Long for Me (8 page)

“They aren’t going to investigate,” she said again, shoving her hands through her hair and spinning around to stare at him. In the dim light, her eyes were broken and bitter, her mouth trembling. “They aren’t charging him. Jensen and I were at Dean’s house and he said he heard something about
extenuating
circumstances. What the hell does that mean? That monster is the reason my mom is dead.”

Inside his pocket, he carried a copy of the signed confession, detailing what had happened all those years ago.

He had a copy for each of the siblings, and a copy for Doug as well. He’d meant to call them all, talk to them, but Jensen had been calling, pushing for answers—so the sheriff had volunteered to handle this. It fell to him, technically, but Guy didn’t give a fuck about technicalities. He’d asked to be the one to tell them.

But somebody had let it slip. He didn’t think it was Dean. If it was, he was going to kick that man’s ass, but he didn’t think the lawyer would have done that. So somebody else. Once he found out who had up and let the news break like that, he was going to raise hell over it.

As he shifted to lean forward, the folded-up sheets of paper were like a ten-ton weight, dragging him down.

“Tink,” he said quietly.

She slanted a look at him, then went to turn her head.

But something in his voice, something on his face must have alerted her. She looked back and he saw the way the blood drained from her already pale face. The tattoos on her neck seemed to grow even darker, angry stains against her ivory flesh.

“Come sit down,” he said softly.

She blinked, her lashes hiding her gaze from him.

“You … you know, don’t you?” she whispered. “How long have you known?”

From the beginning
. He fought the need to go to her, to reach for her. He needed to get this out. Once it was done, she wasn’t going to want him touching her, wasn’t going to want him near her.

She was going to need space—

She’s going to hate me.

His gut knotted and he looked away.

“Sit down, Chris,” he said again, nodding at the chair as he reached for the whiskey.

A sour laugh escaped her. “I’m getting fucking tired of people telling me what to do.”

“Fine.” Weary, he pressed the glass to his temple, wishing the cool surface could calm the torment inside him, but it did nothing. The burn of Jack Daniel’s didn’t even help calm the turmoil inside him. “Just stay there. If that’s what you want.”

He tossed back half the amber liquid in the glass and then put it down with a
thunk
before reaching into his pocket, pulling out the folded-up document. There wasn’t much there. Three pages, typed, detailing the final hours of Nichole Bell’s life. He hadn’t wanted to do it this way, he had wanted her family to be here with her.

But nothing ever went the way it should, it seemed.

Slowly, he looked up at her, staring at her over the expanse of scarred, scuffed wood and a battered coffee table, watched as she wrapped her arms around herself, like she was bracing for a blow.

In a way, he guessed that was exactly what she was doing.

“Theo Miller is dying,” he said bluntly. “He has pancreatic cancer and it’s terminal. He’s going to be dead in a matter of months. Possibly by Christmas. The doctor is looking at four to six months at the max. If he opted to get treatment, he could maybe get a little more time, but he doesn’t want treatment. Since he’s already got a death sentence, the DA doesn’t see the point in wasting the taxpayers’ time or money.”

For a long moment, only silence reigned.

Then, she sucked a harsh, uneven breath before spinning away.

The worn heels of her boots clattered on the wooden floor as she stormed over to the bar. She slammed her fists down on it and braced her weight, staring at nothing. “They don’t want to waste the taxpayers’ time,” she echoed, her voice faint.

Abruptly, she drove her fist into the cabinet and then spun around, glaring at him. “What about my
mother
?” she shouted. “We deserve to know what happened. He should answer for it.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “He should. And you deserve to know. But justice is going to have to happen after that son of a bitch leaves this planet.”

She opened her mouth.

“Chris…” He climbed to his feet, watched as she tensed, unconsciously pulling back from him. “Look, I know how this would play out. The sheriff’s department would be investigating this since she lived outside the city limits. We handled her initial disappearance, and we would handle this as well. But there is
nothing
to go on. The river wiped away almost all the evidence.”

