Secondhand Sinners (26 page)

“I was going to call you after I had the baby. Then you got married.”

“I got married so I could get Abby.”

Emily pinched the bridge of her nose. “I can’t do this right now. My head is pounding and—”

“Why did you leave?”

“I was scared.”

This wasn’t the right time. Miller knew that. But being with Alan after what Hoyt did to her was beyond unhealthy. He couldn’t see a future with Emily if she couldn’t see that. What kind of an influence would she be over Abby?

“Well you know what? I’m going to need more than that. You were scared. Okay, I get it. What were you so scared of that you couldn’t tell me about?”

“You had bigger plans than dropping out of high school with less than a year to go. You were going to play baseball for OSU and become a landscape engineer. I didn’t want to ruin your life.”

“That’s bullshit. What were you really scared of? What were they doing to you?”

“Nothing. Nothing else. Just that. I didn’t want to ruin your life.”

“Look at me.” He held his arms out in what he knew was an over-dramatic display of martyrdom. “My life
is
ruined. I’m divorced, stuck in a dead-end job, raising a child who isn’t mine. Stop lying to yourself and everyone else.”

“I’m not lying, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Really? Because there’s only one way I can think of that Abby could have your hands and Hoyt’s disease.”

“There has to be some other explanation,” Emily said.

“Come on, Emily,” Miller said. “There is no other explanation. Admit it.”

She shook her head.

“Daniel gave me the key to that safe deposit box to keep it from Hoyt because he suspected something weird was going on. It’s not your fault. Hoyt was sick. It makes the whole thing with Alan so…”

He trailed off. This was a waste of time, especially when Abby and Jack were out there somewhere.

“I swear to you. Hoyt never hurt me.”

The stress was getting to him. Everything he thought he knew was disintegrating under the harsh winds of uncertainty. The only thing he really knew was that Abby was out there somewhere, and she needed him to find her. “I have to go.”

“I’m so sorry about all this. I shouldn’t have come back to town.”

He didn’t answer because there was nothing else for him to say and because she was right. For the first time since he could remember anything—as far back as the third grade when he moved to town and met Emily for the first time—he wasn’t certain of a damn thing.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-EIGHT

Emily

Emily tried to follow Miller, but a police officer at her door put a hand up.

“Come on,” she protested. “I’m not really under arrest.”

The man crossed his arms over his chest and stood in the doorway.

“I’m not. I can’t be. My son is out there somewhere, and I have to find him!”

“You have the right to remain silent,” he said, forcing her back into the room. “You have the right to an attorney…”

“No. No. No. This can’t be happening! My son needs me. I have to help Miller find him. Stop it!” She pushed the officer. He didn’t move. Instead, he started to read her her rights.

“Stop. I’m not under arrest. I didn’t do anything wrong, and my son is alone!” She pushed on him again, but he wouldn’t stop reciting her rights. She couldn’t be under arrest when Jack was out there alone and Abby was missing. “I said stop!” She slapped the officer.

He cuffed her wrist. “Ma’am, you don’t need to get so excited with your concussion, and I don’t wanna have to add assaulting a police officer to your charges.”

“I’m not under arrest.”

“Yes, ma’am. You are.”

He tried to guide her to the bed with one hand on her wrist and the other on her shoulder. She resisted, but he was too much for her. “I’m not under arrest!” she yelled as he wrangled her to the bed. “I’m not!”

A nurse rushed into the room. “What’s going on in here?”

“She’s hysterical,” the policeman said. “If she doesn’t stop hitting me, I’m going to have to cuff her to the bed.”

Exhaustion hit her, knocking her down and forcing her to lie back on the bed. “My son has special needs. He can’t be alone. He can’t take care of himself.”

“Where’s her son?” the nurse asked.

The officer shrugged. “No one knows. We have a man on it. Had an off-duty volunteer to head up the search because we’re so stretched.”

“I guess that means you didn’t find Ms. Collins, then.”

“Nope. Owen’s put a few men on finding her because of the murders and all. He’s got a call into Durant PD to see if they can loan us a few men. By our count, she’s got two syringes left. Looks like she’s targeting her family so this young lady’s probably safer in here.”

Emily could hear them talking, their voices echoing toward her like they were at the end of a long tunnel. Why were they talking about her mother? Why weren’t they looking for Jack?

