She Was Their Target, page 6
Zachary leaned on the wall with one hand, trying to control his visceral reaction to the mean girl’s criticisms and strident voice.
Why don’t you kill yourself? Why don’t you get it right next time? You’re a waste of space, Goldman.
He tried to feel the coolness of the wall under his hand, the rough texture of the paint. He was not in school anymore. It wasn’t his school. He had left that scene behind long ago. They were just silly, ignorant girls who had been threatened by someone who was nice and smart and looked different from them. Just like those who were different were made fun of all over the world by ignorant people.
12
Zachary checked back in at the office to let them know that he had finished and was leaving. He didn’t want them to be concerned about a stranger hanging around the school. Then they wouldn’t have to look for him to ensure they could lock up safely. He checked the time and decided he should probably head back to Roxboro if he wanted to be home in good time for supper. Maybe he would even have time to start on it before Kenzie got home. He was sure that she would appreciate it. Even if it just meant that he set the table, got out a salad and side dishes, and left the main course to her.
It was a quick drive from Burlington to Roxboro—a nice drive on the highway, which helped him unwind after the school interviews. As much as he tried to tell himself that his high school experience was over and he had left those days long behind him, the words he had overheard and Rain’s and Ala’s comments about bullying at the school had gotten under his skin. His brain seemed to think he was back there again, in danger, constantly having to be vigilant.
The hypnotic effect of the highway helped to counteract that, bringing him into a calmer, more meditative state. He stopped for gas when he hit the outskirts of town, where it was cheapest. As he filled the tank, he remembered being there and running into Bridget. She had been angry to see him there, sure he was following her. But he hadn’t been. She was paranoid because of her Huntington’s disease, though they hadn’t known it then. She was also in the early stages of her pregnancy with the twins, and had been very pale and suffering from severe morning sickness. Bad enough that she’d had to go to the hospital a couple of times due to dehydration.
Remembering how she had looked that day, so pale and vulnerable, he longed to see her again and to be able to protect her. He was with Kenzie now, and he didn’t have any right to think about another woman, especially one who had treated him like Bridget had. He was still coming to terms with the fact that she had been abusive, that he had sought out and been most comfortable with someone like his mother, someone who would bully and berate him for anything she saw as failings. And Zachary had a lot of failings.
He needed to just put his life with Bridget behind him. He had tried very hard to move on with his life and it baffled him how he longed to go back to her and to have that relationship again, when he was in a much happier and more equal relationship now. Was it because Bridget and Gordon had committed to each other in a way that Zachary and Kenzie hadn’t? He had thought that he and Bridget would have children together even though she had told him from the start that she didn’t want children. But that had been a lie. She hadn’t wanted children with Zachary. Gordon was another story.
Seeing her with the twins broke his heart. It was his life Gordon was living. His wife, the children who should have been his, the happiness and fidelity that he had expected to have when they had married.
When he got into the car after gassing up, he fully intended to go straight home. Kenzie would expect him to be there when she returned from the morgue. He had work to do and wanted to start dinner by the time she got home.
But the car seemed to drive itself of its own accord to Bridget’s house, and he pulled over on the street and stared at it.
Gordon could give Bridget everything she wanted. He gave her a mansion to live in and the staff to run it and do whatever she needed help with. There were maids, cooks, and nannies to ensure Bridget didn’t overtax her strength. He had given her the twins, two perfect little girls Zachary had protected from harm more than once.
It wasn’t just his own imagination and paranoia that they had been in danger. Gordon had not been able to protect them. Only Zachary had. And which was more important? Providing Bridget with a big, beautiful home or keeping her children safe?
But he was not allowed to be there. Bridget had threatened more than once to take out a protective order against him if she ever saw him at the house again. Yet Gordon had called Zachary back. When the stakes had been so high, it was Zachary he called. Gordon had known that Zachary was the only one who could keep Bridget and the babies safe, and he had shown it through his actions.
Zachary opened his laptop case and pulled out a pad of paper. Not one of his little pocket notebooks, but a letter-sized tablet that gave him plenty of space to write. He tried to make his letters and words as legible as possible and to keep them running across the page in neat, horizontal lines. He didn’t know how some people could do it. Even with the blue lines guiding him, his sentences moved up or down the page like a seesaw.
He wrote out everything he could think of. Dr. B had given him assignments like this before. Write a letter to Bridget. Explain your feelings. Think of everything you would tell her if you could.
And then burn it, shred it, or throw it out.
Acknowledge the feelings and then destroy the letter so that no one else would ever see it. Come to terms with his feelings, acknowledge them, and then he would be able to rid himself of them.
But the feelings were all still there, raw and unresolved. Just like his school experiences. Those experiences and feelings were still there, just under the surface. He hadn’t been healed by the therapy and all the exercises he had completed that were supposed to help him deal with the past.
