Burning Down the House (35 page)

“Something like that.”
I polished off the rest of the wine, which appeared to please the psycho immensely.

“
Look at you. I believe you’re acquiring a taste for vintage port.” He poured me another glass. The perfect host. I noticed he moved the bottle to the end table beside him, out of my reach. Was he afraid I’d try to bludgeon him with it? “Take it slower with this one. I think I’d better limit you to two drinks. All right then - do you have any questions before we begin our assignment?”

What in
hell’s heated halls was he talking about? “Assignment?”

“Yes
, my dear. We have a very complex problem that requires an efficient solution. We need to get started. Time is limited, so if you have any questions please speak up.”

Oh, I had plenty of questions. Starting with
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Instead I went with, “The baby. Was it yours?”

“
The baby? I assume so. She claimed it was, and I had no reason to doubt her. I blame myself. I shouldn’t have assumed she was diligent about taking her contraception. None of it would have been an issue if she’d just gone through with the abortion like I instructed her to. No appreciation whatsoever - I had the entire procedure set up for her, out of town of course, gave her the cash to pay for it, and what does she do? She doesn’t even bother to show up for the appointment. Now how irresponsible is that?” He shook his head, obviously appalled by her lack of consideration. “She knew from the start that I was married, that I had a family. She agreed to the rules of the game. A clandestine meeting now and then, but complete discretion was essential. I couldn’t stress that
enough
to her, and with an IQ as high as hers you’d think she could have comprehended the importance. And yet all the rules were supposed to be thrown out the window simply because she got careless! Do you know, she developed this absurd notion that I was going to abandon my family and flush my career and reputation down the toilet just so I could run off and elope with her and help raise that illegitimate brat?”

If I could have unhinged my jaw, it would have hit the sofa cushions. I couldn’t believe, could not
believe,
that he could talk about this poor dead girl with such casual disrespect. Like he had zero remorse and even less in the way of a conscience. As if Jordan was to blame for every despicable, reprehensible thing he’d done and was somehow deserving of her horrible fate.

“
Of course you see why I had to do it, don’t you? She gave me no alternative. I went there that night to try and reason with her but she was completely irrational. She became hysterical, was threatening to expose our relationship - do you have any idea what that would have meant for me? A married teacher, impregnating one of his underage students! Think about it. I would have been ruined!”

“So you bashed
in her skull,” I said flatly. My head was starting to swim from the alcohol. At least the tremors were subsiding.

“You make it sound so brutal. It was the most humane thing to do
. She didn’t suffer. Her back was turned…there was an iron bookend on the shelf beside me…she never even saw it coming. I told you, I’m quick as a fox.”

I started to take another drink, then stopped myself.
Better try to keep a clear head. “Tell me something. If she was already dead, then why set the fire?”

“I
had no idea what sort of damning evidence she could have left lying around in that house. For all I knew, she might have kept a diary, photos of me, who knows what. You know how sentimental teenage girls are. Without covering every inch of her room with a fine-tooth comb, I might have missed something. Don’t you think it made more sense to just burn it all?”

“What about the necklace?”

His forehead crinkled. “What necklace?”

What necklace
- not him, too. Was I the only person in the entire universe who’d noticed the damn thing? Was it invisible to everyone else? I was starting to believe it was a figment of my imagination. “She wore a silver necklace with the letter “
R
” on it.”

He smiled, and
those dimples on either side of his mouth didn’t look cute to me anymore. This man was revolting. “Did she? Ah, now isn’t that sweet. She always was a hopeless romantic. Well, even if it didn’t melt in the fire, I highly doubt one letter would be enough to incriminate me.” His head turned to check the clock in the curio cabinet and my own eyes followed. 10:23. “That’s enough. Question-and-answer time is over. Let’s put our heads together and get to work now.”

I was afraid to ask. “Get to work on what?”

“The problem of what to do with you. What did you think? This is definitely a tricky one but that’s perfectly fine - I love a challenge.” He studied me thoughtfully. “We need to identify the unknown variables before we can reduce them. So what do we have? First of all, your father and boyfriend both know you’re here. They expect you home very shortly. An outright disappearance would be difficult to explain, though not entirely impossible. You’re one of my better students - why don’t you see if you can solve this equation?”

He couldn’t be
serious!
Was he actually suggesting I help plot my own demise? What the hell was he going to do, award me extra credit posthumously? I had to do something, now. It was time for act two of the performance. And it had to be a good one.

Taking a small sip of wine, I sucked the flavor from my bottom lip while
eyeing him seductively through my lashes. “There is…
one
solution.”

His eyes were on my mouth. So far, so good.
“Let’s hear what you’ve come up with then.”

Resting
my free hand on his thigh, I leaned in a bit. “Just hear me out before you shoot me down. Would you do that for me please?”

