Seeing Red (11 page)

Ellis shivered at the thought of Alexander stalking some unsuspecting teenage girl.

“We can’t do anything except what we’ve been doing.” Ellis’s dad stood and faced her uncle. “Make certain people don’t forget, don’t let down their guard. He’ll have to be in the sex offender registry—”

“I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that.” A light shone in her uncle’s eye. “Thank you, Bill.” He snatched his keys off the coffee table.

Her father grabbed his arm. “You can’t go after him! The law protects him. You could end up in jail yourself.”

Ellis stood there looking at the two men. Their anger was so strong, she could almost taste its bitterness in the air. Hollis Alexander was still destroying her family.

Her mother looked up and saw her.

Ellis moved into the living room.

Her dad and uncle continued to stare at each other.

After a moment, her father took a deep breath, let go of her uncle, and said softly, “Laura is gone. Why go out there and drag trouble back to our doorstep? The man is miles away.” He flung an arm wide, and for the first time glanced at Ellis. “I want him to stay that way.”

“I want him dead.” Greg’s voice was flat.

When Ellis glanced at her uncle’s face, her breath hitched in her chest. She’d only seen such brittle hatred once before in her life—when Hollis Alexander had looked at her in the courtroom on the day of his verdict.

Greg turned around and stomped out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

“Bill, do something!” Her mother jumped up from the sofa.

Her dad stared at the door for a moment. Then he blew out a long breath and scrubbed his hands over his face. “What would you have me do? He’s a grown man.”

That’s when Ellis saw it, and she only recognized it in her father’s eyes because she’d been feeling the same thing. Underneath his rational thoughts, his realistic arguments, a primal part of him
wanted
Greg to go after the man, to do whatever was necessary to take that vile creature off the streets.

Her mother said, “
Talk
to him.”

That primeval look faded from her dad’s eyes. He gestured in the direction of the doorway. “I’ve been trying to talk to him. You see the results I’ve gotten!”

Greg’s Corvette roared out of the drive, sand spray and crushed shells clattering against the house like hail.

“Well, now it’s too late.” Her mother’s tone was accusing. “What if he does something foolish?”

Her dad went to put an arm around her mother. “This has taken its toll on all of us. He’ll come to his senses.”

In a rare show of temper, her mother shook him off and stepped away. The deep lines in her forehead said she would not be placated.

Her dad tried anyway. “Even if Greg does find out his address from the Web site, Alexander is in a halfway house. There are plenty of people around. Greg’ll calm down by the time he gets there.”

Ellis’s mother pulled her lips to the side, narrowing her eyes as she looked at him. After a beat, she headed for the door. “
I’m
not going to wait for a catastrophe. I’m going to his house, talk some sense into him before he finds out that address.”

“Marsha!”

She picked up her car keys and kept going.

Her father looked torn for a moment; then he hurried into his study. When he came back, he had a .38 revolver in his hand. He held it out to Ellis. “I asked you here to give you this. Take it. You know how to handle it.”

“Dad! No.” Ellis stuck her hands in her shorts pockets. She knew how to handle it all right; her father had taken her to a firing range on a regular basis ever since Laura’s attack. But she never liked it. The weight of it in her hands made her stomach roll. The kick as a bullet shot out into irretrievable space made her break out in a sweat. She’d refused to keep a gun in her house.

“Take it.”

“I don’t need a gun. Alexander goes after defenseless teenage girls. I’m neither defenseless nor young.”
No, not defenseless, but afraid, always afraid. Afraid of someone like Alexander making a mockery of all of my precautions, all of my training.

“It would make me sleep better. In fact,” he said, “maybe you should move back in here with us. Just for a while.”

As if she wasn’t struggling enough with her memories these days. She shook her head.

“Please"—his eyes were pleading—“take the gun with you . . . for me. I have to go after your mother.”

Reluctantly, she took the weapon from his outstretched hand and felt the familiar roll in her belly.

He hurried to the door and said, “Be careful.”

Ellis looked at the blue-black metal resting in her palm. She was tempted to put it back in her father’s desk drawer. But if it gave her dad a measure of ease . . . She tucked it inside her purse.

After she left her parents’ house, she drove past her uncle’s, just to make sure everyone was there and not racing down the road toward disaster in Charleston.

All three vehicles were in the drive; her mother and father’s cars effectively blocking in Uncle Greg’s Corvette.

She considered going in but realized she might serve as the spark to ignite the anger between her uncle and her father again. It was clear that her dad didn’t want Uncle Greg to do anything that would draw Alexander’s attention back to their family.

Besides, it would soon be dark.

She rolled on past and headed home.

When Ellis got inside her condo, the first thing she did after locking the door behind her was to shove the gun deep in her desk drawer.

Hollis sat at Justine’s long, polished dining room table, eating the best piece of beef he’d ever tasted. Justine sat at the head in her wheelchair, Hollis at her left-hand side. It had been so long since he’d dined here that he’d had to pause in order to recall what each piece of silverware was used for.

“It’s so good to have you back home,” Justine said, her gray eyes looking at him as if he was a long-lost son. “And so lovely of you to take your time to visit with an old woman.”

He reached out and clasped her hand resting on the tabletop. “You aren’t old.” He smiled. He did the math. She’d been forty-two when they’d met; she was only fifty-nine. But the truth was, Justine was a homely woman, at any age—and she didn’t work at overcoming it. “And
you’re
the lovely one.” He lowered his eyes, appearing self-conscious. “Not everyone welcomes an excon into their home.” He bit his lower lip and kept his gaze on his plate.

