Helpless (51 page)

“Adriana, what are you doing?” Tom cried.

“You disgust me,” Adriana said to Roland. “I did everything I could to save our son. And you? You’re dealing in the same crap that killed my Stephen. Were you just going to peddle this garbage to somebody else’s kid? You’re a callous, sick man, and the reason Stephen is dead.”

“Adriana ... help... .”

“Did my son murder Lindsey Wells? Is my Mitchell a killer?”

“No ... no ... Lindsey was alive when Mitchell brought her to me,” Roland said, struggling to speak. “But she had to die. You understand. To save our son, she had to die.”

“You killed her?” Adriana asked.

“No. It was Dee. I had Dee kill her. Adriana, please ... we can fix things.”

“Nothing can be fixed,” Adriana said. “But maybe I can start over.” She knelt down, placing the barrel of Dee’s gun inches from Roland’s head.

“Good-bye, Roland,” she said.

Adriana pulled the trigger.

Chapter 84

A
driana stood from her crouched position quicker than Tom anticipated. Even so, he was ready to act. He’d been whispering in Jill’s ear while Adriana kept herself occupied with Roland. Jill assured him she was ready. She squeezed Tom’s hand with a strength he didn’t realize his daughter possessed.

Adriana raised her gun higher. Her face, savage with a gruesome covering of blood splatter, contorted into a vicious snarl.

“I’m sorry, Tom. I’m going to have to disappear. I don’t see any other way.” She aimed the weapon at Jill.

Tom shoved Jill backward, hard as he could, coiling and uncoiling his hips to enhance his leverage. Jill’s feet lifted off the ground. Tom prayed they had taken enough backward steps that he could shove her far enough out to clear the railroad ties below. He dove to his right at the same instant Adriana fired her shot. Tom heard the bullet slice through the air, then a loud splash. Tom rolled twice, getting closer to Adriana with each revolution.

Please ... please be all right,
he thought.

Another shot rang out. Then another.
Pop! Pop!
Tom rolled again and, in a single motion, sprang back to his feet, within striking distance of his target. Tom didn’t attack right away. He couldn’t make his decisive move until he knew for certain Jill was safe.

The delay gave Adriana precious seconds to get herself reoriented. She aimed the gun point-blank at Tom’s chest.

Finally, Tom heard what he’d been waiting for.

“Green! Green!”

Jill’s songbird voice echoed off the quarry walls and filled Tom’s heart. He lunged at Adriana, clutching her in his arms before she could get off a third shot. They grappled together, spinning around several times, as though in a frenzied dance. Tom lost his grip on Adriana’s arm. He felt the gun barrel digging into his abdomen. Tom somehow maneuvered them close to the edge of the quarry. He kept hold of Adriana as he fell backward. They tumbled over the lip of the quarry’s steep cliff with their arms wrapped tightly around each other.

Time slowed. Tom sensed himself floating above the water. The darkness below appeared infinite, and their bodies felt weightless. The fall shouldn’t have taken Tom by surprise, but it did. A ripping wind howled in his ears as he plummeted downward, shattering the momentary stillness. As Tom fell, he heard Adriana’s loud screams puncturing the night, and the explosion of a gun.

Rainy reached the path before the others. She sprinted ahead of Carter, who didn’t have nearly enough leg strength to keep pace. Off in the distance, Rainy heard the sound of sirens, screeching as though the whole town of Shilo were on fire. She could hear cars pulling to a quick stop, doors opening, then slamming shut. She heard the sputter of radios crackling as more sirens arrived. She pushed ahead, sprinting at full speed with her gun drawn. She felt dizzy with adrenaline. Her thoughts were spinning.

Why had Adriana left Mitchell? Why did Roland bring Tom to the Spot? Where was Lindsey Wells?

Rainy broke free of the woods and stumbled into the clearing. It was just as Mitchell had described. She looked around and saw two bodies on the ground. She heard a gunshot, followed by a splash.

Still falling, Tom heard Jill cry out from somewhere in the water below, “Dad! No!”

The railroad ties, the ones Tom had prayed Jill would clear, emerged from the darkness like a predator about to strike. Tom struck the water and twisted his body to avoid a direct hit. He heard the sickening crack of bone, felt Adriana’s skull crack against his own. Blood splatter sprayed his face like seawater called up from a fast-moving boat.

Tom floated in the water, clutching Adriana’s limp body in his arms. It wasn’t just the cold water making it hard for Tom to breathe. No, something else was wrong. A spot on his abdomen felt exquisitely sore to the touch.