“I’m listening.”

“It’s really quite simple. I go home like I’m supposed to and neither of us mentions a word of this to anyone. We forget that little…
thingy
with Jordan ever happened. To tell you the truth, I never liked her anyway. I’m glad she’s out of the picture. Now you and I are free to have a little fun. It’ll be easy, see, because no one will suspect a thing. Whenever you find yourself alone, all you have to do is call me over to babysit. It’ll never occur to anyone that Peyton isn’t even here.” Rubbing his thigh, I manipulated my breathing to sound heavy, pretending to be turned on. “I have to be honest with you. This has always been a fantasy of mine. I used to watch you in class and daydream about you. What you’d look like naked. What your lips would taste like. Whether you prefer to fuck hard and fast or whether you’d take your time with me. I gotta say, you made it
very
hard to concentrate on calculus.” Moving in even closer, I whispered in his ear, “I’ve always been hot for teacher.”

It was working. The
midnight eyes darkened with lust and his lips curved into a lascivious smile. “Do you know, I mentioned to Jordan once that I fantasized about having a threesome with you. She didn’t like that. Bitch was way too possessive.”

“You won’t have that problem with me. I’m not the clingy type.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

Removing my hand from his leg, I stroked his lips with a fingertip.
“I know how to keep a secret.”

“I’ll just bet you do.
” Seizing my wrist, his smile turned into a sneer and I felt all hope disintegrate. I should have realized that he knew how to put on an act, too. After all, the whole town believed he was a pillar of the community. Hell, he was an expert thespian. My amateur performance hadn’t fooled him for a minute. “How gullible do you think I am? You disappoint me, you really do. I had you pegged as a bright girl but you’re just another vapid whore, aren’t you? I can’t carry on an intelligent conversation with you. Take off your clothes.”

I blinked, wanting to believe I’d heard him wrong but knowing I hadn’t.
“Wh-what?”

“You heard me.” He was already removing his tie
over his head, but instead of discarding it he began to unknot it. “Since you want to act like a dirty little whore, I’ll oblige. You got me all worked up so now you can take care of this new problem you’ve created. I’ll deal with the other one after I’m done wrecking your tight little snatch. And don’t try anything stupid. You better keep in mind, I outweigh you by at least sixty pounds and I can snap your neck with very little effort. I’m not opposed to necrophilia. Now take your fucking clothes off.”

Oh, dear God…this was really happening
...this was
real…

Shaking his head in disgust, he continued
reviling me. “You think I don’t know what you and that boy get up to next door? I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I’m surprised at Alan. What kind of father lets his daughter shack up with some horny eighteen-year-old?”

“What kind of father rapes the babysitter while his daughter sleeps upstairs?”

“You leave my little girl out of this. She won’t grow up to be a manipulative slut like you, I can assure you of that.” He wrapped one end of the tie around his right hand, then the other around his left before pulling it tight. “In the interest of time, I may have to improvise. Get undressed. This is the last time I’m telling you.”

I hated him. I loathed, detested, despised him. Abject terror had just welcomed a new consort - seething fury. Adrenaline rushed through me like a
wild electric current. Which was fine because nothing else had worked so far. This was it, my last resort. It was time to fight.

My
fingers tightened around the bowl of the wine glass. “Let me ask you something,
Richard.
Do you have any idea what they do to good-looking, refined men like you in prison? Hm? Cowards who get off on molesting and murdering innocent girls…can you guess?”

The
look of surprise on his face provided instant gratification. He opened his mouth to respond but I didn’t give him a chance. I had something to say and he was going to hear it if it killed me.

“I’m no psychic but I think I can give you a pretty accurate reading of your future.
Your fun-filled days in the penitentiary will be spent having your virgin asshole shredded to bloody hamburger by some three hundred pound gangbanger who’s decided to make you his bitch. That’s before he hands you off to his friends so they can each have a turn before kicking the shit out of you since even among the criminals you’ll be branded a lowlife for what you did. While all this time the guards look the other way because they don’t care, they know, they know as well as I do that you deserve every degradation being handed to you. And your nights? They’ll be spent locked in a cold cell, sobbing like a schoolgirl, mourning the life you once had.”

His shock was priceless. Beautiful. I kept going.

“And do you know what your loving wife Deanna will be doing in the meantime? She’ll have forgotten all about you. She’ll have filed for divorce and moved on and remarried, and your little girl will be calling some other man Daddy while you catch some nasty STD and rot behind bars. That is, if someone doesn’t put you out of your misery first. Oh, and in closing, I have one more thing to add. This is from Jordan.”

I didn’t give him time to
process the words. Moving faster than I ever had, I smashed the glass in my hand against the side of his head as hard as I possibly could.

And ran
.

30

He was right about one thing. I didn’t get far.

