Kill You Last (12 page)

HIS EMBRACE TIGHTENED.

Then tightened more.

Suddenly, I felt myself being lifted off my feet, my arms pinned at my sides. Alarm spreading, I opened my eyes and tried to squirm out of his grasp, but his grip was too tight and too close for me to get any leverage.

“Gabriel, stop! What are you doing?” I gasped when I realized he was dragging me into the ladies’ room. He swung the door closed behind us, then pushed me hard against the walls.

When my eyes focused, I was staring at a knife.

The blade was curved and sharp on one edge and serrated on the other. I stopped breathing and felt as if my heart was trying to crawl into my throat. Gabriel held the knife just below my neck.

“Don’t move; don’t yell,” he whispered.

I’m not sure I could have done either, even if he’d ordered me to. I was frozen with fear.

“Don’t do anything dumb, and you won’t get hurt,” he growled.

I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. My heart thumped so hard I could feel the pulse throbbing in my neck.
Breathe
, I told myself.
If you stop breathing, you’ll faint.
But I was beginning to feel sick and light-headed with fear. So it was Gabriel? He was the killer?

“I need money,” Gabriel said.

I heard him clearly, but was so surprised that I almost asked him to repeat it. Money? “I think I have thirty dollars.”

“No, stupid!” he snapped. “
Real
money. Fifty thousand.”

What?
“I don’t—”

“Your father has it.”

My father? Fifty thousand dollars?

“He’s been avoiding me. Won’t go into the same room, won’t answer the phone. I made him so frickin’ much money, and now it’s like I don’t exist.”

I was trying to understand, but my brain was sluggish with fright. The knife looked new and sharp, and it was so close to my neck. “How?”

“How what?”

“Did you—”

“Make him so much money?” Gabriel finished the sentence. “I was the cheese in the mouse trap. Janet would talk the pigeons in, and then I would soften them up for the kill.”

Mice? Pigeons?
Was it advisable to tell someone holding a knife to your throat that he was mixing metaphors?

“The kill?” I repeated.

“We didn’t
kill
anyone,” Gabriel growled. “That’s just what we called it. Janet got them to come to the hotel, but once they were there, it was my job to romance them, make them feel beautiful enough to think they could be models, make their mothers feel beautiful enough to think their daughters could do it. I was the closer, the charmer, the one who got the mothers to part with the money. Without me the whole thing wouldn’t have worked.”

“But Dad paid you, didn’t he?”

Gabriel snorted. “Nothing compared to what he kept for himself. And now I need more, and he’s got it, and you’re going to get him to give it to me.”

That’s when it dawned on me.
I was being kidnapped? Held for ransom?

“He’s got till the end of the week, or I go to the police.”

It didn’t make sense. This person holding a knife on me was threatening to go to the police? Shouldn’t I have been the one who threatened to do that?

“You got it?” Gabriel lowered the knife, which was a huge relief.

“No, I don’t understand. The police have already questioned him. They know about the scam.”

Gabriel smirked. “They don’t know anything.”

“Then tell me.”

He shook his head. “Just tell him he’s got till the end of the week. He’ll know what I’m talking about.” He stepped back, slid the knife into his pocket, and gazed at me. “Too bad it had to go this way. You and I could have had a nice thing together.”

I thought of pinching myself to make sure this wasn’t a dream. This guy pulls a knife on me and then talks about what a cute couple we might have been? Was one of us in serious need of a reality check? But I held my tongue. He still had that knife.

“Get out of here,” he said.

I started to back out of the ladies’ room. As Gabriel watched, a nasty curl appeared on his lips. “Oh, wait, there’s something I always meant to tell you. You know all those photographs of famous people your dad has hanging on his walls? They’re stock shots he bought on eBay.”

“But they’re autographed to him.”

Gabriel chuckled. “Not autographed
to
him, autographed by him. They’re fakes. Now go. And remember, one word to anyone, and your dad is toast.”

I backed through the door, not taking my eyes off him until I was in the hallway, where I could turn and run. Outside the bathhouse, I started to walk quickly, wondering if I should go to the police anyway. What if Gabriel was bluffing? Hoping I’d believe him and not get the police involved?

But what if he
wasn’t
bluffing?

Was it possible that Dad had been up to even worse than what I already knew?

