A Secret to Die For, page 19
“In the bathroom.”
“Why? What’s happening?”
“Hopefully nothing, but I need to check it out.”
Garrett was already pulling on a pair of pants and a sweater, sneakers too.
“Bathroom, Saralisa.”
“You’re leaving me here?”
“It’s the safest place.”
“Then you should stay with me.”
Another ping.
“You’re probably right and it’s just a deer.”
Now he was rooting through his overnight bag, and holy fuck, was that a gun? It was, a black pistol, and he checked the magazine before he tucked it into his waistband.
“W-w-why do you have that?”
“Just a precaution.” He pressed an urgent kiss to my lips. “Bathroom.”
“But—”
He checked my phone one last time before he curled my fingers around it.
“Relax. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I backed into the bathroom while Garrett slipped out of the rear door, the one that led to the pump room and then the little grove of trees that Great-Grandma Agnes had planted. Should I call Luca? He’d said that if the motion sensors activated, I should let him know right away, but that was before Garrett came onto the scene. No, I’d wait. The sensors were set too high to pick up a rabbit or a hedgehog, and they had some fancy technology that meant they discounted birds. But a large deer would set them off, or a mountain lion. Not that we got many mountain lions around here, but Annie from the hair salon’s brother swore he saw one in the parking lot outside Applejack’s one night. Of course, Annie’s brother also liked beer, which meant that nobody really believed him. Skip, who’d run the bar before Taya Swann, had sworn that extraterrestrials visited regularly, but nobody had believed him either. And Skip was gone now, in jail for robbing an armoured car, which had come as a surprise to everyone because Skip was a kind old guy who—
The first gunshot sent the phone tumbling out of my hand, and the second nearly gave me a coronary. Glass shattered. Every muscle froze. Three more shots came in quick succession, bang-bang-bang, and I couldn’t even breathe.
The silence was worse.
Why was it so quiet?
Where was Garrett?
What was out there?
The monster.
The monster was out there.
A sob burst from my throat, and I fumbled blindly for the phone. Call Luca, call Luca, call Luca.
He was coming for me. He was here. He was in my home. The nightmares, they were all true. I could barely breathe, and the blood whooshed so loudly in my ears that I could hardly hear either. My fingers trembled as I dialled.
“Sara? You okay?”
“L-L-Luca? Somebody’s sh-sh-shooting.”
“Where?”
“At The Lookout. Near the pool house.”
“Are you safe? Stay inside. Is there someplace you can hide?”
“I’m in the b-b-bathroom. Garrett went outside, and now…now it’s quiet. Everything’s so quiet.”
“I’m on my way, okay? I’m on my way. Do you have a gun?”
“Of course I don’t have a freaking gun!”
“Stay on the line.”
I heard him talking to Brooke in the background, telling her to call Colt, then the slap of feet on concrete because instead of stairs or an elevator, the wide old ramp that had once been used by cars led up to his apartment on the second floor.
“Help, please help. I can’t lose him. I can’t.”
“Any further alerts from the motion detectors?”
I fumbled with the phone again. “I— No, I don’t think so. One of them has an error. What does that mean? What does that mean?”
“I’m getting into the car. Can you hear anything else?”
“No.” Yes. Oh hell, yes. “There are footsteps.”
I shrank into the shower stall and made myself as small as I could go. Suddenly, I was back in that car, hiding from the bad man, waiting for him to kill me too, waiting for a bullet to the head because I wasn’t allowed to live. I wasn’t allowed to live.
A siren sounded through the phone, but it would be too late. Luca wouldn’t be here for five minutes at least, even if he drove like a madman, and I’d be dead. Dead like my mom, dead like my dad, dead like…like…
“Saralisa?”
My heart lurched. “G-G-Garrett?”
“I’m here, princess.”
Then I was in his arms, sobbing uncontrollably because somehow I was still alive and I shouldn’t be. My prince was still alive and murmuring soothing words like it’s okay and it’s over and he’s dead, don’t worry.
Dead?
Dead?
What the hell?
28
SARA
This couldn’t be happening.
There was a dead guy on my portico. My boyfriend had just shot him. And then Parker had shown up waving a pistol and nearly shot Garrett because he thought he was an intruder. I’d had to jump between them and scream at my stupid dumb cousin to drop the gun, and honestly, they should ban those things because they were freaking dangerous.
Luca and Colt had arrived along with every single other deputy from the Coos Bay Sheriff’s Department and the sheriff himself, who didn’t know much about policing but who knew plenty about press coverage. We had lawyers, we had reporters, and we had nosy neighbours, but luckily, they were all being held beyond the cordon set up around the estate. Angela had texted me twice, and I’d ignored her both times.
The worst part was that now they’d separated us. Garrett had been taken somewhere for questioning, Parker too, and I’d been told to stay in the living room at the big house while the deputies searched the grounds, just in case there were any other psychos lurking outside. At least they’d let Brooke stay with me.
“Was it him?” she whispered.
“Who?”
