another image of her nagging me at the VIP party flickers in my memory.
“Monica Brightling?” I say, realizing that I knew Mrs. Nichols before she was Mrs. Nichols.
“You finally made the connection,” she says, satisfied.
“Please, help me.”
“For so many years, I thought you were the one who was going to help me.” She props herself up on one arm as I moan in pain.
“But it was the opposite. You were the cause of my biggest problems, Gil. You stole all of my money. You brainwashed me for years. And I never would have married Spencer if it wasn’t for you.”
“Monica. Call 911 . . . please,” I beg weakly.
“Before you die, I’d like to set the record straight. I know you were led to believe that your brother-in-law was responsible for the video leak, but I just can’t let Terry fucking Barnes get the credit for it,” she practically spits.
“Oh God,” I sputter, clutching my stomach.
“The night of the VIP party, your response to my saying that you’d stolen my money was that I needed to sign up for your course on financial codependence. I could have murdered you then,” she says furiously. “You told me that if I don’t change my problems, I’m choosing them.”
“You bitch,” I try to force, but nothing comes out.
“And when I came back into that hotel room that night and saw your true colors, all of those seminars about taking responsibility for my own life and making fearless choices finally clicked.”
She nods, and even though I can barely focus, I can see how insane she really is. I’m shocked that someone so forgettable in my life has wreaked so much destruction.
“Gil, you really inspired me that night.”
Her eyes are empty as she stares into mine until I can’t keep them open any longer. I feel her breath in my ear and I feel something more peaceful than sleep creeping in.
“Threefold, asshole.”
MONICA
After almost a year and a half of running, I am finally here.
Planning for this moment brought me through the darkest periods of that time. I’ll wait here until I’m satisfied that he isn’t going to wake up, but this time, I know that it is finally done. I have hours before anyone is going to miss him, and if he has a third miraculous recovery, I’ve got an arsenal of weapons that can quickly correct any more comebacks.
I hadn’t planned for the booster effect of the Cialis on the ketamine I spiked his champagne with, and the irony is priceless.
I pull out my book and read The Rule of Three in the quiet of the room, Gil’s body unmoving at my feet. The familiar line at the top of the page makes my eyes well with tears of relief. Everything in your life, you’ve attracted. As you hold the power to create, you also hold the power to destroy.
I hope that somewhere, not far from this room, Vicky and Laura are planning their new lives, free of the scrutiny and heartache they’ve experienced for so much of theirs. I can rest easy knowing that once word of Gil’s death reaches them, we’ll be even.
By now, the district attorney’s office will have received an untraceable video link, a short proof-of-life clip showing that I am alive and well, holding up a copy of today’s Wall Street Journal with the headline about the sisters’ acquittal, the trackable location and time stamp encrypted beyond any traceability, naturally.
I shed fresh tears thinking about the friends I won’t ever see again and what we’ve been through together. There were so many important bonding and commiserating sessions, but the most significant one was the week that Vicky returned from her trip with Terry.
“This idiotic book says that whatever consumes your thoughts is what you will eventually get in life,” Laura mockingly read when she picked up Vicky’s copy, half read on her Palm Springs trip. “If that is true, then Gil and Terry would be dead ten times over.”
I waited for Vicky to say something, but she’d remained quiet.
“I’ve murdered Spencer with my thoughts about a hundred times over,” I chanced.
Laura and I laughed. Vicky began to cry. Laura looked as surprised as I felt by the rare display of vulnerability.
“I just wish he was out of my life for good,” Vicky said defeatedly. “Out of everybody’s lives. He’s evil.”
We’d been lamenting about our husbands over the last few months, but always with a tone of snark. This night was very different.
“I need to tell you about Palm Springs,” Vicky whispered before she filled in the parts of the trip she hadn’t shared when they’d returned a week earlier. She recalled stumbling upon the conversation between Terry and Hemmings in the hotel room and discovering their scheme to traffic women using Spencer’s tech. Gil had caught wind of the plot and had blackmailed Terry into forcing Hemmings to pull industry strings to help him get famous again. She recounted each horrid detail of the conversation, from the mention of Terry receiving kickbacks from the gun lobbyists to ease restrictions on firearms purchases, to the dawning of the gruesome revelation that both Gil and Terry exploited the school shooting that claimed Libby’s life as a way to get themselves back into the news cycle.
“What fucking animals,” Laura had screamed.
The mood in the room darkened considerably.
“We have to do something. This is insanity. Women are going to suffer.”
“Women already have,” Laura said bitterly.
“We have to stop them.”
* * *
The following week, when we resumed our book club, I came with a plan and armed with the words of the book.
The third Rule of Three states that the only way to realize your true desires is to follow the three steps of the rules: wish, believe, and act.
“So what?” said Laura, who’d been opposed to discussing a self-help book from the beginning. Understandably she had a particular animosity toward anything in the genre.
“This is going to help us,” I said seriously.
“I don’t need any help from a book,” Laura defended.
“Let’s hear her out,” Victoria said.
