AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The startled expression on her face told him all he needed to know. Shewasafraid of something.
Dani’s heart skipped. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
Aaron shook his head. “I’m not prying for the hell of it. But I’m a cop, and I’m good at my job. You scan the faces of everyone around you. You jump at unfamiliar sounds, and making sure your name isn’t made public is just another signal to me that you are hiding something or hiding from someone. Which is it?”
She glanced up, then looked away.
Aaron sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m not prying, it’s just…”
Her expression blanked. The tone of her voice became sharper, and there was a muscle jerking at the side of her eye.
“I had a stalker. It was someone I dated. He got possessive and then controlling, and it scared me. I broke it off with him, and he didn’t take it well. Months of unwanted flowers turned into obscene phone calls with a disguised voice, to threatening notes left on my windshield. The protection order I took out on him didn’t work. And the cops began to doubt me when I called.Then one night he broke into my apartment because he thought I was with another man. I was alone, but he was already set on ‘teaching me a lesson.’ He beat me senseless, broke my jaw, and two ribs. They put him in jail for assault. He was out on bail before I was released from the hospital. The rest of the year was a living hell. The cops got so fed up with my calls for help that they would show up late or not at all. One night I woke up and saw him standing at the foot of my bed. He ran as I was calling the cops. So I bought a gun and began sleeping in my closet and stuffed pillows in my bed to make it look like I was there. I was so scared and so sleep-deprived that I was barely getting through my days at school. And then one night during a thunderstorm, I heard a thud in the living room, and then footsteps in the hall. I called 911 and watched from my closet as he emptied a handgun into the pillows. Then I walked out of the closet and shot him in both knees. He got fifty years with no chance of parole for attempted murder.” Then she looked up, straight into Aaron’s face, her hands curled into fists. “I should have killed him,” she snapped, and walked away.
Aaron was too stunned to stop her. It was his mother’s life all over again, only she’d been married to the brute. He saw the angry set to her shoulders, the long steady stride of a woman with someplace else to be, and realized the sacrifice she’d made by coming forward to help find Charlie’s shooter. An abused woman does not seek the spotlight. She was on her own again, and without backup.
Horrified that she’d just spilled her guts to a stranger, it was all Dani could do not to run. Then just before she got in her car, she looked back and caught him watching her.
The intensity of her gaze was like a fist to the gut. Aaron flinched, but stood his ground. Then she got in her car and drove away.
In that moment, Aaron’s world shifted.
She did have someone who knew her story.
She did have someone who could protect her.
She had him.
Aaron couldn’t stop thinking about the rage in her eyes and the sight of her walking away.
Monroe, Louisiana
Alex Bing still had a key to the apartment next to Dani’s. The apartment had been rented once since his brother’s incarceration, but was empty again. He’d made it his business to know. In his eyes, she was the ultimate bitch, and she’d crippled his brother for life. Being separated from his twin was daily torture, and it was only gettingworse. Now that the next-door apartment was empty again, he was going to finish what Tony started. Dani had destroyed his brother. He was going to destroy her. Only quieter. And neater, and make it look like she’d killed herself.
He had it all planned out, right down to the overdose. He knew where the security cameras were, and when it got dark, he snuck into the building, disabled the cameras on that floor, then let himself back into the empty apartment. He crawled back through the ducts and dropped down into her apartment, only to see boxes everywhere. The beds had been stripped. The kitchen packed up. She was gone!
“Son of a bitch!” Alex muttered.
He left the building in despair. He’d missed his chance.
And then it hit him!
If her things were still there, she would be moving them somewhere else. All he had to do was stake out the building, then watch for a moving van. He knew what her furniture looked like. He’d know if it was her things they were loading. After that, all he had to do was follow the van straight to her.
He went home to gather up food and blankets and his binoculars, and then was up before daylight and back at the apartment building. She’d destroyed his family and he wasn’t going to let her get away with it.
After five days on stakeout, Alex’s persistence paid off. A moving van arrived. He moved his car to a better position in the parking lot, and when the movers began bringing out the furniture, he knew what they were carrying belonged to her. At that moment, he would have given a year of his life for a bath, but personal comfort had to wait. Wherever that van was going, he was going, too.
The same night back in Jubilee, when the family sat down to supper, Shirley could tell something was bothering Aaron. He was unusually quiet. Her other sons kept the conversation going with stories of their day, so his lack of input wasn’t noticed. If he wanted to talk about it, he would. Otherwise, she wasn’t going to pry. She knew both local and county officers were working on trying to find the person who shot Charlie, and if that was what was bothering him, he couldn’t talk about it anyway.
But when it came time to serve dessert, Shirley put an extra spoonful of cobbler in Aaron’s bowl. He noticed, and glanced up at her with a smile. She winked, and the moment passed.
Later, after everything was cleaned up and put away, Shirley went out onto the back porch and settled into the porch swing to watch the sun falling below the treetops. Up here on the mountain, that was as much of a sunset as anyone could see. After that, it was just amatter of watching the sky turning into a painter’s palette before the stars were allowed to shine.
She was still watching and savoring the sounds of nightlife on the mountain when she heard the squeak of the screen door behind her, and then Aaron sat down beside her on the swing and put his arm around her shoulder.
“You’re glad you came home, aren’t you, Mom?”
Shirley nodded. “Yes, very much. Are you sorry you came?”
