How could I have been so wrong about him?
I found myself nodding slowly as Ned’s fingers dug into my wrist. "He wanted me to meet him that night," I admitted.
Ned laughed then, a sort of fake laugh that reminded me of that creepy Chucky the doll from those horror movies. "You think it was because he wanted to fuck you?"
Okay, yeah, that’s what I thought. But I wanted to know what Ned thought, because maybe I was wrong. I’d been wrong about Ralph before. I shrugged.
His fingers tightened.
"Dammit, Ned," I said harshly. "What’s going on?"
"You’re not even frightened?" he asked. "I don’t scare you?"
Funny. He didn’t.
He reached under the seat and held a gun to my head. "What about now?"
Chapter 43
Okay, so maybe he’d gotten a little scary. Feeling that barrel on my forehead jump-started my heart.
"What do you want from me?" I asked after a second. My voice didn’t crack; I actually sounded pissed. What was wrong with me? Here I was, a gun to my head, and I was being cocky. I should be shitting in my pants.
Maybe now that Vinny had said he loved me, I had a death wish. It would be the easy way out.
Not.
It was really just that I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that this guy whom I used to get stoned with on a regular basis was holding a gun on me. A Glock, for God’s sake. It could be the one he took from Jamond earlier. Who did he think he was, Rambo? No one who got stoned that much could be violent. At least not on weed. The weight gain I could see. The gun, well, not so much.
Ned’s hand wavered slightly, then steadied. "You really don’t know, do you?"
"Ned, I’ve seen you more in the last two days than in the last fifteen years. How should I know why you’ve got a gun on me?" I reached up and grabbed his hand, the barrel of the gun moved toward the window, and an explosion rocked the Jeep.
I slammed into the seat so hard my head snapped, not that I could hear it. The world had gone silent, a ringing echoing through my head. I opened my mouth and tried to make a sound, but nothing penetrated my ears. From the look on Ned’s face, he was experiencing the same thing I was.
So now I knew the reason they made me wear those earmuffs at the firing range.
Ned’s mouth was moving, but it took a few minutes before I heard snippets: "what," "like," and "shit." But not in that order. I shook my head, trying to tell him I couldn’t make out his words, but he must have misunderstood because he lifted the Glock toward me again.
"If you try anything like that again, or try to get out of the Jeep, I’ll shoot you."
I heard that, but it was like I was in a tunnel with cotton in my ears.
"You fucking shot your windshield, Ned—what the fuck?" I said, although my new hearing impairment made the words sound as if they were coming in from somewhere over Rhode Island.
Ned’s face was expressionless, like he’d been taken over by the pod people. Or like he was getting my voice signals from space, too. The latter was more likely. He set the gun in his lap, pointed at me, and put the Jeep in gear, skidding away from the curb too fast for me to regain any sense of self-preservation and make a jump for it. I also believed he might just throw caution to the wind, decide he’d be deaf for the rest of his life, and shoot me.
I knew now that the headlights behind us had been nothing, just another car that happened to be going in the direction we were, and that Ned was the one all along. The ringing in my ears reminded me of those initial phone calls he made after Ralph and I split, the more recent call about teaching a class. I thought about how he’d never outgrown college—or Ralph. Ralph could tell him to jump off a fucking bridge, and he would’ve done it.
But how to get out of this. My thoughts swirled around like scrambled eggs, no answers, just one big mess. Priscilla was back at the Anchor, no clue what was going on. Vinny and Tom would show up there. She wouldn’t be able to tell them a damn thing. Riley watched me drive away with Ned, and he might be the one who would be quoted in the paper as "the last person to have seen
Herald
reporter Annie Seymour alive."
Oh, fuck. Dick would write the story. The humiliation alone made me happy I would be dead, so I wouldn’t have to read it.
