Authors: Mariah Stewart
“Maggie isn’t playing by the rules, so she took a penalty,” a mocking male voice told her.
“Who is this?”
Don’t let him know we’re onto him …
“This is your worst nightmare, baby,” Edmund crooned, and Vanessa grimaced at Grady. She pointed to the phone and nodded.
It’s him
.
“I’ve had a lot of nightmares lately,” she said. “Who is this?”
“You’re going to have to come on over here and find out for yourself. But you come by yourself, you hear? Do not call the old man or the guy who’s been banging you.” He snickered. “I saw his clothes in the closet upstairs. It must be nice and cozy around here at night.”
“What do you want?” she asked curtly.
“I want you, here, in this house, in nine minutes. I know it takes eleven minutes to walk from your shop to this house because I timed it. I’m giving you nine. For every minute you’re late, your mother will have another hole in one of her body parts. A foot, a hand, maybe shoot off a couple of fingers. If you don’t come at all, I aim for the heart. I see anyone but you coming
this way or anywhere near this house, I kill her. Come now. I’ll be watching for you.”
“Listen—”
“You’re down to eight minutes, Vanessa, and so is your mother.” He hung up.
“I have to go,” she said. “He’s going to kill Maggie if I’m not there in eight minutes.”
She ran for the door.
“Hold up there.” Grady grabbed her arm as she ran past. “I can’t let you just walk in there.”
“I have to.
He’s going to shoot my mother.”
“If you go into that house, Ness, he’s going to shoot you, too,” Hal told her.
“You’re the survival expert, right?” She turned to Grady. “You figure out how to save us both.” She shook herself free. “I have to go. He said he’d be watching for me.”
“Ness, where’s your cell?” Grady asked.
“It’s in my bag.” She pointed to the counter.
He grabbed her bag and dumped the contents onto the floor. He picked up her phone and dialed a number. His cell rang inside his pants pocket. He answered his phone as he handed Vanessa’s phone to her.
“Leave the call open in your pocket so we can hear what’s going on. He’s going to have to be in the front of the house, so try to keep him there to give us time to get in through the back.”
“How do you know he’ll be in the front of the house?” she asked.
“You just said he told you he’d be watching for you. He’ll only be able to see the street from the front door or from the living room.” Grady turned to Hal.
“There’s a stretch of woods that runs behind her house. You know where we can cut through to get to her yard?”
Hal nodded.
“All right, let’s go.” Before Grady opened the door, he kissed Vanessa soundly on the mouth. “Keep the phone open, and keep him talking for as long as you can. He’s got to be feeling pretty clever right about now, so let him brag. Keep him talking, Ness. Act like you’re impressed that he found you, whatever strokes you think his ego needs. Keep him focused on you. Keep your interactions with Maggie to a minimum.”
Vanessa nodded and started out the door. “What if he’s already shot Maggie? What if he just shoots me when I walk through the door?”
Before he or Hal could answer, she shuddered and said, “I have to go.” She fled out the door, with both men at her heels.
“We can cut through the Eakinses’ backyard,” Hal said.
Hal and Grady were right behind her, but when she took off to the left toward Cherry Street, they turned right for the street that ran behind it.
Vanessa ran. She was scared to death and her heart was racing so fast she thought she was going to have a heart attack before she ever made it home.
Then he’ll think I’m not coming and he’ll shoot Maggie
, she told herself.
She talked to herself the entire time.
Why am I doing this? I can’t not. I can’t let him kill her because he can’t get to me
.
What if he kills me? Grady won’t let him kill me
.
Grady and Hal. They’ll save us
.
How? How are they going to save us?
By the time she reached her house, she was scared out of her wits.
Don’t let him know I’m afraid. Let him brag, Grady said. Keep him talking. Let him brag. Act impressed. Keep him talking …
Unless, of course, he shoots me the minute I walk through the door
, she thought as she walked up her front steps on wobbly legs.
Maybe I should have waited until we came up with a Plan B …
She pushed open the front door and stepped into her foyer. Edmund Dent stood at the bottom of the stairwell, Maggie in front of him, a gun to her head.
“Edmund?” Vanessa asked as if she hadn’t known who had summoned her. “Edmund Dent?”
