Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(117)

His flashlight returns to the ground near her feet. To the mass of skeletal bones protruding from the earth.

He looks up at me.

“Wyatt, meet Vero. Vero, meet Wyatt.”

After that, neither of us says another word.





Chapter 42




I DIED TWICE before.

I remember the sensation of pain, burning and sharp, followed by fatigue, crushing and deep. I’d wanted to lie down. I’d needed to be done with it. But I hadn’t. I’d fought the pain, the fatigue, the f*cking white light. I’d clawed my way back to the land of the living.

For Vero. I came back from the dead for her.

Now I am finding the ability to move forward for me.

Marlene Bilek shot Thomas in his side. Not a serious injury, as the bullet grazed his ribs without hitting anything important or lodging anywhere permanent. I still spent a sleepless couple of days bedside in his hospital room, holding his hand while fixated on the steady rise and fall of his chest.

How had he done it? I wondered. Accompanying me after three separate accidents, where I got to sleep off the pain, while he was forced to sit, wait, watch, wonder. To love someone so much and feel so powerless.

I marvel at this man I married. Maybe it’s taken me twenty-two years, but I’m finally starting to appreciate my own good fortune. To have found love. To have built a life. It’s all there, really.

It’s simply up to me to grab on with both hands and claim the future as my own.

In the immediate aftermath, the police had many questions. I did my best to answer, while my brand-new lawyer, produced by Tessa, was careful to remind everyone of my young age at the time of the alleged incidents as well as the abusive situation: mitigating circumstances.

From my own perspective . . . what is memory? What do any of us truly know about the past? I described that last night with Vero the best that I recall it to be true. But as I think Sergeant Wyatt can attest from several days in my company, truth can be relative, the mind a fickle beast. What I think I know, and what I actually know . . . All I can say is, ask Vero. Spend an afternoon. Have some tea.

This is her story after all.

Marlene Bilek’s body was claimed by her husband, Hank, and daughter, Hannah. They have not asked to meet with me and I don’t think I could meet with them. It is too hard to look at Hannah, Vero 2.0, and not think of what might’ve been. For their part, I would guess I’m the woman who tried to exploit Marlene by claiming to be her long-lost daughter.

What do they know of the police’s suspicions regarding Vero’s disappearance thirty years ago, let alone Marlene’s actions that final night in the woods? Technically, Marlene died from a fall. She tripped; she cracked open her skull. I saw it with my own eyes. She shot Thomas, definitely. From our perspective, she acted aggressively, to cover up the truth from thirty years ago. But it would be just as easy for her loved ones to believe she acted out of revenge against two people associated with Vero’s abduction.

The past is the past. Whatever sins Marlene committed, she paid for. I saw her pain with my own eyes. I watched her die.

Now it’s between her and Vero.

This is Vero’s story after all.

Of the two of us, Thomas faces the most legal scrutiny. First, there is the suspicious fire that destroyed our home. Second, possible charges of manufacturing evidence, given the presence of Veronica Sellers’s fingerprints in my Audi. Finally, the burden of the unsolved burning of the dollhouse, not to mention the death of his mother, twenty-two years ago, plus the recent discovery of skeletal remains on the property.

Our lawyer isn’t worried. It would appear we are the only two witnesses from that night so long ago. It’s our official statement that Thomas’s mother died falling down the stairs. While Vero, trapped in the fire, jumped from a three-story window. That leaves the matter of what started the fire, but apparently the original evidence wasn’t preserved. Small towns, limited resources and all that.

As for more recent events . . . Hard to prove Thomas created fake fingerprints, given that the three-D printer in question has been burned to a crisp. Speaking of the house fire, so far the arson investigator has only recovered Thomas’s fingerprints on the gas can. Nothing unusual about that, as it was his property.

Tessa told me herself, smiling slightly, that a single fingerprint isn’t as good a piece of evidence as you’d think. To truly build a case, prosecutors want multiple pieces of physical evidence, not to mention a witness or two. Otherwise, there’s always doubt. And in this day and age of intense media coverage of high-profile cases . . . Prosecutors don’t like doubt. Apparently, many choose to shelve the case, fingerprint and all.

She and Wyatt came to visit me this morning. I have found a lovely cabin for Thomas and me to rent while he recuperates. I think in our entire married life, this is the first time I’ve found a place for us all by myself. It feels good to take the lead.

It also feels good to take a stand.

Thomas, bedridden in the hospital: “You should go. New name, fresh start. Get out while you can. For God’s sake, Nicky. I could be arrested on arson charges any day. Not to mention I engineered a car crash with you still inside the vehicle. What kind of a man does such a thing?”

“You love me.”

“I betrayed you. I created a fake fingerprint glove, tried to literally turn you into a dead girl.”