Bound for Nirvana: (The Bound Trilogy Book 3) (28 page)

“I was yelling at her to slow down. There was something about the way the guy was tugging at the kid, like he was trying to pull her away from her mom, that didn’t seem right.” His eyes narrowed suspiciously, as if only just really connecting with the realization that the child in his memory was me.

Raising a hand, I rubbed at my chest; the rate my heart pounded was becoming almost painful. I nodded once, urging him to continue.

“I swear the guy looked me straight in the eye before he… Well, before I knew it, the kid…
you
were being flung into the road. The woman was screaming. She ran out after you, pushed you out of the way, but… Betty just… She tried to stop, but there was just no time.”

“Wait! Wait a minute!” Ethan’s voice boomed. “Are you saying that Angel was
pushed
into the road?”

The old man looked confused, his gaze skittering over my face as if trying to read me. “You don’t remember anything, do you?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move, could barely even breathe. Ethan’s expression was grave, his hands rubbing over his paling face and into his hair. “Could you be mistaken about what you saw?”

“There’s no mistake,” Schrader said bluntly, looking affronted. “I might be old now, but I played that day over in my head for the last twenty three years, son. And besides, the guy wouldn’t have been so keen to bargain if I’d got it wrong.”

“You
spoke
to him? Well, what did he say?” Ethan hissed with mounting frustration.

Mr. Schrader dabbed at the fine layer of sweat that was forming on his brow, his gaze darting between Ethan and the front door as if he was beginning to regret opening it. For the first time since we’d arrived, he seemed unable to meet my eyes. “You need to know that what happened that day… Well, she wasn’t a bad woman. We’d been unable to have children of our own. Betty—she couldn’t hold on to ’em, had one miscarriage after another. She took to the bottle to help her cope with the loss, the emptiness. In the end she needed a drink just to be able to face the day.”

“Mr. Schrader,” Ethan persisted, his tone weary with frustration. “We sympathize with your situation, but…”

“She had a string of DUI offences, you see. She’d already had her license revoked. If we hadn’t played along, she would have done jail time—”

“Mr. Schrader,
please
. Tell us what happened. What did the man say?”

The old man nodded, holding his hands up in surrender in response to Ethan’s elevated tone. He took a breath, seeming to brace himself before continuing with his story. “What happened next was a bit of a blur. I wasn’t even sure who we’d hit at first, because the kid was on the ground sort of curled up in a ball—”

I wasn’t sure whether he was intentionally dissociating me with the child in his memory because he was trying to distance himself from the event, or because he was having difficulty uniting the child with the woman before him.

Without correcting himself, he carried on. “—but the crowd, they were running further down the street, gathering around something I couldn’t see in front of a parked up van. By the time I’d worked out what had happened and climbed out of the pickup, Betty was hurling her guts up on the sidewalk. She could barely stand. Then I realized that with all the attention focused on what was going on up the street, nobody was paying any attention to us. I figured that if I kept quiet, maybe everyone would think I was the one that was driving... So I told her to run. When I turned around,
he
was there in front of me—the guy. I didn’t even have time to think because he was up in my face, and I just knew that he’d seen Betty. I’ll never forget what he said to me or the sinister threat behind it. The look in his eye, it was cold, callous… evil.”

Ethan delivered his words with slow portentous persuasion. “
What
did he say?”

The old man blinked. “He said, ‘Keep your mouth shut.’ Then he nodded to the puddle of vomit over on the sidewalk and added, ‘If you talk, so will I.’”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Ethan hissed through clenched teeth, getting up to pace the length of the small room, his fingers running over his face and into his hair again.

When I didn’t react, Schrader searched my glazed expression, a look of remorse settling onto his aged face. “I tried to comfort you… before they took you away in the ambulance. You wouldn’t tell them your name, just kept on repeating that you wanted something—a toy maybe. We couldn’t make out the name, it was just a letter—B or E, or something. The only other thing you seemed bothered about was that you’d scuffed your shoes. Your tiny bottom lip wouldn’t stop trembling as you frantically tried to fix them, smoothing the shiny red leather back into place.”

