Khan (Bowen Boys, #2)(38)

They were brown. Monica’s were a deep purple, almost black. He put his finger to her eye and moved it around, hoping for a contact or some other way to explain why she now had brown eyes. When nothing helped, he sat back on the floor and leaned against the counter.

“It’s not Monica.” He kicked the woman in the ribs. “Where is she? What did you do with her? I saw her here yesterday. Where is she?”

Of course she didn’t answer and Tony stood up. He started in the basement, went through the house quickly, and was looking in the bedrooms when the sirens sounded. It took him several minutes to figure out which side of the house he was on to find a window that worked for him.

He glanced out the upper pink bedroom and saw the three cruisers. He noticed right away that they weren’t coming to the house, but down the street a few feet. When the ambulance pulled up, he walked to the kitchen to see if fake Monica had called them. She was still dead.

Tony was starving and went to the refrigerator again. There were leftovers, which he hated, and some lunch meats. He made himself five thick sandwiches and stuffed them and all the bottled water she had into a large grocery bag he found behind the door to the pantry. Here, he took some pudding snacks, as well as a few cans of pop-off-lidded soups. He was walking out the back door ten minutes after the first siren sounded.

He wasn’t happy that Monica had managed to elude him. And he had a feeling that the woman in the house had been a plant to throw him off her scent. Tony went to his car and put all his food in the back seat. He was eating a sandwich when he pulled into the street, and turned when the policeman there directing traffic told him to. He wondered what had happened.

By the time he was at the mall, he had a pounding headache. Tony wasn’t sure why he’d gone there, but he had to crawl into the back seat to rest again. That’s when he found the food.

He tried to remember where he’d gotten it and his head started hurting again. They were good; he ate one while he was lying down, and the water was good and cold. He didn’t have a spoon, so he drank the pudding out of the cup like a juice and then closed his eyes. He wondered who was caring for him.

The food notwithstanding, there had been blankets just the other day. And then there had been a stockpile of small containers of instant coffee. He wasn’t allowed coffee and had no way of heating up any water. He’d thrown them out before going to…

The bloodied rag in his hand had made him think that he’d had another nose bleed, but the ice in the thing made him scared. Where had the ice come from, and what had happened to make him so upset that his nose would bleed?

He heard voices and tensed up. He didn’t want to ever hear voices again, and when someone slammed a car door next to him, he nearly leapt out of his car at them. Tony laid there for several minutes waiting for his heart to stop pounding before he sat up. That’s when he saw the newspaper under his wiper.

Getting out, he looked around. It had snowed since he’d come here. He couldn’t even tell that he’d been here for only a short amount of time. But the paper was in a plastic bag and it wasn’t harmed. When he opened it, a sheet of paper fell out and he read it. The newspaper wanted him to have this and hoped that he would consider taking a subscription. Yeah, right.

When he opened it up, there was a huge headline that read, “Barr Couple Murdered in Their Own Home.” He got back in the back seat and read the entire article. Then he read it again.

He wasn’t mentioned. Going to the obituaries page, he found both their names on the full page write-ups. He wasn’t even a “special friend,” or even a footnote. Scanning the article on the first page again, he tore the paper into pieces and tossed them out of his car.

“Why does no one care that my parents are dead to me? Why? Why?” He looked around the empty containers and fast-food bags in the back seat. “They don’t care. Monica should have told them that I was their son. She should have made them put me in the paper. Somebody should have noticed that I was gone.”

Closing his eyes, he tried to sleep. Sometimes when he was able to do that, his headaches would go away and he’d be fine. He wanted to be fine. He needed to be fine so he could find Monica and make her pay. He decided that when he woke, he was going to go and find the cop lady, Bowding, and make her tell him. He frowned, thinking that the name wasn’t quite right, but he’d find her anyway.

How hard could it be to find a pretty cop like her in this town? Women like her had to hang out at the hair dressers or something. Smiling and feeling in control for the first time in ages, since he’d decided to marry Monica, he let sleep take him. Soon, he thought lastly, soon they would all know that you just didn’t hurt Anthony Barr and walk away.





Chapter Fourteen


Monica watched the news again. They had been running the same feed for over three hours, and she wanted to make sure what she was seeing was actually there. When Caitlynne came home from work, she had her sit down with her and watch it.

“I’ve heard nothing but this all day. That poor couple and those children. What will they do now? They had no other relatives.”

Monica had heard that too. But when the news team put up the pictures again, she asked Caitlynne to look at them.

“I know, so young. The woman had just gotten her children off to school. They think that the man had been killed first and the woman—”