Authors: Minka Kent
I’m sitting in my idling car outside a Le Creuset, mostly watching the clock as I waffle between heading to the police station or heading home to gather my things so I can go to Marisol’s for the night.
I’m trying to think of the implications of the latter—how “Niall” would act, what he might think. But I draw nothing but blanks. This could go in a thousand different directions, consequences flying at me like shrapnel.
But it’s getting late—just past dinnertime. I’ve been gone since 10:00 AM, and there’s a good chance he might have already jumped the gun and he’s halfway to Oklahoma City by now.
Glancing up, I draw in a deep breath, wishing I could stop this spinning ride and get off for just a moment, just long enough to catch my breath and gather my thoughts.
An hour.
I’m giving myself an hour to make a decision.
At 6:07, I’ll either be heading home or heading to the Quinnesec Bluff Police Department.
I kill the engine and gather my purse, prepared to mindlessly browse enamel cookware for the next sixty minutes. But as I reach for my door handle, a car pulls up beside mine.
But not just any car.
It’s an Audi A4, the spitting image of mine.
And when I peer out my window, locking eyes with the driver of the car, it’s like looking in a mirror.
CHAPTER 52
N
IALL
“Come on, come on, come on.” I’m pacing the house as I try to call Sam for the fiftieth time today. I thought since Brienne was going to be out, Sam could swing by and pick me up, and we could have a few hours together. Not to mention, she wasn’t herself last night on the phone, and I need to figure out if I need to do any predamage control there.
It always seems to make her happy when I fill her head with stories about how great life’s going to be for us someday.
Little does she know, someday’s right around the corner.
I’ve got everything prepped. We’ve got new IDs, and we’re picking up a car just north of the Mexican border. There’s a private airport on the other side, and I’ve chartered a local and his plane to take us to Guadalajara. From there we’ll board a plane to Costa Rica.
I shoot her a text—the twenty-third one of the day. This one’s all question marks.
It’s getting late, and it isn’t like her to out and out ignore me like this. That, combined with the fact that she straight-up lied to me last night about being at the apartment, is concerning.
I read through my texts beginning with the ones that say,
Hey, babe, let’s hang out today
and continuing on as they progress to
You’re not picking up. Are you okay? I’m worried!
and eventually escalating to
Sam.
Not cool to ignore me. WTF is your problem? What are you trying to do here? FFS call me!
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have lost my cool, but sitting here cooped up in this potpourri-and-mahogany-scented house with no car and no clue where my lying girlfriend is . . . is starting to get to me.
Taking a deep breath, I promise myself I won’t send any more hostile texts to Sam, and then I order an Uber to the Harcourt.
Twenty minutes later, I’m there.
And she’s not.
CHAPTER 53
B
RIENNE
She rolls her passenger window down, waving at me, and it takes a second for me to realize this is actually happening. Wrapping my hand around my key chain, I crack my window but only a few inches.
My imposter begins to say something, but with the thick glass and the sound of the freeway behind the mall, I can’t make any of it out. She must sense this because she climbs out of her car and walks over, her hand fixed to the Goyard bag hanging on her shoulder.
“I think we need to talk,” she says.
She has kind eyes and a sweet voice with an almost childlike softness to it.
“There’s a coffee shop about ten doors down,” I say. “I’ll meet you there in a few.”
Before I head that way, I text Marisol and let her know what’s going on. I also tell her if I don’t answer my phone in thirty minutes to call the police.
Five minutes later, I’m walking into the coffee shop.
She’s seated at a high-top table for two, legs crossed and foot bouncing as she scans the room before locking eyes on me.
I don’t order anything, and from the looks of it, she didn’t either.
My thighs are gelatin as I make my way across the room and take the seat across from her. The café is relatively busy for a Saturday night, which I’m going to hope will keep her from doing or saying anything crazy or dangerous.
“I want to keep this as civilized as possible,” she says, clearing her throat, folding her hands, and adjusting her posture. The red splotches forming on her neck tell me she’s just as anxious as I am.
