Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 77582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Wes sighs. “So, yeah, I thought about all that and understood why you’d decided against reporting.”
“He didn’t really hurt me, Wes,” I say. “I mean, he did, obviously. I was terrified, and I have no doubt that he would have done very bad things to me if you hadn’t shown up. But he didn’t get to follow through on those things. In the eyes of the law, he was only guilty of roughing me up a little. That’s not enough to land him in prison or get him off the streets for any length of time. It’s only enough to make him even more angry and myself more of a target.”
He nods, his jaw tight. “I thought about that, too. Our system is so messed up. The fact that we have to wait until clearly violent people step over the line drives me crazy. So…” He clears his throat and blows out a long breath. “This is hard,” he mutters. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Just tell me,” I say, my own stomach churning. “The suspense is worse than whatever you did.”
He glances up, arching a thick brow. “You want to bet?”
I let out a nervous laugh. “Jesus, you’re scaring me. What did you do? Kill him?”
He pauses just long enough to make the blood drain from my extremities before he says, “No, but I stalked him. Or, paid a private detective to stalk him for me, since I didn’t really have the time.”
My eyes bulge. “What?”
“He wasn’t an accountant, like he told you. He wasn’t from Redwood Falls, either. He was a janitor at a high school in Chicago.”
My jaw drops. “Chicago? But his location tracking said—”
“He must have been using a VPN or something to make it look like he was local,” Wes cuts in. “In reality, he lived with his mother in a bad neighborhood in South Shore and had a reputation for being a creep. The police knew he wasn’t quite right, but they were busy dealing with gangs and drug dealers. Carl had never done anything bad enough to get more than a ticket for trespassing and a strongly worded warning to quit lurking outside the girls’ locker room at the YMCA.”
“Gross,” I say, my nose wrinkling.
“Yeah.” Wes pauses, unlacing and relacing his fingers, his gaze shifting to the fire as he adds, “He was gross, but he wasn’t doing anything criminal. Not anything we could use to get him locked up, anyway. Not until my guy realized he hadn’t brought groceries home in close to three weeks.”
I frown. “Is that a crime? If so, I might be guilty. Sometimes I go weeks without hitting the store. I live on leftovers from catering events, frozen soup, and fancy oatmeal.”
“He wasn’t bringing home leftovers, either. And his house didn’t look like the kind of place where people were freezing soup or whipping up batches of oatmeal, if you know what I mean,” he says, his gaze still locked on the fire. “It was a hunch, really. The PI and I both felt in our gut that something was wrong in there. We suspected his mother, a shut-in who’d had several strokes, was probably being abused.”
“Oh no,” I say, feeling terrible for the woman. Monsters like Carl usually aren’t raised by sweet little homemakers, but no one deserves to be trapped or forced to go hungry.
Wes gives a short nod. “Yeah. But…it was worse than we thought.”
My hand comes to cover my mouth, my sinking gut already knowing where this is headed.
“She’d been dead for a while,” he adds. “And not from natural causes. Apparently, he’d choked her and left the body in the back room so he could keep collecting her social security and disability payments. The cop who did the welfare check said the smell was horrific.”
“Oh God.” I suck in a breath that catches halfway down my throat. “Oh my God, Wes. Why haven’t I heard about this? Was it on the news?”
He shrugs and tosses a few more sticks on the fire. “Chicago’s far away. And a lot of bad things happen in big cities. The news can’t report on everything.”
I sit back in my chair, stunned. “Wow. So, is he…”
“He’s in jail awaiting trial. But it’ll be a slam dunk. He’s going away for a long time. You won’t have to worry about him showing up in your life again.” Wes looks up from the flames, his gaze uncertain. “I hope that didn’t make you hate me more. I was only trying to keep you safe.”
My chest aching, I shake my head. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you.”
“But you don’t trust me,” he says, his gaze still sad. “And why should you? You’re right. I’m a liar.” He rubs a hand at the back of his neck. “I’ve always thought of it as sharing information on a need-to-know basis or keeping my private business private, but…withholding is a form of lying. Even if you have someone’s best interests at heart.”