One Way Or Another You Will Pay (26 page)

Bear
turns his head and looks at me. “Go check up on the kids again and…take your time,” he intones.

I
look at Bear, my eyebrows raised. Is he going to do it? Kill Tom after all?

“Go,
’Rena!” Bear says in a quiet voice, his eyes fixed on Tom.

I
look at Tom.

“Go
’Rena
,” he mimics.

With
a nod, I drag myself out of the room. But I don’t go to the kids. I stand behind the door and listen, unable to tear myself away completely from the scene.

“You
terrorize my family,” I hear Bear say. “You snatch my baby in the middle of the night and you cut her arm, you come at my family with a gun, and you want
me
to give you the easy way out, regardless of how it affects my relationship with Warren? Nope. Don’t work like that.”

“Oh,
please! You can quit the act, Arena’s left the room, you yobo!” (Yobo: equivalent to a roughneck.)

“See,
it’s not all bad, come to think of it,” Bear continues, ignoring Tom’s insult. “I mean, if I kill you, I’m a former cop, so I would have some serious explaining to do. This way, there’s less paperwork. And, you get time to reflect, think about Sasha and suffer, think about all you did to Warren and suffer, think about what you did to defenseless women like Ingrid and Arena and suffer. What you’re going to have now, the life you’re gonna live from now on, is going to be, well,
different
. You don’t know how good you had it before. Now you’re gonna pray for death and it’s going to be slow and torturous. ”

“I’ll
make you money,” Tom implores. “I’m so good at online gambling. I’m a genius, really I am. Promise you, man, I can crack…”

“I
already have your money, boy, and I’m really enjoying it. Don’t need no more.”

“Fuck
you! And that’s a double negative. Multiple negation, you mor…!”

“And
after you destroyed my rep and almost had me arrested for Savannah’s disappearance, after you put my family through the wringer, I’ll be enjoying it so much more. Keep still.” Bear starts to count. “One…two…three…”

“NO!”
Tom shouts. “Stop doing that!”

“…keep
still…four…five…six…”

“NO!
NO!” Sounds like Tom is wriggling.

“…sssseven…yep,
that’s it!

“No,
don’t! Don’t! DOOOOOON’T!”

“You
enjoy your life, now, you evil bastard!”

I
hear a gurgling sound, then silence.

My
hands fly to my mouth. Is Tom dead? With my eyes closed, I listen in.

Then,
I hear Tom’s groan. More like a rasping sound.

“Police,
please,” I hear Bear say as I barge back into the room.

“I
just stabbed an intruder. An escaped convict. I don’t have a firearm but he does. Yes, ma’am, I have the weapon on me.”

After
he hangs up, with wide eyes, I watch him email the video he took earlier on to his Hotmail account. “In case the cops take my phone,” he explains, eyeing Tom, who lies face down in his saliva.

Bear
pushes me out of the room and shuts the door. “This is what you say …”

I
nod as he preps me.

Within
five minutes, Soong’s house is crammed with cops, most of them with weapons drawn and ready to empty their guns into the escaped convict, who not only terrorized us, but also held Meredith and Burt Simon hostage for hours.

Luckily,
according to the police, the Simon’s are okay. Badly rattled, but okay enough for Meredith to talk to the press about her awful ordeal in the hands of a convicted murderer, an escaped killer.

Ritchie
bursts through the door. “What the fuck, Arena?! Is this guy foking mull (crazy) or something?”

“Something,”
I mutter. “Beyond crazy, for sure.”

After
Tom is taken away on a stretcher, Bear is, of course, questioned by police. Not arrested, just interrogated by three detectives, who are unusually respectful and make it clear Bear’s in the …
clear.

I
guess when Savannah turned up, they changed their mind about Bear’s involvement in her disappearance and realized their mistake.

Of
course, they didn’t apologise for manipulating the press into pointing the finger of blame Bear’s way.

Not
that we expected them to.

Although,
it would be nice if they did.

But
people who only have bits of the story, those who don’t know us, still slow down outside our house and point at the home of the cult worshippers.

They
even take photos of the home of the woman whose two children disappeared. (Some of them don’t acknowledge we’ve got Savannah back.)

I’m
seriously considering moving because of that. Maybe to some pan-handle block with high gates so that we’re not visible from the street.

“Tom
Botha was stabbed in the back,” the detectives say in a polite voice. “We can’t help but notice he’s been stabbed in the
back
and not in the chest, as if he was advancing toward you? Know what I mean?”

Bear
looks the detective in the eye and says, “A man enters my home, an escaped convict, a court-convicted murderer, drags my wife downstairs at gunpoint, assaults her, then tries to rape her. I enter in time, disarm him, then instead of killing him, I wrestle with him and in the process I stab him, saving my wife and my three children. That is my statement. Anything else, please speak to my attorney.”

“Do
you have an attorney
already
?”

“Nope.
But I sure as hell want one now.” He turns his back on the detectives and focuses on the kids.

End
of story.

After
exchanging not-much-we-can-do-about-it looks, the detectives turn to me for my statement.

