Three strikes, p.10
Three Strikes, page 10
Bertie looked Audrey in the eye. “You kill him too?”
She arched a brow. Bertie had never been mean to her face before, so something about the situation obviously didn’t sit well with him. “Pretty sure I wouldn’t be asking about him if I had.”
He grunted. “I’m here for Brit. Told her I’d take her over to that little junk shop in Ryme.”
Barbie stood up. “I’ll go get her.” She cast an uneasy glance in Audrey’s direction, but Audrey just smiled. She’d never been afraid of Bertie and she wasn’t about to start at this point in her life.
The second they were alone, he fixed her with his narrow gaze. It really was strange not to see his eyes bloodshot, or smell the booze rolling off him. A haircut and clothes that fit would make the world of difference in his appearance. “What kind of trouble you stirring up now, Audrey Harte?”
She shrugged. “No trouble. Just looking for some answers. You used to party back the Ridge, didn’t you?”
“I done a lot of things,” he replied. “None of which are your damn business. You might want to think on that before you go digging around in folks’ affairs. Some don’t take kindly to snoops.”
“You know, warning me off only makes me want to look harder. I’m not sure if it’s a Pelletier thing, or if I get it from the Harte side.”
His expression didn’t change. “It’s going to get you into trouble one of these days.”
“Already has.” She said it with a rueful smile.
“Even your luck has to run out someday.”
Was that a threat? She couldn’t tell if it was said with regret, or with hope. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Uncle Bertie!” Britney cried.
He jerked back as though Audrey suddenly burst into flames, his face lighting up with joy. Whatever his faults, it was obvious he loved that little girl. Nothing about the way he looked at her made any warning bells go off in Audrey’s head. There was nothing predatory or salacious in his gaze—just simple adoration that was obviously returned. “Hey there, peanut. You ready to go shopping?”
The girl held up a small denim cross-body bag. “Sure am.”
Barbie smiled. “Have her back by supper.”
Bertie agreed. He didn’t even look at Audrey again as he and the little girl left. Audrey watched them go, intrigue and confusion dancing around her brain. What had that all been about? Did Bertie know something? He had to know being so strange and cryptic would only pique her interest. Maybe he wanted her to dig around. Maybe he wanted her to get hurt. But that didn’t make sense. Bertie got into a lot of fights, but that was because he could be an idiot when he was drunk. He was never mean.
Once they were gone, and Mackenzie sat down at the table, Barbie got another cup of tea and the three of them chatted about what else Barbie could remember.
“Maggie talked to me some. I think she felt safe having another girl around. Sometimes the guys would flirt with her. Most of the regulars treated her like a little sister. I don’t remember her spending time with any one guy. I’m sorry I’m not much help. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I partied pretty hard back then. Dwayne might remember more. He was friends with that Mike kid, I think. He’s working today, but I can get him to call you.”
“That would be great, Barbie,” Audrey said. “Thanks.” A few minutes later, she and Mackenzie backed out of the driveway, headed toward Lower Edgeport.
“Did she tell you anything?” Mackenzie asked.
Audrey had to force her foot to go light on the gas pedal. She was still keyed up from her encounter with Bertie. “She gave a list of possibilities.”
The girl winced. “A list. Wow.”
“Not a long list.” She really had to be more careful in her wording. “I told you this wasn’t going to be pleasant.”
“I know.”
Audrey glanced at her. Mackenzie sounded hesitant—uncertain. “We can stop if you want.” The last thing she wanted was to see this nice, innocent girl get hurt.
“No. I want to know where I came from.”
“Okay, then we go forward. If you change your mind, you just say the word.”
“I won’t change my mind.” The stubborn set to her jaw was yet another reminder of Maggie—bullheaded to her own detriment.
Audrey glanced at the dirt road that led back the Ridge as they sped past it a few seconds later. What had gone on back there? What had happened to Maggie, and why had she never shared any of it with her?
And what, if anything, could Audrey do about it now?
Nineteen years ago
“I don’t know why you waste your time on Jake,” Maggie said as she flipped onto her stomach on Audrey’s bed. “He’s so young.”
“He’s older than us,” Audrey reminded her. She pressed Play on the CD player; Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train” started. “We’re just friends.”
Maggie smirked at her. God, Audrey was so transparent sometimes. “Right. You don’t want to get in his pants at all.”
Her friend made a face. “It’s not like that.”
“Twu wuv,” Maggie teased. Audrey didn’t even know what she was missing. Didn’t know what kind of power sex gave a girl. “You saving yourself for your wedding night? You know he’ll come before he even gets inside you, right? That’s so romantic.”
Audrey hit her in the arm. She hit hard, but Maggie had been hit harder, so she barely noticed the pain. She was good at putting herself in another place when things hurt. “Shut up. I don’t want to have sex with Jake. Not yet anyway.”
“How nice for you that you get to decide who you have sex with.” Shit. She hadn’t meant to say that.
Her best friend went pale. Maybe she was naive in a lot of ways, but Audrey was smart sometimes. Too smart. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. It was just a joke.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Audrey came up on her elbows, looming over her. “What happened?”
