Right Behind Her (Bree Taggert) Page 27

  Bree leaned in to hear him better. “Because he paid so well?”

  He nodded again. “We picked up Elias at his club.” He paused for a sip of water.

  Bree remembered the third passenger in the surveillance video.

  Curtis exhaled a shaky breath. “We drove out to a country road. Elias’s brother had hit a woman with his car. She’d pulled over on the side of the road to throw up and he hit her. The kid was plastered. The woman was in bad shape. She wasn’t moving.” He drank more water. “I thought she was dead, but she wasn’t. Another guy, Jake, came with a truck to tow the woman’s car. He had his cousin with him. They all argued about what to do. Elias told the men to put the woman in the car. Frank said they had to call an ambulance, but Elias said no. Frank got in his face. Elias didn’t like that. He pointed a gun at Frank and had the other guys tie him up and put him in the trunk. Then he pointed the gun at me and told me to drive the drunk kid’s car and follow them. I poured the kid into the passenger seat and did what I’d been told.”

  His voice sounded horrible, scratchy and raw, as if every word were scraping its way out. Bree wanted to stop him, but she also wanted to hear the rest of the story.

  “At the Taggert place, they marched Frank into the barn. Someone carried the woman. I brought the drunk kid. Elias wanted him to watch so he’d learn that actions had consequences. Elias told me to wait outside, but I could see everything through a crack in the wood. What they did to Frank . . .”

  Bree’s gut chilled as he described the men holding Frank while Elias cut off his fingertips.

  “The drunk kid was screaming and vomiting. Frank was on his knees. He was bawling and bleeding, and Elias shot him in the head.” Curtis closed his eyes and breathed. “Then he shot the woman.” He opened his eyes and lifted his own hand. “I deserved this. I deserved to die tonight. I stood there and did nothing while a bunch of goons tortured and murdered my brother.”

  Bree’s father had been one of them.

  “Were they all armed?” she asked.

  Curtis nodded. “Afterward, Elias told me I could go, but I had to remember what happened to people who betrayed him. He knew I had a mother to look after. He told me if I ever said a word, he’d make me watch him cut her up into small pieces, then he’d do the same to me.”

  “Did he say why he kidnapped you now? You kept quiet all these years.”

  Curtis shrugged. “He was convinced that you were going to figure it out, and that he had to get rid of the only evidence that could still put him away: witnesses.”

  Bree touched his uninjured arm, careful of the IV line. “You didn’t deserve what happened to you back then or now. You did what you had to do to survive. We all do.”

  Curtis threw his uninjured arm over his eyes and cried silently. A nurse came into the room and chastised Bree for upsetting him and allowing him to talk. She injected a shot into his IV line and made a shooing gesture at Bree. “He needs to rest.”

  The shot must have been pain meds or a sedative, because Curtis’s eyes closed, and his breathing evened out within minutes.

  When Bree left the room, she was glad to see Anders on his way back in. She wondered if Anders knew the burden Curtis had been carrying all these years.

  She took the elevator to the next floor. A deputy stood guard outside Elias’s ICU room. Bree went in. Monitors beeped as she crossed to the bed. One of Elias’s hands was cuffed to the bed rail.

  His eyes opened and immediately filled with hate as he focused on Bree. His voice was stronger than she’d expected it would be just a few hours after surgery. “Shawn died. I did it all for him, and he died.”

  Decades of drug abuse had taken their toll on his body.

  Bree tried to summon compassion but came up empty. His brother had been the most important thing in his life. “You murdered two people. You shot Harley. You frightened my eight-year-old niece.” She had to stop for a breath. The thought of Elias putting his hands on Kayla made her want to shoot him again.

  “I didn’t hurt her.”

  “You tortured and tried to kill Curtis.”

  There was no remorse in Elias’s eyes. “If you think I’m confessing to anything, you’re wrong. I’ll take the Fifth Amendment, bitch.”

