Never Die Alone (A Bentz/Montoya Novel Book 8) (31 page)

He’d messed up, bungled the plan big-time, and Myra, that bitch, wasn’t going to let him forget it. He remembered the night he’d nearly killed her, how he’d wrapped his fingers around her thin throat and squeezed, listening to her squawk and gasp, watching her eyes bulge first in disbelief and then in terror.

She’d cheated on him and he’d caught her and confronted her and killed her. Snapped her lying, cheating neck the minute she’d turned twenty-one. Myra with her blood-red lipstick so much like the ribbons that tied his mother’s hair. And those red teddies with their seductive garters, again reminding him of Mother’s damned ribbons. The two women he’d loved had both been bitches and he’d taken care of them, hadn’t he? He’d shown Myra. Shown Mother. Shown both of those lying sluts. His mother should never have left his father and Myra, God, she’d spread her legs so easily for another man . . . She’d deserved to die!

No, no, wait. He couldn’t have killed Myra. Never. His head pounded with blurred memories of strangulation and ribbons and hatred and . . .

Stop! That was wrong. He’d gotten it all wrong. Mixed up dreams with what had really happened.

Right? Of course! Myra, his beautiful Myra was alive and had just been on the phone and read him the riot act for not doing as she commanded, for letting Zoe get away.

“We’ll deal with the first one later,” she had said in the awful, ever-present voice. “She can ID you and the damage is done there, but you can take care of her after the heat has died down. For now, idiot, concentrate.”

He felt his back muscles bunch. Hated it when she berated him. Even now, reviewing the conversation they’d had earlier in the day . . . or had it been another time?

“For now, just kill Chloe,” she had insisted, “so that’s one less mistake to worry about and then get the hell out of town. Leave the van. Take my car. Lie low. You still have money, right? You’ve been careful with your mother’s estate?”

He thought of his mother with her wide eyes, thinning hair, and red, red ribbon tying it back. The nursing facility had been expensive, would have eaten up all of her savings, which at the time had been substantial, so she, too, had to die.

She was a bitch anyway.

He didn’t mind helping her along, putting a little too much medication into her protein drink.

“Money’s not a problem,” he’d said aloud and wondered from her lack of response, if Myra had been listening. That was the way with her. She often didn’t reply to him and it pissed him off. “But what about you? If I kill Chloe and leave New Orleans, what about you?” He’d come back here because of Myra.

“I’ll always be with you, Jacob,” she’d cooed, soothing him, once again present. Sometimes he wondered if she even existed the way she toyed with him. “You know that.”

He smiled. She’d been angry with him, but forgiving. So he would do as she had bidden. Kill Chloe, make sure that little kicking bitch was dead, and then he’d blow town and bide his time.

He could wait for Zoe.

He was a patient man.

 

 

Bentz didn’t believe for a second that Jase Bridges was capable of murder, but as they sorted everything out in a conference room, the reporter himself came up with an outlandish theory in which he described finding out just this very afternoon that he had a twin brother he hadn’t known about, nor met. He’d only discovered the truth earlier in some kind of purging confession from his old man, who was also a drunk.

Montoya, who’d come a little late to the party, was skeptical. “Whoa. Wait. All these twins? Seriously?” he wondered aloud. “The twin girls who were taken, the mother who’s a twinless twin, and now Bridges having a twin brother he didn’t know about. What’s going on? Are we on some hidden camera show?”

Bentz didn’t have time to argue the facts. There was another girl missing and now, they had a place to start looking. The farmer who brought Zoe Denning into the station was a local who knew the area.

Zoe’s description of the isolated cabin in which she and her sister had been held coupled with Rand Cooligan’s knowledge of the terrain and the spot where he’d found her running through the field had helped. The police had narrowed the possibilities to six tracts that met the description of a small, run-down and isolated shack with a long, possibly quarter-of-a-mile lane and forests bordering the river. Four were dismissed as Cooligan knew the owners.

However, Bentz didn’t think just because the farmer could vouch for the landholders that put them in the clear, so he was dispatching deputies to those parcels. The other two he would personally visit.

“There’s the Shepherd place,” Rand said in the meeting. “Small one-room house, been abandoned for five, maybe six years. Never seen anyone going in or out, and the gate’s padlocked, rusted shut. I know ’cuz me and my boy went hunting that way just last fall.”

“And the other place?” Bentz asked.

