Aaliyah parked across the street from the Meyers’ house. “You sure you want to do this?” she asked.
“I’m sure. Are you still okay with the plan?”
“My part’s easy,” she answered.
“Okay then.” Jared took out Emily’s phone. “I’m calling you now.”
Aaliyah’s phone rang, and she played with the buttons before answering it. “Got it.”
Then she set the phone down in her cupholder, grabbed him by the face, and kissed him one more time. “For good luck,” she said, “and in case—”
“Nothing is going to happen to me,” he said.
“It better not.”
He tried to give her a reassuring smile before getting out of the car, but he knew it wasn’t a very good one.
As soon as he was out, he minimized the call window and blacked out the screen, hoping it would take more than a wrong move to accidentally end the call. Then he headed toward the Meyers’ front door and rang the bell.
For a minute, he didn’t think anyone would answer. He shifted from foot to foot, rang again, and finally heard footsteps headed his way.
His heart pounded, then seemed to stumble when Andrew peered through the window at him rather than Ms. Carla. Well, crap, he hadn’t planned on company. Or maybe Andrew was alone and he’d have to come back later.
The door opened, and Andrew stared down at him, brows lowered, like he was confused to see him there.
“Jared?” he said. “What’s going on? I saw there was an ambulance at your house earlier. I figured everyone would be at the hospital.”
So he’d been home then? What about Ms. Carla? Should he abort the plan? Come tonight he’d be at Aunt Aggie’s, almost an hour away. Getting back here would be tough. He had to at least try. Now, before the police arrested Emily or anything else could happen.
“Is your mother home?” he asked.
“Mom? Why do you want her?”
“I just do. Can I come in?”
Andrew stepped aside, and Jared took that as an invitation. He moved past him into a house laid out much like their own, except the wall between their kitchen and living area hadn’t been blown out, so the place had a more closed-off feel to it. And something in the kitchen smelled amazing. All tomato-garlicky.
“You cooking?” Jared asked, surprised.
“Not me. Mom’s got ziti in the oven. She just ran out to the bakery to grab garlic bread to go with it.”
“So she won’t be long?” Jared asked.
“Shouldn’t be. What’s this about?” He didn’t offer Jared a drink or a seat. In fact, he stayed between Jared and the kitchen as if guarding the way. Maybe that was okay, because it meant he wasn’t between Jared and the door. Which was an odd thought, but something about the intensity of Andrew’s stare was starting to make Jared nervous.
And he realized something else. “You never asked who the ambulance was for,” he said. “Or what happened.”
Andrew’s brows lowered like storm clouds. “I didn’t want to be nosy.” Nothing about his tone was convincing.
“It was Emily,” Jared said, studying Andrew’s reaction.
Something was seriously wrong here. A normal person—a concerned person—would have asked if she was okay. Andrew just waited for more.
“The police think she cut herself,” he continued, though he really didn’t know what the police thought.
“Is she going to be okay?” Andrew asked. Finally, a normal question, but the way he asked it didn’t put Jared at ease. He’d never shown a speck of concern for Jared or Emily, but suddenly seemed very invested in the answer.
“We don’t know.”
Andrew relaxed at that, and it was the weirdest reaction. Jared wished he could talk to Aaliyah and get her take on things as she heard them on the other end of the phone.
“So then why are you here rather than at the hospital?”
“They won’t let me in to see Emily yet, and …” Did he tell Andrew? Something was definitely going on here. He couldn’t leave until he figured out what it was. Maybe Andrew hadn’t asked about Emily because he already knew. Maybe his mother had told him. Yet she was making ziti and running errands like it was all nothing.
Screw it, he’d come this far. He was all in. “I think your mother may have been the last person to see Emily. I need to know if she has any idea what happened.”
“I don’t think so,” Andrew said, his tone spooky as hell.
“What don’t you think?” Jared ventured, mind going again to the door right behind him. “That your mother was with my sister or that she can help me?”
“Both. You’re not dragging us into your troubles.” He stepped forward, one arm outstretched as though to grab Jared’s shoulder and show him to the door.
Jared stood his ground, despite all the hairs on his body now standing on end and his fight or flight response screaming for retreat.
“I’m not leaving here without—”
He never even saw the fist flying for his face. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground, looking up blearily at Andrew looming over him with his fist clenched and his face twisted with rage.
“You may be right. Maybe you’re not leaving here at all,” he snarled. He glared down at Jared with such hatred his heart started to pound. Murderous hatred. “Dammit, your family can’t do anything right. Your bitch mother wouldn’t file assault charges to get your damned father out of our lives. Your dad can’t even get arrested in this town, no matter what evidence the police have on him, and your sister—”
Jared lay stunned for a second before rearing up. All the rage, all the pain and fear and frustration he’d been feeling concentrated in his fists. He could be angry at his mother for leaving. He could hate what Emily did to herself, but Andrew? Andrew had no right.
Jared flew at him, fists flying. Andrew blocked the one headed for his face. A big, obvious swing. But he missed the second, aimed straight at his solar plexus. Andrew’s breath burst out of him, and he doubled over in pain. Jared brought up a knee, ready to connect with his nose, but never got there. Andrew grabbed him around the middle, sent him crashing again to the floor, coming down hard on his tailbone and stunned into immobility long enough for Andrew to get another blow in. Jared flinched to the side just in time to catch it on his cheekbone rather than his already damaged nose. Already his vision was clouding as everything swelled, closing off his sight. He had to end this quickly.
