Chapter 27

A body like this doesn’t happen overnight. It takes the college years, pregnancy, neglect, and three extra tacos.

-Cobie’s secret thoughts

Cobie

“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey,” I cooed, tugging lightly on Mary’s big toe.

She pulled it away from me and then snuggled down into the couch.

Rafe started to laugh.

“Shut it,” I snickered, bending down to run my finger along the length of Mary’s foot. “If you don’t wake up, Mary Me, you won’t get a yummy breakfast. That means cereal.”

I sang the last words to her, thinking it would rouse my sleeping beauty, but it didn’t.

She just pulled her foot away again when Rafe stood up from his position.

One second I was standing beside the couch, staring down at Mary who’d refused to let go of Dante’s tennis shoe, and the next I was falling backward.

Glass shattered, the world around me sounded like it’d exploded, and I was disoriented.

I couldn’t figure out what to do, I wasn’t sure where I was. Hell, I could just barely manage to breathe.

I was so confused, and I couldn’t remember anything.

Distantly I was aware of another bang, this one much sharper than the last.

Then I felt my body moving.

It took me a long time to finally come back to myself, and when I did, I was shaking in fear.

I'd never been so scared in my life as I was right then.

“You think I want to do this?” Drake hissed in my face. “I don't. But he's given me no choice.”

I looked at him like he was crazy.

I was in a car. Drake was in my face, and I could hear crying—I assumed from Mary—in the car with me. I didn’t see Rafe anywhere in the car.

“We're gonna do this, and to make sure you don't accidentally get out...”

He started to duct tape me to the seat. That's when I started to struggle.

I should've started earlier. Should've tried to get away before. However, I knew that any way I tried was going to end badly for me.

“You know what?” He paused in wrapping the tape around me. “This won't look like an accident if I do it like this.”

I agreed. Though I wasn't going to tell him that. He didn't need to know I agreed or disagreed.

The man was unhinged at the best of times. At least lately. Ever since he'd found out I was dating Dante, he'd changed into the man that Marianne had described to me.

“Why are you doing this?” I cried.

I felt sick to my stomach, scared beyond belief and on the verge of a total breakdown.

Dante was going to see this, and his world was going to implode for a second time.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

“You gave me no choice.” Drake tightened his hold on my hair. “First, Marianne had to go and steal the life insurance money from our son’s death—which I planned out quite perfectly, thank you very fucking much. I sold our house to help pay the debt, but it wasn’t enough. I had to make it look like I fucking cared about that cunt by paying for her hospital stay—which also ended up taking away from the money I had saved. Then, I felt like I was finally catching my lucky break when you gave me your house—all that equipment and storage in it allowing me to make money elsewhere by allowing them to use those tools and storing their shit in the shop—charging them more for my services and building my underground bunker with the extra. Storing even more shit for them. Then you went and took that away from me. I had already tried to contest Marianne’s will, and fucking Dante shut that down. I tried to get custody of that kid claiming I was the child’s father. Not that I would have ever wanted that stupid freak of a kid, but I would’ve gotten a good payout on her, what with her being disabled and all. Plus, with her mother being dead, I could’ve gotten something soon. It would’ve tided me over…but then your stupid freak of a boyfriend’s family ruined that for me, too.”

That was the first time I’d heard anything about him contesting the will or him trying to obtain legal rights to Mary.

I honestly didn’t think even Dante knew about it because he would’ve told me. That information was a little too important not to share.

He growled.

“Well, no more!”

I didn’t know what to say.

I didn’t know what Drake was involved in. Again, I’d stayed out of that part of the situation that Dante was dealing with because, frankly, I didn’t want to know.

But now, I felt lost. Why would he need this kind of money? What was he into that he needed so much this badly and this fast?

“Please,” I whispered. “I didn’t do anything to you. Mary didn’t do anything, either.”

“Fuck you, and fuck Mary.”

I opened my mouth to say something else, but before I could, something changed in Drake’s panicked eyes.

He reached for me.

“We’ll just do it this way.”

Then he slammed my head so hard against the steering wheel, so fast and hard, that it was the last thing I remembered.