Ned drove up Fitch, past the buildings at Southern, turned down Wintergreen. Toward the projects. Or West Rock. I figured I could take my pick. If he shot me and left me at the projects, that would make sense. I could be just another victim. West Rock, well, my body could be up there for days, weeks maybe, and I’d be so decomposed that I could be difficult to identify, like Ashley Ellis. Dental records wouldn’t be a help. I hadn’t been to the dentist in years. I didn’t have a dentist because the idea of going to one gave me a panic attack. My thought, which I believed valid, was that if nothing in my mouth hurt, why should I voluntarily get poked with a metal toothpick, causing unnecessary pain? I flossed regularly in the hopes that I could keep my teeth until I was fairly old.
"Old" was looking dubious right now.
But I’d been in dubious situations before, and with people I didn’t know as well as Ned. Okay, so I didn’t know enough about him to know that he might want to stalk me, but I had known him back in the day. It might be time to give a shit about Ralph; it might buy me a little more time and maybe I could figure out just why he was doing this.
"So, have you had issues with me for a long time, or did they just start recently?" I asked casually.
The gun was still balanced nicely on his lap, within reach if necessary. I could see Ned’s smirk as we passed under a streetlight.
"You don’t know, do you?" he said again.
"Jesus, Ned, why would I ask if I did?" I was alternating between nervous, scared, and pissed off. It seemed as if right now I was pissed. "I mean, we haven’t seen each other in a long time."
He snorted. "That’s what you think."
Something in the way he said it made me take pause. Had we seen each other and I just didn’t remember? That was likely, being as self-absorbed as I could be.
"You wanted me to teach that class—," I started.
"You think teaching is beneath you," he interrupted. "Like what I’ve done with my life is fucked-up, and what you’ve done is all fucking glorious and let’s save the world."
He couldn’t have been farther from the truth—except that I did think his life was fucked-up. But now wasn’t the time to admit that. So maybe he was harboring hate for me outside of Ralph’s influence.
"Listen, Ned, I admire teachers," I said. "I couldn’t do it, which is why I turned you down. I couldn’t stand in front of a bunch of kids and tell them how to write a goddamn news story. I just do it. You’re the one who shows them how." Okay, so that was a bit of a stretch. We’d had a couple of Ned’s students as interns along the way, and they weren’t exactly going to end up at the
New York Times
. He didn’t have to know that, though. Not with a gun aimed at me.
"And I’m not sure that spending my career at the
New Haven Herald
is all that glorious," I admitted. "We all had dreams back then, you, me, Ralph, and Priscilla. Actually, of all of us, Priscilla is probably in the best place. I mean, she’s in New York—she’s working for a paper that still has some respect, well, if you don’t think about those tabloid headlines. She works at a paper that actually had its own fucking reality show on Bravo."
The Bravo show was actually pretty interesting. I was jealous of the reporter who took the subway to crime scenes. Of the newsroom where the editors seemed to want news, real news, not stupid animal stories or stories about community gardens.
"Why did you start asking all those questions when that student said I got her pregnant?" Ned demanded.
Oh, shit.
"You know, I got into a lot of trouble over that. I was on probation—they almost fired me. All because of your questions."
Telling him it was my job would be lame. Because he was half-right in his suspicions. I’d wanted to stir something up. I’d had no idea, though, that I’d succeeded to any extent.
"I really didn’t mean—," I started.
"You didn’t mean to try to ruin my career?" He snorted. "You can be such a bitch. I didn’t completely believe what Ralph said about you until then."
That really pissed me off.
"What the hell did he tell you? That I was a bitch for not saying making up stories was okay? For not sticking by him when it all fell apart after the story about the sick kid?" I thought a second, wondering how much Ned knew, then decided: Screw it. "He set up a fake post office box and took most of the money that was donated. I don’t know exactly how much, but the stories he wrote went out on the wires and people from all over sent in donations."
I thought I was going to go through the windshield even though I was strapped in by my seat belt. But Ned had stopped so suddenly, the Jeep screeching to a halt by the side of the road. He picked the Glock back up and aimed it at my chest.
"What?"
He hadn’t known. No one had. I was the only one, and I’d never told. I got Ralph to stop stalking me when I threatened to tell the cops where the money was, that he’d taken most of it, turning over only a pittance and saying that’s all there was when he got caught.
