BRIAN (The Callahans Book 1) (35 page)

Harley

I curled up in the bed next to Xander and took another bite of pizza.

“I’m sorry,” I said, as I nibbled at a slice of pepperoni.

“For what?”

“For not remembering you. For putting you through that whole ordeal.”

“It’s not like it was your fault.”

“It must have been hard, though, living here with me when I didn’t even know who you were.”

He reached over and rubbed a smear of grease off my chin. “It was rough,” he said, his eyes softening as he studied my face, “being near you and not feeling free to touch you.”

“It must have been surreal.”

“It was…difficult.” He chuckled a little as he picked at his own piece of pizza. “I thought it was all over when your parents showed up and demanded that you go home with them.”

“Yeah?”

“I thought for sure that you would agree to go. I mean, I was standing there, imagining you and your mom in the spare room packing your things while your dad lectured me about forcing myself on you after you made it clear that you no longer wanted me.”

“He would have, too,” I said, laughing around my food.

Xander pushed the empty pizza box onto the floor and flipped over, laying his head in my lap as he ate his last piece. I picked a sausage off of mine and fed it to him.

“I’m sorry about Philip. I guess that wasn’t the grand idea I thought it was.”

“Again, not your fault. And it bought us time. If things had gone differently, we never would have been able to convince Grant to turn himself in.”

“Have you talked to your mom?”

“She said she’d call in the morning.”

“It’ll be okay. Grant will make sure she’s protected.”

I bent and kissed Xander’s nose. Then I pushed him away.

“I need sugar. Isn’t there ice cream in the freezer?”

“Chocolate, I think.”

“Hmm,” I tilted my head as I thought about it. Then nodded. “That’ll do.”

I grabbed his shirt and pulled it on, humming as I went downstairs. My leg was a little sore, and my physical therapist would have a stroke if he saw me walking around without the boot on, but it was cumbersome, and I just couldn’t stand to wear it all the time. Besides, wasn’t the whole idea to get me out of the thing? Maybe taking it off and hobbling down the stairs wasn’t such a horrible idea.

I stumbled around the corner as I made my way into the kitchen. That smarted a little. I’d sure be happy when this thing healed.

“Still hurts?”

I looked up, my heart nearly leaping out of my chest when I saw Margaret sitting at the breakfast nook. She held up a small gold key.

“Xander gave it to me when he first bought the house. In case I ever needed to get in when he wasn’t around.”

“Are you here to see him?” I asked stupidly. “He’s upstairs.”

“Nope. Here to talk to you.”

“Margaret…”

“You know, Xander was the only friend I had when I was a little girl. All those other people’s kids, the Hiltons and the Van Pelts and all the other people’s children Daddy wanted me to be nice to, none of them were like me. They were all precocious little brats. And I…well, I wasn’t perfect, but I was more of an introvert. Until Xander. He knew how to draw me out, how to get me to open up to him. I think I fell in love with him when I was only five and nothing ever really changed.”

My heart sank. I’d accused her of just this when I was trying to make her believe that Xander and I were broken up. But she’d denied it. At the time, I knew it didn’t ring true, but I think I chose to deny that truth.

I couldn’t now.

“Everything I ever asked of him, he would do for me. He even married me when I convinced him that Daddy was trying to force me on some guy I didn’t want. I thought…I assumed that after a while, the marriage would become something more than it was. I hadn’t expected him to continue dating, to go off to graduate school and leave me behind. If he hadn’t done that, I might have pushed the issue some; I might have convinced him then that we were meant to be together. But I thought I had time. And he wasn’t the only one who wanted to sow a few wild oats, you know.”

“You agreed to a divorce.”

“Yeah, but I made sure the paperwork would get lost so that if he ever filed for a marriage license…well, you know.”

“You set us up.”

“When he came around and started talking about you…Harley, this, and Harley, that…I got tired of it really fast. But I couldn’t tell him that. There were other ways to sabotage your relationship.”

“What did you think was going to happen, Margaret? That I would leave him over your ill-fated marriage and you would swoop in to save the day? Not the best plan in the world.”

“No, but it worked for a while. And then Bonnie came to me and told me what Daddy was up to. Told me how you had something you were taking to a reporter that would ruin Daddy’s reputation and possibly put him in jail. I couldn’t let you do that. So, I figured if you were dead, it would kill two birds with one stone…if you know what I mean.”

“Is that why? You thought you would win Xander back if I was dead.”

“I thought that I’d waited long enough. I’ve known Xander Boggs since I was five years old. He was mine to do with as I pleased. And then you walked in and suddenly he doesn’t have time to have dinner with me, to listen to my troubles, to be my date to the occasional party. Breaking up with you wasn’t enough. I needed you gone.”

“You wanted him because he was no longer alone and miserable. Because he wasn’t free to be your second choice.”

“He was mine first. And you…you come along, and it’s not enough to steal Xander from me. You had to steal my daddy, too.”

I shook my head, disgusted by her selfishness. “You could have gone and found a man of your own.”

“I had two men: Daddy and Xander.”

“So you drove the car that hit me.”

“You’re too predictable, Harley. You jog past that damn storefront every morning at the same time every day. All I had to do was wait around the block. When you went past, I just gunned it. If you hadn’t turned and seen me, I probably would have smashed you against the concrete wall of that building, but you turned and the angle wasn’t right. That’s why you flew into that stupid palm tree instead.”

