Two Thousand Miles (26 page)

“We’ve already been hurt—all of us. And it’s your fault.”

“Tell me where it is!” he roared.

“Never!” I screamed, even though I had no idea where the recorder was.

Rick’s hands closed around my neck, forcing his full weight against my throat, closing my airway. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t make a sound. I was dizzy, seeing stars, my brain
becoming numb.

This was it—how I would die. Rick would strangle me
like he had strangled Veronica. Scenes from my unfinished life flickered through my mind like a bumpy old silent movie reel. My mother, the night she begged my father to sign the divorce paper and let her go. My father, eating pizza with Olivia and me on Thursday nights—watching Vampire Diaries. And Mason, I would never get to tell him…

Just before my world went dark, a deafening thwack filled my ears. Suddenly, Rick’s limp body fell
across mine. I gasped, fighting hard to catch my breath.

Something awkwardly fell to the floor near me with a loud thump. I cried out, unable to see what was happening. “I’m sorry,” Olivia murmured, her tears falling onto my cheeks. Olivia pushed the blindfold away from my eyes.

“I hit him with a lamp.” Olivia said, her bottom lip quivering, seeing the bloody gash in the back of her father’s head.

“Thank you for coming back,” I breathed.

“Casper’s always been a shitty liar,” Olivia mumbled. “The police are on their way.” She shoved her father’s wilted body off of mine and untied me. Olivia freed Marion while I ran outside to check on Ray.

Ray groaned as I turned him over to get a better look at his head. His eyes rolled around as they tried to focus on me. Thankfully, he’d only been hit with something and not shot.

The police and ambulances arrived, sirens blaring. This time
, I was glad to see them. “Lay still, I’m going to tell them you’re back here.” Ray muttered something that didn’t make sense. Turned out, he had a minor concussion, but would be all right. 

When I came back inside, Rick had already been hauled off in handcuffs. Marion was in my father’s office, leaned against his desk, taking in the mess. Casper had pulled away drywall and emptied all of the
bookshelves and drawers searching for the recorder Rick had hired him to find.

“I found Lenny tied up in a bathroom upstairs. He’s okay, but I think he went to the hospital for a sedative,” Marion said, lifelessly.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

‘I should be asking you that.”

“I’m okay, a little shaken up, but okay.”

“Me too,” Marion said. “Although a sedative might help,” she muttered.

I glanced around the room. “It’s amazing that they didn’t find anything after tearing up this room the way they did.
At least Rick will be going to jail for something,” I said.

“Assault, kidnapping—if his record is clean, and he has a good lawyer, he might walk on those charges.”

“He won’t walk,” Olivia said. “I’ll testify against him. My mother will testify against him. She knows what he did and she has proof. He bailed Veronica out of jail. He hired and paid for her attorney. It’s how she got out so quickly.” Olivia looked at me. “He shot your father, not Veronica,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “It’s why he was so desperate to find the recorder.”

“What? How do you know that?”

“My mother told me he came home one night with blood on his shirt. He said he’d cut himself. She offered to take the shirt to the cleaners; he told her to throw it away instead. The next day, when the news broke about your dad, she knew my dad was involved, so she took the shirt out of the trash and hid it. But it was when my dad made her tell the police that he was having an affair with Veronica to explain the phone calls they’d made to each other that she knew for sure. I’m sorry she didn’t say anything before. She was so afraid of what he would do to her.”

I hugged Olivia and we cried. I didn’t know what else to do. It was all so overwhelming. “How could he do this to us?” Olivia sobbed. Not knowing what to say, I hugged her harder.

After a while, Olivia let go of me. She scanned the room. “Are you sure you don’t know where your dad moved the camera?” she asked.

“I don’t remember him saying anything to me about a camera.” I closed my eyes, trying to think.

“Well, it’s got to be in here somewhere,” Olivia said, and began searching through debris on the floor.

“
Liv, you’re a genius!” I gushed. “They were looking in the wrong place—the obvious place. The camera didn’t have to be in this room. It only needed a clear view of it.”

I bounced out of my father’s office to the round wall across the hall that held our grand staircase and opened the box I
’d once adored as a child. My mother’s antique jewelry box sat atop the French console table that had also once been hers.

Inside the box was a camera, the lens aimed through the keyhole
at my father’s office. Marion wiped tears from her face. “All this time, it was in plain sight. Just like everyone else, I knew it had to have been somewhere in his office.”

“I’m sure that’s what he was counting on,” I told her.

“What do we do with it now?” Olivia asked Marion.

“I’ll review it, and
then turn it over to the police.”

“H
ow are we going to break all of this to Dad?” I asked Marion.

She didn’t answer, just exhaled hard, as if she had no idea.

I looked at Olivia. “What are you going to do once the news breaks?”

“I don’t know, I can’t even think about that right now. My mom’s parents
live in Vermont; I think she should go there. She’ll be shunned here. I mean, I will be, too, but I’ve got thicker skin than she does. She’s too fragile to handle all of this on her own. She’ll need her family around her.”

“I’ll get on this now,” Marion said, holding up the camera.

“Can I come with you?” Olivia asked.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I’m not sure what we’ll see.”

“It’ll all come out in court anyway, right? Better to know what to expect than not,” Olivia said.

The three of us went back to Marion’s and solemnly watched the video from the night my father was shot. Olivia had been right. My father discovered Rick tossing his office. They argued, and then Rick fired the shot that had almost killed him.