“Yup.” He pushed Maggie away from him, into the living room and onto the sofa.
Vanessa kept her focus on Edmund.
“Bet you never expected to see me again,” he taunted.
She shook her head. “How did you find me?”
He smirked. “It was easy. Your old lady left behind some very talkative neighbors everyplace she went. And she’s pretty talkative herself. ‘Hello, I’m looking for Vanessa Keaton … we’re having a high school reunion and it wouldn’t be the same without her.’ ” He mimicked a woman’s voice.
“You … you made that call?” Vanessa asked, then turned to Maggie. “Maggie, couldn’t you tell that that ‘Shannon’ person was really a man?” Before Maggie could answer, Vanessa had turned back to Edmund. “You had her fooled. She really thought
you were a girl named Shannon, even though I told her I didn’t know anyone named Shannon.”
“Yeah, pretty clever, I thought.”
Vanessa nodded. “I have to give you that one.”
“Thanks.” He sat on the bottom step and waved the gun. “I want you to sit over there with your mother. I want to tell you a story.”
Vanessa moved slowly and backed onto the sofa. She made no move toward Maggie, nor did she make eye contact with her.
“So tell me a story,” Vanessa said.
“When I was a kid, I was very small. And I stuttered. Everyone made fun of me, knocked me around. Nobody ever stuck up for me, except for one person. Know who that person was?”
Oh, shit
, she thought.
I think I can see where this is going …
Aloud she said, “Who, Edmund?”
“The man you sent to prison. The man who died there, beaten to death like a dog. My cousin Eugene.” He stared at her through flat black eyes. “You should have taken it, Vanessa. Whatever you did to make him put you in your place, you should have taken it. You had no right to call the cops on a family matter. You should have taken it, then worked it out with him later. It’s your fault he’s dead, Vanessa. The Bible says an eye for an eye, right?”
He got off the step and started toward her, the hand that held the gun swaying, his free hand clenching and unclenching. She was pretty sure the first blow would be with a fist. He wasn’t going to shoot her before he hurt her. Grady had been right about
that. She braced herself for the punch that was coming.
“No! Don’t touch her!” Maggie jumped from the sofa and lunged toward him. Just as he raised the gun there was the sound of something hitting the floor in the dining room.
Edmund smacked Maggie with his free hand and swung toward the sound just as a black plastic flower pot rolled across the floor.
“What the f …” he muttered.
From the kitchen doorway, Grady leaped forward and landed on Edmund’s back and slammed him, face-first, onto the floor. The gun Edmund had been holding slid on the hardwood almost to the front door.
“What the hell took you so long? And where’s Hal?” Vanessa rushed to help Maggie up.
“I’m all right, honey.” Maggie stood shakily. “I’m all right.”
“Pick up that gun, Ness,” Grady told her. “Put it on the table near the window.”
She picked it up between her thumb and forefinger, as if it had a life of its own, and placed it on the table.
“Grab the cuffs from my back pocket, would you?” Grady asked as he twisted Edmund’s hands behind his back.
She assisted Maggie onto the sofa, then pulled the cuffs from his pocket and handed them to Grady.
“Hal’s out back, probably still trying to catch his breath,” Grady told her as he cuffed her would-be assassin. “He ran the entire way, but he’s just not in shape. He was breathing so hard I was afraid you’d hear him before I could create a distraction, so I told
him to wait outside. He’s called for backup but told them to hang back.”
“Hal’s outside?” Maggie started to rise, and Vanessa hurried to help her up. “Is he all right?”
“I think he’s better off than you are right now.” Vanessa tilted Maggie’s face to get a better look at her injury.
“What if he’s having a heart attack? Maybe we should call an ambulance …” Maggie ran to the back door.
“Tell him to let his backup know it’s time to move in,” Grady called after her.
“Get off me. I’m gonna sue you for excessive force …” Edmund yelled.
“Nothing I haven’t heard before,” Grady told him, then read him his rights. He turned to Vanessa. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Maggie got the worst of it. He was just winding up, though. You didn’t arrive any too soon, you know.”
“I know. I was paying attention.” Grady grabbed Edmund and pulled him to his feet. He held him by the back of the neck with one hand; with the other, he pulled his cell out of his shirt pocket. Vanessa smiled, and did the same.
