Chapter 8
Elias drove straight to the shop.
Bennett & Son Jewelers had been his life's work. His sanctuary. The place he had gone when everything else fell apart. He had opened it with Arthur Hale in 1982, two kids with a dream and a secondhand workbench.
Now it was the only place he could think of that Arthur would go.
"Elias, this is crazy," Lila said, holding on to the door handle as the truck screeched into the parking lot. "The police said to go home. To let them handle it. Arthur is dangerous. He threatened us!"
"Arthur won't run," Elias said, cutting the engine. "Not yet. Not without this."
He got out of the truck. Walked to the front door. Unlocked it. The bell above jingled, the same sound it had made when Lila had walked in five days before, desperate and crying.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
"What's here?" Lila asked, following him inside. Mia was still asleep in her car seat in the truck. Lila had left her there, the doors locked, the windows cracked. She didn't want her anywhere near whatever was about to happen.
Elias walked behind the counter. To the painting of Eleanor Sr. that hung on the wall. He lifted it off its hook.
Behind it was a safe.
Old. Heavy. Combination lock.
"Arthur and I put this in the day we opened the shop," Elias said, spinning the dial. "We kept the real valuable stuff in here. Diamonds. Gold. Cash. But there's something else. Something only the two of us knew about."
He pulled the handle. The safe door swung open with a heavy thud.
Inside, on the top shelf, sitting on a velvet cloth, was a ledger. Black leather. Worn at the corners.
Elias picked it up. Flipped it open.
"Every transaction this shop ever made is in here," he said. "Every diamond we bought. Every piece we sold. Every dollar that went in and out. Including the money Arthur embezzled."
Lila leaned over his shoulder. "Embezzled?"
"Starting about a year before Ellie disappeared. Arthur started siphoning money out of the business. Small amounts at first. Then bigger. By the time Ellie was taken, he had stolen almost two hundred thousand dollars. I found out about it a week before she vanished. Confronted him. He cried. Said he was in debt to loan sharks. Said they'd kill him if he didn't pay. I believed him. I told him we'd work it out. That we'd fix it together."
Elias's jaw tightened.
"He didn't have loan sharks. He was paying Marge Voss. Fifty thousand up front, then installments every year after that. Hush money. And when I found out about the embezzlement... he panicked. He knew if I dug any deeper, I'd find the payments. Find Marge. Find Ellie. So he moved up the timeline. He told Marge to take her that Saturday. At the park. Before I could figure everything out."
He flipped to the last pages of the ledger. The most recent entries.
"Arthur never stopped," he whispered. "He was still taking money. Still making payments. Even after Marge died. Even after Ellie died. He was paying Roland. To keep his mouth shut. To keep an eye on you and Mia. To make sure neither of you ever started asking questions about where Ellie came from."
He looked up at Lila.
"Arthur's not running to Mexico or Canada or some beach somewhere. That note was a lie. He's not leaving. He can't. Because if he leaves, he loses control. And control is the only thing that ever mattered to him. He's still here. In town. Watching us. Waiting for his chance to finish what he started."
The bell above the door jingled.
They both froze.
Elias slowly reached under the counter. His hand closed around the .38 special he had kept there for twenty years, ever since a junkie had tried to rob the shop. He had never fired it. Never even loaded it, until that morning.
He pulled it out. Clicked off the safety.
"Stay behind me," he whispered to Lila.
Heavy footsteps on the hardwood floor.
Slow. Deliberate.
Then a voice. Smooth. Familiar. The voice that had laughed at Elias's jokes, that had comforted him at his wife's funeral, that had destroyed his life.
"Put the gun down, Elias. You're not a killer. Never have been."
Arthur Hale stepped out from behind the display case.
He was older than the last time Elias had seen him. Thinner. His hair was completely white now. But he was still wearing the same custom suits, the same expensive watch, the same smug smile that Elias now wanted to wipe off his face with a hammer.
He held up his hands. Empty.
"I'm not here to fight," Arthur said. "I'm here to talk."
"Talk?" Elias's hand didn't waver. The gun was pointed dead center of Arthur's chest. "You have thirty-one years of talking to make up for. You can start with why."
Arthur smiled. That same, infuriating smile.
"Why?" He looked around the shop. At the display cases. At the workbench. At the photograph of Eleanor Sr. on the wall. "Because I loved her, Elias. I loved your wife more than anything in this world. And she chose you. A nobody. A kid who couldn't even afford a ring without borrowing money from me. I had money. I had class. I had everything she ever wanted. And she picked you."