  “What about Shawn? When did your brother become obsessed with medieval torture?” Bree remembered Elias saying that his brother had turned to drugs in college, which would have been shortly after the murders. She suspected that in the very act of protecting Shawn, Elias had destroyed him. “Let me guess. He couldn’t deal with what he saw. Is that when he turned to drugs?”

  Elias glared. If looks could kill, lightning would have struck Bree on the spot. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Fuck. You.”

  Bree turned and started to walk away. She’d reached the doorway when he asked, “Why couldn’t you just let me die?”

  She smiled at him over her shoulder. “Because I want to see you in prison. That’s where you’re going to spend the rest of your life.”

  Her step felt lighter as she left the ICU. At Elias’s age, he would never taste freedom again. She hoped he suffered every day for the pain he’d inflicted on others in the greatest display of selfishness and entitlement she could remember. If that made her a bad person, so be it. No one was perfect, right?

  She’d saved Harley Taggert’s interview for last. He’d been very lucky. Rather than penetrating his brain, the bullet had grazed his skull. He’d lost a good deal of blood and suffered a concussion, but he’d be all right. He was propped up on a pillow, his head bandaged. Just like Elias, one of Harley’s wrists was cuffed to the bed frame. When she walked into the room, he studied her as intently as she studied him.

  “You look like your mother, but you have your old man’s eyes.”

  “I don’t know how I should feel about that.” Bree paused at the bedside.

  “Are you like him?” Harley asked.

  “I hope not.” With every fiber of her being.

  “Then they’re just eyes.” He shrugged.

  They stared at each other for a few minutes, assessing, comparing, remembering.

  Finally, he said, “I guess you want to hear about that night.”

  “Yeah.” She settled into the chair by the bed and watched him. His features, his shape, his body structure . . . all reminded her of her father. But there was one quality missing.

  Meanness.

  Bree’s father had been cruel and short-tempered. He hadn’t just hurt people. He’d enjoyed it. She sensed none of this from Harley. In comparison, Harley seemed . . . emotionally flat.

  He began with a deep inhale. “Your dad and I did some work for Elias Donovan back in the day. If he wanted to buy a property, and the owner didn’t want to sell, we paid them a visit. If someone owed him money, we encouraged them to pay him back.”

  “You beat people up for him.”

  “Yeah.” His lips pursed, but he didn’t look remorseful; nor did he make excuses. “Elias’s dumbass younger brother got shitfaced and ran over a woman.” His story about the happenings in the barn matched Curtis’s. “I’ve never met anybody as cold as Elias.” Harley shook his head. “He never raised his voice or broke a sweat.”

  “What about his brother? How did he react?”

  Harley’s eyes dimmed. “That kid was fucked up. Elias made him watch everything. Wouldn’t even let him look away or close his eyes. By the time it was done, the kid had puked all over. He was raging and incoherent.” He shook his head. “It was like something inside him broke.”

  After a few heartbeats of silence, Bree asked, “What happened next?”

  “I disposed of her car. Jake was supposed to take care of the bodies.”

  “What did you do with her car?”

  “Took it to a chop shop in Albany,” he said. “But your father was as lazy as he was nasty. He buried them right in his own backyard. He said no one dared go back there because of the dogs. Of course he was dead three years later. But I guess he was right. No on
e found them for thirty years.”

  “But they were found,” Bree said. Buried secrets had a way of working their way to the surface.

  “Yep.” Harley stared at the handcuff on his wrist. He might not have pulled the trigger, but he’d helped commit and conceal two murders. The law saw little difference. “Your daddy and me did a few more jobs in the next couple of years, but after he died, I went straight. I haven’t broken the law since.”

  Bree nodded. “Do you think he planned to kill my mother?”

  “I don’t think he planned much. He was a hothead, and he liked hurting people.”

  “Were you surprised that he killed himself?”

  “I knew him better than anyone. No one will ever convince me that he did.” He shook his head. “Jake was a mean one. He was homicidal, not suicidal.” He sighed. “I’m sorry about what he did to your mom. She didn’t deserve that.”

  “No.”

  “I tried to get her to leave him.”

  “I remember.”

  He frowned at her. “You do?”

  “I remember more than you’d think.”

