Forget Me (19 page)

W
e climbed back over the fence and Reece stuffed me into the passenger side of my car, knowing I was in no condition to drive. He pulled away, spewing dirt and dust up from under the tires.

“We're going straight to the police,” he said. “And we're not taking no for an answer. We're dragging someone back here.”

My heartbeat thrummed, reverberating through my whole body. The black SUV—it connected Flynn's death and the attack on Toni. Whoever lived in that house was the person responsible. I was so close now.
Secrets always reveal themselves.

Now that my brain was moderately working again, I pulled out my cell and dialed Cooper's number. He answered from Toni's hospital room. “Yeah?”

“I know where she went,” I said breathlessly. “It's a long story, but there's a house we thought was empty. And it's not. Can you find out whose name is on the deed without leaving Toni's side?”

“I can call a friend at work, yeah,” he said. “Give me the address.”

I did, and he promised to call back.

My right leg bounced up and down in the seat as Reece careened around curves and blew a light. As we pulled into the parking lot of the police station, my phone chirped. I answered, “Coop?”

“The house belongs to some corporation in the Caribbean,” he said. “DD Exports. I can't find any information on them.”

A company?
“Why would they want a house in River's End?” I asked.

“I don't know. As a rental property or investment maybe?”

Was some shady company running an illegal operation out of that house? And Toni saw something worth killing her over? I couldn't wrap my head around it.

“Okay. We're headed to the police station. I'll fill you in as soon as I can. Don't leave her.”

I marched into the station with Reece at my heels. But before I could approach the reception window and beg for help, the door opened and Officer Reck stood towering before me.

“Back again, Miss Tulley?” he asked.

The start of a headache stirred in my temple. I'd never told him my last name, had I?

Beside me, Reece let out a sigh of relief, assuming the cop and I were on good terms. “Officer,” he said, “we need your help.”

I tried to give Reece a look that said
No, not him,
but the details of our morning poured out of his mouth.

Officer Reck laid a giant hand on Reece's shoulder. “Okay, okay, calm down. Where's this house?”

He wrote the address on a little pad of paper as Reece recited it. Then he handed the paper to the woman at the dispatch desk. “Send a squad car or two to this address, please, and have them detain anyone on the premises.”

He turned back to Reece and me. “Let's go to my desk.”

We followed him to the now-familiar desk, littered with Styrofoam cups, tucked in the corner of the station. “Now, why are you so sure this was where your friend went the night she was hit by a car?” he asked, lowering himself onto his chair.

“She wasn't hit by a car,” I said. “I told you that before and you didn't believe me.”

“Did you find evidence of a crime at this house?”

“Well, no,” I said. “But we didn't get a chance to look around much. We realized someone else was there and took off.”

“How did you get into the house?”

I paled, starting to regret coming here.

Reece spoke up. “The front door was wide-open.”

“And there's something else,” I said. “The car that hit my ex-boyfriend—I saw it in the garage.”

Reck scratched at his goatee casually. I almost expected him to yawn. “At that house?”

“Yes!” I felt like I was just spinning my wheels here.

Reck narrowed his eyes. “I thought you couldn't identify the car from the hit-and-run. I thought you didn't get a plate.”

“I didn't. Well, not that night. But I've seen the car a couple of times since. One time it followed me.”

“And it was the same license plate each time?”

“Well, no. I never saw the plate until today.”

“So you can't actually confirm this is the same SUV.” He gave a small shake of his head to let me know what he thought of me wasting his precious time. “Do you know how many black SUVs are in the area?”

“Can you just run the plate?” I snapped. I grabbed a Post-it from his desk and jotted down the memorized numbers.

I pushed it across his desk. “Please.”

He looked at Reece, with an expression on his face that said,
Can you believe this emotional crazy girl?
He was probably hoping for some guy camaraderie, but instead Reece said, “Run it,” in a tone that said,
If she's crazy, so am I.

Reck let out a sigh so exaggerated, it was like we'd asked him to babysit quadruplets, not to—you know—do his
job.
He rummaged around in a drawer, finally pulling out a giant pair of eyeglasses. He slipped them on, and his fingers slowly punched in the numbers from the Post-it. Then he tilted his head back and forth, cracking his neck, while we waited for something to happen on the computer.

