From Yesterday (19 page)

My heart stops. "Where is he right now, Elyse?"

"He flew to Ohio yesterday morning. He's supposed to be back tomorrow."

"Listen to me very carefully, Elyse. You have to get out of there. You can't let him know what you found, okay? Pack a bag and get the hell out of there until I call you. Promise me?"

She cries harder. "Why? What does all of this mean?"

"Just trust me. I will tell you everything when I can. I promise. Just hurry because I have a feeling Garrett isn't in Ohio anymore. I'll call you soon."

"Okay." She hangs up.

I reach inside my purse and feel around until I hit the holster and I pull out my Glock 26. I eject the magazine and pull the slide back. All ten bullets are there. I put the magazine back in and re-holster the gun. And then I turn my car out of the school parking lot, get back on 95, but heading south his time. If I hurry, I can make it back in twenty minutes.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

There is no one in my apartment when I get back. I check Brady's place and I find the door still unlocked from this morning and no one there either. I call him, but the call goes straight to voice mail several times over. The same thing happens when I try to reach my father.

I call my own voice mail. There are two messages. On of them I only play the first few seconds of because it is my father demanding that I get back here. The second one is the comforting voice of Brady and my eyes tear up when I hear him plead for me to come back because I never gave him a chance to respond. He says he believes me and not my father. So, where is he?

My phone rings again and Elyse's number flashes across the screen but either the call drops or she hangs up after only one ring and it becomes listed as a missed call.

I hope she listened to me and got herself out of here already. I call her back, but I get a busy signal. Something is definitely not right. I go back up to my floor.

The door to Elyse's place is cracked open. I put my hand on my gun just in case, but leave it in my purse so that I don't scare her. I tiptoe around the kitchen and bypass the living room. No one.

I see her in the bedroom. She is sitting in a desk chair with her back to me. I rush over to her.

"Elyse! What are you still doing here?"

She doesn't answer and now I see it is because she can't. Her eyes are wide open and so bloodshot that the whites aren't even visible. Bruising around her throat says she's been strangled to death. I touch her neck to check her pulse like they do on television, but the second I touch her ice cold skin I realize there is no point.

Elyse is dead.

And I don't even get a chance to mourn her because my cell phone rings and once again it is Elyse's name on the caller ID.

I pick it up immediately. "Garrett?"

"Yes, how did you know it would be me?"

I take a deep breath. "Because I'm looking at your dead girlfriend right now. Why did you have to kill her? It's me you wanted, not her."

"I came home and found her looking through my private things, Paige. Or can I drop that act and call you Rebecca? She saw things she couldn't know about, Rebecca. Such a genuine woman like that? She would have turned me in."

Every time he says my name, my real name, I hear his brother Turner instead. It makes me sick.

"Turner was your brother?" I ask.

"Yes, he was my younger brother. He wasn't right in the head, and he made some crucial mistakes, but he was family and you and your bitch sister destroyed him. Now I'll take care of you. Come and meet me in the old men's locker room on campus. The one they don't use anymore since they built the new one."

I scoff at him. "Are you kidding? Why would I do that? I don't have a death wish. I think I would prefer to call the police and let them figure you out."

Now it's Garrett who is laughing. "Sure, you can do that, but there are consequences for your actions. Get over here in the next 15 minutes and don't call the cops or I will kill your father and your boyfriend."

He ends the call.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The old locker rooms are next to the abandoned stadium on the far side of the campus. It was supposed to have been torn down last year, but there was some kind of delay with the funding of a new project. The place is a complete shambles; the track is worn and cracked, the stadium benches are in pieces, and the grass hasn't been cut in so long that the blades reach past my ankles as I trek through it. I make it to the men's side of the locker rooms within seven minutes of Garrett's phone call.

There is no door, just an entrance that curves around so that no one can see inside the room until they have turned two corners. When the room comes into view, I am struck by such a sense of familiarity that I almost lose my grip on my gun, which is in my right hand at my side.

Brady and my father are bound at the hands at feet, but not with rope. Garrett, obviously smarter than his brother, has secured their limbs with plastic twist ties. There is no slipping through those things, as far as I know. Duct tape around their mouths just like Nicole and I had, though. Brady seems unharmed, but my father has blood running down his forehead from a cut that is possibly up on his scalp because I cannot see the source. They both look at me as I enter the room; identical horrified expressions on their faces. They know what I know: I am probably going to die and tied up like that, there will be nothing that they can do to stop it from happening.

"Stop there, Rebecca. That's far enough,"

Garrett steps out from behind a row of lockers and yanks Brady up to his feet. He puts Brady in front of him like a human shield.

"There, now we can talk without you trying to shoot at me. Wouldn't want to miss me and hit your boyfriend, would you?"

I keep my trigger finger straight; it's never smart to touch the trigger unless you are ready to shoot, but I move it closer so that I can get the gun off faster if I need to.

"I have had a lot of time learning how to properly use guns since I was a kid, Garrett. Because of your brother. I wouldn't be so sure that you're safe just yet."

I hear him click the safety on his gun. It looks like a Sig, and I hope so because the one time I used one it kept jamming on me. It would be great if that would be the case now. Wishful thinking, I suppose. They are supposed to be pretty reliable weapons.

"I'll take my chances."

I am tired of his games. "What are we doing here, Garrett? Tell me what you want from me and I will give it to you. Just let my father and Brady leave."

"Can you give me my brother back?"

"This is just about revenge for you? Nothing to do with money? Because your scum brother let that little secret slip out that night. He told us all about your little kidnapping scheme. How the two of you planned to take Nicole hostage and ask my parents for five million dollars to get her back. Too bad he jumped the gun and ruined your plan. He never mentioned he had a brother, only that he was supposed to wait for someone, but I have figured the rest out today. I knew there was something I didn't like about you when we were at dinner the other night."

