AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thank you, sugar.” I could tell he ran his tongue around his mouth, and his grimace of pain and distaste at all the new gaps he found was totally understandable. “I love you, Eden.”
“I love you too. So, so much.” My voice cracked at the last, and I bent to kiss his cheek once more. I took a deep breath, steeling myself for what was going to be the hardest part of this conversation. “Dad? I need to talk to you about something very important now. Are you listening?”
“Go ahead, sugar.”
“You should know that the police have been waiting for you to wake up, because they want to talk to you about the attack. The Feds are even in on it now, hinting that they think this might be a hate crime, though I suspect they actually want to get a look at what goes on behind the scenes at HEG. If we aren’t careful, they’ll use this attack as a vehicle to drive right through the heart of the world you’ve built.”
“They can go fuck themselves,” he returned with some of his old fire, while that beep-boop alarm went off again.
I glanced at the monitor above his bed, trying to figure out if he was strong enough for this. But he had to be armed before anyone else realized he was awake and talking. “Now that you’re awake, we need to have a plan to handle this, okay? I’ll change my face as soon as I walk out of here, pour out some gut-wrenching tears and wail to the world that you can hardly remember anything. You’ve suffered severe head trauma, so we can easily have people believing that you can barely even remember me.”
“Eden, honey, that’s not necessary—”
“Itis, Dad. It’s vital that you don’t remember anything, at least officially. We need to convince the world that you can’t remember you were attacked. For instance, you can’t officially remember why you lied to Kels about a New Hope bus coming in, because the police will find out that no bus was scheduled to come in the night you were attacked. Somehow, some way, I’m sure the reason you needed to be at that meeting hall was becauseyouwere the one who started this whole nightmare of a stalker problem in the first place. If that’s ever made public, the whole persona you’ve created as a benevolent, pure-hearted guru collapses like the house of cards it is. Everything will be ruined. So that’s why as of now, you. Remember.Nothing. Okay?”
Beep-boop.
Beep-boop.
Beep-boop.
“How’d you know it was me?” he whispered, staring at me with that one green eye. In it, I could see he understood. He knew the jig was up.
I put a hand to my chest, trying not to gasp out loud. Sure, I’d already figured out the truth for myself, but that one look stabbed poison-edged daggers in all the bleeding pieces of my already-broken heart. The pain of it stole my breath.
“You were almost perfect in your scam, but it’s the little things that trip up even a great conman like yourself. For instance, the name of a cat, and the name of a car.” When he still just stared at me, I swallowed hard and kept going despite that damn alarm going off. “You must have directed your hired stalker on how best to get to me, yeah? I mean, how else would he have known to put a lookalike Timothy the cat on the hood of my car—a car that’s named after Timothy? Of course, it’s common knowledge that I’ve always named my car Timothy, but you’re the only person who knowswhyI chose that name. It’s the name that belonged to a cat that I loved when I was a little girl. I’ve never even told Kels that cat’s name. Only you knew. So only you could have directed my stalker to put a dead Timothy-lookalike on the hood of Timothy the car. Talk about the mother of all subconscious tells.” In all honesty I was surprised Luke hadn’t picked up on it. Given enough time I’m sure it would dawn on him.
“You were never in any danger, darlin’, I swear. Or, at least you weren’t supposed to be,” he added, absently messing with all the gaps where his teeth used to be. “I sent Cobee to bring you back to me, where you belong.”
“Wait, what?” My jaw actually dropped. “Cobeewas my original stalker?”
“Yep.”
“Cobee Bruno, the guy who thought he was locked in the greenhouse for five hours because he didn’t realize he needed topullon the door instead ofpushit?ThatCobee Bruno?”
My father’s eye closed as if in pain. He probably was, and not just from his wounds. “How many Cobee Brunos do you know?”
I could only shake my head. “Holy shit, Dad.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me to come home? Why put me through all of this ridiculous bullshit?”
He shifted furtively in the hospital bed. “The way things ended between us three years ago, I wasn’t sure you’d even answer the phone if I called and asked for you to come back. So… I got creative.”
“Creative, huh?” More like he’d been incapable of swallowing his pride long enough to apologize, admit he’d been wrong, and ask me to come back. A normal man would have done that, but my dad? Never in a million years. Instead, he’d concocted a wild scenario where I’d be forced to crawl back to HEG, begging for help. Then he could have come out looking like a hero, while I would have been shackled to him all over again out of sheer gratitude.
Typical. So damn typical.
“I know what you’re thinking.”
My father’s gravelly voice brought me out of my dark thoughts. “Do you?”
“You’re offended I used the likes of Cobee Bruno to fool you. I would be too, sugar, but I was desperate. And for what it’s worth, I had to give that man step-by-step instructions on how to go about stalking you, but even then you were too sharp to be fooled for long. I’m strangely proud you spotted that little Timothy fuck-up of mine. Good eye, sugar. Good eye.”
Dear God. “Look, instead of blowing smoke up my ass, just help me figure this out, okay? Is Cobee the one who attacked you? I can’t imagine it, he loves you so much, but I still have to ask.”
He made a vaguely dismissive sound that whistled through the new gaps in his teeth. “Cobee bailed the very same night you went and filled his hide full of BBs. If anyone’s still stalking you, it’s not coming from him.”