“He’s all alone,” she whispered because it was all she could get out. “He needs me.”

“Any chance your officer will find the little boy?”

“He’s getting some volunteers together, so there’s as good a chance as any. Alan grew up here. He knows the town well, so if anyone can find him, it’ll be him.”

“No. Not Alan.” Emily tried to lift her head, but it was too heavy to hold up. Even her hands were too heavy to lift. Every muscle in her body was anchored. “Send someone else. Please.” When she closed her eyes, she felt like she was floating on the water, feeling the ripple effects of a large splash that was rocking her to sleep. She pretended Jack was next to her with his head on her shoulder. It was so much better to think about finally being with her son again rather than the look on Miller’s face when he accused her of denying that Hoyt was Abby’s father.

He was so insistent that Hoyt must’ve hurt her. It had been a logical assumption for Miller to make. Wilson’s was too rare for any other conclusion. But Hoyt never touched her. Did he? Was there a memory playing hide and seek up there in her brain that was now sloshing around inside her skull, weighing her down, pulling her under?

***

“I’ll run away. Far, far away.”

“I would really miss you.”

“I won’t run away. I couldn’t leave you. I could never leave Levi alone with them.” Emily smiled the best smile she could muster. “I’ll be okay.”

Daniel let go of her hands, put his arm around her shoulders, and squeezed. “If they try that again, you run. Run as hard and as far as you can. Don’t look back.”

“I couldn’t—”

“Yes you can.”

“I’ll get lost.”

“Then I’ll come find you.”

Emily woke in a dark room to a throbbing in her head. She immediately remembered where she was and that Jack wasn’t with her. She could feel someone gently running fingers through her hair. It was so comforting. She touched the hand…a man’s hand. Miller’s hand. He was back, which meant he’d found the kids.

She pulled the hand to her lips and kissed it. “How are the kids?”

He leaned closer, kissed her on the cheek and whispered, “How the fuck would I know?”

Everything came into focus. Not Miller. Alan. She chucked his hand away. “Get away from me!”

He turned on the lamp beside her bed and stood over her wearing street clothes, his expression unreadable. Emily reached behind to push the call button on the bed, but Alan stopped her when he took hold of her wrist.

She snatched it away. “What do you want?”

“I always told myself that if I ever became like Hoyt, I would kill myself. I was so sure I’d be better than him. I don’t know what happened.” Alan rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms, and when he looked at Emily again, tears pooled in his eyes. “I am sorry about everything, but…what I did to your boy with the gun? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get over that I did that. I wanna make this right.”

“Really?” Emily felt hope again. He was going to tell her where Jack and Abby were.

Alan’s eyes rose to meet hers. Then his contrite pout slowly morphed into a sneer. “No. Not really.”

“Oh my God.”

“That was good, though, right? I just spent ten minutes practicing in my car.”

“I hate you.”

“You should’ve seen the look on your face. So hopeful, so eager.”

“I thought you were going to tell me where the kids were.”

“Jack’s fine. I told you that. Abby’s okay too.”

“You can’t believe that. Not after the way you terrorized both of them. You know, the longer this day drags on, the more damage you inflict on anyone around you.”

“I can kill you now and claim you were trying to get my gun.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, calling his bluff. If he wanted her dead, he would have already killed her. Pain was Alan’s game. He liked hurting her. He liked holding her hostage, separating her from her son, destroying her reputation in town and her relationship with Miller. Although it was impossible for her to know when it happened, somewhere along the way this had ceased being about finding Hoyt’s money. This was a game to Alan. He hit her, took Jack, terrorized Abby, and taunted Miller all for his own pleasure. That’s why he was back now.

“You really are like Hoyt, aren’t you?”

“You’re no better than me. You wouldn’t be so fucking superior if you knew what I know.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“I know your mom has gone off her rocker and is now on a killing spree.”

“No she’s not.” There was some vague recollection of the policeman and the nurse talking about her mom, but she couldn’t keep up with their conversation. Now, after some concentration, she remembered the word
murder
. “Who’s she supposed to have killed?”

“Your dad and your grandmother.”

“No. How?”

“She stole four syringes from the hospital, filled them with bleach, and has as of now killed both your dad and your grandmother by injecting their IVs with bleach.”

