Chapter 23

The lighter fluidexplained why Jared hadn’t tried to flee. He couldn’t outrun an accurate lob of the candle, and his pants were soaked with the stuff.

I could shoot her without killing her, but that wouldn’t ensure she couldn’t still toss the candle. I’d seen people do some pretty remarkable things when shot, and Holly had a broken mental state to help spur her on. Then I had an idea, so I ran back to the kitchen and drew up short when I saw Ida Belle and Gertie coming in through the back door.

“Unlocked,” Gertie whispered.

I nodded and hurried to explain the situation. “Gertie, you come with me and cover the butler’s door after I go in. Ida Belle, you cover the main door of the drawing room. If Holly tries to escape, tackle her.”

Ida Belle hurried off, and I dashed over to the sink and grabbed a large pitcher sitting beside it and filled it with water. Gertie grinned and gave me a thumbs-up. I crept back through the butler’s pantry, Gertie right behind, and stopped at the door, positioning the pitcher in my right hand. I twisted the doorknob with my left hand and inched the door open to make sure everyone was still in the same position, then I threw the door open and launched.

Holly let out a shriek as the door slammed against the wall, but I was already halfway across the room. She lifted the candle to throw it, and I chunked the entire pitcher of water on her.

Bull’s-eye!

The candle went out and Holly took off running for the front exit. I yelled for Ida Belle and set off after her, Gertie hot on my tail. Holly ran right through the doors without even opening them and I heard the wood splinter. I made it to the opening just in time to see Ida Belle dive-tackle her onto the entry floor.

I saw a flash of metal and yelled, “She’s got a knife!”

I grabbed a pillow from a chair and sprinted for Ida Belle just as Holly swung the knife around, right at her chest. I launched, my arms extended, and stuck the pillow out like I was reaching for the end zone. I slammed into Ida Belle, knocking her over just as Holly embedded the knife into the pillow.

I sprang up in time to see Gertie flying toward us with the drapes from the other room. She tossed them over Holly, who was halfway up, and I tackled her to the ground again. She thrashed beneath me, and I swore.

“If you don’t stop moving, I’m going to relight that candle and drop them on these drapes.”

All movement ceased and her body went slack. A couple seconds later, she started wailing like a child. Jared stumbled out of the room, his expression so dazed I knew he was in shock. Gertie pulled fuzzy handcuffs out of her bra—something I never wanted to discuss—and I fished around in the drapes until I got Holly’s hands secured behind her back.

Ida Belle had guided Jared into a chair, and he was now sitting, his whole body shaking. The disgruntled guard finally showed up, and when he saw Jared sitting there, his shoulders slumped with relief.

“Now you show up,” Gertie said, shaking her head.

“Call the paramedics,” I said. “He’s in shock. Jared, I’m going to call the state police. I’m not interested in getting the runaround from the locals over this. And I need your attorney’s number. Let him handle Holly. Do you understand?”

“Don’t call the paramedics,” Jared said. “I don’t want people to know…”

The guard, who already had his cell phone out, glanced at me.

“Not an option anymore, Jared,” I said and motioned for the guard to leave. “I’ve got this under control. Call the paramedics and get back to the gate to let the state police in.”

As the guard left, Jared pointed to the drawing room, his hand still shaking. “My phone. She made me throw it into the corner by the big plant.”

Gertie hurried off to retrieve the phone, and I hoisted Holly up from the ground and plopped her into a chair before using the ruined drapes to tie her there. She had stopped wailing, but it looked as if the reality of the situation was finally beginning to sink in and she turned to softly sobbing.

I called the state police and gave them a brief explanation and told them I needed assistance well beyond what the local force was capable of as Holly would need a police escort to a locked-down facility. Then I stepped in between Jared and Holly and glared at both of them.

“This nonsense ends now,” I said to Jared. “Because I won’t be here the next time she tries to kill you.”

Some of the color had returned to his face, but he still shot a nervous look at Holly and gulped.

“I know why you’re covering for her. I saw the documents on your desk. But you can’t keep doing this. She’s dangerous and she’s escalating.”

“I am not!” Holly yelled.

“And she’s back,” I said and sighed. “You can’t reason with her, Jared. Surely you understand that. How many more people are you going to put at risk? This entire nightmare could easily be taken off your hands.”

