Violets & Violence (23 page)

“Now what, Rinker?” Edie asked. “Now that I’m free, what’s your play?”

I recognized the surprise in his face; it was obvious he hadn’t expected to see her.

“Put the gun down,” she told him. “If you hurt my friend, you’ll never see Lindsey—”

He aimed over his shoulder and shot all six rounds into the closet before dropping the smoking handgun to the floor. His eyes had blinked with each squeeze of the trigger; now all that was left was a messed-up closet door and the ringing in my ears.

“Where’s Lindsey,” he said, his voice purposely loud so we would hear it over the hearing damage. “Now that the gun’s useless, bring me Lindsey.”

Out of the corner of my eyes, I caught the only indication that Edie was even moving; she hurtled over the bed and ripped the closet doors open. I saw her mouth drop open before I heard her screams, a faint sound that couldn’t quite penetrate the constant ringing I heard.

And then I saw it, too.

My heart sank, and I felt like I might get sick.

Shifting my attention to Rinker, I found the confusion on his face slowly transform from fear and confusion and into a satisfied smirk. Like he hadn’t been quite sure about exactly what he had done, but now it all made perfect sense.

To my eyes, it seemed pretty clear: he had just killed Violet, Edie’s sister. And this man was a monster, because the dead woman inside that closet brought him satisfaction.

The ringing from the gunshots faded away, and I was finally able to hear Edie’s violent, anguished screams as she held her sister’s bloody, wide-eyed body to her chest and rocked her back and forth.

The Grosse Pointe Police arrived at Violet’s home long before Luke did. It appeared that gunshots in this suburb of Detroit were not as easily ignored as they were in my childhood neighborhood the day Darren shot the homeless guy. Edie’s neighbors had ears, and they paid steep enough property taxes to guarantee rapid response times from the local police force.

“The police are here,” Rinker said from the floor next to the bed. After the fatal gunshots, he had dropped there and stayed, allowing me to get up off of the bed, tape his wrists and ankles, and stand over him, make sure he didn’t move. He hadn’t budged this entire time, that smirk still on his face as he awaited his expected fate: the cops would come and take him away, he would be tried and sent off to some prison. At least in my inexperienced view, that was what would happen to him.

Edie hadn’t let go of her sister’s corpse, and Rinker seemed shocked to see that he had in fact killed another human being. It made sense why he had fired those bullets—he didn’t want either one of us, or Luke, to empty the chamber into his own body. He had clearly done something horrible to Luke, Violet and Edie.

And in some twisted way, it also made sense why he’d shot into the closet – he hadn’t known, or had he? – that Violet was a sister, a virtual twin. And that this virtual twin had spent years avoiding the public eye so that her magic show not only felt real, but so that the illusion could compete with reality itself.

Firing into the closet door, had Rinker truly believed that it was the only safe place to shoot those bullets because, again in his reality, Edie and Violet were just one person, and that person that he had tied and bound and stuffed into the closet had magically escaped from all of that and now stood on the other side of the bed.

But how could he have thought that?

On closer inspection, I saw that the bloodied Violet wore a long, blonde wig; Edie had short, dark hair. Even their eyes were different. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but Violet had greyish-green eyes and Edie had hazel eyes. It seemed so obvious now, these two sisters might have confused me since the first time I saw their magic show, but it was
so bloody obvious now
.

Blinking hard, I glanced over my shoulder toward the driveway and watched officers in SWAT gear surround the house. Glancing at the windows to the backyard, I saw the same scene.

“What have you done?” I asked Rinker, and my voice came out as a whine, and I wanted to kill him for the pain he had inflicted on Edie and her life.

He refused to move from the floor.

At last, the bedroom door crashed open, and the men with rifles and guns rushed the room. They brought everyone down so quickly that none of us knew what was happening until we were all cuffed on the bed, and two officers were frantically busy trying to keep Violet alive.

By the time I reached the house, I knew that something had gone horribly wrong. Sure, the crime scene tape offered one reasonably obvious clue that something bad had happened here, but even without that yellow line, my throat constricted, arms burned as if the pounding of my heart would evolve into full-on cardiac arrest as I kicked the Range Rover to a stop and ran inside.

