Chapter 8
Time slowed down.
Travis jumped out of the driver’s seat. He was wild-eyed, unshaven, holding something in his right hand that glinted in the afternoon sun. A gun.
I pushed Claire behind me.
“Inside,” I said quietly. “Lock the door. Call 911. Now.”
She didn’t argue. She turned and ran for the porch, the dogs right behind her, barking furiously. I heard the deadbolt click home a second later.
Travis started up the walkway.
“Where is she, Ethan?” he shouted. The gun was shaking in his hand. He was high—pale, sweating, pupils blown wide. “I know she’s here. That little bitch told you, didn’t she? Natalie. She always was a weak little thing.”
He stopped ten feet away.
“Your mother sent me,” he said, grinning. It was not a pleasant smile. “Said I could have whatever I wanted once I took care of the wife. Money. Trucks. The whole works. All I gotta do is make sure she don’t testify.”
“Put the gun down, Travis,” I said. I kept my voice calm, even. The same tone I’d used on scared, angry soldiers overseas. “This doesn’t have to end like this. You’re high. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Oh, I know exactly what I’m doing,” he said. He took a step closer. The gun came up. “I’m getting paid. And then I’m getting the hell out of this hick town. And you? You’re gonna watch me do it.”
I heard sirens in the distance.
Good. Claire had called.
But they were at least five minutes out. Maybe longer.
I kept my eyes on Travis’s, not on the gun. I’d been trained for this. Disarm a man with a weapon. Distance of ten feet. If he fires, I’m dead. If I move too fast, he fires. If I move too slow, he fires.
“You don’t want to do this, Travis,” I said. “Think about it. You kill Claire, you spend the rest of your life in prison. Or worse. My mother will never pay you. She’ll throw you under the bus the second you pull the trigger. She’ll say you acted alone. That you were obsessed with Claire. That you’d been stalking her for months. She’s already got the story written. You know she does.”
Travis hesitated. The gun wavered.
I could see the doubt creeping in. He was stupid, but he wasn’t that stupid. He knew what my mother was capable of.
“She’s using you, Travis,” I continued, keeping my voice steady. “Just like she’s used everyone else. You’re disposable. Once you do this, you’re a liability. She’ll make sure you never see a dime. And you’ll spend the rest of your life in a cell, wondering why you were dumb enough to trust her.”
“Shut up!” Travis screamed. The gun came up higher, pointing straight at my chest. “Shut the hell up! She wouldn’t do that! She loves me! She’s the only one who ever cared about me!”
The sirens were louder now. Close.
Travis heard them too. His head snapped toward the road, then back to me. Panic crossed his face.
“You called the cops,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
He raised the gun again, this time pointing it at the cabin door.
“Fine,” he said. “If I can’t get to her, I’ll get you. That’ll be enough. She’ll pay me for you.”
He fired.
The bullet hit the porch post three inches from my head. Splinters flew.
I moved.
I closed the ten feet between us in less than a second. I hit him low, driving my shoulder into his stomach, wrapping my arms around his legs, lifting him off the ground and slamming him backward onto the gravel drive.
The gun went flying.
Travis grunted, the wind knocked out of him. I rolled on top of him, driving my knee into his ribs, grabbing his right arm and twisting it up behind his back until I heard the joint pop. He screamed.
I held him there, my knee in his back, my weight pinning him to the ground, while he thrashed and cursed and tried to buck me off. I didn’t let go. I’d held down bigger, meaner men than Travis Carter.
The first sheriff’s car skidded into the drive less than a minute later. Deputy Carter jumped out, gun drawn, followed by two more deputies.
“On the ground!” Carter shouted. “Hands where I can see them!”
I released Travis’s arm and stood slowly, my hands up.
“He’s disarmed,” I said. “Gun’s in the bushes over there.”
The deputies descended on Travis, rolling him over, slapping cuffs on him, reading him his rights. He was still screaming, spitting, calling me every name he could think of. Deputy Carter walked over to me, his face grim.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Fine.”
Claire came out of the cabin then, the dogs at her heels. She ran to me, throwing her arms around me, checking my face, my arms, my chest for bullet holes.
“You’re okay,” she kept saying, over and over. “You’re okay. Oh my God, you’re okay.”
I held her tight, my face buried in her hair, my heart hammering so hard I was sure she could feel it.
I was okay. We were okay.
But it had been close. Too close.
Carter came back a few minutes later, Travis already in the back of a patrol car.
“We got the gun,” he said. “We’ll run ballistics, but I’m betting it’s the same one he used in a convenience store robbery last month. And with what Natalie told us yesterday? We can add conspiracy to commit murder to the list of charges against your mother. This is it, Ethan. This is the end of the line for her.”
He was right.
With Travis in custody, with Natalie ready to testify, with the recordings on the USB drive, with the security footage from the house, with the hospital records, with the break-in, with the attempt on Claire’s life today—my mother didn’t have a leg to stand on.
She was finished.
But I knew my mother. She wouldn’t go down easy. She’d fight. She’d scream. She’d threaten. She’d try to take as many people with her as she could.
And she still had those files on my father.
David called an hour later. He’d already heard about Travis. He was already drafting new charges, new motions, new requests to have my mother’s bail revoked immediately.
“She’s done, Ethan,” he said, sounding relieved for the first time in weeks. “We’ve got her on conspiracy to commit murder. No judge in the state is going to let her walk after this. The trust hearing is a formality now. The criminal trial is a formality. She’s going away. For a long, long time.”
“When will they arrest her?”
“SWAT is picking her up tonight. She’s at the country club. They didn’t want to cause a scene in the middle of dinner, but—”
He stopped.