I told Ned the little I knew. I had no idea what Ralph did with the money in the end. He hadn’t tried to contact me again, although he did know where I was and he kept tabs through Ned and Priscilla. I didn’t mind that, as long as I didn’t have to see him or talk to him. I closed that door and locked it. Until he showed up again.
Ned was making
mmm
ing sounds during my story. He hadn’t looked like a psychopathic killer before, despite the gun, and he really didn’t look like one now. He just looked like Ned, college professor, with a tight grip on a Glock.
It reminded me of that test when we were kids: What in this picture doesn’t belong?
The blow to my jaw knocked me for a loop. I hadn’t seen it coming. I’d started daydreaming and was gazing out the bullet hole in the front window of the Jeep when I felt the gun’s impact. Intense, immediate pain spread through the left side of my face. My jaw felt like it must be in a million pieces, but when I instinctively reached my hand up and touched it, nothing moved or seemed askew. I shifted my mouth a little, probed with my tongue to see if my teeth were floating around somewhere. Oh, Christ, would I have to go see a dentist now?
No, it seemed like everything was in its place.
So much for not thinking Ned could be a psychopath.
"What was that for?" I managed to sputter, the movement of forming words sending needles into my face, even though I knew the answer. I’d been able to walk away from Ralph, the spell broken, but Ned never did.
"Does there have to be a reason?" He spit the words out at me—literally, as I could feel the droplets land on my chin. I suppressed an urge to wipe them off, not wanting to make him any angrier and afraid that touching my face again would cause more pain. I could already feel my jaw swelling.
"He knew you wanted to get back at me, right?" I asked. "That’s how he got you to go along with helping him. Jesus, Ned, Ralph used people. He used me; he used you. He was a goddamn criminal." I paused. "I don’t know what he wanted out of me now—maybe he wanted to prove that he could still charm me. Is that what it was?"
Ned didn’t say anything, just floored the accelerator, and the Jeep shot back out into the street. We spun around to the left, past the Brookside projects, and up the road leading to West Rock. The gate was wide open. I thought they closed it after sunset. That’s what the sign said, at least. Someone was asleep on the job, which did not bode well for me at all.
I didn’t ask where we were going, since I pretty much knew. We spiraled around to the summit, where the Judges Cave sat primly just back from the road. This was where Jamond had said he’d seen Felicia’s body. A flashback of how Ned had saved me from Jamond popped into my head.
Going over it now, a few hours out and with more perspective on Ned’s state of mind, I realized that perhaps Ned hadn’t been so gallant after all. When Jamond told Ned that he’d "changed his mind," he’d looked scared. And the way Ned had looked back at him—I knew now that Ned had set me up. Vinny’s arrival thwarted the plan, but then he had a new one. Get Priscilla to get to me. Easy.
So fucking easy it would make my head spin if it weren’t already spinning with the pain from my jaw. I tried opening my mouth, but it was almost locked shut; I could feel a pulsating just in front of my ear.
But even though I could make sense of Ned’s fierce, misplaced loyalty to my ex-husband, I still didn’t know why Ned would stalk me, want me dead.
"Why?" I managed to say between clenched teeth. "Why are you doing this?"
"You tried to kill him."
I stared at Ned. "Tried to kill who?"
"Ralph. Don’t deny it. You had your gun—you shot at him."
"No, Ned. I didn’t shoot at Ralph."
"You had your gun at your car. I saw you. Your boyfriend saw you. You shot at Ralph."
If my mouth didn’t hurt so much, it would’ve hung open. "Jesus, Ned," I sputtered. "I went to my car to get my flip-flops. They were behind the gun under the seat, and I had to take the gun out to get them out. I heard the shots but didn’t see anything. I froze and didn’t put the gun back until after the shooting started. I stuffed the gun back into the car, didn’t have time to change my shoes. I went back into the bar through the back door and then went out the front, where Ralph was on the ground." I paused, touching my tender jaw for a second, instantly regretting it, then added, "Someone might have shot at him over his gun deals. I had no reason to shoot him."
"He was stalking you," Ned said flatly.
"Why?" I wished there were more light; I wanted to see his face.