“Hello,” she said into her phone.
“Hello,” he replied, then snapped his phone closed and said, “You’d have made a good cop, Ness. You followed instructions to the letter, you never lost your cool, you kept focused just like I told you.”
“I was scared to death,” she admitted as the first patrol car came screaming to a stop out front. “I had
no cool. I thought I was going to pass out or throw up.”
“You did just fine, babe,” he said softly. “Just fine …”
She opened the front door for Gus and Sue and pointed to the man on the floor. “He’s all yours, Officers …”
Vanessa and Maggie sat across from each other at Hal’s conference table waiting to give their statements regarding the day’s events while Grady paced in the hallway talking on his cell.
“Vanessa, I don’t know how to thank you for saving my life this morning,” Maggie said. “You didn’t have to come.”
“Do you believe he would have killed you?” Vanessa asked.
Maggie nodded. “There’s no question in my mind. Several times, I thought he was going to pull that trigger …” She shivered at the memory. “Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I will never forget that you put yourself in danger to save me.”
“Maggie, you’re my mother.” Vanessa sighed. “Whatever else has happened, whatever issues we have, the fact remains that you’re my mother, and I could not let him kill you in my place.”
Tears rolled down Maggie’s cheeks. “Look, I know I screwed up as a mother. There are so many things I did back then that I’d never do now. I never meant to hurt you or Beck, Vanessa. I did love you—I still love you both—but I screwed up big-time. Every good relationship I ever had, I screwed up.”
“Yes, you did.” Vanessa faced her and met her eyes
without blinking. “You screwed up your life, and you screwed up both of ours. But here’s the thing: in screwing up, you gave us both what turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to either of us. You sent us to Hal. He saved us—both of us—so for that I have to thank you. It makes up for everything you didn’t do.”
Maggie covered her face with her hands. “I’m sorry, Vanessa. I know I was a poor excuse for a mother.”
“A piss-poor excuse, when you get right down to it. But maybe instead of beating your breast and crying about everything you did that hurt us …”
Maggie’s head shot up.
“Yes. Hurt, Maggie.” Vanessa took a deep breath. There were things she’d waited a lifetime to say. Now might be her only chance. “From the time I was seven years old until I was about fifteen, I was afraid all the time. Did you know that?”
“Afraid of what, honey?”
“Afraid that the men who came home with you at night would come back during the day when I was there alone. I hated the school day to end, because all the way walking home, I’d be getting more and more scared.” Even now, years later, Vanessa could feel that cold finger of fear on the back of her neck. “What if someone was there when I got home? What would I do? What would I do if you were out at night and one of them came looking for you? What would they do to me?”
“Oh, baby, I’d never have let anyone hurt you. I’d have died before I’d let anyone touch you,” Maggie wept.
“Good to know now, but it would have been even better to hear when I was a child.”
“Dear God, I’m sorry. Look, I know I was a mess back then. I did so much wrong when I was too young to know better. I made a million bad choices and few good ones. I lost the best man I ever knew—the only man I really loved—because I was too weak and too scared to stand up to my father. You can’t imagine what it was like for me back then, Vanessa.” Maggie patted her eyes with a tissue she’d taken from her purse. “I was bullied and forced into marrying someone I didn’t love. My entire life went wrong from that one wrong turn.”
“This isn’t all about you, Maggie. A simple I-screwed-up-my-life-and-I-screwed-up-yours-too-and-I’m-sincerely-sorry is probably all that’s necessary at this point. The rest of it—the explanations, the attempts to excuse yourself that you’ve been making all these years—they don’t matter so much anymore to anyone except you. I can’t help you to clear your conscience but I can give you some of the best advice you’ll ever get.” Vanessa scanned the table and found a pen and a sheet of paper. She wrote something and handed it to Maggie. “This is the therapist who helped me. Maybe she can give you a referral to someone in North Dakota that you could make an appointment with.”
Maggie frowned.
“You have issues that you’ve been dragging around for years, Maggie. You haven’t been able to resolve them on your own, so maybe someone else can help you. It might be worth a try.” Vanessa shrugged. “Of course, it’s up to you.”
Maggie studied the paper for a moment.