For a second, Maggie wondered what Dree would do if she kissed her. Would she let her? Could Maggie shut her up as easily as she did boys that talked too much? No. Kissing would just make this worse. Audrey was one of the few good things in her life. She couldn’t mess that up, no matter how much she sometimes stupidly wanted to. “I told you, nothing.” Losing Audrey was the one thing that scared her.
“Maggie.”
Tears scorched the back of Maggie’s eyes. She was not going to cry. She glanced out the window. “Someone’s here.” Then she saw whose truck it was and her tears dried up faster than the beach at low tide on a sunny day. “Fucking Bertie Neeley.”
Audrey frowned. “What’s your damage with Bertie? He’s a drunk.”
Maggie laughed. She said it like that made him harmless, but she knew Bertie wasn’t just some sweet old guy.
Still frowning, Audrey put her hand on Maggie’s arm. “Did Bertie do something to you?”
“Do something?” Maggie mocked. “Jesus, Dree, just ask me if he fucked me, don’t go all after-school special.”
The change in her friend’s expression was … beautiful. Audrey’s face hardened. Her weirdly pretty eyes brightened, and in that brightness Maggie saw something that actually scared her. For a second she couldn’t even breathe. Maggie had seen a lot of monsters in her life, but this was the first time she ever felt like she had one of her own.
“Bertie never touched me,” she admitted, before she could lie. It was tempting to say he had just to see what Audrey would do.
“If it wasn’t him, then who?” Her friend slid her hand down Maggie’s arm and took hold of one of her hands. Maggie couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched her in a loving, nonsexual kind of way. Not even her mother, who spent most of her time in her room, bruised and staring out the window. Sometimes Maggie just wanted to hand her a bottle of pills so she’d get it over with.
The tears she’d tried to hold back rushed forward with a vengeance. She couldn’t tell everything. Dree was her best friend. The only other real friend she had was Mike, and she couldn’t talk about him either. He’d made her promise that they’d keep each other’s secrets and not talk about what happened in the little shed on the hill. She didn’t want Audrey to look at her like other people did—like she was garbage. Audrey loved her, and she wanted it to stay that way for as long as possible.
But there was one thing she could tell her—the thing that no one knew. The thing that was to blame for every other bad thing that happened to her. Audrey could help her stop it. Maybe. If anyone could save her, it was Audrey.
Tears trickling down her face, Maggie told Audrey what her father had done to her—what he made her do to him. Every painful, disgusting thing. She tried not to cry as she remembered these things—some of them were like they’d happened to another person, like she’d watched them on TV rather than experienced them. When she was done, she sat on the bed, her shoulders sagging, nose clogged with snot, and waited for Audrey’s reaction.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. And it was true. She knew how to survive, but she didn’t know how to save herself, and she couldn’t see anything at all that made life worth living.
Then Audrey opened her mouth. “We could kill him.”
Maggie stared at her. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”
“You’d kill someone for me?”
“I’d do anything for you.”
Maggie threw her arms around Audrey’s neck and squeezed her as hard as she could. “You’re the best friend ever.”
“I always will be,” Audrey promised. “Always.”
And Maggie believed it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Where had it gone wrong?
Talking to Mackenzie—looking at her—had brought up so many memories of when Audrey and Maggie had been best friends. She still couldn’t believe Maggie had kept her pregnancy a secret. If it were anyone else she’d assume Maggie hadn’t known, but she knew that wasn’t the case.
All of her training insisted that Maggie probably hadn’t shared the information because of shame. She’d always looked at Audrey as being “the good one” of the two of them. Shame, when Audrey thought about it, was what had ruined their friendship.
When Audrey was released from Stillwater, Maggie was already back in Edgeport. Audrey had been nervous about seeing her friend again—what if Maggie rejected her? But Maggie hadn’t rejected her.
Audrey rejected Maggie. Somewhere during her incarceration, Audrey had become ashamed of what she’d done, despite the fact that her adult self had no regrets. She didn’t blame Maggie—she took full responsibility for her actions—but every time Audrey looked at her, Maggie was a reminder of what she’d done.
So Audrey starting pulling away, and Maggie tried to hold on. The harder Maggie dug in, the more ashamed Audrey became, because it was so very obvious by then that there was something very, very wrong with Maggie. The hospital hadn’t made her better, and Audrey took some responsibility for that. If she hadn’t killed Clint, Maggie wouldn’t have been sent away. She’d be okay.
Realistically, adult Audrey knew that wasn’t how things worked. Maggie’s mental issues would have eventually come to the forefront, and without that stay in the hospital, things might have gone a lot worse for her. None of that mattered when it came to her feelings. Inside, she owed Maggie for being ashamed of her, and she wasn’t going to let that shame spread to Maggie’s kid. That was the thought in her head when she drove down to her parents’ house later that same day, Mackenzie in tow. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the girl alone in that cottage, despite her own desire to go through Maggie’s things. It didn’t seem right.
Jess and the girls were there when Audrey arrived, so it was easy for her to corner her father in the kitchen and let Mac entertain the girls.
“Do you know of anything that happened that spring back the Ridge that involved Bertie Neeley?” she asked.