Tom suddenly knew why he’d begun to sink. Water filled his nostrils. He gagged to clear his airway, but the pain felt worse than drowning.

Tom’s body bobbed vertically in the water, as if he were climbing the rungs of an invisible ladder. His mouth angled for each struggling breath. He let the water fill him up and pull him under.

His muscles were tiring.
Any moment now
.

Drowning wasn’t anything like the movies or TV portrayed it to be. It was far more terrifying, because no overt signals, like splashing or frantic hand waving, warned of any peril. Drowning, Tom knew, was a far more cerebral experience. But no matter how people imagined a drowning victim suffered, in the end everyone died the same way: the heart simply stopped beating.

Tom’s limp body sank into a free fall. He made several hard kicks, fighting to surface against the decreased mobility of his denim jeans. His lungs were afire. His chest felt as if it were being squeezed by a bone-crunching weight.

He felt a sudden pull on his shirt. His whole body jerked upward. His body jerked again. Instead of sinking, Tom felt himself starting to rise. Tom broke the surface, the fire in his burning lungs extinguished with that first blessed breath of air. He began to tread water. He could feel the blood rushing out the bullet hole in his stomach. He saw Jill treading water beside to him. She was holding on to his shirt. A body, floating facedown nearby, had to be Adriana. He could see the depression where the railroad tie had crushed her skull.

Tom felt another tug on his shirt, followed by the sensation of being pulled. Jill was swimming for the shoreline. And she was dragging him with her.

Tom felt the rocks and sand of the shoreline pricking at his neck and arms. He could see the moon and the stars above him. The world was spinning. The last words Tom heard before he lost consciousness repeated in his fast-fading thoughts.

“Don’t you die on me, Dad! Don’t you dare die!”

Chapter 85

T
om struggled to open his eyes. When he did, he was looking up at Rainy’s smiling face.

“Are you an angel?” he managed to croak.

“No. I’m not.”

“Is this heaven?” he asked.

“No. It’s St. Elizabeth’s Hospital,” Rainy said.

“I don’t believe you. No, I’m sure this is heaven.”

“Have you ever been kissed by an angel?” Rainy asked.

Tom felt the warmth of her lips pressing gently against his eyelids, then brushing over his mouth. “I think I can get used to heaven.”

“Well, heaven can wait.”

“Warren Beatty,” Tom said.

“What?”

“That’s my favorite Warren Beatty movie.
Heaven Can Wait.
”

“I see.”

“We can watch it together.”

Tom tried to sit up and felt a sharp pain in his gut.

“Not time for that just yet,” Rainy said.

He lifted up his hands, expecting at least one of them to be handcuffed. “I’m still a free man?” he asked.

“You’re a lucky man,” Rainy said. “The bullet hit you in the side, not the stomach. But it was touch and go for a while there.”

“Rainy ... what happened ... ?”

“What happened is the Boyd family is not going to make the cover of
Parents
magazine, that’s for sure.”

“How did Adriana frame me? Why?”

“A lot’s happened since you’ve been out of pocket.”

“How long?”

“Three days. Going on four.”

“Jill?”

“She’s fine. She’s with Lindsey Wells.”

Tom’s expression went blank, and his jaw fell slack.

“But I thought Lindsey was dead. The police found her body in the woods. That’s why they were coming to arrest me.”

“They found her blood-soaked jacket in the woods and your knife nearby. Frank Dee was supposed to kill her but decided to keep her locked up in the icehouse. Apparently, he’d been ... assaulting her. Instead of killing Lindsey, he cut her hand and soiled her jacket. I guess he planned on absconding with her, but Adriana didn’t give him that choice. One of the Willards Woods employees noticed the lock on the icehouse door wasn’t the one she put there. She called the police, and they found Lindsey alive. Traumatized, but at least she’s alive.”

“Thank God,” Tom breathed. “What happened? Did Mitchell try to kill her?”

“He did,” Rainy said. “Lindsey called Tanner and told him about the flash drive Jill gave her. Tanner called Mitchell. They hatched a plan to get the flash drive back. Mitchell planned to kill Lindsey. Only he couldn’t do it. He choked her until she passed out. He put her in the trunk of his car and drove her back to his house. Then he went to Daddy. He told Roland everything, about his illegal image business and what he did to Lindsey. Only, he didn’t tell Dad that Mommy already knew about his sexting ring and told him to shut it down.”

“Sexting ring?”

