The One That Got Away: An MM romantic suspense, page 1
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
Nicky James
The One That Got Away
Copyright © 2021 by Nicky James
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Artist:
Nicky James
Editing:
Susie Selva
LesCourt Author Services
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the author.
Trigger Warning
In this story, there is heavy focus on an incident that happened many years ago involving a child kidnapping/sex-trafficking operation. The details of sexual abuse are NOT discussed in any detail at any point during the story, but the kidnapping incident itself is referred to often. The long-term mental health impact of such an incident is explored through one character and presents as:
Severe anxiety and panic disorder
OCD
Dissociative episodes
PTSD
Table of Contents
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
Trigger Warning
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Other Titles by Nicky James
Chapter One
Charlie
I wasn’t imagining it.
All I had to do was wait, and I’d prove it.
Wedged out of sight in the corner, fingers idly flicking the locking mechanism at the bottom of the window, I took a mental note of the time and counted.
Early morning sunlight sparkled across the dewy lawn and refracted off the chrome rims of Dad’s Impala in the driveway below. The weather report called for seasonably warm temperatures. No forecasted rain, which the blue sky, absent of any clouds, seemed to confirm.
The Beekmans were rounding up their herd and shoving them into their minivan across the street. Eight-year-old Dyson scooted under his dad’s arm, making a getaway, squealing as he flew with airplane arms across the front lawn.
Casey shouted after him, looking frazzled as he buckled his youngest into a car seat. Alice, Casey’s wife, was crouched, double-checking backpacks as she waved for Julia and Delilah, their four-year-old twins, to get into the van. Alice must have found something missing because she popped off the ground and raced back inside, tripping over the couple’s two cairn terriers, who were barking in echoing fits at the front door.
The Beekmans were nothing short of entertaining.
One minute.
Maple, oak, and elm trees lined the street in both directions. They were bursting with new life, fresh greenery that brushed together in the gentle spring breeze. If I leaned against the windowpane, I could make out the edges of Francine LaPointe’s flower beds with freshly churned soil and newly planted annuals in various shades of purple and pink and yellow. My elderly neighbor loved to garden and had been itching for the spring thaw for months.
With the May long weekend approaching, I knew Ms. LaPointe would be spending all her time sorting out her vegetable patch in the backyard. “You can never plant tomatoes before the May long weekend,” she’d told me once. “All it would take is one frosty night and they’d be kaput.”
Two minutes.
I continued staring as far down the street as I could, counting the cars in each laneway, ensuring every one of them belonged. Nothing seemed out of order.
The faint rhythmic clicking of the latch under my fingers helped me count the passing minutes without rushing. It was metronomic. Soothing.
Necessary.
From the landing halfway down the stairs from the second floor, I had a good view of the neighborhood in both directions. I was familiar with people’s routines and relied on them to help maintain balance in my less than ordinary world. If people diverged from their schedules, it ignited an inner disquiet I carried with me all day.
It was Monday. Monday meant Westly Huntington would drag his garbage to the curb any moment, beating the weekly pick-up time by the skin of his teeth. I checked the street in both directions again then stared at the older man’s garage door.
Three minutes.
Like clockwork, it rose.
Westly shuffled outside wearing a bathrobe and slippers, dragging a black-lidded bin behind him at the same time the telltale clatter of the garbage truck announced its arrival in our neighborhood.
Four.
Alice and Casey had their crew buckled into the van. They drove off, leaving their dogs yapping in the big bay window. “Another day, another dime,” Casey often said. He was a decent guy. Friendly. Always tired, but that seemed understandable considering he and Alice had five kids under ten.
I scanned the street. Waited. Waited some more.
Five.
My skin prickled and itched.
I wasn’t imagining it. I wasn’t crazy. If I waited long enough…
I clicked the latch on the window, locking and unlocking it, back and forth, the sound echoing inside my head.
Little beads of sweat formed along my spine and at my temples. I wet my lips. Click, click, click.
When a blue Mazda whizzed by, the hairs along my arms stood on end. A red Sunbird drove in the opposite direction. In the distance, closer still, the garbage truck rumbled.
“I’m not imagining it.” The hushed words carried a weight of familiar anxiety.
Am I?
Six.
Mr. Huntington’s garage door lowered as the old man tottered back inside. The Beekmans’ dogs gave up their frantic barking and retreated, likely for a nap since they had a long day of nothing ahead of them. The hydraulic whine of the garbage truck pierced the air. Closer again. My internal temperature rose to unreasonable levels. My heart beat like a war drum against my ribs.
More sweat.
More minutes.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
“I wasn’t—”
There it was.