“I don’t see how. I’ve been trying to figure out a loophole.”

“Have you talked to your attorney about it?”

“No, because I didn’t want to—couldn’t tell him…”

“That Holly killed Lindsay?”

I glanced over at Holly, but she’d gone silent again, staring at me with wide eyes and—finally—a heavy dose of fear.

“There’s a man doing life in prison who doesn’t deserve to be there,” I said. “He’s already lost ten years. How many more people are you going to sacrifice before you tell the truth?”

He stared down at the floor. “I don’t know the truth.”

“Then tell me what you do know.”

“I can’t, or I lose everything.”

I stepped close to him and bent over, then whispered, “If Holly committed a crime, the courts will put her away, not you. So technically, you won’t be in default of the requirements of your trust.”

His eyes widened and he shook his head. “It can’t be that simple. Besides, I promised my father, and I’ve been hiding stuff all this time. They’ll throw me in jail too.”

“I doubt it. Don’t get me wrong, you’re in serious trouble, but you can either fess up and hope for a lenient judge who takes into account the circumstances, or you can keep covering for Holly and roll the dice for the rest of your life, which might be shorter than it should be. Your choice.”

His shoulders slumped. “I’m so tired. I don’t even think I care anymore. I just want it all to end.”

“That power rests solely with you.”

“Don’t tell her,” Holly pleaded, sounding more like a child than an adult.

He looked at her for several long, silent seconds, and I could see the love and sadness in his expression, but exhaustion and fear had finally trumped duty.

“She’s off her meds,” he said quietly. “I stand there and watch her take them. Watch her swallow, but I saw them in the bottom of the toilet yesterday morning. I don’t know how long she’s been doing it.”

“Please, Jared,” Holly begged. “Don’t send me to the bad place. I’ll be good.”

He broke his gaze with her, as if looking at her any longer was painful, and let out a defeated sigh.

“Father and I were in his office most of the night,” he said. “He was mad over some business decisions I’d made and yelling at me made him happy. Holly had retreated to her room—so we thought—right after dinner, which is when the yelling started. When he was done, I was all worked up, so I went downstairs to grab a beer and ended up falling asleep on the couch watching TV.”

He looked at his sister, tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Holly, but I can’t live with this anymore. These secrets are destroying not just me but other people. Holly came in about 3:00 a.m. She was frantic and had blood all over her clothes…and she was carrying a knife.”

“Did she say anything?”

“Not right away. It was like she was in a walking coma. I sat her down in the kitchen and went to get our father. He made everything worse by thundering about, of course, demanding answers. Finally, Holly said she saw Ryan and Lindsay fighting and he’d struck her.”

“I did not say that!” Holly yelled. “I always said it couldn’t have been Ryan.”

“You did say it.” Jared looked up at me. “She swore she had no idea where the blood or the knife came from. That she remembered looking in Lindsay’s kitchen window and then everything was a blank until she was sitting in our kitchen.”

“That’s true,” Holly said, her voice barely a whisper. “I still don’t remember everything, but without the poison the doctors gave me, I see flashes of that night…of the part I don’t remember. I saw him hit Lindsay, and she screamed because it hurt her. But it couldn’t have been Ryan.”

“Why couldn’t it have been him?” I asked, watching her closely.

She seemed as lucid as I’d ever seen her when she shook her head and looked back down at the floor, and I knew she was hiding something.

My phone signaled an incoming text and I frowned. Surely the lawyer or the state police would call rather than text, but I checked just to be certain. It was the photo from Brett Spalding. I opened it and saw Ryan kissing Kelsey outside the hotel bar. But something in the background also caught my eye—a person looking at them from behind a plant in the lobby.

I enlarged the image and looked at Holly.

“You knew it couldn’t have been Ryan because you were spying on him at the hotel bar that night.”

“No way,” Jared said.

“So she managed to get to Lindsay’s house and downtown all the time to stalk Ryan; she got to the sheriff’s department and my house in Sinful; and she got back here despite being in police custody, but she couldn’t have gotten to the casino that night? Your logic is seriously flawed, and you know it. You said yourself that you and your father were in an argument most of the night. No one looked for Holly. You assumed she’d gone to bed, but no one checked.”