He took a step forward. Elias's finger tightened on the trigger.
"Do you know what it's like?" Arthur said. His voice was rising. Getting wilder. "To watch the woman you love marry your best friend? To stand up at their wedding and smile while she promises to love him forever? To go to their daughter's birthday parties and hold their baby and know it should have been yours? That should have been my wife. My daughter. My life!"
"So you stole her?" Lila said from behind Elias. Her voice shook with rage. "You stole a six-year-old little girl? You destroyed three generations of people because you couldn't handle being rejected?"
Arthur looked at her. Really looked at her. For the first time.
His eyes widened.
"You look just like her," he whispered. "Just like Eleanor. God, you're beautiful." He took another step forward. Obsessed. Hungry. "You know, if things had been different... you could have been mine. My daughter. My granddaughter. We could have been a family."
"Don't you dare," Elias snarled. He took a step forward, the gun never wavering. "Don't you ever talk about them like that. They are not yours. They never were. You took nothing from me but time. And now I'm going to take everything from you."
Arthur laughed. A high, crazy sound.
"You're going to arrest me? Is that it? You think that little ledger proves anything? It's just numbers on a page. Roland is a known liar and a criminal. His confession won't hold up in court. Marge is dead. There's no proof, Elias. None that matters. I've got the best lawyers money can buy. I'll be out on bail before the sun goes down. And then... then I'll come for what's mine."
He nodded toward the door. Toward the truck. Toward Mia.
"The little one looks like a smart kid," Arthur said softly. "Wonder how long she'd last on the road with me. A few months? A year? I could raise her right this time. Do what Marge should have done. Make sure she never knows you existed."
That was it.
The line.
The one thing you never said to Elias Bennett.
He didn't think. Didn't hesitate.
He pulled the trigger.
BAM.
The sound was deafening in the small shop.
The bullet hit Arthur in the shoulder. He screamed. Staggered backward. Clutched his arm. Blood poured through his fingers.
"You shot me," he gasped. Disbelieving. "You crazy old bastard, you actually shot me."
Elias walked toward him. The gun still raised. His eyes dead.
"Next one goes between your eyes," he said. "And I swear to God, Arthur, I will sleep like a baby tonight."
He raised the gun again.
"Elias, NO!"
Lila threw herself between them. Arms outstretched. Shielding Arthur.
"Are you insane?" she screamed. "You kill him, you go to prison forever! Mia needs you! I need you! Don't let him win! Don't give him the satisfaction!"
Elias stared at her. At the tears running down her face. At the fear in her eyes.
The gun wavered.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Getting closer. Detective Vasquez must have tracked them. Must have known they'd come here.
Arthur saw his chance.
While Elias was distracted, he turned and ran for the back door. Lila tried to grab him, but he shoved her hard. She fell to the floor.
"Arthur!" Elias yelled.
He fired again. Missed. The bullet shattered a display case. Diamonds went everywhere, skittering across the floor like drops of water.
Arthur threw the back door open. Disappeared into the alley.
Elias ran to Lila. Helped her up.
"Are you okay? Did he hurt you?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Lila said, rubbing her arm. "Go after him! Don't let him get away!"
Elias ran to the back door. Threw it open.
The alley was empty.
Arthur was gone.
But there was a trail of blood. Leading from the back door, down the alley, toward the street. Bright red. Fresh.
He was wounded. Bad. He couldn't have gone far.
Vasquez and three uniformed officers came bursting through the front door, guns drawn.
"Elias! Lila! You okay?" Vasquez yelled.
"He went that way!" Elias pointed down the alley. "Shot in the shoulder. Bleeding bad. He can't be more than a few blocks ahead."
Vasquez didn't hesitate. She radioed for backup, for K-9 units, for a helicopter. Then she ran down the alley after the blood trail, her officers right behind her.
Elias stood in the doorway. The gun still in his hand. The smell of gunpowder thick in the air.
Lila came up beside him. Put her hand on his arm.
"You did good," she said softly. "You protected us. That's what matters."
Elias looked at her. At the shop. At the shattered display case, the diamonds scattered across the floor, the trail of his oldest friend's blood leading into the morning light.
Thirty-one years.
It had all started in this shop. With a dream. With a partnership. With a love that had curdled into something evil.
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And now it was going to end here too.
One way or another.