“The guy from the Peninsula? The one you were worried about?”
I shook my head. I’d caught sight of the body after the drama with Parker, and although part of the head was missing, the one remaining eye had stared unseeing at the night sky. It hadn’t been the monster. Or at least, not that monster.
“I didn’t recognise him.”
Neither did Garrett; he’d told me that much before he was taken away.
“Do you want me to make you a drink? Coffee? Hot chocolate? Water?”
“Just water.”
I’d gotten dressed in a hurry, and there were still pieces of candle wax flaking off from under my sweater. Earlier, going to sleep covered in the stuff had seemed sexy, but now it was just more evidence of how truly screwed up my life was. I nudged a few red fragments under the table with a foot.
“How long do you think this will take? Garrett didn’t do anything wrong. He was only protecting me.”
“There’s a bunch of procedures they need to follow. Luca said we’re not meant to talk about what happened.”
“We were asleep. Garrett didn’t start this.”
Brooke gave my hand a squeeze. “I know, sweetie.”
An age passed before Colt came back with a deputy I didn’t recognise in tow. I’d thought Sheriff Newman might put in an appearance, but he was probably outside courting the media and making sure the photographers got his good side.
“Are you up to answering some questions, Sara?”
Did I have much choice? “I’ll do my best.”
“Can you start by talking us through what happened?”
I took a deep breath and started from the beginning. The motion alerts, Garrett’s concern, the shots. Parker’s ill-timed appearance. I suppose at least he’d shown up. Either EJ slept like the dead, or he hadn’t cared two hoots about my welfare. As for the twins, they’d run onto the scene in pyjamas after the cops arrived, gone slack-jawed when they realised Garrett Dorsey was there, disappeared, and come back ten minutes later wearing make-up and designer clothing.
“The intruder didn’t enter the pool house at all?” Colt asked.
“No. I mean, I didn’t hear him come in.”
“I only ask because there appear to be some kind of restraints attached to the bed?”
My cheeks burned, and Colt wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Those are mine.”
“Right, uh, okey-dokey. So, moving on… Over the past several weeks, have you received any other alerts at night from the motion detection system?”
“Like an intruder? No. But I knew the sensors worked because they always picked up Garrett when he arrived.”
“Does he make a habit of coming over late at night?”
“Yes. We’re both adults. We don’t have a curfew.”
“I understand that. Any specific threats against either yourself or Mr. Dorsey?”
“Beyond the one you’re already aware of? No. But after that…that incident at the Peninsula, Blue was asking questions about my parents. What if she pushed someone’s buttons?”
“Rest assured, we’ll be speaking with Ms. Carver.”
“Do you know who the man was? The man Garrett shot? Where he came from?”
“We’re still working on that.”
“Out of all those deputies, nobody recognised him?”
“He most probably came from out of town.”
“He was there to kill me, wasn’t he?”
“We’re still processing—”
“The evidence, I know. Well, process this—a stranger arrives at an estate in the middle of nowhere and instead of heading for the main house where all the valuables are, he somehow navigates his way to the pool house, which is usually devoid of both life and accoutrements, with a gun. Next you’re gonna tell me he was just looking for a place to lay his poor, weary head.”
“I understand your concerns.”
“Do you? Do you really? Because right now, it seems like I’m the only one who’s worried!”
I shoved the chair back and stalked across the kitchen, looking for something to throw. Damn Parker and his obsessive tidiness. In the end, I yanked open the refrigerator, found an apple, and hurled it toward the door. Right as Luca appeared.
“Whoa.” He sidestepped, then peered around the doorjamb. “Is it safe now?”
“Sorry.”
“I was going to ask how you’re feeling, but I guess I already know the answer.”
“Where’s Garrett?”
“He’s fine. His lawyer’s with him now.”
“Why does he need a lawyer? He acted in self-defence. There was a man outside with a freaking gun, and it wasn’t a social call.”
“We just have a few issues to get straightened out. Sara, have you ever seen the man who came to your house before tonight?”
“Doesn’t anyone in the sheriff’s department talk to each other? No, I’ve never seen him before, same as I never saw the person who killed my mom and dad before he showed up either.”
Luca beckoned Colt out of the room, and I was tempted to throw another apple. Why couldn’t anyone be straight with me?
29
GARRETT
My phone vibrated on the table in front of me, and I ignored Angela for the seventeenth time. At least Luca hadn’t decided to cuff me, and he didn’t seem too worried about me checking my messages either. Probably because the situation was a clear-cut case of self-defence.
An intruder had shown up at Saralisa’s home and set off the alarms. I’d flanked him, and while he was fiddling with the lock, I’d instructed him to raise his hands. He’d turned and fired at me, but he clearly hadn’t spent much time on the range because both shots went wide. I’d shot him in the chest twice and the head once. The end.
Our family lawyer was far more excited about this than I was, no doubt because he was getting paid eight hundred bucks an hour plus whatever expenses he charged for driving to this godforsaken part of Oregon outside of business hours. Now he was pacing the study at The Lookout in two-thousand-dollar brogues and a custom-made suit.
