40. Paxton

CHAPTER 40

Paxton

My entire life, I wondered if my parents had adopted me. While I bear a small resemblance to my dad, there’s nothing of my mom in me. Her wild, red hair is about as crazy as she is. Free-spirited, she would call it.

Kali froze, eyes wide, as she struggled to comprehend while pointing at my mom.

Yeah, my exact thoughts when I found you talking to her. That’s not Pearl; that’s not her name. It’s Elizabeth. And who knows what her last name is now?

“Get in the car, Kali,” I demand, my pulse ramping up to a thundering stampede.

“Paxxy.”

That damn nickname! I cringe, slamming my door shut to keep Riggs inside.

She rushes toward me before I can stop her, wrapping her arms around my chest. I roll my eyes, keeping mine flat against my sides. She’s putting on a show. She wasn’t this excited almost two years ago. When she was supposed to be moving to California.

This isn’t California.

Peeling myself out of her hold, I take a step next to Kali. She’s confused, as she should be, because so am I. Finally, she finds her voice.

“That’s your mom?”

Not by choice.

I nod and grab her hand. “Let’s go. Now.” She might think she knows this woman, but she has no clue.

Kali stops behind me, and our hands break free. I whirl around when I hear her say, “You never told me you had a son.” No shock there. She probably threw a party the day I left.

She hikes a shoulder. “It’s not like he ever visited me. It felt like I didn’t.” Classic victim-playing. I refuse to engage in a debate over parental responsibilities at the moment. “How do you two know each other?”

“That is none of your business,” I say before Kali can answer. I open the car door, nudge her inside, and shut the door myself, fearing she might jump out if I don’t. As I round the car, I skewer my mom with a frosty stare. “If I find out you had anything to do with Kali’s kidnapping, I’ll arrest you myself.”

I ignore Kali’s confused expression as I slam the car in reverse. The tires squeal in protest when I hit the gas. My hands tremble from rage, and my focus is laser-sharp on the road ahead.

From the second I saw Kali, it’s been impossible to think straight. Keeping my feelings in check is a constant battle. I have to remind myself that she’s not here to see me. We’re done. I’m helping her because she’s important to me. Even if I can’t tell her how much .

And now this?

“Do you…do you think she had something to do with…” Kali’s voice trails off.

I swerve to pull off the road, slamming the truck in park, and release a painful sigh with a death grip on the steering wheel.

Fuck, yeah, I do. Somehow.

I turn in my seat, finding sparks of shock in her eyes. “Everybody’s been looking for a connection. I think I just found it.”

“Pearl wouldn’t…” she starts.

“There is evil inside that woman, Kali. She put me through hell after my dad died.”

Realizing the potential connection, she whips her head around so fast, I heard it crack. “We need to go back, Paxton. Right now!”

My principles escape me for a moment. I hear Kali, and she’s right. But it’s her. I’m not sure I can control myself if I find out she’s the reason for all of this.

“My best friend is missing. If she knows anything…” Kali squeezes my bicep. Hard. “Paxton, we need to find her.” Her jaw sets, and her eyes burn with a fierce intensity. I’m afraid to tell her no.

Fuuuuck! Confronting my mom again sends a ripple of dread through my veins, but what choice do I have? I need to put aside my personal demons. We could call Martinez, but he’s an hour away. Despite my stand-down with this case, I’m still a cop, and time is crucial. Riggs senses the shift in atmosphere, his ears perking up as he whines from the back seat.

“Hold on,” I say, shifting the vehicle into drive and making a harsh U-turn.

Kali glances at the back seat, checking on Riggs. He’s fine. He’s used to this. So there’s no question I’m hiding anything, I give Martinez a quick call and tell him what happened. There’s not much to say, but I want him to be aware of my mom . Of the connection .

We only have a link. But one link hooks to another and another until you find your anchor. The answer.

Who buried Kali alive?

The fear of discovering the answer and facing the possibility that the woman who birthed me is capable of such a heinous crime gnaws at me.

Kali’s quicker than I am, already swinging open the door before I put the truck in park when we reach the diner. She bolts into the restaurant. I let the engine idle for Riggs’s sake and chase after her. By the time I make it to the door, she’s already rushing back toward me.

“She’s not here. Roberto said she just left because she wasn’t feeling well.” Her voice is mixed with frustration and haste. She grabs my hand, pulling me back to the truck. “C’mon, we can catch her at her home.”

Not likely.

What have you gotten mixed up with, Mom?

The drive starts off quiet. God knows what Kali’s thinking. Me, I’m wondering if I’m about to come face-to-face with the man I almost killed ten years ago. Maybe that’s who Kali saw on the plane. He fits the description. Considering he locked a teenage boy in an underground storm shelter for days at a time, without food or water for punishment, it’s not too far-fetched he buried someone alive. If he did it, I’ll kill him myself. Nobody will stop me this time. I glance at my phone to check if Martinez has sent me the names yet, but he hasn’t responded.