“You’ve got the fucking dog.” She stopped, clenched her jaw as she worked to calm her breathing. “You’ve got him. There are bite marks on my mother’s body.”

“Yeah. And maybe, if we had time, and I mean
months
to build a case, we could. But that evil son of a bitch isn’t going to give us months.”

“So he just
gets away
?” A laugh, bordering on a scream, erupted from her. “He cheats the system by dying. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“He’s not getting out of jail.” He lifted a hand.

She shied away, wrapping her arms around her middle, like she couldn’t stand to have him touch her, like she was freezing and aching for comfort, but the only comfort she could take was from herself.

It shattered him.

“Not getting out of jail.” Tears brimmed in her eyes and as he watched, she blinked them back. Now she wouldn’t even let herself weep around him. “You think that’s enough? We won’t ever know now, will we?”

He lifted the paper, the creases already worn from how much he’d handled it during the day. “He agreed to tell what had happened,” he said haltingly, lifting the page for her to see.

For a moment, she looked confused, shaking her head. Then, slowly, she crumpled, her legs folding beneath her as she went to the floor. “He agreed to tell,” she said, the words cold, lifeless. Flat.

She looked at him like he was a stranger.

“He told you,” she said, staring at him.
Through
him.

Clenching one hand into a fist, Guy held her gaze, that flat, lifeless gaze. “He told me. When he told me about the cancer. He…” The words trailed off, reluctant to come.

Too late now, you stupid idiot
.

Shifting his gaze away, he stared out the window. “He wanted out. I told him that wasn’t going to happen. So instead he asked for a few privileges, on account of his condition. In exchange, he signed a full confession, detailing what happened that night. It’s enough to close the case. That’s why they aren’t investigating. There is no need. They already know he’s guilty.”

“They know he’s guilty.” She drew her knees to her chest and turned her face away. “But instead of charging him, he got special
privileges
. Yeah. That makes sense, Guy.”

She was quiet for a moment and then she said, “Please leave me alone.”

* * *

The door closed behind him and Chris felt like that quiet little
click
echoed throughout her entire being, rippling and spreading until it managed to break something deep inside.

She could almost feel the pieces falling to the pit of her soul.

Her throat ached, but the tears she felt burning inside just wouldn’t come.

Not without him.

She curled one hand into a fist as the agony swung to anger and back again.

She wanted to howl, but then a few seconds passed and she thought of what he’d told her, and she almost wanted to laugh.

Theo Miller was dying.

Would be dead in a few months.

He had cancer.

Chris had always thought herself a relatively decent person who wouldn’t wish cancer on her worst enemy, but here he was. Theo Miller, the monster who’d stolen her mother from her and he had cancer.

A bad one.

She knew about pancreatic cancer, but only vaguely. Mostly because it had killed a celebrity a few years back—one of the few movies she remembered watching with her mother had been
The Outsiders
. Patrick Swayze. He had been one of her mother’s favorite actors and because of that, Chris had liked him too. Her mother was why she liked flowers, why she liked Tinker Bell, why she liked a lot of things, although she didn’t always admit it.

So when she’d heard the actor had pancreatic cancer, she’d actually read a few of the articles about it. A rather aggressive, hard-to-cure cancer.

Now it was going to kill the man who’d killed her mother.

But she’d wanted to see him held responsible.

Her back started to ache from sitting curled up on the floor and she shivered, pressing her brow to her knees as the ache spread upward and through her. Her entire body hurt. Her heart hurt. Her soul hurt. As the minutes ticked away, she stayed where she was, afraid to think too much about what she’d been told.

Guilty.

He was guilty.

He’d even admitted it.

But it wasn’t enough.

Rising to her feet, she moved to the window. Across from her, she could see the golden glow coming from Guy’s apartment, but she turned her back to it, refused to look.

No. It wasn’t enough that Theo had admitted his guilt.