The interior tasted stale and thick with silence, which seemed like a contradiction but really wasn’t. That air gave me an instant headache and forced my hands to my head as I followed the thin line of blood and muddy soles to my bedroom.

It was empty.
Empty
.

Just the ghosts of activity, the skeletons of an ending gone horribly wrong.

No
.

It hadn’t ended well, and I knew it the moment I entered the bedroom. The sheets on the bed were ruffled, there was a tag on the carpet, painted splinters of wood on the floor, another tag on the closet doors—

Shit
.

I lowered my hands and stepped closer to the closet door with the six bullet holes in it. On the inside wall, the clothing, the floor, I saw blood. A lot of blood.

No, it didn’t end well
. My heart raced faster and faster, my extremities humming, freezing.

I knew it was Violet’s blood, even before I reached down and sunk my fingers into the damp carpet. Holding my fingertips there, a quick onslaught of imagery flashed across my mind, all of them happy—Violet’s smile, her eyes glittering under the stage lights, the euphoria that followed our lovemaking, the teasing smirk, the way she seemed to melt into me after one of my absences.

I jolted my hand out of the bloodstain and started gasping for air.

The images and emotions confirmed everything: I had lost the only woman I would ever love.

This bloodstained carpet was all that remained of her.

It’s over. Oh my fucking god, it’s over.

I wanted to scream, to yell, to pour my heart out, but the thick silence inside my house swallowed every last ounce of what remained of my soul.

The conference room overlooked the Hudson River from forty-two stories above street level. The East-facing windows in the rebuilt One World Trade Centre stretched the full length and height of the wall so that Edie Barrow and her early-60’s attorney had a nice, teasing view of freedom.

To Edie, it felt like déja vu from nearly a decade ago when she had met Henry Rinker and his team of bank lawyers on their turf, in their building. But unlike the sense of beginning she had experienced back in her past, today’s meeting brought a sense of ending.

“I was sorry to hear about your sister,” Janelle said. She hadn’t aged much since the last time Edie had seen her.

She allowed an uncertain shrug as a response to her lawyer’s words, but when Janelle didn’t speak, Edie finally reached up and wiped her dry eyes.

“Does the justice of life in prison offset any of that loss?” Janelle asked.

Edie shook her head, silent, as she glanced away so as to fend off the tears burning in her eyes. No.

“It doesn’t, does it?”

“Not even close.” She hadn’t just lost her sister that day, she’d lost the other half of herself.

No more hiding, no more sharing phones and debriefs and trying to find a life that had to remain secret from the show with wigs and makeup and alternate addresses and…Ugh. As much as she had wanted to leave, be free from it all, she’d do it for the rest of her life now if it meant she could have Violet back.

“I never liked that man. Prison won’t be kind to him, it never is when it comes to bankers.”

Edie forced a smile at Janelle’s attempt to offer comfort. “Thank you.”

They stared at one another for what felt like a long time. Too long. But Edie stayed calm and maintained her cordial smile.

“Time to move on,” Edie said at last. “Luke is gone, so thank you for wiring his portion of the recovered money to the UK.”

The lawyer’s face tightened with a genuine concern. “Do you think you’ll ever see him again?”

Edie shrugged, she really didn’t know. She wasn’t expecting anything from Luke. She knew how closely she resembled her sister, the woman Luke would have killed for, the one he had suffered on a cross for during a three-week blackmail fiasco that nobody ever found out about.

She’d seen his pain whenever Violet offered to spend time in hiding so that Edie could date a few men over the years; Luke had hated an empty bed, hated waking up without Violet on those dozen or so days. His eyes couldn’t hide that, and those same eyes also could never see beyond Edie’s appearance. He couldn’t see Edie as her own person back then, there’s no reason he would start now.

“Actually, I doubt it,” Edie answered at last. “Luke needs to…”
To what? Heal? Can someone ever truly be healed after losing his soul mate?

Janelle nodded without waiting for her to finish what she was going to say, opened her leather portfolio, and slid a cashier’s check across the conference room table.

Four hundred and seventy-three thousand dollars
.