“She’s a nurse. Why the hell was she a waitress?” I’m still confused. She’s lived here all this time?

“Pearl’s a nurse?” she blurts out.

I nod. At least that’s what she was in Oklahoma. “Is she married?” I ask.

“She wasn’t. At least the entire time I knew her. She told me she had been married four times before, though.” She turns in her seat, questioning, “How long has it been since you saw her?”

I take a moment to remember when it was. “She popped up at work. Not long after you found the note on your car.” Thinking back to the timing, I should’ve questioned it more. “I hadn’t seen her in a decade, and there she was. She told me about moving to California and wanted to say bye before she left.”

“You never told me that.” She sounds hurt.

The white SUV in front of me blurs, my focus clouded by regret. “I just…there wasn’t a point in bringing it up.” Kali remains quiet. She doesn’t agree. “She was leaving the state, and truthfully”—I look over at her, wishing I could make her understand—“I was hoping to never see her again.”

She nods, dropping her head. “I guess I never knew her,” she murmurs, shaking her head. “There.” She points to a small, weathered house.

Despite the old siding needing a new paint job and the shutter hanging by a screw on one window, it’s the vibrant red flowers in pots that stand out. My mom always loved her flowers.

Probably more than she loved me.

The truck comes to a stop, and this time I’m prepared for Kali’s quickness. I catch her by the elbow before she can get out. “Stay in the car,” I assert with a firm voice. She parts her lips to argue, but I cut her off. “You’re safer in here with Riggs. I’ll check to see if anyone’s home.”

Securing my gun at my side, I open the door, fixing her with a stern look until she signals that she’s staying put. She holds her hands up in surrender. “Okay, fine.” It’s confirmation enough for me. She doesn’t have to be happy about it.

Dirt and rocks crunch underfoot as I walk up the gravel driveway. There isn’t a car anywhere on the property. Off in the distance, the mooing of cows carries in the wind. My knocks on the weather-beaten front door echo unanswered. Waiting a few seconds before knocking again. It’s pointless. She’s not here. I cast a brief look back at Kali, shaking my head, before turning to do a perimeter check. I glance through each window until I hit the back door. Taking a chance, I try to open it, but it’s locked.

“I have a key.”

Kali’s voice startles me from behind, jolting me into a defensive stance. My hand instinctively flies to my gun until my eyes land on her, holding up a gold key. “Didn’t we agree that you’d stay in the car?” My voice is a low rumble of frustration.

“I recall you saying you were going to check if she was here first. You checked, and she’s not. So, I thought since I have a spare key, we should use it.”

“Are you trying to get me in trouble? I don’t have a warrant.”

For a moment, she just looks at me, her expression faltering. “But you tried the door.”

“That wasn’t meant for you to see.”

“Well, I did.”

With a determined stride, she moves past me, sliding the key into the hole. I should stop her, but if my mom gave her a key, she gave her access. With a cautious glance around, I relent and follow her inside. Kali calls out her name, but we’re met with silence. I check the small two-bedroom house before returning to where Kali is in the living room.

“What do you expect to find?” I inquire, scanning a cluttered desk with bills and magazines. Using a pen from my pocket, I nudge a magazine aside, revealing Pearl’s last name. I’m happy to see it’s not still Houston, but why did she change her first name? There’s a bill with a huge past-due stamp across it. It’s for an MRI.

“I’m not sure,” Kali replies, pulling my attention away from the bill. She stands in the middle of the living room, spinning in place. “You’re the cop. What would you be looking for?”

“If I had a warrant, we’d be looking through everything. Every single square inch. But we don’t.” Riggs barks from my truck, and my spine straightens. Shit. This was a bad idea. The drawn shades obscure the view outside. Without wasting any more time, I take two swift steps toward Kali and guide her to the back door. If we can exit before someone spots us, it’ll be a lot easier to offer an excuse.

“Freeze. Hands in the air.” A burly cop, gun drawn, beats us to the back door. He fixates on my firearm holstered at my hip. I throw my hands up, and Kali does too, stepping out from the shadow cast by me. The minute he notices her, he drops his weapon. “Kali? What the hell?”

“Chip!” she replies, her chest rising and falling from fear. We both lower our hands. “Thank God it’s you. Have you seen Pearl? She left work not feeling good, and I had just seen her, and she seemed fine. I was worried something had happened.” Words tumble out of her mouth like a torrent, rapid and urgent.

He keeps his defensive stance and his hand on his holstered gun. Ignoring her question, he keeps his focus on me. Chip? What the fuck? I know this guy. But I know him as Charles. Of course, he wouldn’t remember me, but it’s the man my mom grew up with. I can’t remember the exact year he moved, but it’d have to be at least fifteen years ago, back when I was a pimple-faced, stick-thin kid. A lot has changed since then.

But why are my mom and Charles, or Chip , living in the town that took my brother?