John frowned. She didn’t take offense; her father frowned a lot. “You expect me to remember something involving Bertie Neeley that happened almost twenty years ago?”
“Yeah, I do. I ran into him at Barbie’s and he warned me off digging around back the Ridge. He wasn’t the least bit subtle.”
Her father shook his head with a sigh. “Damned old fool.”
“Did you give me that gun because of Bertie?”
He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away from the door. “Lower your voice, you harpy.” There wasn’t any insult in his tone, however. “You want your mother to hear?”
No, she didn’t, so she kept her voice a whisper as she demanded, “Is Bertie why you gave me the damn gun?”
He rolled his eyes, making her feel like an idiot. “Jesus, kid, do you know how much I was drinking back then? No, I don’t remember anything that had to do with Bertie except I probably knocked him on his ass more times than I want to admit.”
“Well, something happened. I don’t care unless it has something to do with Maggie.”
His expression softened. If she lived to be a hundred she would never understand the friendship that existed between her father and Bertie. Never. “Hey, now. Watch it. Bertie Neeley might be a weaselly son of a bitch on occasion, but he would never, ever hurt a child. He’s always loved kids, and been good to them. You remember how he used to keep a tab at the store so you kids could put your candy on it.”
Actually, Audrey had pretty much forgotten about that. She hadn’t thought of it in years, but he was right. Back when there had been a small general store in Edgeport, Bertie could always be counted on to buy a kid a treat.
But why threaten her if he hadn’t done anything? It didn’t make sense, unless he thought she might dig up something unrelated to Maggie. She had no interest in what else went on back that road. Still, it would pay to be careful.
“Hey, did you transfer that gun to my name before you gave it to me?”
He didn’t even blink at her change of subject. “Yeah. Do you think I just let you run around with an unregistered handgun? That would be like handing an arsonist a flamethrower and trusting that nothing bad would happen.”
Audrey laughed. “Thanks, Dad. You’re a real peach, you know that.”
His lips lifted slightly. “Hey, apple, have you met tree?” His smile faded. “Is it true they found a body at Jake’s this morning?”
God, she’d practically forgotten about that too. Myopic much? “Yeah. A guy that was at Gracie’s last night. He was shot.”
“Hunting accident?”
“I’m not sure.” She wasn’t about to tell him Ratchett had been in town to blackmail Jake. “The police had just gotten there when I saw Jake, so I don’t know much.”
Her father arched a brow. “You know the difference between a hunting accident and murder.”
“Okay, stop talking like I’m a murder expert.”
He stared at her. “You want to go down that road? ’Cause we can.”
She shook her head, not really offended. “One murder doesn’t make me an expert any more than one drink makes someone a drunk.”
“It only took one drink to make me one,” he shot back. At the sound of laughter, his gaze drifted over her shoulder to where Mackenzie sat with Anne and Jessica at the table. “Speaking of apples and trees.”
Audrey didn’t look; she kept her attention focused solely on her father. There was a tightness to his face that unsettled her. “I wish you’d tell me what you know.”
“Yeah, well, I wish you’d stop talking so much.” His scowl lacked any real censure, though.
“I’m going to find out.”
His brown and blue gaze locked with her own. “Someone might get hurt if you keep doing all this digging. And I don’t mean you. It’s not all about you, kid.”
Audrey’s spine straightened. “Maggie was my friend. She told me about Clint, but she didn’t tell me about her kid. There was a reason for that.” She had to know what that reason was. She had to at least try to make it right.
“Yeah, like maybe she realized she’d already ruined your life enough.”
“Oh, Dad. Maggie didn’t ruin my life—I took care of that for both of us.”
John was still for a moment, watching her face. For a second, Audrey thought he might hug her, then he nodded his head at the scene behind her. “Just take care that little girl’s life doesn’t end up ruined too.” He grabbed a plate of cookies off the sideboard and shoved it at her. “Now, go visit with your mother and sister. I’ll make tea.”
She backed off, reluctantly taking the plate. Her father had a way of firing her up and making her doubt herself all at the same time. She went into the dining room and set the cookies on the table before sitting down. Mackenzie was on the floor with Isabelle and Olivia, laughing at something Isabelle said.
Jessica watched them with a strange expression on her face.
“You okay?” Audrey asked.
Her sister’s head snapped up. “Hmm? Oh, yeah. I was just thinking. I heard there was trouble at the resort this morning. Some dead hunter?”
“Something like that. I don’t know all the details.”
Anne shook her head. “What a tragedy.”
“There’s been a lot of death around here lately,” Jessica remarked.
Audrey’s lips twisted. “Ever since the reaper came home.”
Both of them groaned and scowled at her. “Don’t talk so loose,” her mother chastised. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”
The serial killer who abducted Alisha had everything to do with her, but she didn’t remind them of that. Making herself the bad guy wasn’t going to help anyone, so she dropped it.
“I have something for you,” Jess said, taking her purse from the back of her chair and putting it in her lap. She searched through it for a couple of seconds before pulling out an old, dog-eared photograph. “Greg said you might want it. I told him you were trying to find out more about the kid who died and he found this. It’s a photo from a party back the Ridge.”