A lot of money, yes. But it still felt insignificant given the price she had paid to see this. The sadness would never go away, she knew. It would remain with her like a scar but one that would never heal until it swallowed her whole.

“Where are you off to now, Edie?”

Pocketing the check, she met her attorney’s stare and offered an honest sigh. “I don’t know.” She stared outside at the Hudson River. “Someplace warm. A beach. Violet always talked about doing that.”

“That sounds nice.” Janelle forced a wide grin.

Edie stood up. “Or I might just go back to Detroit.”

She hadn’t just lost her sister that day, after all.

“Either way,” Janelle offered, standing up, “I wish you all the best.”

Edie walked with Janelle to the elevators, and once the doors opened, the two women shook hands and walked away from one another without looking back.

When the elevator stopped in the building’s extravagant and heavily secured lobby, Edie strode out across the floor and then stopped. The crowd around her barely noticed her.

Are you watching closely?

Frowning, she scrutinized the main entrance, the security checkpoint, watched the elevators, and then gave up. It was only once she started walking again that she spotted him. He was watching her from the other side of the security kiosk.

When their eyes locked, he smiled.

It’s him
.

Her eyes widened, and she gave a genuine smile, the first since that day.

Edie didn’t waste time on second glances; she removed her heels and ran at him. Hard. And once she was close enough, she leaped into his arms and squeezed. Harder.

“How did you know where to find me?” she asked breathlessly.

“I asked Luke,” he said, almost just as breathless. “I missed you, Edie. I missed you so much.” And then Carter kissed her, pressing his lips to every available inch of her face.

“I missed you more,” she whispered on the verge of tears.

At last, she kissed him back.

And it felt like magic.

A project like this could never be completed, much less conceived, by a single individual. So while my (fake) name is on the front of this beautiful cover, it’s only because, like Violet/Edie, someone’s gotta put their name on the marquis.

              For starters, I really owe a huge
Thank You!!
(yes, with two exclamation points) to Jessica Fear, the sketch artist who brought my vision for Luke and Carter to life. You’re a tremendously talented young lady and (you might not believe me now, but you will someday) your parents are both awesome. Without Leslie’s encouragement and support in those early days, I wouldn’t be publishing my stories anymore.

              I owe a huge thank you to Hang Le of byhangle.com for bringing this book’s visual appeal to life through the amazing cover work that she does. Despite what we are all taught at school, we all judge books by their covers… and without Hang’s help, nobody would judge mine as reading worthy. So, Hang, thank you for your talent, patience and tolerance of my sense of humor and, often, offside remarks.

              In terms of graphics and visual aids, Helen Lynch of All Booked Out has also been a tremendous support and, in the words of one famous credit card company, she has been more than priceless.

              I have a long, long list of bloggers, authors and readers who make me
want
to turn my computer on each day and hammer out more stories. They aren’t just my cheerleaders, but the engine that powers the greater indie author “movement.” Many of them are among my closest friends. So thank you for motivating me, taking a chance on my words, supporting the industry as a whole, and for telling your friends, family, and your own readers about some of the things I’ve rambled on and on about.

              I have another ginormous thank you to my small, somewhat exclusive group of Morganettes for always being willing to offer help, feedback and great conversation. You’re all such big supporters of my work…I truly wouldn’t be doing this without you. I’ve met a few of you so far and can’t wait to see you all again, and to meet the rest of you. Soon. Because you’re my family, and I miss you like crazy, and I love you all.

Almost lastly, I couldn’t write like I do without the help and support of Amy Louise Clark. I don’t understand your loyalty, unfaltering belief and restless drive, but without you, I’d still be trying to figure out a way to get people to read
non friction
. You’re one of the best friends anyone could ask for and, between you and me, I don’t trust the banking system or government as much as I trust you. Thank you for always being there, for believing in me more than I ever could, and for, well, just being you.

              Lastly, for sure this time, I couldn’t write at all without the support and patience of my wife. The sense of humor, great optimism, fantastic looks and absolute modesty are yours through marriage, and you never complain about it. Lucky you. Anyway, thank you for letting me write and for emptying out the dishwasher when it’s really my chore to complete. Perfection is overrated.