My gaze flickered to his, his words waking me from the trancelike state that I’d retreated to. He must have interpreted the sudden flash of recognition in my eyes as anger, because his next words came out rushed, seeming to plea for my understanding, my forgiveness. “I’m sorry. Sorry that you lost your mom, and sorry I lied for my own selfish reasons. But please try to understand, Betty wouldn’t have lasted a day inside. I didn’t think telling the truth would help anyone, and it certainly wouldn’t bring your mom back—”

“You son of a bitch,” Ethan came to an abrupt halt in front of Schrader. “She’s spent her entire life blaming herself for that accident—sentenced to a life of purgatory by her entire family because they all believed what the eyewitnesses said. You were the only one that saw what really happened.”

“I thought she’d remember. I thought she’d tell the police, give them a description of the guy who was trying to snatch her. How was I to know that she’d lose her memory?”

For a second, I thought Ethan was going to combust with fury and exasperation, his clenched hands outstretched as if he were trying to refrain from hitting the old man.

“Ethan.” My single word, though spoken quietly, seemed to startle the two men, because it was the first word I’d uttered since arriving.

You see, Ernest Schrader’s account of what happened that fateful day seemed almost transcendental at first. The ravages of time and forgotten horrors had left my memory in a tangled mass, a sort of swollen knot of complicated, interwoven enigmas. Recently the frayed edges of that knot had been picked, and gradually the truth was unraveling.

Slowly, something was occurring to me, entering my mind in an eerie, flimsy-like way. At first it teetered on the edge of thought, just a tiny fragment of a concept really; difficult to grasp, barely perceptible, and almost not even plausible—almost.

I reached for my purse, retrieving my cell and quickly typed a name into Google. Within seconds a clear photographic image emerged onto my screen, the face looking back causing my breath to catch in my throat. “Would you know him? The man who pushed me in front of your car—if you saw him again?”

Ernest Schrader didn’t falter when he answered, “In the blink of an eye.”

Taking a fortifying breath, I passed the cell to Schrader. “Then tell me—is this the man?”

Ernest Schrader took the cell warily from my grasp and stared down at the screen. It was an instant reaction, the way he physically recoiled at the sight of the picture. His sickened expression provided me with the answer I was dreading, his ensuing words only confirming what I already knew to be true. “Yeah, that’s him.” He glanced up at me, horror blending with sheer disbelief. “Jesus Christ, do you know him?”

His question hit me like a bolt of lightning, sparking fury and fear and disbelief deep within the core of my heart. The blood drained from my face as a fine sheen of sweat misted on to the surface of my skin.

“Angel?” Ethan’s voice dripped with fear.

Suddenly my stomach roiled, bile rising from the pit of my stomach to vehemently invade my throat. Somehow, I managed to gather myself, swallowing down the threat to vomit, and rose to my feet. When I reached the door, I turned to Ernest Schrader, finally finding the strength to answer.

“Yes, I know him. He’s my father.”

Chapter Thirteen

We spent the entire journey home in silence, consumed in our own private horror. No words were adequate to ease the impact of what we’d just learned, not for either one of us. I could feel the intensity of Ethan’s gaze on the back of my head as I stared unseeing out of the passenger window, could picture the concern in his eyes as he glanced between me and the road ahead. But my man knew me well, because he did not speak. He was giving me the time he knew I needed.

When we left he’d followed me silently out of Schrader’s house, and taking me by the hand had led me carefully to the car, where he’d gently kissed the top of my head before buckling me safely into my seat.

Ernest Schrader had trailed behind us, dabbing at his runny eyes. I’d asked him one last question before we drove away. What had happened to his wife? It turned out that my father’s malignity that day had resulted in more than one untimely death. Betty Schrader had been unable to live with the guilt of being drunk behind the wheel of her car when it struck and killed my mother. The pain of loss was all too familiar to her and so she’d swallowed a bottle of vodka along with a plethora of sleeping pills exactly one month after the accident. She’d more than paid her dues for her foolish mistake. She may have been a drunk, but she was no killer. Ernest Schrader had kept his word to my father to protect her, and later to protect her memory. His penance was that he’d lost the woman he loved because of that day too.

