My Killer Vacation(69)

There is just a hint of movement on the left side of the house. It’s Myles with his back to the wall, peering into the side window, gun pointed at the ground between his feet. My wild rush of relief to see him still unharmed is quickly marred by his dark expression when he notices me sitting in the parked car. Teeth gritted, he jerks his chin down the road. “Go, Taylor,” he mouths. “Now.”

There’s a loud crash inside the house.

Myles jerks backward, then slowly peers inside, but I can tell he’s also watching me out of the corner of his eye. I’m distracting him. I can see that now. As much as I want to help, the best thing I can do in this moment is get my butt back to the end of the block and flag down the police. Putting my car into drive, I start to edge away from the curb.

The front door of the house flies open. Rhonda Robinson comes running down the steps, a knife in her hand. A knife? Considering the way Oscar Stanley was murdered, I expected a gun, but I don’t have time to consider this now. She’s running toward a black sedan, which is parked at an angle and partially blocking the driveway of Lisa’s neighbor. Clearly she parked in a hurry and she was definitely rushing again now. Trying to make a run for it before the cops arrive?

Myles steps out from the shadow of the house, gun trained on Rhonda.

“Stop where you are, Rhonda. Get down on the ground.”

The mayor jerks around with an expression of shocked dread. She starts to go down on one knee and Myles approaches slowly.

“Hands behind your head. Do it.”

Another, louder siren is added to the cacophony of sound and it seems to spook Rhonda. She springs back up and sprints for her vehicle, knife in one hand, keys in the other.

My eyes search the rearview, praying for red and white lights. Where are the police?

It feels like we’ve been waiting on them for an hour, when in reality, it has probably only been three or four minutes. Too long, though. Rhonda is going to get away—and she is clearly the murderer. Her name is on the property records, along with Oscar Stanley. She was profiting off vacation rentals while lying to voters about eradicating rental homes from Cape Cod. Her motive was to keep Oscar silent. Those threatening notes, written by Oscar, were intended for the mayor. She was on the verge of being outed. Her motive is rock solid.

Meaning she’s the one who threw a buoy through my window.

The one who bashed me in the head with a book.

She killed a man. Someone’s brother. If that happened to Jude, wouldn’t I want someone to intervene so she could be brought to justice?

Am I just going to let her drive away or am I going to do something?

She could be on her way to do something drastic. Or hurt another person.

When she hops into her sedan and the engine roars to life, I make a decision. Out of the corner of my eye, I sense Myles running in my direction. He must guess what I’m planning because he belts out my name.

I’ll apologize for scaring him later.

I lay my foot down on the gas, whip my car across the street and skid sideways in front of the mayor’s vehicle, blocking her from leaving. Frantically, she glances back over her shoulder, but the neighbor’s car is preventing her from reversing. The sirens are very close now. A quarter mile maybe. So many of them. Myles pounds a fist on the roof of Rhonda’s car, ordering her to step out of the vehicle with her hands up, but she’s not listening. She’s looking right at me, screaming at me to move. Thank God she only has a knife or I’m certain she would have already fired a bullet through my windshield in her desperation. I’ve never seen anguish like this, up close and personal, and in those minutes that pass while the sirens approach, sympathy wells inside of me, despite everything she’s done.

All at once, the fight goes out of the mayor and she deflates, her head falling back against the seat. Tears roll down her cheeks and she puts her hands up, palms facing out. Police cars squeal to a stop around us, Myles is shouting directions to them. An explanation of what’s going on, leading with the fact that I’m not a threat. But I can barely hear any of it over the rapping of my heart. It pounds in my ear drums and my fingertips. I breathe in and out to try and get it back under control, but I’m still vibrating head to toe when Myles yanks open the driver’s side door and pulls me out, crushing me against his chest.

“Are you out of your mind, Taylor?” He squeezes me, dragging me away from the scene of the mayor being handcuffed, blocking me with his back. Up ahead, Lisa stumbles out of the house and drops down onto the steps, hands over her mouth. She doesn’t appear to be injured, just in shock. “My God,” Myles growls into my hair. “What were you thinking?”

My response is partially muffled by his shoulder. “Stop shouting at me.”

“I’ll shout all I want. You lied to me. I asked you to stay down the block.”

“No, you asked me to drive to the end of the block. And I did.”

I definitely didn’t pick the right moment for semantics.

With a laugh totally devoid of humor, he pulls away slowly—and I can tell right away this isn’t his usual bad temper. I shook him up. Badly. He’s white as a ghost, sweat soaking the front of his shirt. “She could have had another weapon in the car, Taylor. Or on her person. We would have apprehended her eventually. Lisa was safe. You didn’t have to put yourself at risk.”

I can’t argue with what he’s telling me. He’s right. What causes me to fight might be my spiked adrenaline or the humiliation of being yelled at for trying to help—no, I did help. Whatever the reason, I can’t bring myself to back down. Maybe I’m fighting for more than just being right. It feels like I’m fighting for us. What we could be together. “I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines and watch everyone else do the hard thing. I’ve been doing that my whole life.”