I saw a flicker of blue as the screen changed.

He clucked his tongue. “You must have memorized it wrong. Nothing's coming up. The screen's blank.”

I sat motionless and tight-lipped, though inside I was burning.

The desk phone rang and he picked it up. “Yep.” He paused as he listened to the voice on the other end. “Okay. I'll take care of it.”

He hung up the phone and looked at us. “There's no one at the house now. A unit will stay on hand. If the person comes back, we'll detain them and see if they know anything about your friend.”

Reece turned to me, his face twisted in frustration. I could tell he was expecting me to explode. To scream that this wasn't good enough.

Instead, I rose from my seat. “Thank you, Officer. You've been a big help. We'll leave it in your hands now.”

I briskly walked away, trying to keep my face unreadable, until we got outside and Reece sidled up to me. “Morgan? What the hell just happened in there?”

“He's involved,” I said.

Reece blinked quickly. “How do you know?”

“Because the SUV
did
come up on the screen. I saw words reflected in his glasses.”

“Could you read them?”

“They were backward, so mostly no. But I clearly saw ‘DD.'”

“It's a company car,” Reece said. “DD Exports.”

What was going on here?

• • •

I parked next to Reece's car in the hospital parking lot.

He clawed his fingers down his face. “I need to sleep. I can't even focus right now.”

I gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
I
was exhausted and I'd actually gotten a few hours. “Yeah, I know. That's why I just brought you back to your car. Go home. Sleep.”

He rolled his head to the side and eyeballed me.

“What?” I said.

“Don't do anything stupid. Don't go back to that house. We'll figure this out, but our top priority has to be staying safe. Something's going on, and people who get too close to the answer end up . . .” He aimed a thumb at the hospital building behind him. “And Toni would murder me if anything happened to you while I was taking a nap.”

I snorted. “Don't worry. Get some sleep. I'll be good.”

He heaved a sigh and dragged himself out of my car and to his own.

I would be safe, but I wouldn't give up. I had to keep digging.

My phone buzzed from the pocket of my jeans. I hadn't heard from Evan all morning. It had to be him. I looked down and felt a twinge of anxiety. It was an anonymous text from a restricted number.

Meet me at The Falls in an hour. I can help you. I have information.

An eerie feeling swept over me, like the cool breath of a ghost, causing goose bumps to spring up on my arms. It was too easy. It had to be a trap.

But it wasn't a threat—like,
Meet me here or so-and-so dies, come alone.
It was worded like an offer.

I read the text over and over until finally coming to a decision. I couldn't let this opportunity go. The truth was so close now. But I wouldn't go alone.

I texted Evan.

are you around?

After a long minute, he wrote back.

not right now. y?

My fingers flew over the phone.

got a weird text. some1 wants me 2 meet them at the falls in 1 hr. i need 2 go. i need answers.

He responded quickly.

not without me. i'll meet u there. i'm 45 mins away.

Where is he? I thought. But before I could ask, another text came in.

in nh. bringing back answers for you like i promised. see u soon.

Evan had gone to
New Hampshire
? I stuck the phone back in my pocket and held my hands out in front of me. They were shaking. My nerves were on edge, and I felt like my heart was beating double time. The answers were so close now.

But a small voice whispered from the back of my mind.

I bet that's what Flynn thought, too.

• • •

I parked next to Evan's car. His was the only other one in the lot, so unless my mystery informer was hiking through the woods, he or she wasn't here yet. I took the path, tossing uneasy looks over my shoulder, until it opened up at the top of the waterfall. Evan stood, nervously shuffling his feet. When he saw me, he jogged over.

“You're here!” He pulled me into his arms, but let go too quickly. “Did you see anyone else?”

I shook my head.

“How's Toni?”

“No change. But Cooper and Reece are taking turns watching over her so she's never alone.”

“Good,” he said.