“The Tillman place?” Rand shook his head. “The owner, Sigmund Tillman, was an older guy. Oh, gosh, he’s been dead now, what? Twenty years. Left the place to his daughter as I recall.”

“But she doesn’t live there?”

“Nah. And she’s dead, too,” Rand said, thinking hard and nodding. “Murdered. Far as I know they never caught whoever did it.”

“Tillman?” Selma whispered, her eyes rounding. “There’s a man named Tillman in our support group. Milo. His twin sister’s name . . . Oh, God, I should remember this.”

“Myra,” Rand said.

“Okay, we’ll start there.” Bentz looked at Montoya. Another twin? Well, why not? To his partner, he said, “Let’s roll.”

C
HAPTER
31

“J
acob killed your sister?” Brianna repeated, and wondered how far off the rails Milo was. Jason had a brother named Prescott, she knew that, but not one named Jacob. Even if there was a brother who looked identical to Jason, why would he have killed Milo’s sister?

A cold feeling slid down her spine as the words
identical to Jason
slipped through her mind. Her heart froze. Was it possible? Did he have a twin? Hadn’t Jase said something about his mother leaving after his infant brother had died?

Was it all a lie?

She glanced up at the balcony where the tall, gray-haired guy had been smoking. He was still there, lighting up another cigarette and staring at her through the smoke he exhaled. Her skin crawled. Why the hell was he staring at her, and why was he standing so close to Jase’s apartment? She’d thought it was because he lived in a neighboring unit and that still could be true, but as she moved slightly so that her line of sight was obstructed by the stairwell, she noticed Jase’s door was open wide though his truck was nowhere to be found on the street or in the lot.

Not a big deal.

Or was it?

“No one could prove it. Myra just disappeared. Here in New Orleans, around the time of our twenty-first birthday,” Milo was saying. “We were going to celebrate together, but never got the chance. When all this talk about Selma’s daughters being abducted when they were turning twenty-one happened, I wondered, of course, but—” He shrugged, sunlight and shadow playing over his face as the wind rustled through the branches overhead, causing the leaves to turn. “Then I saw Jacob and that’s when I tried to get into contact with you.”

“You did a piss-poor job of it,” she said, thinking of him standing outside her window. Her cell phone jangled in her hand. Jase’s number flashed onto the screen. “I need to take this. I’ll just be a second,” she said, though Milo had started to protest.

“Hey, wait, I want to tell you—”

“I said, just a sec.” With an uncompromising look in Milo’s direction she held up a hand, saw that he’d snapped his mouth shut ostensibly to pout, then thought,
Too damned bad,
and turned her back on him.

“Hi,” she said, expecting Jase to launch into the story surrounding Donovan Caldwell’s death.

Instead, he said, “Zoe Denning is alive and here at the police station.”

“What?” she whispered, not thinking she heard correctly. “Zoe?” Tears of relief sprang to her eyes and she leaned against the trunk of the live oak for support. “What about Chloe?”

“Not yet . . . we don’t know. Are you at my apartment yet?”

“Yes.”

“Wait for me. I’m driving. On my way.” And then he launched into a bizarre tale of his learning he had a twin brother who could be the 21 Killer or a copycat or his own kind of freak because Zoe had first misidentified Jase as the killer. She listened in shock as the tale unfolded. “. . . and so the police have narrowed it down to a couple of places. They’re checking out a cabin owned by Myra Tillman first.”

“Wait. Tillman?” she repeated, and from the corner of her eye saw Milo’s head snap up. “That’s got to be it,” she said, pieces of the puzzle starting to tumble into place. “I’m . . . I’m with Milo now.”

“What?” Milo demanded, but she listened to the story Jase spun and once he was finished, said, “Milo says that Jacob killed his sister. Never proven because he skipped town.”

“To become the 21 Killer in Los Angeles.”

“And he came back here, not because of Rick Bentz,” she said, as the pieces finally clicked together. “But because of Myra.”

 

 

True to her word, Brianna was waiting for him.

Jase tore into the parking lot, threw himself out of his pickup, and stepped onto the sunbaked asphalt. She’d crossed the parking lot to meet him and his heart soared stupidly at the sight of her. He felt the urge to throw his arms around her, to ignore the fact that the secret he bore would keep them apart forever, but, of course, he couldn’t. He had to restrain himself.

He took one step toward her when from out of the shadows of live oaks, a man catapulted himself at him. “You bastard!” the man screamed. “You killed her!”