I made it halfway to the front door before discovering firsthand what it feels like to get tackled by someone twice your size and hellbent on stopping you. It’s like being hit from behind by a speeding truck. One second you’re on your feet and the next you’re face-down in the road, struggling to find your breath and wondering what the fuck just happened.

Only in my case the road was
textured pile carpeting, and the truck was a deranged calculus teacher.

His solid body covered mine, heavier than I would have expected for someone so
slender, and I fought the urge to panic while gasping to recover the air that had been slammed out of me. My mind raced frantically. Why, oh why didn’t I pay more attention to that self-defense article my mom forwarded to me? All I could remember was something about using your elbow since supposedly it’s the strongest point on the body. Lying on my stomach, crushed against the floor with both arms pinned under his, that tip offered little benefit. I couldn’t even move, much less jab him with my elbow. With his weight suffocating me, screaming wasn’t an option either. Not that it would do much good. The only one likely to hear was Peyton, and there was no way I wanted her witnessing what her doting father was about to do to me.

“You
bitch!
” he howled into my ear. “Look at the
mess
you made! There is wine all over my brand new sofa! All over the
carpet!
How the hell am I supposed to get that up? Do you know what Deanna is going to do when she gets home and sees this? She’s going to kill me!” Sitting upright to straddle my hips, he jerked my head back roughly using handfuls of my hair. I noticed with a brief flicker of satisfaction that there was blood on his cheek from the glass.

“
Good,” I croaked.

“Do you have the money to
pay for that sofa to be reupholstered?
Do you?
I cannot even begin to tell you how sick and tired I am of being forced to deal with this godforsaken generation of spoiled, reckless, self-indulgent delinquents! Is this how you were brought up to behave? Like an uncivilized barbarian? I’ll tell you one thing, your father can expect to be seeing a bill for this! I work very hard to be able to afford these nice things and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you treat my house like a playground!”

I started laughing then. I couldn’t help it
, maybe I was bordering on hysterical. The man had fallen completely over the edge and was now off the map of rationality. I could just picture how that conversation would go.
Good evening, Alan. I hate to disturb you at this hour, but it seems your daughter was inconsiderate enough to trash my living room just now while I was attempting to rape her. I’ll have an itemized bill for the cleaning and repairs to you by tomorrow afternoon. I’m afraid she won’t be able to work off the damage herself since I’ve already taken the liberty of killing her. I do hope we can settle this little matter between us without having to resort to small claims court.

“Is this a joke to you? You think I’m joking? You find this funny?”
I felt the weight lift from my back before I was forcibly rolled over to look up into his rabid eyes. He was standing now, bent over me while groping underneath the hoodie to get a grip on the waistband of my jeans. The delirious laughter died instantly in my throat as I realized what he was trying to do.

I suppose you could say my survival instinct kicked in at that point. Because that’s when I started thrashing around like a wild animal, kicking and slapping at him, raking his flesh with my fingernails, but all of that, including my
desperate attempt to scream, was cut short when he let go of my clothes long enough to stun me with a backhanded blow to the side of my head.

Reeling
from the impact, I temporarily lost the capacity to fight. My vision clouded. The blinking Christmas tree lights swayed, merging together into one kaleidoscopic blob. Reality was slipping away into a fuzzy, surreal haze that felt like a lucid dream. Only I was trapped in the nightmare. I couldn’t wake up from this.

I couldn’t wake up.

He didn’t say a word. The time for talking was over. All I could hear was his heavy breathing and that freaky opera music and my own pulse throbbing deep within my ears. My left hand was damp and sticky and burned painfully. I felt several tugs as he began wrenching my jeans down in jerky motions. I made a grab for his arms, digging my nails into them hard enough to draw blood. He raised a fist. From out of nowhere came several shouts.

T
hen he was gone.

One minute he was there…

…and then he wasn’t.

I blinked
. A familiar pair of hazel eyes appeared above me.

“
Sara! Oh God, baby - please be all right! Please…are you hurt? What did he do to you? Oh, shit…” I felt hands slipping gently underneath my head, feeling around as if searching for something. “Can you hear me? Talk to me. Say something.”

I could hear noises coming from the other side of the room, angry curses and
crashes and meaty-sounding thuds. Lying flat on my back, I couldn’t see what was going on. What were they doing? They were going to wake Peyton.

My
left hand was lifted gingerly by the wrist. “Is this your blood or his?”

Blood? Oh. That explained the burning. I must have been cut by the wine glass
, too. Odd…I hadn’t even felt it at the time.

“Can you sit up?” The arms reached around me and I allowed them to help me into an upright position.
My jeans were at an awkward angle, halfway down my hips and kind of twisted. Warm fingers brushed my cheek.