Ultimately, Laura agreed because the success of The Rule of Three was driving Gil crazy with jealousy and she relished the idea of carrying the copy around the house to torture him. Vicky had been quiet when I read more from the book.
Control what consumes you. Your thoughts become things; your fears become problems. Be your own solution.
Though we’d traded our marital resentments, I needed Vicky and Laura to see them for what they were: justifiable motives. I told them that we’d never be happy if we didn’t do something life-changing for all of us. And our husbands were only going to continue to drain us in every possible way.
“We need to kill them.”
The sisters were silent as I laid out the configuration that would reduce the possibility of last-minute capitulation. Laura would kill Terry, Vicky would kill Spencer, and I would kill Gil. And after that initial night, we would never speak about it again.
After a long silence and pensive looks between the sisters, Laura spoke first. “Okay, Monica, let’s say we agree to this. I get that you hate Terry and Spencer, but do you really care enough about Vicky and me to risk your freedom for killing Gil? I don’t think I’ve seen the two of you even speak to each other once.”
If I wanted to make them trust me, I had to tell them everything.
Neither Laura nor Vicky said much after I told them that I’d been a devotee of Gil’s and lost all my money and was disowned by my parents because they thought I’d joined a cult. I wasn’t welcome back in Galveston by any of my former friends. I’d bet everything on a man who deemed me so insignificant that he didn’t even recognize me when I came to Kingsland. And I confessed to Laura that it was me who’d leaked the video on Twitter that brought Gil down.
Vicky looked stricken and sick, while Laura appeared out of body.
“You realize that you didn’t just ruin his life when you did that,” Laura said angrily.
“I’m so sorry for that. I didn’t know you then. It ruined my life too. When Gil was canceled, I had no job, no money, and no one to look to for help. For better or worse, Gil was the person in my life who gave me purpose. I was young and didn’t know that I could be that for myself, yet. And when I met Spencer a few weeks later, I was desperate, homeless, and out of options,” I told them.
“You’re blaming Gil as the reason you ended up with Spencer?” Laura said. “Are you hearing this?” she’d asked Vicky.
Vicky stayed quiet.
“Cause and effect,” I said. “And it came back to me threefold when Spencer was indicted. We lost everything. I went through the same thing you did, Laura!”
“It is a remarkable coincidence that Terry recruited you to Kingsland, where Gil happened to be living, given your history with Gil,” Vicky said finally.
“There are no coincidences, only opportunities.” I quoted the book.
What I didn’t share with the sisters was that I’d helped push that coincidence along. I’d been keeping tabs on Gil for a few years and knew he was living in a wealthy community for social outcasts. When it became apparent that Spencer was on the same trajectory, I dug deeper and saw that Terry’s legal team had repped a number of Kingsland’s once-esteemed residents. I had no idea when I made a call to the law offices of LeFleur, Stermer & Schelling that it would set off such a life-changing chain reaction.
When Gil laid eyes on me at that first Kingsland event and had absolutely no recognition, I was furious and humiliated. But I knew the opportunity had been presented to me to teach him a lesson. Meeting the sisters and learning about all the deplorable things that their husbands had gotten away with—even before the Palm Springs trip revelations—inspired a “three birds, one stone” plan.
“What if we get caught?” Laura had finally said. “Isn’t it always the spouses?”
“Not if the spouses have airtight alibis, no motive, and the victims have many enemies.” I could see the wheels turning in both of their heads.
“And we have the perfect scapegoat,” I’d added.
“Hemmings,” Vicky wisely said.
“Yes. That fucker has to go down too.”
“How do we do it?” Laura pressed.
“I think the punishment should fit the crimes, don’t you?”
“Guns,” Vicky said softly.
“Exactly,” I replied.
“I don’t want to go to prison,” Vicky said.
“We actually know people who’ve gotten away with murder. Most of them were defended by Terry’s legal team,” Laura said.
“Kingsland isn’t exactly the kind of place that a triple homicide happens and isn’t scrutinized. There’s no crime here,” Vicky countered.
“Except for the spate of car thefts. There is an emerging criminal element here, one that could likely escalate.”
“This is crazy. There’s no way we’ll get away with this.”
“The people who get caught are the ones who slip up and talk about it,” I said.
“We don’t speak a word about this once it is done.”
* * *
Fourth of July weekend seemed perfect because people would be distracted by the holiday festivities and the all-day drinking would make witness recountings murky. The sound of fireworks would be a good cover for gunshots. We had to prime the husbands leading up to the big party at Terry and Vicky’s for maximum tension and conflict. Individually, we planted seeds of doubt about each other’s motives and betrayals so that the barbecue would be rife with tension between the husbands. As far as everyone in Kingsland knew after that cookout, Spencer Nichols wanted to kill Terry and Gil.
Milly was integral in the lead-up to the murders, as we knew she’d help spread far and wide that there was trouble in the Nichols household after the yoga class with me once she’d seen my bruises. We knew she was always in earshot and used it to our advantage before and after the shootings to make sure people were looking in the right directions.