He folded the finished letter carefully into thirds. He wished that he could give it to Bridget. Maybe if he had the chance to express his feelings to her instead of being shut down and told to leave, he could get over it.
If he just felt like he had been heard.
It was much later than he had intended when he got home. His chest and stomach muscles hurt like he’d been doing heavy lifting or a sport he wasn’t accustomed to. He had been holding himself so tense for the past few hours.
Zachary was exhausted.
He picked up his laptop bag and climbed out of the car, enervated. Almost as bad as he would have been from a panic attack. He locked the door, checked the handle, and locked it again. He walked around the car, checking each handle to make sure that they had all locked. He pressed down on the trunk to ensure it was still secured in place. He pushed the button on his key fob once more to ensure the security system was armed.
Zachary entered the house and cleared the burglar alarm, mentally congratulating himself for remembering it even when he was exhausted. He could hear Kenzie talking on the phone in the kitchen and looked in on her.
“Oh, here he is,” Kenzie said, when she saw him in the doorway. “Thanks for letting me know.”
She lowered the phone and pressed the hang-up button.
13
Who was that?” Zachary asked, as it was evident that it was someone who knew them both and had possibly called Kenzie to give him a message or get information from him. He hadn’t looked at his own phone since he had left the gas station, even though he knew it had rung and blinked alerts at him a couple of times.
Kenzie slid her phone into her pocket, pressing her red lipsticked lips together hard, so they flattened out and disappeared. Zachary swallowed. It wasn’t good news. Something had happened. He wasn’t sure he could take anything else.
“That was Gordon.”
Zachary’s heart sank. He scratched the back of his head, trying to think of something to say. There was no way to explain or excuse himself. He had known there was a danger in even driving past Bridget’s house or anywhere he knew that she would be. Running into her accidentally at the mall or the gas station was one thing. Showing up anywhere that was on her regular schedule was a big no-no.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Kenzie asked. She motioned to the table, inviting Zachary to sit down.
“I… I don’t know why I did that.”
He couldn’t help wondering how much she knew and how much Gordon knew. Had Gordon just seen him or caught him on a surveillance camera? Or was it worse than that?
“Why you did what?” Kenzie drilled. Just like a foster mom or group home supervisor who wouldn’t let him get away with fudging an answer in hopes that they didn’t know the full extent of his transgressions.
“Why I… went by Bridget’s house.”
“Went by it?”
Zachary cleared his throat and licked dry lips. “I… stopped there,” he admitted.
“And…?”
“I just wanted to see it… to make sure that everyone was safe.”
Kenzie opened her mouth to object, and Zachary rushed to fill in more details before she could argue against his statement.
“I had to make sure that there wasn’t anyone watching the house. That there weren’t any dangers that they were unaware of. I couldn’t let anything happen to Bridget or the babies.”
“They aren’t in danger anymore. Anyone who intended them harm has been put behind bars.”
“We don’t know that,” Zachary pointed out. “We just know of the ones we are aware of. Gordon is still running a business that could make him enemies. The way that he works, the way he treats his employees, the things that he does… he could have hurt or offended a lot of people, not just the ones we know of.”
“But that isn’t your job. It’s Gordon’s job to ensure they have the security they need and that his wife and his children are protected. It’s not your job.”
“I know,” Zachary admitted miserably. “I just… can’t help feeling that they are in danger and I am the only one who can help, like before.”
“I told him not to call you.” Kenzie shook her head. Her cheeks were red. “I told him not to call you again, and he did anyway. This is on him too.”
Zachary swallowed. While he agreed, he couldn’t fault Gordon for calling him when they needed his services. Zachary had come through and the children had been returned unhurt. That was what mattered. He would never have forgiven Gordon if he had called someone else and the twins had come to harm. Zachary’s life was intertwined with Bridget’s and he didn’t think anyone would ever be able to untangle them, no matter how much he sometimes wanted to.
“I’m sorry,” he told Kenzie, looking down at the shiny tile floor. “I’ve been trying, but…”
“But this is escalating,” Kenzie said flatly. “We’re not just talking about driving by the house or stopping to make sure there is no one else hanging around.”
“I…” Zachary trailed off and shook his head, unsure what to say. Unsure how much she knew.
“If you don’t want to talk to me about it, maybe you’d better call Dr. B and talk to her. Maybe set up a couple of extra sessions.”
Zachary rejected this immediately. “We can handle it in my regular sessions. I don’t need to change anything.”
“You need to change something.”
“I know that, I mean, I don’t have to change my schedule. My sessions with her. We were able to get it under control before.”
“With just one session a week?” Kenzie challenged.
They hadn’t been a couple yet then. Zachary knew Kenzie and they dated or went out to meals occasionally, but they hadn’t been boyfriend and girlfriend yet. Kenzie didn’t know the extent of the treatment Zachary had been through at that time.
“More for a while. But I was stable on just one session per week.”