“And I think I know where she went that night. Reece had his eye on this giant abandoned house—he wanted to throw a party there and she went to check it out. But it wasn't abandoned after all. The car that killed Flynn was there. Everything's coming together.” I was speaking too quickly, the words rushing out of my mouth like the water raging down the falls beside us. “What did you find in New Hampshire?”

He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket. “I think this explains everything.”

A branch snapped from somewhere behind me. Evan stopped and looked over my shoulder. His face was a battleground of emotions—fear, grief, betrayal—but shock won out.

He let out a ragged breath and said, “You
are
alive.”

I
spun around to face the person, but what I saw only confused me more.
Evan's dad?

“Mr. Murphy?” I said, my voice sounding so small against the backdrop of the rushing water.

He was dressed casually, in jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt, and walked confidently toward us, hands in his pockets. He laughed, as if my recognizing him was some kind of joke. And that made everything click into place. I was looking at a dead man.

“You're not Evan's dad,” I said.

A grin pulled at the corner of his mouth, confirming the truth. This was Doyle Murphy. The man who'd disgraced his company and his family and thrown himself off the top of the falls, in this very spot. Evan's uncle.

I shot Evan a look. “You knew about this?”

“Not until today,” he said. “Not until this.” He handed me the paper he'd been holding. I unfolded it, and the world spun.

It was James Bergeron's birth certificate. Flynn's birth certificate. And Doyle Murphy was his father. Flynn and Evan were first cousins, and their fathers were twins. I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry as dust.

Evan positioned himself in front of me, fists balled at his sides. “How can you be alive?”

Doyle kept his voice neutral. “They never found my body, Evan.”

“The current took it away,” Evan said. “Your blood was all over the rock.”

Even though the impossible was staring him in the face, Evan couldn't seem to accept it. Or maybe he just needed to hear an explanation. I did, too.

Doyle gave his nephew a long, cool stare. “It's easy to get a bag of your own blood when you donate on a regular basis.”

“You stole your own blood?” Evan asked in disbelief.

“It had to look legitimate. My DNA had to be on that rock. I spilled the blood, made the anonymous call that I saw a jumper at the falls, then took a private off-the-books flight to Grand Cayman.”

The calm tone of his voice didn't match the tension in his shoulders, his stiff jaw, and his wild eyes. He wasn't as confident as he'd like us to believe. Underneath, he was a live wire.

“So why are you back now?” Evan asked.

“Now?” He gave a derisive laugh. “I've been back and forth several times. I even watched one of your games. I just had to make sure your dad wouldn't be there. The two of us can't be in the same place at the same time.”

Evan considered that for a moment. “Does my dad know you're alive?”

“He didn't at first,” Doyle said. “I tried my best to protect him. And I actually never planned on coming back. But there I was, sitting on top of a pile of money in the Caribbean, warmed by the sun, surrounded by the most beautiful blue water you'd ever seen . . . and I might as well have been in prison. I got homesick.”

He shook his head at the absurdity of it. “I wasn't a free man. Not if I couldn't come home now and then. Not if I couldn't see my brother. Watch my niece and nephew grow up. If I stayed away, you'd forget me. So I came and went—private charters, using your father's passport. I purchased a beautiful foreclosed home for a steal, under a shell corporation's name. And I stayed there when I came to visit. But then . . .” He paused for a breath. “Then things started to get complicated. Your father figured out what I'd done.”

I stayed completely still, as if any movement would stop him from talking.

“What did he do?” Evan asked.

“He told me to stay away. He was nervous, scared that if the law found out I'd faked my death, they'd take him down with me. That was always his worry. Even growing up, Darren was always worried he'd catch the blame when I got into trouble. But he never did anything wrong. Not even at Stell. If he'd known about the deaths we caused, he'd have shut down production and reported it immediately. That's why we're a good team. We balance each other out. Darren does the right thing, and I do what needs to be done.”

Evan had said he thought his dad was hiding something. That he'd go through periods of unexplained anxiety. Now we knew he got nervous when his brother was in town.

But why was Doyle telling us everything now? Had he decided to come back from the dead? Make things right?

“Dad wasn't the only one to find you,” Evan said.