“Same,” I say, keeping my words at a minimum so she can do all the talking. As far as I’m concerned, she’s the one who has the explaining to do.
“Are you seeing him?” she asks, her warm brown eyes unblinking as they lock onto mine.
“I’m sorry. What?” That wasn’t exactly the question I expected her to ask me.
“Shane,” she says.
I glance to the side, confusion setting in as I try to make sense of this.
“You were at the house last night,” she says.
“What house?”
“Eleanor’s.”
“Who’s Eleanor?” I ask.
Her fist balls for a second, and her lips press together. She tries to speak and then stops herself.
“I’m sorry—I don’t know anyone named Shane,” I say. “Nor do I know an Eleanor.”
Her eyes flick past my shoulder toward the parking lot, where our identical cars are parked side by side several spots over.
“I . . . I don’t understand,” she says before turning back. “I know it’s you. I know you were there, at the house. The green house on Caldecott.”
I resist the urge to confirm to this crazy woman that yes, I live in the green house on Caldecott.
“When we first moved here, I couldn’t get a job,” she says. “Shane . . . Shane gave me a name. A résumé. When I landed a job, he gave me a wardrobe full of beautiful clothes, designer bags, and makeup—the good kind. Took me to get my hair done, even had a picture picked out.” She runs her hand down her sleek bob. “And just last month, he rented me a place. A really nice apartment. Fully furnished. Brand-new everything. It was a gift, he said. He’s been working two jobs, working so hard . . . I thought he just wanted to take care of me.” She glances down, her fingers practically knitting a sweater, and I realize her hands are trembling. “Last night, we had plans, Shane and me. And he canceled them. Said he had to work. Now, I don’t know why, but something made me feel like driving past the house . . . just to, I don’t know . . . just to see. But when I got there, all I saw was you. Through the windows. You were on your phone, texting I think. But I could tell you were beautiful. And you certainly weren’t some eighty-five-year-old client.”
So it
was
her last night, parked on the street.
I listen, clinging to her every word, unsure of where she’s going with this.
“I’ve been with Shane since we were kids,” she says before placing a shaky hand over her heart. “I love him with everything I have. I would die for this man. He’s always been there for me, always had my back. I’ve never had any reason to doubt him. Ever. But when I got home last night, I did a reverse search of the address . . . and it came up showing the owner was a Brienne Dougray.”
She pauses, and I nod. “Right. That’s me.”
Biting her lip, she dips her hand into her bag and pulls out a wallet. Unzipping one of the slots, she produces a plastic driver’s license, placing it in front of me so I can read it.
The name on the right is mine.
The photo is hers.
“This is the name he gave me,” she says, “when I couldn’t get a job.”
I begin to say something, but she lifts a hand.
“Before you tell me what an idiot I was for going along with it, please know that I’m well aware,” she continues. “Love makes you blind, and Shane can be very persuasive when he wants to be. And I trusted him. I trusted that he had my best interests at heart. And I believed him. I believed him when he said this was some made-up name and that we weren’t hurting anyone.”
“He told me his name was Niall,” I say. “Niall Emberlin. And that he was a doctor.”
She squints, and now it’s her turn to be confused. “He works at the hospital, but he’s not a doctor. He’s a patient transporter.”
“He had a badge . . . and he wore scrubs going to and from work . . .” My stomach twists, heavy with disgust as I think of the type of person who would go to such lengths. “He had medical textbooks in his study, and he’d always talk about research and different cases he was working on.”
“He used to work in a nursing home as a nurse’s aide,” she says. “That’s about the extent of his medical background.”
I sit in stunned silence for a moment. “He was so convincing.”
She swipes at a tear that falls from the corner of her eye. “You think you know someone.”
“How long have you been together?”
Rolling her eyes she says, “Since we were kids. Our whole lives practically.”
I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to be used like a pawn by someone you loved, someone who loved you.
She tries to compose herself, and I try to piece together everything I know so far. Only one glaring question remains.
“Why do you think he chose me?” I ask.
Eyes holding mine, she lifts a single shoulder. “Wish I knew.”
“There has to be a reason,” I muse out loud. “You two aren’t from here, are you?”