In the darkness, the terror was gone and things weren't as they seemed.

***

Dante

If I never relived the last moments of my wife and childrens’ deaths in my dreams, my life would be perfect.

I scrubbed my hands down my face, trying to clear my mind of the last of the nightmare that I had while I tried to catch an hour of sleep on my office couch.

Even now, twenty minutes later, I was still feeling the effects of that chilling dream.

I was driving to make a pick-up before heading home to pick up my girls, and my heart was still pounding.

I relived my worst nightmares in my dreams, over and over again.

Or I should say, I used to before Cobie came into the picture.

Now, though, I had a woman who woke me when the shadows crept in.

Then again, that woman did a lot of things for me I was just now realizing.

For instance, washing my clothes. Once she learned that Lily used to do it the same way as she did, Cobie changed up her habits. She started folding them differently than she had been doing for years just so I didn’t have a reminder of that loss whenever I looked at my folded clothes. She didn’t do this because I had asked her to or because she didn't want me to remember Lily, but because she was trying to slow the barrage of memories in an attempt to make sure I didn't have fucking panic attacks.

Then there was the way she completely rearranged her life to revolve around mine. She kept Mary while I worked days and nights and whenever in between. I didn't ask her to take over Mary's care—she naturally stepped into the role of her mother because she wanted to and because she loved Mary as much as I did.

I was so focused on how Cobie cured me of some of my demons that I didn't see the car that was stalled on the side of the road until I'd nearly missed it.

“Shit.” I slowed down.

Then I backed up and stopped until the truck's hitch was inches away from the car's bumper.

I'd done this so many times over the years that it was ingrained in me where I needed to stop to make it easiest to hitch up the car.

Getting out, I hooked it up in a matter of moments, secured the vehicle, and then was back in my truck a few minutes after I'd parked.

My phone was ringing when I got back inside, momentarily confusing me.

It was so late at night that nobody should be calling me. Dispatch would call, sure, but they'd do that on my radio, not on my personal phone.

Hitting the answer button without looking at who it was, I placed it to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Finally!”

I frowned and pulled the phone away from my head, looking at the display.

Cobie?

“Who is this?”

“It was so fuckin easy.”

A cold chill slithered down my spine.

“Who is this?” I repeated.

“Your worst nightmare.”

Something inside me snapped, and I snarled out, “You have no fucking clue what my worst nightmares are!”

“Oh, but I kinda do.”

I started to say something, but the sound of flesh hitting flesh stopped me.

“Don't.”

I didn't recognize my own voice.

“Sorry, too late. You ruined me, so I'm gonna ruin you.”

Then he started to laugh. “Bet you didn't know that it was me with your wife, too.”

Everything inside me stilled. “I’d had a few problems. I was thinking about the kid, and whether I was making the wrong decision leaving him in the back of my car all day. Not like I could do anything. But still.”

Bile started to work its way up my throat, and I sat there, frozen, as I tried to decide what to do.

I couldn’t hang up and call the cops…that would make it to where I no longer had him on the line. And I knew I needed to keep him on the line.

“Where are you?”

I didn’t want to hear anything about what he was talking about, but Drake acted like he didn’t hear my question. He continued with his story.

“I ran that kid off the road toward your sister’s car. It was an accident, of course. They blamed it on the kid texting and driving, but I was the one who’d caused her to lose control.”

And then I heard what sounded like a door opening. Followed by Mary’s screams.

“You hear that?”

I put the truck in gear, momentarily forgetting that I had a car semi-attached to the back of my truck, and started to roll forward.

The jerk of the chains on the car had me glancing in the rearview mirror, but I still didn’t stop.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “Please, don’t hurt her.”

“Oh, I won’t hurt her. Or at least it won’t appear like it was me.”

And then I heard what sounded like him throwing the phone against something hard. “All right, ladies and gentlemen. Take two, and go!”

And I knew then, exactly what he was going to do.

He was going to make it look like Cobie had driven off the same bridge that my wife and children had died on.

I didn’t think.

I didn’t do anything but drive.

I was two minutes away.

Two minutes.

I could make it.

They would make it.

It would be okay.

It had to be okay.