“Burford, it’s simple. The man had no business creeping around the Baldwin estate at midnight, not unless you count committing a felony as a valid reason. I shot him in the fucking face with a legally registered firearm while he was in the process of trying to kill me.”
“Your father’s currently campaigning for tighter gun controls.”
“Fantastic, let him. They can start by taking the guns away from the criminals.”
“You know what the press is going to say.”
“Have you been speaking with Angela?”
The door opened, and Sheriff Newman walked in. The guy had to be at least eighty, and his rumpled attire suggested he’d never been near a tailor or even an iron in his life.
“How are you holdin’ up, son?”
“That’s the question I should be asking my girlfriend. How much longer are you going to keep me here?”
“We need to make sure we cross all the i’s and dot all the t’s. I spoke with your father a few minutes ago—great guy—and he’s sendin’ a car for you.”
“I already have a car.”
“Just repeatin’ what he said. Do you know a young lady called Angela? She called 911 and told the dispatcher she was concerned for your welfare.”
For the love of fuck. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Women.” The sheriff rolled his eyes. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em.”
“Do you really think that’s an appropriate joke to be making tonight?”
He held up his hands and backed out of the room. “Just sit tight, son.”
The door closed, and Burford snorted. “I’m sure this investigation is going to be handled in an entirely thorough and professional manner.”
“Call Angela,” I ordered, heading for the door myself. “Tell her to stop wasting police time.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find Saralisa.”
Except I didn’t get far. When I pulled the door open, Luca and Colt were on the other side of it.
“We need to talk,” Luca said.
“Don’t you have enough information already? What would you have done in that situation? Invited the asshole in for coffee?”
“It was a righteous kill, but that isn’t the issue. You’ll walk on the shooting. The first problem is that he was wearing a backpack, and in that backpack was a pair of handcuffs, zip ties, duct tape, a knife, condoms, and what we believe might be a type of sedative. The lab will need to confirm.”
He’d come to Saralisa’s home with a fucking rape kit? My hands balled at my sides, and I wanted to put a fist through something, preferably what was left of that motherfucker’s face.
“I wish I could go back and kill him again. Slower this time.”
“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“What’s the second problem? You said ‘the first problem,’ which means there must be another.”
“The second problem is more of a question: why was he there?”
“I thought you just answered that.”
“That’s merely logistics. I’m asking—and so is Sara, incidentally—why a stranger to this town ended up at the pool house on the Baldwin estate in the middle of the night. It’s not the kind of place a rapist would head to by chance.”
I’d been so busy thinking of the “what” I hadn’t stopped to consider the “why.” But now that the adrenaline was dissipating and the threat of jail had receded, I saw that Luca was absolutely right. Saralisa had been deliberately targeted.
“They knew she was there.”
“The question is how? I can tell you that the fact she’s been staying in the pool house isn’t common knowledge in Baldwin’s Shore. She only told me and Brooke two weeks ago. Until then, we thought she was staying in the big house the same as always. And before you ask, Brooke didn’t tell anyone and neither did I.”
It got worse.
“I wasn’t supposed to be here tonight.” The words were like sandpaper in my throat. “A meeting got cancelled at the last minute, and I flew back early to see her.”
If Mandy Caukwell hadn’t tripped over her Maltese terrier and ended up in the hospital getting her ankle pinned, I’d still have been in Los Angeles. And Saralisa would have gone through hell. She’d be in the damn morgue, not freaking out somewhere in this fucking house.
“So who knew the details of your schedule? The perp clearly wasn’t expecting you, and he wasn’t aware of the motion sensors either, which means we can probably rule out the Baldwin family hiring someone. When Brie’s team was fitting the system, EJ complained that the drilling was too loud, and one of the twins had a hissy fit about privacy because she thought we were installing cameras and she likes to sunbathe topless by the pool.”
Thanks for the warning.
Hold on a second… “You think her family would be capable of hiring that psycho? To rape and kill her?”
“We have to consider every possibility. What did Sherlock Holmes say? That once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
“It was Arthur Conan Doyle, actually. But I see your point.” And if we were going to philosophise, then another quote sprang to mind, this time from Arthur Schopenhauer: All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
I’d done the ridiculing, not openly, but in my own mind. And we’d sure had the violence tonight. I was heading toward stage three, but I wasn’t certain I wanted to arrive at the destination.
“I used to think the Baldwins were irritating yet harmless,” Colt said. “But one of them is in jail for murder and another for attempted murder, so I’m open to the idea that they could do something as fucked up as trying to have Sara killed. But the pieces don’t fit. Which leaves us with the possibility that someone fixated on Sara. I don’t think that happened here because the dead guy isn’t familiar, but I hear she’s been spending time in Roseburg lately. Did you see anyone following her? Get the prickly feeling that something was wrong?”
“We barely went out. Saralisa isn’t a party girl, and I don’t enjoy my every move being posted on the internet.”