“We’re from Nebraska. Shane said he wanted to move here to connect with his stepmom’s family, but as far as I know, nothing ever came of that. He always said he was too busy working his two jobs, and things were going well for us for the first time in our lives—financially speaking at least—so I didn’t push it. I figured he’d reach out to them when the time was right.”
“His stepmom?”
I vaguely remember my grandparents mentioning that my mother had remarried years ago, and I recall my grandfather returning from a meeting with the two of them after my mother begged for a reunion. I’ll never forget the expression on his face when he returned that night. He hung his fedora on the top hook of the coatrack and looked at my grandmother with narrow eyes and tight lips, shaking his head “no” before retiring to their room for the night.
He didn’t approve of this new man, and that’s all there was to it.
“What was her name?” I ask.
“Sonya,” she says without hesitation.
My skin prickles with goose bumps and I let out an audible gasp, my fingers grazing my open mouth.
“What?” she asks. “What is it?”
“My biological mother’s name was Sonya . . . You don’t think . . . ?” My voice trails off as I consider the possibility that Shane may have been my mother’s stepson. But I still don’t understand why he would have targeted me, why he would want to hurt me. I did nothing wrong. It wasn’t my fault that my mother didn’t have the means—emotionally, financially, or otherwise—to give me a proper upbringing.
“Is your mother still around?” she asks.
I shake my head. “She passed a couple of years ago. Pancreatic cancer, I believe.”
I only found out after the fact. Apparently she didn’t want my grandparents to know she was sick, didn’t want to give any of us a
chance to say goodbye. It was a spiteful, manipulative, and selfish move, and my grandparents weren’t the least bit surprised by it.
The woman rests her elbows on the table, massaging her temples. “Shane’s stepmom died of pancreatic cancer a couple of years ago.”
My throat is dry, and my blood turns to ice in my veins. The café is packed with warm bodies, but I swear it just got degrees colder.
“Oh, my God,” I say when I gather myself.
“What?”
“After he had me committed, he started siphoning money from my accounts,” I say. “He must have known how much my grandparents were worth and that they left it all to me. Sonya told him, I bet.
That’s
why he targeted me. He wanted that money. He felt entitled to it because of her. That’s got to be it.”
She’s quiet as she contemplates my theory. “I remember a long time ago, maybe when we were still in high school, Sonya had too much to drink one night, and she was telling us about her parents and how loaded they were. Millionaires, she said. She told us they wrote her off, replaced her. She was so upset. You could tell she wanted to hurt them like they’d hurt her.” She pauses, dragging in a ragged breath. “Shane was always so protective of her. His mom abandoned him when he was a baby, so he never really had a mother figure until Sonya came along. He idolized her. It was like she could do no wrong. They had an interesting bond, that’s for sure.”
I try to imagine my mother bonding with anyone, but I can’t visualize it. The only time she was ever sweet or loving to anyone was when there was something in it for her. Selfless and genuine wasn’t a language she spoke.
“He used us both to avenge her,” I say. “We were nothing but pawns in his sick scheme.”
Her bottom lip quivers. Maybe I should have been more sensitive just now, but there’s no way to sugarcoat what this monster did. I bet
he thinks he did it in her honor. Or perhaps he feels entitled to the Dougray fortune because in his eyes, he’s the rightful heir, having been raised by Sonya.
My mother was a lot of things, least of which was an upstanding and decent human being, but she would never have approved of this. Sure, she didn’t get along with her parents, but she never stopped loving me. She said so herself in all the letters she sent over the years—letters I wasn’t able to read until it was too late. After my grandmother passed, I found them in a shoebox in her closet, held together by a handful of rubber bands. There must have been hundreds of them. I don’t think she ever forgave herself for losing me, nor did she ever get over it. All the horrible things she said and did, it was because she was hurting, and hurt people hurt people. I imagine it was also a bit of a distraction from the life she left behind, the life she lost after a string of poor decisions.
I get up to grab a handful of napkins from the self-serve bar and bring them back to Shane’s teary-eyed girlfriend.