“Dad and Ma’am are really dead?”

“As doornails.”

It was hard to comprehend. Why would her mom kill the two people in life who were always there to tell her what to do, what to think, and what to feel? Maybe she didn’t like that as much as Emily thought. Even so, why’d she kill them now, when they were so close to dying? Why did she herself feel nothing except for a small amount of relief? Because she was more like her grandmother than she wanted to admit.

“Why?”

“Don’t know, yet. Owens has been looking for her all day. He’s pissed too. He’s had to put off his golf game twice now because of your family. So see? I do know some things.” He jerked the blanket off her. “Get up…” He pulled on her arm until she was standing. “I’ll show you what else I know.”

“That officer outside is not going to let you take me out of here.”

“Wrong. I’m the officer outside now.”

“How could Owens let you guard me after what you did to me?”

“I explained it all to him a few hours ago. How your poor kid went missing when we went to Levi’s to rekindle our romance. He tends to wander off like that. I feel awful that we weren’t watching him more closely. Oh, and I sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, apologize for the black eye and bruises. We’ve always liked to keep it rough between the sheets. I guess I didn’t know my own strength.”

“Owens fell for that?”

“Hook. Line. Sinker.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Has that concussion made you forget about your own son?”

She knew going with him was a huge mistake. That other policeman said people were looking for Jack, so did she really need to go along with Alan anymore? If she could reach the call button on the hospital bed, she’d get some help.

“Don’t even think about it,” Alan said. “If you push that button, I’ll go straight to where I’ve got your kid stashed and I’ll smother him with a pillow.”

“People are looking for him. They may have already found him.”

He scoffed. “If I didn’t have them looking miles away from where he really is.”

“How are you going to explain taking me out of here?”

“I didn’t take you out of here. You escaped.” He drew in a deep breath and shook his head as he released it. “I guess I wasn’t on top of my game, you know, cause I’m so worried about you and your kid. I turned my back for one second to get you a bottle of water from the nurses’ station, and you ran away.”

“You can’t honestly believe you’re going to get away with this.”

“Don’t you get it?” He pulled her closer to him and gazed into her eyes as he brushed her hair behind her ear. Then he kissed her on the cheek, put his lips to her ear and whispered, “I already have.”

Was there was no other choice than to go with him? Emily knew she was defeated, like when every google search on delayed speech, tantrums, and lack of eye contact produced pages and pages of articles on autism. She knew there had to be a study out there somewhere that had discovered that little boys with blue eyes and a birthmark on their thigh couldn’t possibly be autistic. It was her desperation that kept her up all hours of the night, looking for a way out of the dark cloud that was closing in on her. She never broke free of that fog, she simply learned to trust her gut and navigate her way through it. That would be the only way through this ordeal with Alan. He’d been ten steps ahead of her all day, and now her gut was telling her to go with him. The best chance to get out from behind, and hopefully away from, Alan was to walk beside him.

***

Fifteen minutes later, they were in sitting in the parking lot of a hardware store in a car Emily guessed was Alan’s personal car.

“What are we doing here?” she asked.

Alan pointed to two police officers a block away who were standing in front of their cruisers in the parking lot of the Sunny Horizons Nursing Home. “Waiting on those piss ants to clear out. Damn fools shoulda been gone by now.”

“Are they there for Ma’am?”

“Yep. Coroner’s already taken her body, and Owens has put everyone else out looking for your mom.”

“Are we going in there?”

“Yep. I have a little something special to show you. If those jackasses don’t leave before they find out you’ve escaped, I might have to move on to Plan C.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m working it out.”

“Kinda seems like the more plans you have the more goes wrong.”

“Nope. This plan is even better than the first one. I have to get something out of this day, and if I can’t have his money, this will be just as good or even better.”

When the officers left about ten minutes later, Alan pulled Emily out of the car and led her to the long brick structure down the street.

“What’s going to happen?” she asked as she walked into the building with Alan’s hand on her back. Nursing homes made her nervous because it was where people went to die, and she couldn’t imagine anything worse than dying in a nursing home. Scratch that, she
could
think of one thing that was worse—not knowing where Jack and Abby were.

“You’ll see,” he answered and escorted her down a hallway that was deserted except for the lone man with a long silver braid who was sitting against the wall in his wheelchair, singing in Native American.