“Baby, please
talk to me. Please. I need to know if you’re hurt. Please just try…try and tell me whether or not you’re okay…are you?”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
Unexpected tears filled my eyes before spilling over. My lower lip began to quiver. I nodded.

He
wiped my tears away with a shaky hand. Something in them seemed to have an exacerbating effect on him. The fluctuation in his eyes from worried concern to outrage was swift and fierce.

“
Fucking bastard!
” Turning from me, he hurled himself in the direction of the commotion. I had a clear view of what was happening now. It was a surreal scene. My own father, the gentle pacifist who had never once lifted a hand to hurt anyone, was whaling on his prey like a UFC champ. It appeared that my earlier prediction had been uncannily accurate. Richard Weston was indeed getting the shit kicked out of him. But not by a group of inmates. By my father and Doug Price. And now Rob.

I pulled myself clumsily to my feet.
Standing on wobbly legs, I hitched my jeans up and shuffled toward the staircase, carefully taking the steps one at a time, slowly making my way to the second floor and down the hall to the third door on the right. With my uninjured hand I quietly turned the doorknob. In the faint glow of the rainbow nightlight I saw the small form, curled up underneath the covers with Mr. Kokobear. Her soft breathing was slow and even. She was sound asleep. I couldn’t believe it. She was still asleep.

I heard
the thumps of footsteps as someone ran up the stairs, then felt a hand on my shoulder. From behind me came my father’s out-of-breath, anxious voice. “Sara? Sweetheart?”

I turned unsteadily to face him. My finger touched my lips.

“Shh…” I said before collapsing into his arms.

If
I thought time had slowed down before, the events that happened afterward picked up again in fast forward. Everything ran together in an expedited blur.

The
blinding flash of red and blue lights from the police cars.

The steady stream of officials coming and going.

Mr. Weston, bloodied and battered, informed of his rights and handcuffed before being taken away in an ambulance.

Chief
Landry patiently listening to my slow, stuttering account of what happened.

The friendly
young EMT picking tiny shards of glass from my hand before cleaning and bandaging it.

The ride to the hospital.

The grandfatherly physician examining my head where I’d been struck.

Mercifully, Peyton never saw
any of it. One of the female officers stayed upstairs with her until her mother could be notified and make the trip back from Pittsburgh. Fortunately I was gone by that time. I didn’t want to see Deanna Weston. Didn’t want to see the way she might look at me.

Doug
eventually went home but my father and Rob both continued to hover over me, refusing to let me out of their sight for a second. I definitely didn’t mind. Although there was one moment in the ER when I actually thought they were going to try and follow me into the bathroom. I was also afraid the doctor would want to keep me in the hospital overnight for observation, even though physically I’d checked out fine. But after giving me a mild sedative, he finally released me.

Once we
made it home, Dad ran me a hot bath and I soaked in there for nearly an hour trying to scrub away the crawly feeling of Mr. Weston’s hands on me. It hurt when I tried to wash my hair. There was a swollen, tender spot on the side of my head where he hit me. Every time I thought of that man touching me I felt my stomach start to contract. It was hard to understand how Jordan could have become so obsessed with someone like him. She could have had her pick of guys. But the starry-eyed girl actually deluded herself into believing that deep down the man loved her. And all the while she was as dispensable to him as a back alley prostitute.

How
was it that the selfish bastard never once stopped to consider the ramifications of his actions and how they would affect his wife and daughter? It broke my heart to think about how scary and confusing this whole situation was destined to be for Peyton. And I sure as hell didn’t enjoy knowing that her father had just been ripped from her life because of me.

I know what you’re thinking. And in a rational world, you’d be right. But look at it from my point of view. If not for me, maybe no one would have ever known.
To me, if was almost preferable that way.

Almost.

After rewrapping my sore hand, I emerged from the bedroom to find Dad on the phone with Mom. I knew it was her because of the slight edginess in his tone. She’s the only person on earth who has ever been able to get under his skin that way. I think her high-strung temperament gets on his nerves.

Catching sight of me,
he told her, “Hold on, here she is. You can talk to her yourself.”

I spent the next
twenty minutes trying to convince my near-hysterical mother that I was perfectly fine and there was no need for her to hijack a plane to Maryland. When she’s agitated, it’s very hard to get through to her. She rants nonstop without ever pausing to listen. Even if you’re lucky enough to get a word in edgewise it usually doesn’t filter through. Poor Stanley - he was really going to have his hands full with her. In the end I think the only reason she yielded was my repeated reminder that I’d be seeing her in ten days. Dad finally took the phone from me.

“
Elizabeth, the girl is exhausted. She needs to get some sleep. Yes, I know. I’m not. You need to calm down - I told you before, she’s fine. No, I won’t. Yes, I’ll make sure she calls you tomorrow. I promise. All right then, good night.” He dropped the phone with a sigh.