“Wait. Ethan? She just called me. She wants to meet. Tonight. Alone. She says she has something to give you. Something that will end all of this. No lawyers. No courts. No drama.”
I felt Claire go still beside me. She’d heard.
“What is it?” I asked.
“She wouldn’t say. Just said it’s something you’ll want. Something that belongs to your father. She’s willing to hand it over. In exchange for one thing.”
“What?”
“Ten minutes. Alone with you. No recording. No witnesses. Just you and her. At the main house. Nine o’clock tonight.”
Claire was already shaking her head.
“No,” she said. “Absolutely not. She’s got nothing left to bargain with. She’s desperate. She’ll try to kill you, Ethan. Just like she tried to kill me.”
I thought about it.
My mother was trapped. She knew it. She had no moves left. Travis was in custody. Natalie was a witness for the prosecution. The evidence was overwhelming. She was looking at twenty years minimum.
What could she possibly have that was worth ten minutes alone with me?
And then I remembered the safety deposit box. The files on my father.
She still had those. If she handed them over, if she destroyed them, then the threat was gone forever. My father’s name was safe. The company was safe. Natalie’s secret was safe.
And if she didn’t? If she tried something?
I was a decorated combat veteran. I’d survived two tours overseas. I could handle one fifty-five-year-old woman in her own dining room.
“I’m going,” I said.
Claire’s eyes widened.
“Ethan, no—”
“I’ll take Carter with me,” I said. “He and two deputies will be outside the whole time. They’ll be listening through the door. If I so much as raise my voice, they come in. She won’t try anything. Not with three armed cops ten feet away.”
Claire looked like she wanted to argue more. But she also knew me. She knew I wouldn’t rest until this was truly over. Until every last threat was gone.
“Promise me you’ll be careful,” she said quietly.
“I promise.”
I met Deputy Carter at the end of the driveway at eight forty-five. He had two other deputies with him, both in plain clothes, all armed. We drove to the main house in unmarked cars, lights off, parking in the tree line where my mother wouldn’t see us.
“Remember,” Carter said, as we walked toward the house. “We’re right outside. Door stays unlocked. Anything feels wrong, you yell, we’re in there before she finishes her sentence.”
I nodded.
The front door was unlocked. I pushed it open and stepped inside.
The house was dark. Only the dining room light was on—the same room where I’d found my mother and sister eating dinner while Claire froze outside. The same room where Travis had smashed the china and written those terrible things on the walls.
The walls had been repainted. The floor had been cleaned. The table was set again, with two places. Two glasses of wine. A bottle of my father’s best red.
My mother was sitting at the head of the table, exactly where she’d been that night.
She looked older than I’d ever seen her. Tired. Defeated. The fight was gone from her eyes. All that was left was something that looked almost like sorrow.
“Ethan,” she said. Her voice was soft. “Thank you for coming.”
I stayed by the door. I didn’t sit. I didn’t take my eyes off her.
“Where is it?” I asked. “What do you have for me?”
She reached into her purse on the table and pulled out a thick manila folder. She set it in the center of the table, between us.
“Everything,” she said. “Every file. Every ledger. Every piece of paper I had on your father. It’s all there. No copies. No backups. I checked.”
She pushed it toward me.
“It’s yours. For good.”
I didn’t move to take it.
“Why?” I asked. “Why now? You’ve spent thirty years holding this over his head. Over my head. Why give it up now?”
She looked at me, and for the first time in my life, I saw real regret in her eyes.
“Because I lost,” she said simply. “I lost everything. My freedom. My daughter. My home. My reputation. I’m going to prison, Ethan. We both know it. Probably for the rest of my life. And sitting in that jail cell last night, waiting for them to come get me, I realized something.”
She paused, swallowing hard.
“None of it was worth it. The money. The house. The power. None of it made me happy. None of it brought me love. I spent thirty-five years fighting for things that didn’t matter, and I destroyed everyone who ever actually cared about me in the process. Your father. Natalie. You. Claire.”
She looked down at her hands.
“I’m not asking for forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. I’m not asking for a deal. I know I have to pay for what I did. I just… I wanted to give you this. Before it was too late. Before I did something else stupid and destructive. Your father was a good man, Ethan. He wasn’t perfect. But he was good. He doesn’t deserve to have his name dragged through the mud because of me.”
She stood up slowly.
“I’ll plead guilty to everything. The assault. The break-in. The conspiracy. All of it. No trial. No drama. No more lies. I’ll tell the court exactly what I did. And exactly why. I’ll even testify against Travis if it helps.”
She walked around the table toward me. I tensed, but she stopped a few feet away.
“I just have one question,” she said quietly. “Before I go away forever. Did he ever love me? Even a little? Or was I just a convenience to him? A mother for his children? A hostess for his parties?”
I looked at her.
The woman who’d raised me. The woman who’d taught me to ride a bike, who’d bandaged my scraped knees, who’d cried when I left for basic training. The same woman who’d tortured my wife, who’d tried to kill her, who’d destroyed everything my father had tried to protect.
“I think you loved the idea of him,” I said finally. “And I think he loved the idea of you. But neither of you ever really knew each other. Not really. And by the time you realized it, it was too late.”
She nodded. A single tear rolled down her cheek.
“Goodbye, Ethan,” she said.
She walked past me toward the front door. She opened it, and stepped outside, where Deputy Carter and the others were waiting. She didn’t look back.
I stood there alone in the quiet house, the folder on the table between the two untouched glasses of wine.
It was over.
May you like
Really over.
I picked up the folder and walked out into the night.