  “Not sure if that’s a good thing.”

  “Me neither,” Bree agreed. “Do you want me to call you Darren or Harley?”

  “Darren would be good. I tried hard to forget Harley. He wasn’t a good person. I’m not a good person. If you’re looking for some father substitute, don’t bother. That’s not me. I don’t do relationships.”

  Bree had a feeling he kept his lady friend at arm’s length, just as she’d been tempted to do with Matt. Watching Harley—Darren—try to weasel out of being her relative made her overjoyed that she’d chosen to raise Erin’s kids, to embrace their love, to risk her heart. She could easily have made the wrong choice. She could have retreated from their needs and turned her back on them. She could be the one nursing a hollow emptiness.

  But she wasn’t. Instead, her heart and her life were full in a way she’d never expected.

  “Let me explain something to you, Darren. If I was looking for a father figure, I sure as hell wouldn’t pick a man who helped murder two people. You haven’t been in my life for twenty-seven years. I’ll survive without you.” Bree left the room without looking back.

  Anyone who could do what Harley had done could never be trusted. He was right about one thing: he wasn’t a good person. She’d embraced life and love with Adam and the kids, but sometimes it was just as important to know when to walk away. She knew better than anyone that just because someone was family, that didn’t mean they weren’t toxic.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Later that afternoon, Bree knocked on Adam’s door. For the last hour, she’d debated whether to tell him about Harley. Adam was desperate for news of their family. Would he pursue a relationship with Harley? Would Harley reject Adam and cause him more pain? Deep down, she didn’t want Harley anywhere near Adam, but that wasn’t her decision to make.

  Adam answered, bleary-eyed. He shoved his curly hair off his forehead. “Hey, come on in.”

  “I’m sorry if I woke you.” She stepped into his house. “You cleaned.”

  “Yeah. Cleaned and crashed.”

  She walked back to the studio. Sunlight streamed through the windows onto the canvas, creating a heavenly effect. “You didn’t change it.”

  He cocked his head and stared at it, a bemused smile curving his mouth. “I promised I wouldn’t.”

  “This is your best work yet.”

  “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” He turned away from it. “The gallery is picking it up next week.”

  She noted a new canvas propped against the wall. “When will you start another?”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking about taking some time off, maybe getting a horse of my own. Then we can all ride together. What do you think?”

  She grinned. “I think it’s a great idea.”

  “Will you go to the livestock auction with me? I want to pull a horse from the kill pen, like Erin always did.”

  Bree’s eyes burned. She blinked away a tear. “I would be honored.”

  He grinned wide, something the serious Adam rarely did, and Bree hated to ruin his day. But she had to treat him like the adult he’d become.

  “I have something to tell you.” She told him about the investigation, the murder minus the gory details, and about their newly discovered cousin. “He doesn’t want anything to do with us. He likes to be alone. Considering his crimes, I don’t want him anywhere near Luke or Kayla, but it’s not my place to speak for you.”

  “I can understand wanting to be alone.” Adam inhaled and sighed deeply. Then a touch of anger flashed in his hazel eyes. “He always knew about us all this time, though, right?”

  Bree had expected him to be hurt, not mad. “He did.”

  Adam considered her answer for a few seconds, then huffed. “Our family has a terrible history. Who knows how messed up he is?”

  “Good point.” Bree wasn’t as nice as her brother. She had little empathy for their cousin.

  “That said, he helped kill people.” Adam gave her a curt nod. “I don’t want him anywhere near Luke or Kayla either.”

  “OK. Good.” Relief swept over Bree. “I know how much you want to connect with Mom and all.”

  “The house burning down is a sign that I need to let go of what I lost and appreciate what I have.” Adam slung an arm over her shoulder. “We don’t need anyone else. We’re OK.”

  Bree leaned her head on his shoulder. “That we are.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Tuesday evening, the summer sun shone hot on Matt’s head. “Relax your arm. She’ll sense your tension.”

  Bree loosened her grip on Greta’s leash. In the field next to her barn, the black German shepherd trotted at her side. Bree stopped and commanded the dog to sit in German. Greta obeyed. Bree continued walking, and Greta fell into step beside her.