He rolled, hard, but Andrew pushed back, scrambling to disengage before he could get rolled under. He got to one knee, but Jared kicked hard and heard something pop. Andrew bellowed in pain and fell back to the floor, clutching for his leg. Jared got on top of him, sitting on his chest, glaring down. His fists were still clenched. He wanted to send them flying for Andrew’s face. Or to lift and slam his head into the floor. Or a million other things. He wanted Andrew to hurt.
There was a sound, someone calling his name in terror, and he realized it was coming from his phone. From Aaliyah on the other end of it. She couldn’t know what was going on, but she was there listening. Recording. He could beat Andrew to a bloody pulp, but it wouldn’t get him the answers he needed. And it wouldn’t bring his mother back.
“What about my sister?” he asked, glaring down at Andrew.
He stopped fighting long enough to glare back, fire in his eyes saying the fight wasn’t over. “Your sister is weak,” he spat. “Like your mother. Like my bitch mother—cheating, lying, trying to shield your lousy father. As if her loyalty was to him. Not to me or my Dad. Oh, she said she was covering for me, but we all know that’s a lie. If she cared about me or my father, she’d never have been slutting around.”
Jared’s blood went cold. “Covering for what?”
He had to swallow down the blood coating his throat from the broken nose in order to ask. Between that and the swelling, he hoped he could still be understood for the recording.
Andrew brought his head up suddenly, right into Jared’s face, hitting his damaged nose and sending the pain supernova. His vision blacked out, the world twisted, and the next thing he knew, he was pinned under Andrew, his vision clearing just enough to meet the gaze of a madman. There was no sanity left behind Andrew’s eyes. Just empty gaping holes that only violence would fill.
“Don’t play any dumber than you have to,” Andrew said, his face far too close, his weight making it hard for Jared’s chest to expand. His head was already swimming. “You don’t care what I think of your sister. Ask me what you’re really here for. You want to know about your mother’s murder.”
“My mother?” he gasped, struggling for enough air. “But why would you—”
“Because!” Andrew shouted, his spittle flying in Jared’s face. “Because your father hit her that night. Bounced her head off of something the way my fist bounced off your face. And not for the first time. Remember when you came running to our house? Your mother wouldn’t press charges then either. She could have stopped everything that night. Your father. My mother’s affair. But she didn’t.”
“I don’t get—”
Andrew lifted his head, slammed it into the floor as Jared had wanted to do to him. His vision blacked again, and terror spiked like lightning through his brain. He’d walked right up to his mother’s killer. Put himself in Andrew’s hands. And now he was possibly going to die the same way.
But the worst was the realization of how close he’d come to being Andrew. He shared the same angers. The same impulse control issues. He didn’t want to believe he could be one bad decision away from murder. Maybe it would be best if he let Andrew take him out. If he could leave some of his DNA behind, something that would get Andrew caught, the world would be a better place.
Andrew didn’t know or care about the crisis raging through Jared. Malice gleamed in his eyes as he stared him down. “I saw her that night, sitting in her car, bleeding,” he said, reveling in the pain he was causing Jared, devouring it. “I offered to call the police. To sit with her. But she refused. She was bleeding and he was to blame and she wouldn’t do a damn thing about it.”
“So you blamed the victim?” He struggled to get the words out.
Andrew leaned more of his weight onto Jared’s stomach, forcing out the very last of his air. “So I gave her something to complain about until she was never going to complain again. If she wouldn’t accuse your father, I’d make sure the police found her body. And enough evidence to arrest him.”
There was another sound from Jared’s pocket. Aaliyah telling him help was on the way. He could only hope it wouldn’t come too late. But it drew Andrew’s attention, and he shifted, just enough for Jared to suck in air. It hurt like hell.
Andrew grabbed roughly for Jared’s pocket, digging for the phone.
“If you wanted Mom found, why leave her car at the train station?” Jared asked, hoping to distract him.
It was no use. Andrew came up with the phone. He resettled his weight on top of Jared and raised it to his ear, the look on his face absolutely chilling.
“The girlfriend, I presume?” he said. “Or are you the bitch sister?”
Jared willed Aaliyah to stay silent. He didn’t want Andrew going after her next. Especially if he didn’t live through this. If he wasn’t there to throw himself between them.
No, not even an option. He had to take Andrew down. He couldn’t let him hurt anyone else.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I have the number now. I have one little thing to take care of here, and then you’re next.”
He smashed a finger to the phone, disconnecting the call, and when that wasn’t enough for him, he smashed the phone itself onto the ceramic tile of their floor, right beside Jared’s head. Once. Twice. When it cracked, the sound shot right through him.
And then he was alone with a murderer. Truly alone.
Slowly, Andrew smiled down at him, his lips stretching like they might peel back from his face. It was a death’s head grin. Maybe it was his failing vision or even his concussion, but it seemed like Andrew had become something less than human.
“You want to know the truth before you die?” he asked. “You can take it to your grave. My mother saw me come in that night, all bloody. I enjoyed telling her what I’d done. For us. And still she covered for him. Finding the car, driving it to the train station, cleaning up the evidence.”
“Did my father know?”
“Screw your father! He started all this. One way or another it was all his fault. I don’t know what my bitch mother told him or what he knew, but he did this to my family and yours.”
He’d had enough talking. Andrew grabbed Jared by the hair, ready to slam his head into the floor again. Like he’d done with the phone. Once. Twice. Until he cracked.