I GOT HOME in time to find a handful of photographers shooting pictures of a Soundview Police Department wrecker towing Dad’s Ferrari out of the driveway. I hurried to the front door. Dad was sitting in the kitchen with a bowl of peanuts, a bottle of tequila, and a shot glass. Dark stubble lined his jaw, his hair was disheveled, his shirt hung out.

“You know what they’re doing?” I tilted my head in the direction of the driveway.

He nodded slowly, almost hopelessly.

I sat down at the table with him. “Dad, brace yourself.” When I told him what had just happened with Gabriel, Dad’s bloodshot eyes widened with fury. He placed his hands on the table and lurched up unsteadily. The chair he’d been sitting on clattered backward and banged into the kitchen counter. He staggered a step or two toward the kitchen door and shoved his hand into his pocket as if to take out his car keys, then stopped and cursed loudly, as if he’d just remembered that his car was no longer there. In frustration, he spun around and kicked the chair across the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” Mom gasped, appearing in the doorway.

“When I get my hands on that punk, I’ll …” Dad grumbled and staggered again, turning his head this way and that, as if uncertain which direction to go.

“What’s wrong?” Mom asked.

Dad and I looked at each other with, I was convinced, the same thought—was this something we wanted her to know about? Unfortunately, we were a little too obvious about it.

“You’re not going to tell me?” Mom’s voice was filled with helpless disappointment.

Dad nodded at me, as if giving his approval. I told her what had happened.

By the time I’d finished, Mom was reaching for the phone. “We have to call the police.”

“Don’t,” Dad said.

She stared at him. “Why not?”

Dad took a deep breath, picked up the chair, and sat down, letting out a trembling, almost defeated sigh. “Just…don’t.”

“But we’re talking about someone who threatened our daughter with a knife,” Mom said, taking the phone off the hook.

Dad glanced at me and then said, “You can’t call them, Ruth. You know why.”

From the way Mom reacted, I wasn’t sure she did. But she must have figured it out pretty fast. Looking shaken, she slowly replaced the phone on the hook.

At the table, Dad knocked back the rest of the tequila in his glass, his shoulders stooped with defeat. The kitchen became quiet and filled with a heavy sense of gloom.

“Is someone going to tell me why Mom can’t call the police?” I asked.

Mom looked at Dad, then at me. “Oh, darling, I really don’t think you need to—”

“I—” Dad began, and Mom instantly quieted. He rubbed his hand across his forehead and stared at the table. “I don’t…want the police to know…because …” He leaned forward and pressed his face into his hands. For a moment I wondered if he was going to break down.

Mom stared at me, her eyes filling with tears, then turned to him. “You don’t have to tell her.”

He lowered his hands and stared at the table. “Some of the things you’ve heard…are true, Shels.”

A tremor ran through me. “You…had something to do with the missing girls?”

“No, not that, but…I…took advantage.”

For a moment the words didn’t compute…then they did. Mom turned and looked out the window so I couldn’t see her face.

“What about…the ones who are missing?” I asked.

Dad nodded.

I stood there stunned. Numb. Thinking back to what the girl on TV said about Dad wanting to meet her alone.
My own father
…I thought.

Mom hurried out of the kitchen. Her footsteps raced up the stairs, and a door slammed.

Dad hadn’t moved. He was still staring at the table. “They said…they were all over eighteen.”

Again it took a moment for me to understand.
Over eighteen
? Oh God, so that, according to the law, meant they were legal? But the way he’d just said that—

“You’re…not sure?”

He didn’t answer.

“Did you hurt them?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Are you
sure
?”

Dad winced. “You doubt me?”

I stared at him in disbelief, feeling frustration and incredulity mutate into anger. “Do I doubt you? If I do, can you blame me? Every day, you reveal something new and swear that that’s the end of it. And then the next day, there’s always something else and it’s always worse. What’s next, Dad? What horrible thing will we find out tomorrow?”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, right,” I scoffed.

“I swear, Shels.”

I stared at him. His gaze dropped. I remembered what Mom had said about liars keeping their eyes on yours. I thought about what Gabriel had said about those autographed photos that hung on the studio walls.
So many lies
…

“Please, Dad, don’t swear if it’s not true.”

