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Josie took it and began to page through it. It was thick, with several entries, none of which were dated. She could tell the pre-accident entries from the post-accident entries because Brooke’s handwriting had altered slightly. She moved toward the end of the entries, reading as quickly as she could. It didn’t say much at all about Raffy other than how cruel and abusive he had always been. There were no clues to where he might have gone. The biggest revelation was that Brooke and Beau had been lovers. Josie was not surprised. There seemed no end to the women Beau had been involved with behind his wife’s back. She kept going until the end, letting out a gasp as she read the final entry.
“Are you okay?” asked Brooke.
“Um, yes,” said Josie.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Not exactly.” Josie put the diary back into the box and then brought up a photo of Beau Collins on her phone. She turned it toward Brooke. “Do you remember this man?”
Brooke tugged at a long, greasy shank of her hair. A deep sorrow pooled in her eyes. “He was my lover,” she said. “It’s one of the few things I can remember but I think it’s only if I see his face. The more I see it, the more that comes back. I wish he would come and get me. My husband says he will never come back for me because he is a…” she took a moment to find the memory. “A lecherous liar.”
The words hit Josie like a slap. The review.Beau Collins is a lecherous liar who cannot be trusted. He is not a real therapist. He’s not there to help you. He’s there to steal your wife.
“Brooke,” Josie said. “This man’s name is Beau Collins. Do you remember you and your husband going to marriage counseling with him?”
Brooke looked down at her lap. “I did a bad thing and I have to pay.”
Josie reached over and touched Brooke’s hand gently to get her attention. The woman quickly clasped Josie’s fingers, holding on tightly. “Brooke,” Josie said. “I think you’ve paid enough.”
Brooke nearly knocked Josie over as she sprang up from her haunches and threw her arms around Josie’s neck. Still on her knees, it was a challenge to stay upright, but Josie accepted the hug and slowly returned it. Brooke smelled sour but Josie barely registered it. She wondered, when was the last time anyone had hugged this woman or shown her any affection at all? When was the last time she’d been out of this house? When was the last time she had seen anyone besides Raffy or Claudia Collins? What the hell had Claudia Collins been doing, giving the Sullivans thirty thousand dollars in cash?
Brooke was facing the front door. When her body went from relaxed to tense, Josie knew something was wrong. The floorboards creaked. Hanging onto Brooke, Josie turned both their bodies, pivoting on one of her kneecaps to see Archie Gamble flying toward both of them with something metal flashing in his hand.
FIFTY-THREE
The three seconds it took for Gamble to get from the door to looming over Josie and Brooke went by in slow motion. As Josie pulled Brooke onto her and rolled to the side, the flash of metal in Gamble’s hand resolved into the shiny blunt end of a hammer. As he smashed the hammer down onto the place where Josie and Brooke had just been, Josie rolled again until they were clear of the couch and she was straddling a shocked Brooke. Frozen in place, both hands to her chest, Brooke stared up at Josie with wide, frightened eyes. There was no time to reassure her.
Josie brought her left leg up, foot flat, ready to stand as her right hand unholstered her pistol. Gamble pivoted from where he had stumbled into empty space, slicing the hammer downward, and came at her. Before Josie could call out and tell him to stop or even properly aim at him, he was on her, sweeping the hammer down and toward the side. It hit the pistol, ripping it from Josie’s grip, and sending it somewhere into the corner of the room. Brooke shrieked.
Josie’s body reacted without thought. As he wound up again to bring the hammer down on her head, she sprang up, away from Brooke’s prone form, and charged at him, spinning as she came into contact with his body until her back was pressed against his chest. Both her hands followed the length of his sinewy arm, all the way to the hammer’s long handle. His free hand found her face, clamping over her mouth. It tasted of cigarettes and dirt. His fingers dug into the scar on the side of her face, making it sting and bringing back memories of her six-year-old self, sliced open, bloodied, afraid.
Twenty-seven stitches.
When he yanked at her jaw, it only pissed her off more. She held fast to the handle of the hammer and bit down whatever hunk of flesh her teeth could find. He made a guttural noise deep in his chest. She felt the vibration against her back, and she held on, jaw clenching tighter until something hot and coppery filled her mouth. Flesh gave way. His grip on the hammer loosened just slightly. Josie used both her hands to yank the hammer from his grip. Staying in the tight circle of his arms, she spun again, away from the hand she’d just bitten, and used her body’s momentum to bury the head of the hammer into his thigh. As she completed the turn, now facing him, he stumbled backward. Somehow, he managed to stop himself from falling all the way onto his back, instead falling onto his knees. He nearly buckled when his right knee hit the floor. His facial expression morphed from anger to shock to intense pain. Yet, when he looked up at her, Josie knew he was nowhere near finished with her.
She’d been in enough scuffles as both a woman and a police officer to know that most of the time, a devastating blow to certain parts of the body would knock an opponent down and either put them out of the fight or stun them long enough for you to subdue them, but every once in a while, the opposite happened. A blow like the one she’d just delivered to Gamble’s leg sent a person’s adrenaline into overdrive, numbing any pain they might be feeling and giving them the strength of two very pissed-off people.
Gamble was pissed.
Their eyes locked for a fleeting second. His lip curled upward in the sort of smile that told her that he was very much going to enjoy killing her in the most savage way possible.
Josie lifted her chin in acknowledgement and then spat out the hunk of his hand she’d torn off directly in front of him.
Then they flew at one another. She had a slight advantage since he was on his knees, but it didn’t last long. He was bigger and stronger. Still, she stayed tight to his body so that he couldn’t put much strength or momentum behind any of the blows that he rained down on her head and shoulders. She used her elbows on his rib cage to no avail. When she felt their bodies falling—her on the bottom—she reached down and, through his jeans, did her best to grab the biggest fistful of skin and muscle on his inner thigh that she possibly could, hoping she’d find the exact spot she’d hit him earlier.
She did.
He howled as he fell on top of her, but again, it only seemed to infuse him with more rage and energy. Straddling her, even with one mostly dead leg, he started throwing punches at her head. Josie dipped her chin to her chest, curled her hands into fists, and brought them up over her head, twisting from side to side so that her fists and forearms took the brunt of the onslaught. Her lower body worked to shimmy out from beneath him. When that didn’t work, she pressed her feet flat to the floor and drew her knees up. She hooked a foot over one of his ankles and tried to roll, using her hips to throw him off balance. It stopped the punches for a brief, glorious second, but he stayed on top of her.
“You bitch!” he grunted. He had a few more choice words for her, but Josie’s mind tuned them out, searching through every hand-to-hand combat tactic she knew to try to get out of this. A couple of punches made it past her defenses, glancing off her shoulder, her forehead, her collarbone. She put one foot flat and used her other knee to try to hit him in the kidney. Mostly, she hit his tailbone which only made him angrier.
Then, suddenly, he stopped. Disoriented, Josie lost the precious seconds between his last punch and his entire upper body suddenly pressing down on her. His chest pushed her fists into her face. His blood-covered T-shirt scraped over her forehead. For a moment, she thought he had simply decided to smother her but then the weight of him on her chest shifted back to her pelvis. He straightened his upper body, looking down at her with that menacing smile. In his hand was the hammer, claw edge pointed right at her. Blood dripped down the handle, snaking down his arm. He’d stopped to reach for it. He had seen it on the floor and stopped to reach for it.
Even if she used her forearms to block it, the hammer would shatter her bones. She had no chance against it. He’d kill her in moments.
For the first time, fear edged out Josie’s anger and adrenaline.
She was going to die.