“Milo!” Brianna cried as Jase feinted to the side and his attacker hit hard against the side of his truck.

“What the hell is this all about?” he demanded, grabbing the guy’s arm and pulling it around his back.

“You killed Myra.”

“Not me, pal.”

“I thought I explained,” Brianna said. “Stop this!”

“Fuck!” Face red, eyes bulging, Milo was forced hard against the hot front panel of the truck. “It’s just you look so much like the bastard.”

“I know.” Jase gave the guy’s arm a little tweak.

Milo squealed and his knees buckled.

“We good now?” Jase asked, feeling sweat run down his face, his adrenaline punched up. “Because I’ve had a long day and I’m itching for a fight. What’d’ya say?”

Milo didn’t respond.

“Okay, then—”

“No! Don’t. I’m good. Good.” Milo was nodding furiously. “Good.”

Jase didn’t let go.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, man, I’m sure. Look, I didn’t mean anything. You just look so freaking much like the guy I’ve been searching for . . . hell.”

Jase released him and stepped back, but he remained wary, ready to pin the guy again and call the cops. “I don’t have time for this,” he said. “The guy you’re looking for, my brother, the police think he might be at a place your sister owned around here.”

“What?”

“A cabin by the river?”

“That old place?” Milo was shaking his head. “I thought . . . I mean, I think my uncle or cousins ended up with it.”

“Deed’s in the name of Myra Tillman, owes a ton of back taxes. State’s about to step in.”

Brianna asked, “How do you know that?”

“Connections. I called the office on my way over here.” He stared hard at Milo. “I suggest you go to the cops and explain everything you know about what happened to your sister. Talk to Detective Bentz when he gets back there. You got that?”

Milo wanted to argue. Jase saw it in the shorter man’s eyes.

“Okay,” he acquiesced, still scowling and rubbing his arm.

“I mean it.”

“I said, okay!”

“Good.” To Brianna, he said, “Let’s go. I think it’s time I met my brother.” He was starting for his pickup when a shadow crossed his path. A premonition of dread tightened his muscles as he looked up to find his father standing on the other side of a live oak.

“Don’t you have unfinished business?” the old man asked as he flicked a knowing glance at Brianna.

“Not now, Dad,” Jase warned.

“No time like the present.”

“I said, not now. Not when the police are about to take down the twin I never knew I had, the sicko who is probably the damned 21 Killer.”

“Always chasin’ a story,” the old man said, unperturbed by this bit of news, that his own son could be a serial killer.

“What’s he talking about?” Brianna asked.

Edward’s old eyes twinkled.

“We’ve got to go.” He rounded the pickup to the passenger door. “Come on, Brianna.”

She looked from his father to him and back again as she followed him. “What’s going on, Jase?”

His old man chuckled. “Tell her on the way,” he suggested, and patted his shirt where the envelope Jase had left him poked out of his pocket. “Jase here knows all about how your sister died.”

“What?” she asked, her eyes, so like Arianna’s, turning on him. He didn’t wait, just grabbed her arm with one hand and opened the door of his truck with the other.

“You’re a bastard,” he said to the man who sired him. “You know that, don’t you?”

“So I’ve heard.” Ed reached for his near-empty pack of Camel straights. “But I’m gonna fix that right now. You think you killed a man, don’t you?”

Jase paused, his hand on the hot door handle of his truck. He remembered knocking a guy senseless with one hard punch.

“It wasn’t you, son. Oh, yeah, you hit him hard. Cold-cocked the son of a bitch. But he didn’t die from it.”

“Wait. What? We buried him.”

“Buried who?” Brianna asked, staring at him in horror.

“Tell her.” Ed lit up.

Jase drew in a deep breath. Wasn’t he the one who’d said there would be no more secrets, hadn’t he vowed as much to himself? But not like this, not for his old man’s amusement. “The man who killed your sister.”

“What?” she cried. “But Arianna drowned.”

Jase was sick inside remembering. “I know. And . . . and it’s my fault. Come on, let’s go. I’ll explain.”

“What the fuck is going on here?” Milo said, hearing all of the conversation.

Ed chuckled again and let out a stream of smoke. “This here,” he said to Milo, “this here is Judgment Day. Oh, and, son?” he said to Jase through Jase’s open window. “That grave up at the farm?”

Jase froze. “What about it?”