He refilled the shot glass and took a drink. “This time it’s true. I swear.” The kitchen became quiet again. I heard a creak from upstairs and wondered what Mom was doing. I stood with my arms crossed tightly, as if to keep myself from exploding. I wanted to understand. I wanted to come up with an “Oh, it’s just Dad being Dad” explanation. But how could I understand his being with girls my age? The things he must have told them…
promised
them…to get them …

I shivered. It was disgusting. There was no other way to describe it. A man his age.
A man in his position of power and influence over young, naïve, starstruck girls. The old casting-couch routine, indeed,
I thought bitterly. The girls I knew would have called him a dirty old man and gross. And for good reason. And now I had to face the fact that my own father wasn’t
just
one of those…those men who stared a little too long. He was something far, far worse.

DAD TOK ANOTHER slug of tequila. Was he bracing himself? Did he expect an outburst from me? I was angry, and growing angrier, and tempted to say something mean, feeling like I needed to vent but trying at the same time not to. It wasn’t just what he’d done to those girls. It was what he’d done to Mom and me, too. Did he ever think about us and what would happen if people found out?

It was hard to imagine anything more disappointing, or humiliating. My own father…was practically a child molester.

Suddenly, I couldn’t stand being in the same room with him. I understood exactly how Mom felt. I ran upstairs and sat down on my bed, seething, the same question rolling over and over into my brain, as if it was coming off an assembly line: How could he?

How could he?

How could he?

He was despicable. I thought of the photos of those famous actors and models, and how Dad had faked them, just as he’d faked everything he’d been doing, pretending to be a successful photographer when he was really just preying on young women for money and sex. There was symbolism in thinking of our family at that moment. Mom and I upstairs in our bedrooms, the high and righteous. Dad downstairs, not exactly in a dungeon, but low and contemptible just the same. He deserved it. Unlike the other times, I couldn’t even begin to try to forgive what he’d done.

I heard a soft knock on my door. “May I come in?” Dad asked.

I didn’t answer. I had to think about it.

“Sweetheart?” he said after waiting.

I gritted my teeth. Had he called any of those other girls sweetheart? The thought threatened to make me ill. I waited until the sensation passed, then thought the same thing I always thought: he was still my father. “I guess.”

He stopped inside the door, as if afraid to come any closer, his hands shoved into his pockets. He was a rumpled, disheveled mess, his eyes downcast. “I’m sorry. I was incredibly stupid. I made mistakes. I…never really thought about the consequences.”

It sounded heartfelt, and despite how angry I was, I also felt sad that he’d come to me and not to Mom, as if he assumed that she was a lost cause. As if I was his only chance.

“Sweetheart?”

That word made me want to scream, but I gathered myself in. “Don’t ask me for forgiveness, Dad,” I said, keeping my voice flat and unemotional, “because I am so far away from that right now.…I just have to ask you one more time, because there’ve been
way
too many surprises. Just swear to me that this is the end of it. That this is as bad as it gets and it doesn’t get any worse.”

“It doesn’t get any worse. I swear.”

“Then why can’t we go to the police and tell them what Gabriel did? If they’re going to find out about you and those girls anyway …”

Dad ran his hand over his head, letting his hair flop wherever it wanted. “I don’t want them to know.”

“So Gabriel gets to threaten me with a knife and go free?” It was incredible.

Dad gazed at me with sad, weary, reddened eyes and didn’t answer.

“And what about the money? He said he’d go to the police if he didn’t get it by the end of the week.”

As if lost in thought, Dad gazed off. Suddenly, I caught a glimmer of what was in his head. “You’re not…seriously considering
paying
him, are you?”

No reply. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe he would acquiesce to Gabriel’s demands. “Dad, you
can’t….
”

“Shelby, please, don’t. Not now. Give it a rest.”

He sounded like he was in agony. I had to wonder if he could pay Gabriel even if he wanted to. I had no idea if my parents had any money in the bank. We had our house. And the only other things of value that Dad owned were his camera equipment and his car, which reminded me.

“Why did they take the Ferrari?”

“DNA tests. I assume they got a sample from the body they found in Scranton and want to see if anything in my car matches it.”

“Was…she ever in your car?” I asked.

Dad made a helpless gesture with his hands. “Who remembers?”