“Oh, Hollis, I regret every day that I didn’t testify for you at your trial. I could have told them it was a mistake. I know you were trying to protect me, but I could have told them the kind of person you are. You were a victim of circumstance, paying for a crime you didn’t commit. Lord knows you shouldn’t have been looking in a young lady’s window, but we all make mistakes, especially in our youth. Look at me, locked in this wheelchair for the rest of my life for one little mistake I made. It happens. You’ve proven to me you’re a thoughtful and caring young man. We’ll not discuss this topic ever again. You hear?”

He blinked, as if battling tears, and smiled at her. He used his softest voice when he said, “Yes, ma’am. God bless you.” After a pause, he added, “And I’d like to help you again, make it like it used to be, just me and you. You don’t need strangers doing for you now that I’m here.”

She gave a brisk nod of dismissal and patted his hand. “All right, then. How about some coconut cream pie? I remember it’s your favorite.”

He jumped up. “Let me clear the dishes.”

She wheeled backward. “I’ll start the coffee.”

As Hollis stacked the china, he wondered if the gamble of telling his defense attorney about Justine would have paid off. Would her testimony have swayed the jury from the circumstantial evidence? Or would it have led the police to search the woman’s house? That would have been disaster for certain.

No. He’d done the right thing.

He took the dishes into the kitchen and began rinsing them in the sink, set low and accessible. Justine’s little mistake—driving with a blood alcohol level double the legal limit and crashing into a two-hundred-year-old tree—had left her legs paralyzed. But it had also brought her to Hollis. At seventeen, he’d been working as a helper to the contractor who revamped this house to accommodate Justine’s new limitations.

By the time the job was done, Hollis had made himself indispensable to her—errands, odd jobs, and the like. Plus, her limited mobility only compounded her already introverted behavior; she’d been hungry for his friendship. And that friendship had given him the ability to expand his hobby.

If the police had found what was in Justine’s basement . . . well, things would have been a whole lot worse than fifteen years in prison.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

A
lthough memories had stolen her sleep, Ellis looked out on the early morning with a sense of purpose. It was time to put thoughts of Laura and Nate and Hollis Alexander away. To-day she would be proactive, focus on something that would protect girls from the Hollis Alexanders of this world. It was the first day of the self-defense class she taught each summer, a class that mothers who remembered Laura’s attack insisted their daughters take.

Before bed last night, she’d dutifully set the gun on her nightstand. On her way to the shower, Ellis looked at it sitting there with all of its deadly little bullets tucked in their chambers. She wanted to bury the damn thing in the back of her desk drawer again. But she’d promised her dad. She picked it up and tucked it inside her purse before she finished her morning routine.

At nine o’clock, she stood waiting in the shady area in Blue Heron Park. It sat at the very edge of downtown Belle Island, allowing most of her students to arrive on bicycles and on foot. In this community, twelve-year-old girls weren’t afraid to walk or bike wherever they needed to go. Ellis envied them.

The girls gathered around her, sitting in a semicircle on the coarse grass. She’d had all of them in her fourthgrade class at one time, and the way most of them were looking up at her said they still thought she was youngnew-teacher cool. Good. That gave her a fighting chance to make what she taught here stick.

None of these girls had been born yet when Laura had been attacked. Time and forgetfulness led to complacency. Most of these kids felt as she had at their age; they lived in a world cocooned from the evils that dwelt beyond the long bridge across the estuary. And that somehow those evils did not even think to cross that bridge.

“It’s good to see all of you again,” she began. “We’ll be meeting here for three weeks. This class is going to be pretty physical, so I want you to make sure you wear old clothes from here on out.” She picked up the stacks of two pamphlets she’d created,
Predators
and
Self-Defense Common Sense,
and handed them to the girls. “Pass these around. Feel free to take some for friends who aren’t joining us. I want you to share what you learn here with every girl you know. It could save her life.

“Lots of what we discuss will be common sense, but don’t take it lightly. The best way to survive an attack is to avoid it in the first place. Criminals look for weak or distracted victims. You’re going to learn to project an air of confidence and to be aware of your surroundings.”

“Miss Greene.” Jessie Baker raised her hand as if they were in school. “My momma said your cousin was kidnapped from her bedroom—right here in Belle Island. Is that true?”

“Yes, Jessie, it’s true. Sometimes, no matter how careful you are, trouble still finds you.” Ellis kept right on talking, discouraging specific questions about that crime. “In dangerous situations, I want your
first
instincts to be the right ones. For instance, if someone tells you, ’Don’t scream, or I’ll kill you,’ I want you to immediately start making as much noise and attention-getting ruckus as you can. The guy has just told you what will foil his plan—use it.”

Ellis had always wondered why Laura hadn’t called for help. Ellis had been right there, sleeping in the bunk above her cousin. Laura had only to yell. What threat had Alexander made that had prevented it? He’d gotten in by cutting the window screen. But there hadn’t been any sign of a struggle . . . .

Ellis realized the girls were all sitting there with expectant looks on their faces. She brought her mind back on task. “I want you to be able to protect yourselves. In addition to making sure y’all make smart choices, we’re going to learn a few defensive martial arts moves. A friend of mine taught me my first moves when I was just a little older than you.”

Right on cue, Rory’s nephew, Daniel, sprinted from behind a thick tree.

He grabbed Ellis from behind, and in two swift moves, she had him lying on the ground struggling for breath.

She’d enlisted Daniel because he was a defensive lineman at UNC, a good eight inches taller than her, with a neck the size of her thigh. She hadn’t given him a heads-up on her skills. He was simply to try and take her down, or drag her off to his waiting car.

Gasps and murmurs came from the girls, who hadn’t been expecting the demonstration.

“See,” Ellis said, barely breathing hard herself, “it’s not going to matter if someone is bigger than you, stronger. With what I’m going to teach you, it won’t matter.” She reached down and offered Daniel a hand up.