Olivia looked as if she was in another world. I couldn’t imagine what she must have been going through—watching one of the people responsible for bringing her into the world try to take someone out of it. “You won’t need to testify,” Marion told her. “There’s enough here to convict.”

“Is it okay if I stay here with Kat tonight, I don’t want to go home yet,” Olivia asked Marion. Her place was probably swarming with reporters by now. “Sure
,” Marion agreed.

I grabbed two spoons and a pint of chocolate ice cream from the freezer and took Olivia to Marion’s guest room where I’d been s
taying. We snuggled beneath the comforter and dug into the container.

“Do you hate me now?”

“What? You saved my life today,” I gasped.

“Yeah, from my attempted-murderer-of-a-father.”

“Liv, what your dad did isn’t your fault. If you hadn’t come back today…” I didn’t want to think about it. “…I wouldn’t be here with you now.”

“I’m sorry for the bitchy things I said to you the other night. I didn’t mean them. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Kat.”

“Me either,” I said.

“Today is the day,” Marion sang. Then the curtains swished open, the morning light blinding me.

“The day for what?”
I groaned, eyes closed.

“Your father is being released from the hospital today.”

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Language,” Marion snapped.

“Sorry,” I grumbled.

I rolled out of bed and robotically got dressed. Olivia and I had stayed up late talking about everything we’d done during our time apart, and I was still tired. She was too; she didn’t budge when I told her we were leaving.

I stumbled out to Marion’s Volvo and got in. “Where are we going to live?” I asked her. “Because I’m not going back to that house—too much bad juju.”

Marion laughed. “You and your father are going to stay with me for now. We’ll decide what to do about the house later.”

“Torch it,” I offered.

“I think I need to call my sister and find out what all she let you get away with in Slidell.”

I laughed. “When is the last time you’ve been home for a visit?” I asked.

“A while.”

“That’s what I thought,” I muttered.

“No offense taken,” Marion said.

I laughed. She was a little stiff; she could have used a good dose of swamp water to loosen her up.

When we arrived at the hospital, I hesitated before getting out of the car
. It hit me that after everything my father had been through the ordeal wasn’t over yet.

“Have you told him what happened to him?” I wasn’t sure he knew. We hadn’t talked about it, and all Marion said was that he didn’t remember anything when he woke up.

“He knows, but not because I told him. His memory is slowly returning, which is a good thing for his recovery.”

“How’s he handling it?”

“As well as could be expected. He’ll just need a little time to move past it.”

“I think we all will,” I said.

My father was sitting in a wheelchair in his room when we arrived. “They won’t let me walk out on my own,” he complained. “It’s hospital policy,” Marion soothed, touching my father’s face in a way that made me wonder if their relationship status had changed. Casper did call Marion my father’s girlfriend when he was holding us hostage. At the time, I thought he was just being an ass, but maybe he knew something I didn’t.

“You look great, daddy. How are you feeling?”

“Brand new,” he smiled. “And ready to get out of here.”

A nurse wheeled my father down to the lobby and out the front doors where Marion’s car was parked. He thanked the nurse and stood up—without assistance—to prove he could have walked himself out of the hospital and got in the car.

When we entered Marion’s
apartment, Olivia stood up from the couch. “Hey, Mr. P,” she said. “Lookin’ good.” I placed my hand on my dad’s shoulder, dreading breaking the news about Rick, but it had to be done. My father placed his hand over mine. “I know,” he said. “Liv and I had a nice talk on the phone when you and Marion were on your way to get me.” Olivia nodded in agreement, tears glistening in her eyes.

“Yeah, he was gracious, as always,” she said. “But I do have something to say to you, Kat.” Olivia crossed her arms over her chest, appearing annoyed.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“It’s just that now I understand why you’d want to live in swamp country.”

“Huh?”

Mason stepped into the living room from the hallway. He was just as heart-stoppingly beautiful as I’d remembered. He was wearing Khaki shorts, a polo shirt, and that LSU cap.

“Mason,” I gasped. He smiled. “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

“I came to see you,” he shrieked. “I thought you might like it. Your dad said—” “My dad!”

Of course, my dad
.

“Daddy!
What did you do?” I whipped around and asked him.

“Just offered the boy a ride is all,” he grinned.
A ride
? He’d sent a plane, I knew it. I turned back to Mason. “I called you
five
days ago,” I growled, holding out five fingers to concrete my point, “and you didn’t call me back!”

“So, that’s what’s got your panties in a twist,” he grinned.

“Yeah, that’d be it,” I said, my hands perched on my hips.

“Did you leave a message?”

“No. I didn’t think I had to.”

“Well, you should have, ‘
cause the screen’s busted on my phone, and unless you leave a message, I won’t know you called. I like your hair, by the way,” Mason winked at me. I smiled. I couldn’t help it.

“You better now?” he asked.

“I guess,” I said, shrugging.

“Well, c’mon then.”

I jumped into Mason’s arms and held on tight. “I missed you, Cali girl,” he whispered.

I leaned back, taking Mason’s face in my hands. “What the hell happened to your neck?” he barked.

“Later,” I said. “There’s something I need to say first.” Mason’s mouth perked
up, amused. I looked into Mason’s eyes and said the words I’d feared I would never get to say to him. “I love you, Mason Dugas.”

“I love you, too,
Katara Parker; whether you’re standin’ right next to me, or two thousand miles away. I’m always gonna love you,” Mason said, softer. I kissed Mason and didn’t care who was watching. I know girls say they don’t need a man to complete them, but it’s certainly nice when you find one who does.

Olivia cleared her throat, breaking Mason and me apart.