“Yes,
he assaulted me,” I say. “Tried to rape me. While he and my husband struggled, I ran upstairs to check on my sleeping children and call the police. When my husband called me, I went downstairs and saw my ex-husband lying on the floor. No, I did not see the stabbing.”

That’s
my story.

“Mm,”
suspicious detective with hooded eyes boring into mine, says.

Before
he’s taken away to the police station for formal questioning, where his attorney is meeting him, Bear is allowed to say goodbye to the kids, who have been asked to remain in the bedroom until Tom is carted away.

Bear
hugs us all, then turns to our son.

“Did
you kill him?” Warren whispers, his eyes expectant.

“No.
I didn’t. But he won’t be coming back to hurt us again.”

“Not
ever?” Warren asks.

“Nope.”

“You sure?” Amy asks, jumping up and down. “That’s what you guys said the laaaast time and he …”

“He
won’t,” Bear says, looking into Warren’s face. “Take my word for it.” He ruffles Warren’s hair. Warren wraps his arms around Bear’s waist and they hug, then indulge in some backslapping.

I
watch the interaction between the two of them, the sadness in Bear’s eyes as he looks at Warren and I swallow hard. What if Bear wasn’t in our lives right now?

What
if we didn’t connect? What if I didn’t spot the diamond in the rough? Behind that hairy face and awful clothes he wore. (Still is a bad dresser. Hates shopping for clothes and is thrilled when I shop for him. Unlike Tom, who was a spiffy dresser. To the nines.)

Bear
places his hands on Warren’s shoulders. “Warren, I need you take care of the girls until I get back, boy.”

“Okay,”
Warren says. To people who don’t know Warren, he seems calm and unruffled. But only I noticed he changed his pants.

Bear
turns to me and gives me his special smile.

“I
love you, Bear,” I say melting into his arms.

“Stay
strong and be careful,” he whispers. “Watch out for Ingrid.”

“Okay.”

“Ritchie will be with you until I get back.”

I
nod.

Bear
is led into the back of a police car and driven to the police station.

“How
is he?” I ask a paramedic who attended to Tom.

“Him?
Be prepared for a lawsuit. He plans to sue you and your husband for attempted murder.” His eyes twinkle with amusement.

“Oh,
yeah, that’s Tom, a’right.”

As
I stand with Savannah in my arms, Amy on one side of me and Warren barnacling around the other side of me, I think to myself,
We need to get Soong some new carpeting because of the blood stains. Maybe even a new lounge suite, while I’m at it.

Oh,
let’s not forget her patio chair that Bear and I broke when we acted like hormonal teenagers at her fundraiser.

I
smile to myself. Bear said he would protect us and he did.

****

At around 4 PM that afternoon, Ritchie and I are at a coffee shop, waiting to meet with Ingrid.

I
could go to her house, considering she asked me over but I don’t trust her right now.

She
sold us out to Tom, remember?

In
fact, right now, I have little sympathy for her. Maybe no sympathy at all. I mean, Tom could have shot me and my kids. The outcome could have been one of the biggest tragedies ever.

But
then again, she did call Bear and tell him that Tom was on his way to me.

That
was confusing to me; on one hand, sell us out to Tom but on the other hand, call Bear and warn him about Tom?

How
exactly am I supposed to regard her?

The
first thing I plan to do is show her the video of Tom disrespecting her. Let her hurt, I don’t care.

At
the coffee shop, the first thing I notice is her hair – it’s shiny and neatly styled and I’m assuming she had it done yesterday morning in anticipation of seeing Tom.

Anger
washes over me. What the hell is wrong with her?

But
when she removes her oversized sun shades and looks up at me, all my doubts and desire to hurt her, fly out of the French doors.

Her
lip is split, her eye is black, and the left hand side of her face is purple and blue.

“Ingrid,
what the hell?”

She
nods, her eyes darting between the Ritchie and the table.

“Bastard!”
Ritchie mutters.

“Whyyy?”
I ask.

“He
asked me to get condoms and I refused.”

“Oh.”

She looks at me. “That wasn’t part of the plan. Having sex with you, raping you, that wasn’t what he was supposed to do. He was just supposed to get his son.”

All
along, she didn’t believe that Tom was after me, that Tom was obsessed with me, but I guess she found out.

“Tried
to talk him out of it. I thought…I thought when he was out, I could reason with him, get him to change his mind about taking Warren, and maybe…we could just go to South Africa. He, me, my kids…”

“But
he got violent when you interfered with his plans?”

She
nods. “I called Bear and told him about it,” she says, in a voice filled with defeat. “Didn’t know what else to do.”

Ritchie
and I exchange what-do-we-do-now? looks.

“H…how
is he?” she asks.

I
lift and drop my shoulders. “They couldn’t give me much information. But there is a possibility that he will not be able to walk again.”

Slowly,
she traces a pattern on the tablecloth. “He hit me in front of the children.” Her eyes fill with tears.

Of
course he would.

A
short silence follows.

“Will
they allow me to visit him?”

Did
I hear correctly?

She
still wants to see him?

I
look at Ritchie. He shakes his head in what looks like exasperation.