  “She did it.” Bree smiled as she led the dog toward Matt.

  “Of course she did. She’s brilliant.”

  Excitement lit Bree’s eyes. “I want to work with her more before she goes for training. Nothing too complicated. I just want to know how she thinks and how she responds.”

  “You have time. The earliest she’ll go for training is September. Have you decided who will be her handler?”

  “I’m leaning toward Collins.” Bree used a hand signal to command the dog to lie down. When the dog obeyed, she rewarded her with a tug toy. A quick flash of alarm crossed her face as Greta lunged for the toy. But Bree held on as Greta’s mouth clamped shut and she pulled hard. “Oscar also applied, but even if I wasn’t going to fire him, I wouldn’t trust or reward him with a dog.”

  Matt smiled at the change in her perspective. Six months before, she wouldn’t have considered acquiring a dog to be a reward. He loved watching her challenge her fear. She was the strongest person he’d ever met. “You’re definitely going to fire him?”

  Bree walked Greta over and let the leash go long. “Todd called this morning. Elias’s cell phone records showed multiple calls back and forth with Oscar.”

  Everything clicked. “He fucked up the evidence labels on purpose so Shawn wouldn’t be charged.”

  Bree nodded. “I also suspect he did his best to smudge fingerprints.”

  “Aunt Bree!” Kayla and Ladybug came running from the house.

  Bree tried to shorten Greta’s leash.

  “Don’t.” Matt stopped her. “She’s fine with kids and other dogs. Watch her body language. She’s happy, confident, and curious.”

  The two dogs greeted each other with wags and sniffs. Greta dropped into a play bow. Bree visibly relaxed. Ladybug wanted Bree’s attention, so Matt took Greta’s leash.

  Kayla pointed at Greta and asked Matt, “Can I pet her?”

  “Sure.” Matt casually stepped on the leash to keep the dog from jumping on the child. Greta liked kids, but she could get excited, and the dog was bigger than the little girl. When everyone had quieted down
, he pulled a tennis ball from his pocket. “Do you want to play fetch with her?”

  “Yay!” Kayla threw the ball as hard as she could. It went about fifteen feet. Matt unsnapped Greta’s leash. The dog fetched the ball in two big strides, brought it back, and dropped it at the little girl’s feet. Then she backed up two steps and barked.

  Matt stifled a laugh. “Try again.”

  Uninterested in fetch, Ladybug stretched out on the grass to watch.

  “Luke is coming.” Kayla picked up the tennis ball and wiped it on her dirt-and-grass-streaked jeans. “He can throw it really far.”

  When Luke arrived, the kids and the German shepherd moved into the field. Luke took the ball and pitched it far out over the meadow. Greta sprinted after it.

  Bree turned to face Matt. The setting sun burnished her hair. She squinted, the lines around her eyes fanning out.

  Matt’s heart swelled. He took both of her hands in his. “I’m going to tell you something. Do you promise not to freak out?”

  Her eyes widened. “Why would I freak out?”

  “You’ll have to trust me.” Matt had never felt this close to anyone, but he had to face the fact that he had no control over her feelings, and he couldn’t hold the words inside any longer. They just burst out. “I love you.”

  Tears brimmed in her eyes.

  The pressure inside his rib cage grew, seemingly to a breaking point. Had he made a huge mistake? Had he rushed things?

  Joy filled Bree’s heart. She wiped her eyes. It felt like a stupid time to cry, but she couldn’t stop. Matt’s face fell, and she wanted to tell him that she was happy, not sad, but emotions tightened her throat. She had to swallow before she could speak.

  “I’m sorry.” Matt rubbed his chest. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “Shh. Stop.” She pressed a finger to his lips. “I love you too.”

  With a wry smile, he pulled his head back. “Do I hear a but in that statement?”

  “No. No qualifiers. I love you.” She took a few seconds to find the right words. This moment was too important for her to screw up. “Please be patient with me. I want you. I want our relationship to work. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.”