The white Pontiac Grand Prix appeared at the end of the road, turning off Grenadine Avenue and heading in my direction. Slow and steady like before, inching down the street at a speed far below what was posted. As it crept past my house, I ducked back into the corner out of sight, watching from a tiny slit beside the curtain. A second later, I poked my head out and followed its retreat as it drove off down the road.
Then it was gone.
Again, the license plate had been unreadable.
I clicked the window latch one final time, locking it in place, and raced down the stairs, muttering, “I wasn’t imagining it. I saw it. I saw it four times. Four. That’s something. It’s got to be something.”
As I passed the front door, I double-checked the deadbolt, unlocking it and locking it again, peering through the tiny crack where the door butted against the frame to assure myself the firm piece of steel was in place.
I moved along each window in the front room, doing the same to all the latches, clicking them open and closed, checking each in turn. The house was large—smaller than the house where I’d grown up but a significant size nonetheless—with an excess of ingress and egress points. More than I would have preferred.
There was a large sitting room, a downstairs office where dad worked on his models, a study, a media room, and several bathrooms, along with a garage and the enormous kitchen in the back.
The second floor was reserved for multiple bedrooms, a bathroom, and a decent-sized study I used for work. The unfinished basement had been sealed off for my sanity.
I’d worked out a system years ago, a ritual Dad called it, which I performed a minimum of four or five times a day with each and every window and door in the entire house. Was it healthy? My doctor said no. My father had no comment. We both pretended it was normal.
The kitchen was my final destination. There were far too many windows in the open space. Sunlight glistened off the granite island and appliances. The white cabinetry gleamed under its assault.
Dad was hunched over a newspaper in the breakfast nook, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, thinning silver hair slicked back over a round head. Everything about Dad was rounder these days. “That’s old age for you,” he’d once said when I’d suggested a healthier diet. “If you make me eat any more damn greens, I’ll dig my own bloody grave. Not worth it.”
The old ticker was chugging along just fine, he’d assured me. The doctors disagreed and said his blood pressure was too high and his cholesterol needed to come down.
Dad didn’t argue about the locks, so I’d stopped hounding him about his health.
When I entered the kitchen, I felt the heat of his attention as I moved along the outside wall, clicking the locks on every window along the back of the house. I had to shift aside long hanging branches from a few plants, but that didn’t bother me.
I finished at the patio door and took a mental note, ensuring I hadn’t missed anything, then I turned and faced my father. Wringing my hands, I pieced through the events of the past few days to ensure my arguments were solid.
Dad cocked a brow as though he knew I was about to make an announcement. Unfortunately, he read me like a book.
“I’m going to the police station this morning. Someone’s following me.”
Dad paused, studying me, likely assessing my decision and whether or not he could steer me away from it. “You spent damn near twenty minutes on the landing.”
“Twelve.”
“Boy, I’m not arguing with you. Twelve or twenty, you know you shouldn’t be doing that.”
“It’s a white Pontiac. Older model Grand Prix. I’m guessing between 1996 and 2000. I couldn’t get a read on the license plate, but it drove past twice, and yesterday—”
“Charlie. Stop.”
I twisted my fingers together and shuffled my feet as I clamped my mouth shut and waited for Archie Falkingham to go on.
“Now listen. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“No one is following you. If you take this to that poor man at the station again, he’s going to lock your ass up. I swear to god, son—”
“I haven’t committed a crime. There is no reason to arrest me.”
“Don’t be smart. You know what I mean. Do you want another stint in the ward? That’s where this will land you.”
“My suspicions are well founded. If you would just listen.”
“Enough. There’s only so much that man is going to tolerate. You hammering down his door every other week with these outrageous stories is going to get old, you hear me? I’m telling you. Let. It. Go. If you don’t, I’m getting on that phone and telling Sofia she needs to adjust your meds again.”
“But… I’m not imagining it.”
Dad sucked his teeth, studying my face for a long time before he nodded at the coffee pot on the counter behind me. “Grab yourself a coffee, and I’ll pour us some cereal. Breakfast, a bit of work, then you’ll feel better.”
My fingers twitched. “At the post office yesterday—”
“Charlie—”
“—while I was grabbing those forms—”
“Enough.”
“And then again when I was at the cart return at Daisy’s Market. It was right there. I looked up and—”
The bench scraped across the natural stone tile as Dad shoved away from the table. I snapped my mouth shut. Grunting, he used the table to help pull himself to his feet.