I nodded. I could see it; I had seen it multiple times in my memories since climbing out of bed this morning. I kept telling myself that I was remembering it wrong, that my memory was playing tricks on me. But it was there, strong and definitive. And exactly how she described it.

“So what do you want now? Do you think that I’m just going to walk away now that everything is over, now that Xander and I are finally back together?”

“Oh, I know you won’t. But you know, this part of Los Angeles is nice and everything, but there has been a string of home invasions in this neighborhood over the last few months. A woman even got shot a few blocks over when she surprised the burglars at work.”

As she said it, she pulled a gun out from under the table. It was a good-sized piece, a forty-five maybe. I grew up on a ranch in Texas. I knew guns. And I knew a gun that size had a good kick, but it was also accurate. And the human body makes for a pretty big target.

I stepped back against the wall and held my arms up so that she could see my hands.

“You really can’t believe that Xander won’t put two and two together and figure out what you’ve done.”

“He’ll forgive me just like Daddy did.”

“Your dad?”

“Who do you think helped me get the car fixed after your little accident? You may be a petite girl, but you left one hell of a dent in the front of my car.”

“Grant knew?”

“Of course he knew. He sent me out of town for a few days, had the car fixed, and made sure no one saw me at the scene. He might even have paid off the cops, but I’m not too sure about that. It’s not something he talks about often.”

“You can’t really think that Xander would be as understanding. He doesn’t have the same bond with you that your father does.”

She stood slowly, coming toward me with the gun outstretched between us. “Xander loves me. He always has. If I’d told him about the accident, he would have helped me just like Daddy did. He did it once before. What’s another hit and run when you’ve already walked down that road?”

“If you love him, how can you be so unaware of who he is as a person?”

Margaret’s face tightened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that Xander carried around a hell of a lot of guilt after the first accident. Do you know that he stayed in contact with the victim? That he used to send him money and that he sends money to his daughter now? Did you know that Xander attended the trial that sent the man to jail for nine years, and that he plans to go to his first parole hearing in six months?”

Margaret stared at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.

“He doesn’t do that.”

“He does. And when he first told me about it, he said he was driving. That’s how much he cares about you. He never told anyone the truth until today. Until he was trying to save your dad from his own fate.”

“Xander?”

“He was the one feeding the feds information on your dad. Did you know that? Did you know they threatened his mother? Did you know that what I was doing that day, trying to meet with that reporter, was just to protect Xander?”

“But Xander wouldn’t turn on my dad. He knows how much that would hurt me.”

“Yeah, well, he was doing it. Maybe his mother meant more to him than you.”

Margaret shook her head, her dark eyes widened by emotion. Her hand was shaking. I thought that maybe if I timed it right, I could knock it out of her hand. But then her focus cleared, and she stared at me.

“You’re lying. You’re just trying to upset me so that you can run. But that’s not happening.”

“I’m just telling you the truth, Margaret. No one is really who you think they are. Not even Xander.”

Tears started to roll down her cheeks. “All I know is that my dad is going to jail because of you. And Xander is gone because of you. That’s all that matters.”

I inclined my head slightly. “You saw Xander when I was in the hospital. You saw how he refused to leave my side, saw how he brought me here even when I didn’t know who he was. Do you really think he’d get over my death that easily?”

“I’ll help him through it.”

She gestured with the gun. “Let’s go into the sitting room. It’ll be more believable there.”

I reluctantly turned, leading the way. She poked the gun into my back, causing me to step wrong on my injured leg. I stumbled and nearly fell. My hand slammed into the wall and my chest followed.  I suddenly realized that Xander’s cellphone was in the front pocket of the shirt, and I carefully took it out and held it in my palm.

Margaret grabbed my arm and pulled me up straight.

“Come on, let’s go.”

“My leg,” I moaned, stumbling slightly again.

She groaned, but she held me under my arm to help me into the sitting room.

Xander’s phone was small, several generations behind the iPhone. I teased him about being too attached to the thing, but I was glad he still had it now. Margaret could see it if I held my hand at the right angle. And I knew the phone the phone fairly intimately. I’d watched Xander use it millions of times, and I’d dialed it for him over and again whenever we went on long drives together. I knew exactly which set of hot buttons to use to get the person I wanted.

I just had to stall a few minutes longer.

“You realize he’s just upstairs, waiting for me to come back with ice cream, right?”

“Then we need to hurry.”

“He’ll hear the shot.”

“It’ll take him a few seconds to get down here. By then I’ll be out the kitchen door.”

“What if you don’t kill me with your first shot? I can tell him who did it.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to get it right with the first shot.”

She was serious. And I could see that she’d worked it all out ahead of time. Her eyes were…why had I never seen it before? She was like a lost puppy, a child who’d seen too much of the realities of the world. She was broken. I felt sorry for her.

“Can I look out at the backyard one last time,” I asked. “It’s my favorite spot in this entire city.”

“It’s dark.”

“I could flip on the lights.”

“And alert Xander? I don’t think so.”

Not enough time had gone by. I had to find another way to distract her. But I couldn’t think of anything else.

“Please, Margaret. This isn’t going to get you what you want.”

As I waited for common sense, or just a piece of reality, to sink its way into Margaret’s mind, I was beginning to think that it was already too late. That this was really going to happen. I wasn’t ready to die.

And then I heard footsteps on the stairs, and a new fear blossomed in my chest.

“Hey, babe,” Xander called. “What’s taking so long?”