For a while. Until Gordon had hired him to surveil Bridget to find out if she was seeing someone else. That had pushed him back over the edge. Even so, he had thought that he was back on track. The new medication protocol and his hospital stay had reset things and he was able to stay away from Bridget’s house.
Mostly.
And then the twins had been kidnapped.
And now he couldn’t get them out of his mind. With everything he did, he still had Bridget and the twins in the back of his mind, worrying over whether they were okay. Feeling the constant pull to check on them.
“And you were doing group support for a while,” Kenzie added. “When did you stop doing that?”
“I was… it was… I don’t think it was helping that much. I kind of let it fade after a few months.”
“Well, if it helped initially, then maybe you should go back to it. Until you’re doing better again.”
Zachary sat down at the kitchen table. He put his face in his hands, elbows on the table. He was wrung out and exhausted. He didn’t have the mental energy for the conversation.
“I’ll get it worked out. It’s just going to take a little time.”
“Does Dr. B know you’ve been leaving notes for Bridget?”
14
Zachary groaned. He had hoped Gordon had not told Kenzie that part. That Bridget was putting the notes somewhere safe and not telling Gordon or Kenzie. Or that Gordon or a staff member was disposing of them without Bridget seeing them, which was probably more likely.
But Gordon had called Kenzie, and Gordon knew that Zachary had left a note in the mailbox for Bridget. At least once.
“Does Dr. B know?” Kenzie repeated.
“No.”
“How do you expect her to help if you’re not giving her all of the information?”
“I will.”
“You need help, Zachary.” He could hear the sadness and frustration in her voice. How many times was she going to put up with his relapsing before she told him it was time to clear out? There had to be a point at which it got to be too much and she decided she wasn’t going to put up with his failings anymore.
“I know.”
“You need your meds reviewed. I had high hopes for this protocol, but I just don’t think it’s working. You’re having side effects. You can’t get your… obsessions under control. I really think you need to do something proactive. Get your meds changed. Increase your number of sessions with Dr. B. Start going to a support group. Or get a referral to an effective program…”
“I’ll talk to Dr. B,” Zachary repeated. “We’ll work out a plan.”
“There’s got to be something that you can take that will be more effective without a lot of side effects.”
Zachary shook his head. He pulled his hands down from his face and looked at her. “I’ve been on pretty much everything that’s out there. There’s no such thing as a drug that doesn’t have side effects. Not for me.”
“There’s got to be something.”
“This is a good protocol. It’s been working.”
“You’re still stalking Bridget, and it’s going to land you in jail. That’s not working. And with the misophonia, obsessive thoughts, headaches, and inability to sleep…”
“The sleep aid works.”
“When you take it! But most of the time, you won’t, so what good is it?”
“If I need it, I take it.”
Kenzie shook her head and made a gesture as if pushing it all away. “Fine. That’s your business. It’s your body and you can make the choices you please. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
There was a hard lump in Zachary’s throat. He knew where this would lead. “I’ll do it,” he promised. “I’ll talk to Dr. B and we’ll increase my sessions… increase my dosages and see if that will help. I’ll find an OCD Anonymous group. I’ll take the sleep aid every night.” His eyes were hot with tears. He was going to fall to pieces if she kicked him out. It was worth doing whatever she asked him to do.
Kenzie stopped talking and just looked at him.
“I don’t want to force you into anything,” she said in a quieter tone. “This is for you, not for me. Do you want to live like this?”
“I don’t want to lose you,” Zachary choked out. His vision blurred and it was a struggle to keep his composure.
“You’re not going to lose me. I’m not going anywhere. But I want you to be the best you can. You don’t want to keep going back to Bridget. I know you don’t. And I know you know there is no future with her. It’s a problem with your brain. But there are ways to deal with it. Things that might help.”
“I will. I’ll get help.”
Kenzie bit her lip. “I know you don’t want to live like this,” she repeated.
Zachary nodded. He wished that it was as easy as she made it sound. Get more therapy, take more drugs, and it would naturally go away. He wouldn’t feel the pull toward Bridget anymore. He would be able to just drop the obsession and go on with his life with Kenzie without another hiccup. But there was no “off” switch for his brain.
Neither of them said anything for several long minutes. Kenzie turned away from the table and started to prepare dinner.
Zachary had intended to help. But now he felt like a lump of dough that had been dropped there. Unable to move or get up. Too drained to do those things that sounded so easy. Make a salad. Get out of the chair and set the table. His limbs were sodden and heavy.
For a while, he just sat there, putting his hands over his face again, propped up by his elbows on the table. Thinking about what he had to do and trying to avoid thinking about it all at the same time.
Avoiding it won out. That part of Zachary’s brain just shut down and, instead, he started to think again about Kristin. He wouldn’t let his personal demons get in the way of solving the case. He would bring Jennifer some kind of consolation. He didn’t know what, but he would find something.
“All drugs have side effects,” he said aloud to Kenzie.