Before I could protest, he took me by the arm and guided me around until I faced the coffee pot, then he shuffled away to retrieve my ceramic mug from the cupboard—the navy one with beige speckled dots in various sizes painted around its circumference. I’d bought it at the art festival from a lady with wildly frizzy hair and a laugh that was like tinkling bells. It was my favorite mug and the only one in our extensive collection I could use for my eight o’clock coffee. The red one with the gold stripes was for my ten o’clock coffee. The moss green one with a painted pinecone on one side was for my midday coffee.
I didn’t drink coffee after noon. If my doctor had her way, I wouldn’t drink it at all. She claimed it exacerbated my anxiety.
I disagreed.
Dad placed the navy mug on the counter and nudged it toward me. From the table, he retrieved his plain mug with World’s Best Dad printed on the front and placed it beside mine. “What are you working on today?”
I didn’t like being dismissed, but Dad also knew I didn’t like getting off schedule, so I relented.
When I reached for the coffee pot and Dad was sure I was following through with his request, he retreated to the other side of the kitchen where he dug a box of Raisin Bran from the pantry.
“Kristy is waiting on an outline for the next book. I’m stuck in the planning phase. Still trying to sort out the structure of the plot. I need to think more about it.”
The sound of cereal falling into a bowl filled the empty air after I finished speaking.
“So, in essence, you’ll be at that damn window all bloody day or sitting in your room.”
I filled our mugs and replaced the pot under the machine. “My brain needs to be stimulated. You know those things help.”
“Try going for a walk.”
Dad found the milk in the fridge and poured it over the flakes to a precise level, knowing my predilections. After, he handed over the jug so I could splash a quarter ounce into my coffee and slightly less into Dad’s.
“I might run some errands or go to the library. I told Kenny I’d pop into the bookstore this week sometime too. Sign more books.”
Dad glared over the bowls of cereal as he carried them to the breakfast nook. His left hip was bothering him, giving him a slight limp that wasn’t always present. Since it wasn’t raining, he couldn’t blame the weather like he often did. It was arthritis, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
Dad sat at the table, and I joined him.
We ate in silence for a few minutes before Dad sighed, peering up from under his bushy eyebrows. “Don’t start this again, kiddo. I’m not an idiot. You say errands, and I know what that entails. Take a step back and analyze this whole thing with a clearer head in a day or two. You’re anxious about this new book and the plot not coming together how you want. It’s stirring everything up. Trust me.”
“I’m not imagining it. I think Detective Graveman should know.” I ate another spoonful of cereal. “Just in case,” I added, not looking up.
Dad stopped protesting, but I didn’t miss the way he shook his head in submission nor did I miss the indecipherable words he muttered under his breath.
We finished our breakfast and coffees. Dad rinsed the dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher while I reversed course, checking the locks on my way back upstairs. When I hit the landing and stopped at the window, scanning the street in both directions, Dad’s booming voice traveled from all the way in the kitchen.
“Get off the bloody landing, Charlie, or so help me god.”
I continued upstairs.
In the bathroom, I showered and worked through my assiduous routine of shaving, styling my wheat blond hair into a severe side part, gluing down any stray flyaways with an exorbitant amount of gel, dressing—tan slacks, tailored to fit, and a polo in a soft blue color that accented my eyes—and applying the appropriate amount of aftershave and cologne.
I brushed my teeth, flossed, groomed my eyebrows, cleaned out the sink, and wiped the droplets off the mirror with the cleansing cloths I kept handy.
Then I managed my pills, counting them out and taking them with a small mouthful of tap water.
Order. Control.
Before leaving the bathroom, I studied my reflection. Square, clean-shaven jaw. Pale lips with a gentle downward curve, not too thin but not overly plump either. When I tried to smile, it looked awkward and unfitting. My face was more suited to a neutral expression. I had freckles in abundance across my sharply pointed nose and cheekbones. I wasn’t sure how I felt about them. They seemed boyish, which I didn’t appreciate at age twenty-nine. My eyes were gray blue, a color that wasn’t dissimilar to the horizon when a storm approached. Framing each eye were long lashes, long enough my sister, Adelaide, called them girly. I hadn’t appreciated that. Dad had told me it wasn’t worth the fight and I should let it go.
Adelaide didn’t like much about me.
For a moment, I leaned in, peering deep into the pools of gray blue, seeking something I’d never been able to see. I knew I wasn’t like other people, and I understood why—to a point—even though there was a dark hole in my brain I couldn’t access.
I was an adult, but too many people didn’t see me as such. They saw me as mentally deficient. Broken. They treated me like a child, and I wasn’t a child.
They sometimes called me crazy.
“But I’m not crazy.”
My doctor had reassured me several times, and she was the one with multiple diplomas on her walls. The doctors might have slapped many labels on me, but crazy wasn’t one of them.