And all the time, the one person who was to blame had gotten away with it.

I’d played them over and over in my head—Ernest Schrader’s words. When he’d described how my father had tried to murder me, and in doing so, had inadvertently caused my mother’s death. The added burn came with the knowledge that he’d spent the last twenty three years outwardly blaming me for his own crime. And because I’d accepted culpability, I had also unwittingly protected him.

Somewhere in my mind I’d known all along what had happened that day. It had been boxed and sealed and buried inside my fucked-up mind—by choice. My unwillingness to face my demons had ensured his crime remained a secret. So he’d continued to drip feed his poisonous lies that I was to blame, nurturing my shame and guilt, knowing that as long as I suppressed my memories, the truth would remain buried. There was no doubt of one thing—he was an indisputably capable psychologist.

Somehow we’d arrived home and Ethan had parked the car without me even being aware. After taking my hand and helping me from the car, he guided me into the elevator and we took positions on opposite walls, facing each other.

It was the first time since Schrader’s revelation that my gaze had focused on anything, when it sidled up Ethan’s long, lean legs, over taut abs and strong shoulders. The expression on his face was so chock-full of extreme, mixed emotion that it was impossible to read. His gaze penetrated mine, a look so intense it was soul deep and heart-shattering. Every muscle in his perfect body was stretched and rigid, the pulse in the dip of his collarbone racing wildly, and suddenly I could read him with the lucidity of pure crystal glass.

What I saw raging behind those burning blue eyes was so powerful I could almost reach out and touch it. It radiated off him in scalding, electric waves. I saw a man hell-bent on revenge. I saw a man capable of murder.

As the realization materialized, I felt overwhelming fear spiking through my body. I shook my head frantically. “No, Ethan.”

For a brief second, he closed his eyes, his hands fisting at his sides, as if furious with himself for not having the strength to mask his riotous thoughts and emotions adequately.

The elevator door slid open and with weighted shoulders, he stalked through the foyer and into the open lounge. I followed at a pace, my mind working frenziedly for a way to calm him down, to get him to think clearly. He reached for a bottle of bourbon, pouring a couple of fingers full into a tumbler and knocking it back in one swift gulp. Then, turning, he gripped me by the shoulders.

“Angel, listen carefully. I want you to wait here. I’m going to call Jackson to stay with you—”

“No! No, Ethan! We need to think about this. Work out the best way to—”

“Best way to what? Let the fucker get away with it? Let him win? No fucking way, Angel. I’m not going to waste a single second. That cocksucker starts paying today for the hell he’s forced you to endure. I’m going to torture the fucker slowly until he remembers every last detail of what he’s put you through.” His tone was chilling, filled with murderous hostility.

“And then what?” My words scraped through the tears of alarm and panic bubbling in my chest. “And then I lose the only good thing I’ve ever had. If I lose you, Ethan, I’m more broken than I’ve ever been. You’ll be the one tearing us apart. You’ll be the one letting him win, because without you I am nothing—nothing! I would rather die than live a cold, miserable existence without you.”

Suddenly, his hands fisted into his hair, gripping huge chunks and tugging with all his might. Tears of rage burned in his eyes as he sank to his knees. “Then what? How? How am I supposed to deal with this? How am I supposed to protect you from that monster?”

Fear and devastation gripped my heart as I watched the one person I really loved falling apart at the seams, because he didn’t know how to avenge the injustice which had been served on me by my father all my life.

Mirroring his actions, I sunk to my knees, prying his fingers from his hair to grip them tightly in mine. “We bide our time,” I coaxed gently. “We figure out the best way—for us—to deal with this. And in the meantime, we do what we always do. We take solace in each other.”

The war in his eyes suddenly seemed to calm, the threat of violence diminishing with each soul-healing breath he dragged into his lungs. Inside, I breathed a small sigh of relief. I wasn’t sure if it would last, but for now, at least, I had him back.

Reaching out, he cupped my face, his thumbs brushing away the tears I didn’t know had fallen. “How did you become so strong?” he whispered with profound veneration.

“It’s you, E. It’s all because of you.”