Garrett hits Brady in the ribs with the butt of his gun and Brady falters. He wheezes through the tape and goes down to the ground. Hard. Garrett points the gun to his head as I raise my arm and hold my gun out with both hands.

"Watch it. You won't be able to hit me before I put a bullet in his skull. You dumb bitch, you don't know anything. That money was going to change our lives. Our family had that farm in it for at least a hundred years. When the economy took a nose dive we lost everything and it was your father and his business partners that refused to go in with my parents on their plan to develop a new crop that could have saved our farm. After the bank seized the land, my parents had to get minimum wage work that barely paid the rent in our crappy two bedroom apartment. They certainly could no longer afford the medication that Turner needed for his Borderline Personality Disorder. So, I blame you."

He isn't facing me when he talks about placing blame. He has turned to my father.

"No!" I scream, too late.

Garrett shoots my father. It hits him in the chest, on the right side. My father's eye close and he slumps over, blood pouring from his wound.

Garrett turns back to me. "There, that's better. Now as far as the money goes, well, you're going to pick up that pen and piece of paper over there and write down the account number and password to your trust fund. Isn't online banking amazing? I'll verify that this is the correct information, and if it's not, I will shoot Brady in the head. Do it now."

There is little fight left in me. Most of it ran out of the hole in my father's chest. I write down the information.

"Good, now take out that pretty cell phone of yours and login to your account. Unhide the password so that I can see you are typing what you wrote down on that piece of paper."

I do what he asks. When I'm in my account and he's satisfied that I have given him the correct information, he tells me to close the banking app and put the phone away. I have just enough time to hit button in my campus police app before I get the phone back in my pocket. Now I can only pray that it worked.

"Good job, Rebecca. Now let's address the topic of revenge. Because I already have mine. I took it for my brother, who's life your sister took. Don't look so surprised. My brother had a camera set up in that barn. I saw when you fired that shot and missed. I saw your sister get the gun from you and not miss. I know she was the one who killed him. That's the real reason she shot herself, isn't it?"

I nod. "I have always thought so, yes."

"And I'm sure you already know it was me that started messing with your head back in Ohio. And obviously here. That was for my parents. They started drinking when we lost the farm. My father was drunk the night he lost control of his car and crashed into a tree. My mother died instantly, but he lived for a few hours before they found him. I'm told he suffered horribly until he finally died, pinned in that car. It was a major bonus that you were institutionalized because of the stalking. I didn't intend to make them think it was you, but I ran with it afterward. Good job with the name change, by the way, but next time don't use names associated with your family. It took me a few years, but I found you."

I am surprisingly calm now. I want to keep him talking in the hope that campus police got my signal. "So, was it you that finally went to my father and told him where I was? Why didn't anyone know who you were?"

"It was me. I flew to Cleveland yesterday, went to see him and let him know how to find you. I needed him here so that I could make you suffer more by watching him die. People knew who I was, Rebecca, they just didn't know what I looked like because I was offered a full athletic scholarship to school and was able to remain there even after my parents lost their money. Garrett is my first name, but no one ever used it. Everyone used to call me Tate, because the only thing I would eat as a baby was potato."

My arms are getting tired. I don't know how much longer I can hold the gun at him. The left one is especially sore from using only that when I was giving him my account information.

"Now it's your turn to answer a question, Rebecca. Why did you let everyone believe that you shot Turner and not Nicole?"

I glance at Brady just to make sure he is still breathing. He is, but it looks painful every time he sucks in a breath. He must have a broken rib.

"Nicole was the confident one. She watched out for me. I looked up to her. Our roles were reversed that night. She could not handle having shot your brother, and she did it to save my life. While we waited for the police to get there, I told her. I said, 'just forget what happened. I shot Turner, not you'. I repeated it over and over until I think I had actually convinced her that was what happened. Obviously not, but I tried. She tried to apologize in her suicide note, but only I knew what she meant and I never told anyone."

Brady and I lock eyes. I am losing my grip on the gun and he can see it.

An opportunity presents itself just then. I hear a noise from outside the locker room. Garrett hears it, too.

"What did you do?" he yells. "Did you call the cops, bitch? I'll kill your boyfriend."

When he started yelling at me, Garrett took the gun from Brady's head and pointed it at me. As he goes to move it back, I take my shot. He sees it coming and fires back at me. I miss the kill shot, only hitting him in the shoulder and not even the one he's using to hold his gun.

I drop to the floor. Pain, white hot and searing spreads throughout my abdomen. My vision gets a little cloudy, but I can see Brady trying to move toward me, but Garrett is already standing over me. He puts the gun to my head and I close my eyes and wait to die.

I hear a gunshot.

And I continue to breathe.

I see Garrett hit the floor next to me. Shot in the head, he's gone.

I pass out.

I'm in and out of consciousness while I try and piece time together. I see the campus police and some county officers. Obviously the police app worked. At some point, I'm placed on a stretcher and am taken out of the locker room to an ambulance. I wake up again and feel that ambulance moving and hear the sirens wailing.

An EMT is sitting with me. "You're okay," he says. "The bullet passed right through and was far enough to the side that it didn't hit any major organs."

I try to speak but my voice comes out a whisper. "And the others?"

He smiles. "I know the one guy with the rib injury is okay. Just a fracture. It will heal. The gunshot to the head is gone. And the older man with the chest wound is touch and go. Hey, the pain medication I gave you is kicking in so just relax."

I pass out again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

I am next to be called. I'm sitting in my seat, sweating under the heavy graduation gown in the Miami May heat. And then I hear my name.

"Rebecca Levkin."

I jump up and get to the podium where I shake hands with the Dean and take my degree. This is what I've been waiting for my whole life and it's every bit as spectacular as I thought it would be.