“I’m a friend of Kali’s, and I’m also a police officer. I can show you my badge.” I wait for him to nod before pulling my wallet from my back pocket and flashing him my badge. If he doesn’t recognize me, he will now. He glances too quick at it. There’s no way he looked long enough to catch my name.

Maybe he does remember me.

“If you’re a cop, then you’re aware that you’re trespassing.”

“Trespassing?” Kali clips, holding up the key as evidence. “Chip, I have a key. I told you, I was worried about Pearl.”

“She’s the one who called it in. She thought someone was breaking into her house.”

That’s a lie.

She’s running. And this is nothing but a distraction. The idea that my mom had something to do with Kali fires up an anger that I’d long buried in her absence. I just don’t understand. What is her involvement in this? How did my mother and Chip end up here? Is he involved? Was Kali always her target? Is she so evil that she would have someone buried alive?

Who am I kidding? There is something wrong with her. She didn’t seem to mind when my stepfather threw me down into the storm shelter in the middle of the night. Always waiting on the other side, releasing me like she saved me. At first, I thought she was, but after a few times, it was obvious she was doing it on purpose. She was not the hero; she was the orchestrator.

“Well, c’mon.” Chip steps outside, holding the door open. “You guys can’t be in here. Only because it’s you, Kali, I won’t arrest you. She didn’t know you were the one at her house.”

We follow him out, and Kali locks the door behind her.

“Can you call her and tell her it was me? I have to talk to her, but she’s not answering her phone.” He nods, and I keep my eyes on him, scrutinizing his every move, searching for signs of nervousness or fidgeting. He appears calm. “She might not recognize my number.”

He holds out his pad and a pen. “Give me your number, and I’ll tell her.”

As she writes her number down, she says, “This is urgent. Can you call her now?”

He pulls out his phone and puts it to his ear. After a few seconds, he shrugs. I make a mental note of the time so Martinez can verify if he called her. “She didn’t answer. But I’ll tell her you need to talk to her as soon as possible. Are you guys staying in town?”

“No,” I spit. Kali might be in danger here. There’s something going on, and we don’t need to be stuck in this small town. Martinez is putting out a statewide lookout for my mom. She’ll be on the radar of every cop in the state of Texas.

“You might want to check your messages,” I suggest to Chip, my hand gripping the door handle as I settle into my truck. “There’s going to be a BOLO for Pearl any minute.”

His eyes widen, and a furrow creases his forehead. “What? What’d she do?”

“She’s wanted for questioning in connection with the girl that went missing last night.”

A droplet of sweat beads on his forehead. His calm demeanor shifts. “This is ridiculous. She hasn’t left Blackburn. What does she have to do with anything?”

“That’s for the Austin PD and Texas Rangers to find out.” His face is beet red by the time I back out. I glance through the rearview mirror, and he’s on the phone yelling at someone. Chip’s involvement is still up in the air for me. But he knows something. The pieces of the puzzle don’t fit together neatly, and I’m left with more questions than answers.

Leaving town, Kali stares out the front window. Every couple seconds, she’s shaking her head, engaged in an internal conversation. I give her a moment to take everything in. She finally says, “She was like a mom to me. She couldn’t have had anything to do with what happened to me.” I sense her questioning eyes on me, but she won’t like my answer.

“She’s not the person you think she is. I told you that after my brother died, something broke. She didn’t care who she was with or what they did to me. She’d let my stepdad beat the shit out of me with a switch for not eating one carrot on my plate and then tell me I deserved it. And that was one of many. He was a hothead who had a thing for hurting people.”

Her gasps reverberate in the truck. Holding her hand over her mouth, she utters, “Oh my god. Was this revenge for what my dad did?”

“I wish I could tell you how that brain of hers works, but I don’t speak crazy.” Gave up trying to figure her out after she married Carl. I hold off telling her about Chip because she’s already freaking out. I’ll tell Martinez as soon as I get back to the precinct because I’m not sure if he’s involved, but that connection is definitely worth looking into.

There’s a heavy silence, and I want to reach for her, reassure her that her friend had nothing to do with this, but I can’t. “You never saw her at the diner? We work the same shifts.”

Her question surprises me at first, then grates on my nerves because I think I’d know if I saw my mom. “She wasn’t there when I went in for pie.”

Another gasp escapes Kali’s lips. “She knew you were there. That day…she was fine one minute and the next, she hurried out of there saying she was sick. I was so confused because she never calls in sick. Now it all makes sense. Well, clearly, not all of it,” she adds. That’s why they were short-staffed and everything was backed up. She must’ve seen me come in.

Guilt tightens its grip around me, and a bitter taste of responsibility that I set the entire plan in motion sours my stomach. She hid herself from me. Why? Why didn’t she want me to know she was there? Had I left well enough alone, Kali would’ve never been taken.

Buried alive.

Fuck.

Kali was right moving away from me. No other women have been taken—that we know of—since she left. This was personal. My mom. Revenge. Hatred . But where does Shanna Clark fit into this picture?

I might not have put her in that grave, but this is all my fault.