Doyle's face darkened, and I knew. This little speech wasn't about contrition. Fear spread through my body.

“No.” He groaned and rubbed his cheeks. “The boy found me. He came right up to my house. I pretended to be Darren, of course, but he had all sorts of questions, and I knew he wasn't going to give up.”

Evan's voice cracked, “He was your son.”

“He was a mistake I made nearly two decades ago one night with a woman I didn't even know,” Doyle spat. “That doesn't make someone family. I offered him money, but the poor kid”—he stopped to let out a callous snort—“he didn't want money. He wanted
me.
”

Doyle shook his head at the thought. “It was sad, really. He thought I'd turn myself in, face the charges, give up my money. That I'd go public and sacrifice everything to welcome some whore's kid.”

“He was your blood!” Evan raged. He lashed out and grabbed Doyle's sweatshirt in his fists.
“My
blood!”

Doyle broke out of Evan's hold and shoved him back, sending a rock skittering over the edge of the falls. “You spoiled brat, can't you see that I protected you? If I went public with the news that I'd faked my death, your family would be dragged through the mud again. Your father might be charged with aiding and abetting a criminal. You could lose your house, money for your future, your dad.”

“But James was my family and you killed him!” Evan roared.

Doyle held out his hands innocently, that cocky-calm look returning to his face. “
I
didn't kill him.”

“Not yourself, no,” I said, finally gaining the courage to speak up. “You got Officer Reck to do it for you.”

His eyes flicked to mine in surprise. He looked almost impressed. “I told him to take care of the problem. How he got that done was his own choosing.”

“And Toni?” I shot back.

He shrugged. “Your little blond friend saw too much.”

“She saw you alive in your house,” I guessed.

“And then she accidentally fell out a second-story window onto the driveway.”

“You're a psychopath!” Evan yelled, and the water behind him seemed to rage even louder.

Doyle considered this. “You know they say that three to five percent of all CEOs are psychopaths?” He waved his hand dismissively. “I'm driven. That's the difference between your father and me. We'd never have made it as far as we did with his by-the-books thinking. I'm spontaneous. I'm the problem solver. I get things done.”

He returned his attention to me. “And I just have one last problem to get rid of. I'm really sorry that it's come to this, Morgan, but . . .” A slow smile spread across his face. “It's also kind of . . . karmic.”

Tension seeped into my muscles. “What did I ever do to you?”

“You don't know?” He threw his head back and looked up at the sky. “Oh, that's rich.”

“What?” Evan said. He reached out behind him, blindly searching for my hand.

Doyle pointed from Evan to me. “Look at you two. The Montagues and Capulets.” He sneered, “Noah Tulley, this girl's father, is the reason for our family's downfall. He ruined Stell. He destroyed the town.”

I shook my head quickly, not understanding.

“Stupid girl,” he snarled. “Your father is Employee X.”

My head started throbbing. Dad was the whistleblower? Was that the secret my parents whispered about at night? The thing they didn't want me to know?

It was my father who'd set things in motion, and Flynn had found out. I remembered the line in his notebook that read like algebra:
NT=X.

I imagined the struggle my dad went through after he found out people were dying because of Stell. The choice that lay before him. Speak up and ruin everything. Or stay silent and be complicit in the deaths of innocents.

I'm sure it wasn't easy. Pride welled up inside of me.

I glared at Doyle. “You sent those notes to my parents. You tried to scare them.”

“What notes?” he asked.

“My parents did nothing wrong,” I insisted, anger edging my voice.

He took a lumbering step toward me, causing Evan to stiffen. “Your father should've waited. No one had to know. I was fixing things behind the scenes. The next batch of pills would have been better. The company would have survived. The town wouldn't be rotting. So many lives have been destroyed because of your father.”

“No,” I said. “Because of
you.
What my father did was brave. He did the right thing. He saved lives.”

Evan put his body between me and his uncle. Evan was much younger and slightly bigger. All he had to do was stay away from the edge, wrestle Doyle to the ground, and I could call for help.

“You're not going to touch her,” Evan said fiercely.

Disappointment dimmed his uncle's eyes. “You'd choose her over your family?”

