Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(115)

“It wasn’t my fault!”

“You sold your own daughter!”

“And I paid the price. I returned to Ronnie. I spent another year getting the shit beat out of me. Doesn’t that count? I screwed up and I paid for it.”

“Not as much as she did! What about after you left Ronnie? Why not go to the police then? Why not rescue your daughter then?”

Marlene doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to. We all know. Because she would’ve been arrested, too. And what kind of woman wanted to go to jail, when she could start over with a new man, five thousand dollars richer and no one else the wiser?

I step toward her. The gun wavers in her hand. I don’t care. I take another step, then another. I don’t have a gun, a flashlight, any kind of weapon. I have only my outrage, and it’s enough.

“What will they think of you, your new and improved family? Once they realize what you really did to your first child? You’re not the victim at all. You’re the monster Vero feared in the dark.”

“I don’t know. And I don’t plan on finding out.”

Marlene raises her gun. She stares me straight in the eye.

Just as Thomas yells, “Run!”

He hurls the flashlight. I feel it rush by my ear, the second before it connects with Marlene’s face.

She cries out, reaching up instinctively with her left hand, even as her right pulls the trigger.

A bullet. I swear I can see it. I can watch it spiral through the night, homing in on my chest. For a fraction of an instant of time, I don’t care. I throw open my arms. I embrace my own death.

Because this was how it was always meant to be. I knew it from the first moment I set foot on this property. I would die here.

Such is life in the dollhouse.

And then . . .

I fall down. I don’t know how or why. Then I don’t have time to consider it. Another shot is fired. Thomas yells, at me, at her, I can’t tell. He rushes by, shovel overhead, a man on the attack.

“Run,” he screams at me. “Run!”

And I find myself racing across the rolling hills I used to contemplate from the tower bedroom, cutting a path straight for the woods.

Another scream of frustration from Marlene. Another explosion from the gun. Followed by a heavy grunt, distinctly male. Thomas, I think; she’s shot Thomas.

But I can’t go back. The wind is carrying me now, cold and determined. Into the woods I go.

“Vero!” I cry out.

And I know she is here with me. We run together, two little girls finally escaping. I hold out my hand, and she is there.


* * *



“SHOTS FIRED, SHOTS fired!”

Wyatt’s SUV had just crested the hill when he heard the first exchange. He grabbed the radio; Tessa was already unclipping her seat belt.

“There,” she reported, pointing through his window. “Lights. Near that mound of vegetation.”

He careened his own vehicle to a stop, identifying Marlene Bilek’s car, dead ahead. A quick request for backup while unholstering his sidearm; then he and Tessa had both doors open, using them for momentary cover. Whatever was happening was playing out beyond the beam of the headlights. They couldn’t see as much as hear the action.

Dark bobbing shapes as two people struggled. Then a woman’s shriek of frustration, followed by a fresh crack of gunfire. A muffled grunt; then the second shape dropped to the ground.

Thomas Frank, Wyatt guessed, given the larger size.

“Marlene Bilek!” Wyatt called out. “This is the police. Drop your weapon!”

He leveled his own weapon, but at this distance, in the dark . . .

Apparently, Marlene Bilek figured the same. Because in the next instant, she scooped up a flashlight. Then, as they watched, she took off across the grass.

“She’s running away,” Tessa exclaimed.

“Or giving chase. Where’s Nicky?”

“Shit!”

They both took off into the night.


* * *



LEAVES SLAP MY face. I twist around one tree only to become briefly entangled in a bush. The woods are thick, heavily overgrown, and I have no light to guide my way. Already I’m thrashing and heaving, whacking my way through the vegetation like an enraged bear.

She will find me. She has a flashlight. She has a gun.

She’s already taken out Thomas, and now it’s my turn.

I will die in these woods, just like I did twenty-two years before.

Now, with my heart heaving in my chest and tears pouring down my cheeks, it amazes me all the pictures popping into my mind. They are not of the dollhouse. They aren’t of Vero. They are of Thomas.

I am running for my life. Approaching the precipice of my third death, and mostly, I’m remembering the man who loved me.

Days and weeks and months in the dollhouse. Exchanges of looks but never words. Coconspirators before either of us was ever brave enough to verbalize the crime. But he knew, and I knew that he knew, and it was enough to give both of us hope.

Because what is love, if not an exercise in faith?

The nights he never left me. I cried and cried. I railed at him; I hit him. I blamed him; I begged him. And he took it. He held me and stroked my hair and whispered it would be all right. Because what is love, if not perseverance?

I forgive you, I think, though until this moment, I didn’t realize just how much I blamed him for the fire. But he was right; we were just kids. We didn’t know what we were doing. And none of us should’ve been there anyway.