“Doesn’t exist,” the old man said. “All that’s up there is an old tarp filled with rocks. You didn’t kill no one, boy. If you don’t believe me, ask Prescott.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Brianna demanded as Edward Bridges let out a long, self-satisfied laugh that was almost a cackle and ended with a coughing spate.

Jase started the truck and peeled out of the lot.

All of the ghosts of the past seemed to chase after him as he started talking, his confession as dark as the middle of the night. As she backed into the corner of the cab of the truck, listening in stunned silence, he admitted the truth.

“I loved Arianna,” he said and caught the pain in Brianna’s eyes. “It was a long time ago, of course.”

“Of course,” she whispered, a sharpness in her voice as they both knew how long Arianna had been gone.

“We would meet at the river late at night. She’d sneak out and I’d be waiting.” It had seemed so innocent, or at least no more dangerous than being in trouble with her parents.

As the miles rolled beneath the tires of the truck, he added, “It hadn’t gone on all that long. A few weeks. One night I showed up later than expected because of car trouble and when I got there—” He cleared his throat remembering how they’d swum beneath the moon and the stars. It had been exciting, almost dreamlike until that particular night, the one that changed all their lives forever. “When I got there,” he continued feeling the weight of Brianna’s gaze, seeing, from the corner of his eye how horrified she was, “Arianna wasn’t alone.”

“What do you mean?” she asked and he heard the hesitation in her voice over the rumble of the engine.

“There was a man with her. An . . . an assailant.”

“A murderer?”

“Rapist.” In his mind’s eye he remembered walking through the forest to see Arianna lying on the riverbank, her body white and naked, a faceless man atop her. She’d been whimpering, sobbing softly and painfully as her rapist had grunted in some kind of sick pleasure. “I went ape-shit,” Jase said. All the anger he’d felt at that moment came flooding back. “Jumped the guy and tried to beat him senseless. Or . . . or thought I had. It’s all a blur. It’s like when people say they ‘saw red.’ I don’t remember hitting him, but I did, and he turned, kind of roared and twisted. That’s when I saw the knife, the one he’d used to subdue Arianna.”

“Oh dear God,” Brianna whispered, her voice breaking.

Without thinking, Jase had attacked, sprang on the back of the man who had turned in the darkness, a blade flashing. He’d jabbed quickly, connecting with Jase’s face and slicing, creating the scar Jase bore today.

“He cut me.” With one hand, he indicated the scar. “Got his licks in.” The truth was they’d fought, struggled. “We went at it and somehow I managed to connect, a blow to his nose while holding his other wrist away from me. The guy was stunned and dropped the knife before crumpling into a heap.” His jaw worked as he remembered the scene, how the bastard, his pants at his ankles had slumped to the ground and Jase had given him one final kick. All the while Arianna had screamed and mewled, scrabbling in the darkness for her clothes.

“How come I’ve never heard of this?”

“Because it was covered up. That’s the way Arianna wanted it.”

“I don’t understand.”

Neither did Jase. Never had. Never would. “I—I was certain I’d killed the bastard and stupid kid that I was, once I saw that Arianna was safe, or as safe as she could be, I took her home, she begged me not to tell a soul and I lied and told her I wouldn’t. Then I asked my brother and father to help me. Since I was convinced I’d killed a man, I wanted my dad to go with me to the police, but Ed would have nothing to do with it.”

Brianna had wrapped her arms around herself as if to ward off a chill, or protect herself somehow as Jase took a corner a little too fast and the tires screeched in protest.

“Dad,” Jase spat out, remembering how stupid he’d been, how scared, how young. “He swore he’d buried the body under a tree on the farm, and I believed him. It was a mistake and a lie, but that’s what he told me. The tree?” he glanced at her, “It’s still there, kind of a reminder, I guess. And now Prescott, my brother, he wants me to buy the place. Tree and all.”

“Your brother was part of it?”

Jase’s jaw grew rock hard. “Seems as if.”

Jase stole a look at her, saw the revulsion on her face, the same revulsion he felt. “So now Ed says I didn’t kill the guy?” Jase couldn’t believe it. “What kind of man would let his son think he was a murderer?”

“The same kind that wouldn’t let his kid go to the cops and plead self-defense,” she said, her voice cold as ice. “What happened to my sister?” Brianna asked, staring at him as if he were Satan incarnate.

“I went back to Arianna, once things were settled with Dad and Pres. I pleaded with her to go to the hospital, or the police. Or both, but she was frantic, insisted that no one, not even you know.”