“I choose her over
you.
”

Raw fury contorted Doyle's face and, quick as lightning, he struck out his fist and hit Evan straight in the jaw. Evan didn't even have time to react. He slumped to the ground, unconscious.

A small cry escaped from my mouth.

“Just a little trick I learned,” Doyle said, glancing down at Evan's body. “Cranial nerve strike. Something they don't teach the boys in baseball camp.”

The wind changed direction and spray misted my face. I blinked against the wetness, wiping at it with the back of my hand. Blood rushed loudly through my head, mixing with the roar of the falls.

Doyle's attention shifted back to me. I looked up at his hulking frame and my legs turned to jelly. My mind searched for strategies, for any way out. As if reading my thoughts, Doyle said icily, “You can run, but I'm faster. You can fight, but I'm stronger.”

I put my hands up in front of me, as if that could ward him off. “There have been too many deaths. It'll look suspicious.”

“There are only so many ways to make a death seem accidental, yes.” He advanced on me as he spoke. And with each step, I took one backward, closer to the ledge, to the churning, foaming water below. “There are cars, of course, but one more of those would seem . . . suspicious, you're right. That's why you, my dear, are going to kill yourself here.”

“No,” I said, my voice quivering. “They'd never believe it.”

He spoke in a monotone, like a news anchor explaining the nightly tragedy. “You got the idea when you took pictures for the paper last week. You've been so distraught over the death of your ex-boyfriend that you came here and . . . jumped. Officer Reck will tell everyone how obsessed you were. How you'd deluded yourself into thinking your boy toy was still alive. How depressed you were when you found out that he wasn't. No one will question your death.” He smiled slowly. “They never questioned mine.”

I looked over at Evan on the ground, hoping to see some sign of life, but he lay still. “Evan won't go along with your story.”

“By the time he wakes up, I'll be gone. It's time to revisit some of my favorite secluded international beaches. This particular trip to River's End was more trouble than it was worth. If Darren wants to
stay
out of trouble, he'll find a way to keep his boy quiet. If he can't, I just won't return. And good luck to anyone who tries to find me.”

He shrugged like it was no big deal. He was completely void of empathy. For his customers who'd died. For Flynn, Toni . . . or me.

The wind whipped up the back of my shirt as the falls roared behind me. I was at the edge. Nowhere else to go. I fell to my knees. The stupid girl in the horror movie, giving up, begging for her life. I put my hands up. “Please, Mr. Murphy. Please don't.” Tears sprang to my eyes. Real tears.

But the giving up?

That part was an act.

Doyle reared up, ready to kick me over the side. I could see it, in my mind's eye. Me falling backward, gliding through the air, wind whipping my hair over my face, the water swallowing me whole.

But as his foot neared my torso, I grabbed it in midair. I twisted his leg with all of my strength and rolled myself to the side, pressing my body to the ground. He tried to right himself, find a new balance, but the momentum he'd built up to kick me propelled his own body over the side.

He fell through the air, not gracefully, but clawing, screaming, clinging to life—until a jagged rock silenced him, and the water pulled him under.

I scrambled over to Evan on my hands and knees and pulled his head onto my lap.

“Evan?” I said, rubbing his cheek hard. “Wake up, Evan.”

His eyes fluttered open and for one last second they were Flynn's eyes. Gray and mysterious. Skeptical and untrusting. Then his lids closed slowly, like a drawn window shade, only to snap open again.

“Are you okay?” he managed to push out.

“Yeah,” I breathed. “He's . . . gone.”

I leaned over and covered his forehead, his nose, his eyes, his cheeks with kisses.

I wasn't drawn to Evan because of any similarities to Flynn. Other than their looks, they were complete opposites. I understood now why Flynn never let me in. But his secretive nature had made me feel insecure. Evan made me feel . . .
everything.
Beautiful. Wanted. Worthy. Deserving of someone like him. And I realized, in an intense full-bodied rush, like a first breath after being underwater, that I loved him. I was in love for the first time in my life.

I opened my mouth to tell him, but he spoke first.

“I love you, Morgan.”