I turned my phone to show him. “Here. This photo was taken the night Lindsay was killed. That’s Ryan kissing Kelsey outside the casino bar, and that’s Holly hiding behind the plant, stalking him, just like she always did.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Jared argued. “Ryan could have left right after that.”

I looked over at Holly. “But he didn’t, did he?”

She shook her head. “He got into the elevator with the girl. I saw him get a room key.”

“And then you left and went to your sister’s house.”

“Yes! But not to hurt her. Well, not that way. I wanted to tell her that Ryan was cheating on her. Except a man was already there.”

“Did you see his face?”

“No… I don’t know. Sometimes I think I remember, but then it’s gone. Or maybe it’s all wrong.” She started to sob. “I did it, didn’t I? I killed my sister. That’s why I was covered in blood and had the knife.”

The pitch of her voice kept getting higher and more frantic, and I was relieved to see Ida Belle open the door and let the paramedics in. They took one look at the girl tied to the chair with drapes and I hurried to explain.

“She’s supposed to be on a twenty-four-hour psych hold, but she escaped somehow and tried to set her brother on fire. The state police are on their way, so if you can just get her under control for transport…”

As soon as Holly had spotted the paramedics, she’d started thrashing and wailing again, trying to free herself from the chair.

“She’s handcuffed, of sorts,” I told the paramedics. “But I don’t know how well they’ll hold.”

The first paramedic pushed the drapes down and exposed the fuzzy handcuffs. The second one grabbed a needle and vial out of his bag and jammed it into Holly’s arm. She screamed as though she was being slaughtered and the paramedic took a step back and we all watched as the sedative began to take effect. Holly’s screaming tapered down to a sigh, and she slumped over in the chair.

“Let’s get her into the ambulance,” the first paramedic said, then looked back at me. “That sedative won’t last long. It’s just enough to get her to the hospital.”

I nodded. “The state police shouldn’t be much longer. Just be ready to leave when they get here. Oh, and she’s probably got lighter fluid on her, so be careful with anything that might ignite a spark.”

They unwrapped the drapes and removed the handcuffs and within minutes, she was secured on the ambulance, her arms and legs restrained to the gurney. The paramedics were waiting in the ambulance, so I returned to Jared, wanting to get the entire story out of him before the state police showed up. Just in case he lost his nerve.

“You and your father assumed Holly killed Lindsay, didn’t you?”

“No! At least I didn’t. Not at first. My father told me to take her upstairs and get her cleaned up and make sure she wasn’t injured, and he rushed out to check on Lindsay.”

“And the knife?”

“She’d dropped it on the kitchen floor, and it was still there when I took her upstairs to her bathroom.”

“So your father took it.”

“I didn’t know that at the time. I just thought he was going to make sure Lindsay was all right. Holly kept repeating that she saw Ryan hit Lindsay but no matter how hard we pushed, she wouldn’t say anything else.”

“So your father went to Lindsay’s house and found her dead.”

Jared nodded, his expression one of someone who’d lived through a horrific situation. “He said Ryan wasn’t going to get away with it.”

“So he put the knife in the dumpster at the motel.”

“He was overwrought and angry,” Jared tried to explain. “I think he went to the motel to kill Ryan, but he wasn’t there. There was no way my father was going to let Ryan get away with killing Lindsay, so he did what he had to do…to make sure Ryan went to prison.”

“And to protect Holly.”

“He made her swear never to tell that she left the house that night. He told her he’d lock her up if she did. She had a really bad experience in one of those places. She’s terrified to be in them.”

“So you let an innocent man go to prison.”

Jared shook his head. “I didn’t know. I always thought Ryan did it. Holly saw him. I know you have the picture from the casino, but maybe he left afterward.”

“So he went to the motel room, had sex with Kelsey, then left the hotel and went straight to Lindsay’s house and killed her before Holly turned up, even though she’d left the hotel before him? I need you to think very hard about this, Jared—when Holly told you what she saw through that window, did she name Ryan specifically? Or did she just say ‘he’?”

Jared scrunched his brow and stared at the floor for several seconds, then he looked back up at me, the blood draining from his face.

“She said ‘he.’”