“This kid was pretty entrepreneurial. He contracted a bunch of his friends and strangers he met over the Internet. These kids coerced their girlfriends into taking naked pictures of themselves. Mitchell paid them for any pictures they got, then sold them on the Internet for a profit. He basically tapped into an underserviced, but highly desired fetish market. The kid was making a fortune.”

“Tanner Farnsworth?”

“He was one of them. So was Gretchen Stiller.”

“A girl was coercing her own girlfriends into taking these pictures?”

“Sexting is anybody’s game.”

“So Mitchell knew his mom was framing me?”

“He did. This family kept a lot of secrets from each other.”

“I saw Adriana kill Dee and Roland. It’s like she just snapped.”

“Well, Adriana wasn’t who she pretended to be,” Rainy said, stroking Tom’s hair. “This woman nearly destroyed your life.”

“How? She’s not a computer wizard.”

“No,” Rainy said. “But following your tip about Cortland, we made several arrests. One of the people we arrested, a guy named Aaron Donovan, turned state’s witness. He told us everything.”

“Everything?”

“Adriana seduced Simon Cortland. She knew about the stock scheme Cortland concocted with her husband. She knew he had the ability to destroy people’s reputations. Apparently, Adriana was curious about Mitchell’s growing wealth. She seduced Cortland and had him install spyware on Mitchell’s computers. That’s how she found out Mitchell had been running a sexting ring.”

“So Adriana got Cortland to frame me for Mitchell’s crimes.”

“Simon Cortland hijacked Lindsey’s wireless network and wrote the Tumblr blog posts about her supposed affair with you. He was ‘Fidelius Charm’ and sent you the text messages of one of Mitchell’s many victims. Marvin was right.”

“How so?”

“Adriana came up with the idea to make it look like you were sleeping with one of your players.”

“Why?”

“She wanted to make you look like a sexual predator. A jury would be more willing to believe you were running a sophisticated sexting ring that way. According to Donovan, Adriana was paranoid about the plan falling apart. That’s why she posted your bail. She wanted to keep the suspicion as far away from herself and Mitchell as possible. Who would think that the woman who bailed you out of jail was also the one who put you there?”

“So Cortland put that Leterg program on my computer? Faked those bank accounts, too?”

“He did,” Rainy said. “Only Cortland couldn’t easily get to your home computer, especially after you installed the alarm, which is why he used your work computer instead.”

“Grateful for that.”

“Me too. The failed battery was the turning point for me.”

“And James Mann?” asked Tom. He kept his eyes closed, picturing Mitchell Boyd and this Aaron Donovan telling Rainy their stories.

“Simon was opportunistic,” Rainy said. “He knew about PrimaMed’s pending drug approval. His firm wrote the press releases. He already had his stock scheme going with Roland Boyd. ‘Two for the price of one,’ is how Donovan put it. He’d bring you down and make a mint with Boyd in the process.”

“Then who killed Marvin?”

“Frank Dee,” Rainy said. “Sadly, Lindsey Wells witnessed it all.”

“Why?”

“Because Marvin figured out the connection between Cortland and Boyd. That’s why Boyd had Marvin killed.”

Tom closed his eyes tightly and tried to swallow his anger. “Boyd got what he deserved,” he said. “Dee too.”

“And so did you,” Rainy said. “You’re now an innocent man.”

“In less than twenty-four hours I went from being a rapist, child pornographer, and drug smuggler to almost being in the clear,” Tom said with some amazement.

“What do you mean, almost?”

“I did ignite a fireball in front of a bunch of police cars,” Tom said.

“Well, the good news is I’ve had a chat with Sergeant Brendan Murphy. He’s sorry about how he treated you. I think you might find you’re in less hot water than you’d expect. My guess is you’ll get off with probation. No jail time.”

“But I’ll still need a lawyer.”

“I’d say that’d be a smart move.”

“Do me a favor,” Tom said.

“Anything.”

“Call Amanda Pressman. She’s the only attorney I’ll ever use.”

Epilogue

T
he Shilo High School parking lot was crowded with runners. There were a thousand registered participants, all of whom were stretching in preparation for the first annual Marvin Pressman 5k Memorial Run for Teen Safety. Organizing the event in such a compressed timeline would have been too massive an undertaking for Tom without Rainy’s guidance and expertise. In fact, it was Rainy who had inspired Tom to organize Marvin’s run. She participated in the Melanie Smyth Memorial Run, held each year in Newton, and had been more than happy to help Tom pull this race together.