The Inmate (59)

I run up to the side of the vehicle. The driver is a big guy with a full beard. He’s bigger than Shane. He looks tough, but his eyes go wide and all the color drains from his face when he looks at me, standing there dripping wet, blood all over my shirt.

“Please help me,” I say.

And then I collapse.

It’s over.





Chapter 41


PRESENT DAY




When the police arrived at the Nelson farmhouse, they found five bodies. Brandon Jensen on the porch—dead. Kayla Olivera in an upstairs bedroom—dead. Chelsea Cho in Shane’s bedroom—stabbed to death between the time I ran out of the room and the arrival of the police. Tim on the floor of the living room—bleeding and unconscious, but still alive. Shane on the floor of the living room—knocked out cold. Three dead, three survivors.

I was the one who told the police that Shane had tried to strangle me with my necklace. When Tim regained consciousness, he confirmed Shane had come at him with a knife and taken him down. But Tim forced himself to get off the floor and had hit Shane on the head with a baseball bat and knocked him out to keep him from following me out of the door—just before collapsing himself. Shane’s fingerprints were found all over the knife.

Shane was the only one who told a different story. He claimed that he never stabbed Tim—and it was his knife, so of course, his fingerprints were on it. He claimed Tim had knocked him out, and he couldn’t remember anything that happened afterward. He alleged that Tim must have stabbed himself to make it look like he was the innocent party. But of course, I was the tiebreaker who backed up Tim’s story. When I told the police about what Shane had done to me, he was the one arrested.

Even though I never saw his face through the whole thing.

And now Shane is spending his life in prison. Tim, on the other hand, is my boyfriend. Someone who I’m beginning to think I might have a future with, for the first time since I became a single mother at eighteen years old. He’s a great guy. The best, really.

Shane was the one who tried to strangle me that night. He had to have been.

Tonight, Tim and I are celebrating. I got the job at the primary care practice, and the salary and benefits are amazing, not to mention it’s much closer and much less scary than the prison. The interview went so well—they apologized for not responding to my first request for an interview when I was sending my resume all over town—apparently, some disgruntled patient had called and warned them about me. I felt terrible that a patient disliked me enough to do that, but I tried to put it out of my head. At least I have the job now.

So I handed in my notice at Raker Penitentiary, and even though Dorothy made a bit of a fuss about it, when I pointed out the fact that I hadn’t once met the physician supposed to be supervising me, she quickly changed her tune and wished me luck at my new position.

I won’t have to deal with Dorothy or Marcus Hunt ever again. I won’t have to see Shane ever again. Thank God.

Margie comes over to babysit for Josh so that Tim and I can have a night alone. Tim got it in his head that he wanted to cook dinner for me, so right now, I’m heading down the block to his house. I’d love to spend the night there, but it’s not fair to ask that of Margie, so the two of us will go back to my house at the end of the night.

As I press my finger against the doorbell, a random thought floats into my head: I wonder if Kelli Underwood ever came over here. I’m certain Tim told me the two of them had a couple of dates, so it’s not impossible he might have invited her over. She might have stood in this very spot, ringing the doorbell.

She’s still missing. It’s been a week now. I’ve been checking the news daily for updates, and the tone of the stories is sounding less and less optimistic. By now, if she were able to, she would have contacted somebody. The longer somebody is missing, the less chance there is of them turning up alive and well.

I tried to bring it up last night with Tim, and he changed the subject. I suppose I don’t blame him. He seems uncomfortable talking about his exes—as do I.

Tim opens the door to the house, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. His whole face lights up when he sees me at the door, the way it always does. You would think now that we’ve been dating for over two months, he wouldn’t always look so excited to see me. But he does. It feels like fate that we ended up together after all these years.

“Brooke!” he says. “Get in here… it’s cold!”

He’s right—the temperature has dropped in the last week, and my thin jacket doesn’t seem nearly warm enough. Raker gets a lot colder than Queens.

Once I’m inside the house, Tim helps me out of my coat and then wraps his arms around me to warm me up. I rest my head on his shoulder, feeling a rush of happiness. I never thought I’d have a relationship this good ever again. With every passing day, I’m more and more certain that Tim is The One. And he’s made it no secret that he feels the same way about me.

“Hey,” he says, “how did Josh’s math test go?”

Last night, Josh and Tim spent an hour studying the addition of fractions with different denominators for his test today. I had tried to explain it to Josh the week before, but somehow it didn’t get through. Luckily, Tim is a professional elementary school teacher who taught this very subject.

“He got a hundred,” I say.