Chapter 6
The next three weeks were the calmest I'd known since Allison died.
The police detail left after the DA assured us Derek had no way of reaching us from the maximum-security facility where he was being held. Vanessa was in a separate facility, in solitary for her own protection—prisoners who hurt children didn't last long in general population.
Chloe and I settled into a routine. I enrolled her in the same preschool Allison had gone to. We took walks around the neighborhood. We planted more sunflowers in the backyard. I started learning the basics of running Hale Designs, sitting in on weekly meetings with the senior team, who were patient and kind and eager to keep Allison's vision alive.
I should have been happy. I was happy, most of the time. But there was always a tightness in my chest, a feeling that the other shoe was about to drop. Derek's words echoed in my head every time I closed my eyes. This isn't over.
I should have trusted my gut.
It was a Tuesday afternoon. I'd picked Chloe up from preschool and we were at the grocery store, buying ingredients for her favorite—chocolate chip cookies. She was sitting in the cart, singing a song from ballet class, when I felt someone watching me.
I turned around.
A man in a baseball cap and sunglasses was standing at the end of the aisle, pretending to read the label on a cereal box. He was too big, too broad-shouldered to be a regular grocery shopper. And he kept looking at us.
I gripped the cart handle tighter and moved down the aisle toward the checkout. The man followed. Not obviously. He kept his distance, stopped to look at things, but he was always there. Always in the same aisle as us.
I paid for the groceries as fast as I could, my hands shaking so much I dropped my credit card twice. The bag boy helped me load the car. I strapped Chloe into her car seat, double-checking the straps, then got in the driver's seat and locked all the doors.
The man was leaning against a pickup truck across the parking lot, watching us.
I pulled out of the parking space fast, tires squealing on the asphalt. I checked the rearview mirror. The pickup truck pulled out right behind me.
I dialed 911 with one hand, the other white-knuckled on the steering wheel.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"Someone is following me. I'm with my four-year-old granddaughter. We just left the H-E-B on Bee Caves Road. He's in a dark gray Ford F-150. Texas plates. I'm heading west on 71 toward West Lake Hills."
"Stay on the line with me, ma'am. Units are en route. Do not go home. Drive to the nearest police substation. There's one on Highway 71, two miles ahead on your right. Can you make it?"
"I'll make it."
I floored the gas. The speedometer climbed to seventy, then eighty. The pickup stayed right on my bumper. Chloe stopped singing.
"Grammy? Why are we going so fast?"
"Just a game, baby. Grammy's racing the truck behind us. Isn't it fun?"
She giggled, but it was a nervous sound. "Are we winning?"
"We're winning, baby. We're definitely winning."
I saw the police substation up ahead, lights flashing in the parking lot. Two patrol cars were already pulling out onto the highway to meet me.
The pickup truck behind me swerved. For a second, I thought he was going to ram us. Then he hit the brakes hard, turned across the median, and sped off in the opposite direction.
The police caught him three miles later, running a red light at the intersection of 71 and 620.
Detective Marquez met us at the substation. She was in her workout clothes, hair pulled back in a ponytail—she'd been at the gym when the call came in.
"Are you okay? Is Chloe okay?" she asked, kneeling down to look us both over.
"We're fine," I said. My hands were still shaking. "He didn't get close. Just followed us."
Chloe was already distracted by a lollipop the desk sergeant had given her, happily licking it while she colored on a piece of scrap paper.
"We got the driver," Marquez said, standing up. "His name is Carlos Mendez. Local guy. Record for assault, armed robbery, breaking and entering. Did five years in Huntsville. Got out six months ago."
"Did he say who hired him?"
"Not yet. He's lawyered up. But we found this in his truck."
She held up an evidence bag. Inside was a piece of paper with my name on it, my address, Chloe's name, her preschool, the make and model of my car. And in the corner, written in Derek's unmistakable handwriting: "Make it look like an accident. Car crash. Both of them. No survivors. Fifty thousand when it's done."
My blood turned to ice.
Fifty thousand dollars. That was all our lives were worth to Derek. Fifty thousand dollars to a man who'd already stolen half a million from my daughter.
"He paid a hit man from prison?" I whispered.
"Through a cousin on the outside," Marquez said. "We've been monitoring his calls, but he used code. Talked about 'a business deal,' 'paying off an old debt.' We didn't pick up on it until now. I'm so sorry, Evelyn. This is on us. We should have been more careful."
"No," I said. "It's on Derek. It's always been on Derek. He'll never stop, will he? Not as long as he's alive. Not as long as he has money or friends or anyone willing to do his dirty work for him."
Marquez was quiet. Then she said, "There's another way. The DA is willing to offer Derek a deal. Testify against Vanessa, admit to all the charges including the solicitation of murder today, and he gets life without parole in a supermax facility in Colorado. Twenty-three hours a day in solitary. No phone calls. No visitors except his lawyer. No way to reach anyone on the outside. Ever. He'll be buried alive, Evelyn. He'll die in that cell, alone and forgotten."
"And Vanessa?"
"Without Derek's testimony, her case is weaker. But we still have the audio recording. We still have the texts. She'll get life too. Probably in a maximum-security women's facility outside of Texas. She'll never see Derek again. She'll never breathe free air again."
I looked at Chloe, now passed out on the sofa in the break room, lollipop stick still in her hand, her face smudged with blue ink from the marker.
"What do you think I should do?" I asked Marquez.
"I think you should take the deal. Derek in supermax is better than Derek in any Texas prison where he has connections, where he can still reach people, where he can still hurt you. I think you should take it and never look back. For Chloe. For Allison."
I thought about it all night.
I thought about Allison, lying at the bottom of the stairs, her neck broken. I thought about Vanessa at the funeral, wearing her bracelet, whispering "I won." I thought about Derek in the courtroom, mouthing "This isn't over." I thought about the pickup truck on the highway, inches from our bumper, Chloe in the back seat, laughing because she thought it was a game.
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I called Benjamin at six the next morning.
"Tell the DA I'll agree to the deal," I said. "But only if Derek signs the papers in front of me. I want to look him in the eye while he does it. I want to see the look on his face when he realizes he's going to spend the rest of his life in a hole in the ground, with no one to talk to, no one to manipulate, no way to ever hurt anyone I love again."