But honestly, she didn’t know what
would
be enough.

Chapter Eight

Morning came streaming in, too bright.

Too early.

Her alarm jangled out, Yoda’s voice far more obnoxious in the a.m. than it had seemed when she downloaded the
Star Wars
voice pack off Google Play.
“Do or do not. There is no try
.
”
His wise, wizened little voice was the first thing she heard in the morning, the familiar old saying the tone she’d programmed in place of an alarm.

Just then, she was tempted to tell Yoda to
Kiss my ass, you must
. But she didn’t have the energy.

Maybe after coffee.

Rolling onto her belly, she grabbed her phone, silenced his voice, and then threw the phone down and took up the study of the floorboards beneath her bed.

Three hours of sleep, she guessed.

Not much to go on, but she didn’t have to be social today. It was Wednesday and she didn’t have to be at Shakers. She’d fill the Internet orders for Bells N Blooms, and keep her cranky ass away from society.

It was probably a good thing she couldn’t really open up an actual store. Not that she wanted to. There was the old guy who’d gotten her hooked on flowers and lately he’d made noises about her coming in with him, maybe buying his place in a year or two so he could retire, but she wasn’t ready to do that.

She’d probably fail. Spectacularly, like she did with everything that really mattered.

Although sometimes, she thought about it. She’d fallen in love the first time she went in there. She could still remember it.

It had been with Mom.

A lance pierced her heart and she rolled onto her back, flinging her arm over her eyes.

It had been to pick up a corsage. Tate had had a dance at school.

The scent of flowers, the chaotic blooms, it had been like magic to the girl she’d been. So young. She’d already loved digging around in the dirt and the idea of working with flowers all day …

Les had even let her put together her own little bouquet, with some of the flowers he wouldn’t use, when he saw the amazement in her eyes as he finished up an order.

She’d been hooked.

School seemed like a waste of time to her, but she managed to learn more about flowers and plants than most adults knew. She knew how to plant them, the right way to cut them, which flowers worked well in an arrangement and which ones were likely to die sooner. She’d spent three years in foster care before the state finally let her go back home to her father and her foster parents had tried to gently nudge her into botanical studies.

But Chris didn’t have a head for school.

She’d done fine when Mom had been around to help her, but concentrating was hard, and the words and numbers jumbled together on the page. The harder she tried, the worse it got and others who tried to help only got frustrated when she couldn’t make them understand that the words didn’t look right to her.

It wasn’t until eleventh grade that she was diagnosed with dyslexia and by then, she was almost hopelessly behind. A couple of patient tutors and teachers were the only reason she was even able to graduate with her class, but it all left her with a burning disgust for school.

It hadn’t been so bad with Mom.

Nothing had been that bad with Mom.

Sighing, she rubbed her hand across her chest, but it did nothing to ease the ache there. She wanted to cry, needed that release so much, but she couldn’t find any way to free the tears trapped inside.

Guy’s face flashed before her and she squeezed her eyes shut.

No.

She wasn’t going to go to him.

Crying on his shoulder after what he’d done …

Setting her jaw, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up, staring at the narrow strip of light filtering in through the window. The hollow ache remained, but she’d just have to find a way to live with it, deal with it.

Standing up, she strode out of her bedroom into the narrow, boxlike bathroom.

She was going to have to find a way to live with all of this, she supposed.

Theo Miller and his pathetic way of evading justice.

Guy and how he’d helped.

And the fact that her mother’s killer would never really answer for what he’d done.

She’d lived with the loss of her mom all this time.

She could live with this, right?

* * *

When she came out of her bathroom, the folded-up square of paper remained on her coffee table. Light shone down on it, catching her eye and refusing to let her look away.

She curled her lip and moved into the kitchen, her need for caffeine screaming through her.

And still, those folded sheets of paper remained back there.

Mocking her.

A confession.

What the hell?

What kind of special privileges did he get?