43. Kali

CHAPTER 43

Kali

“Kali, wake up.”

I take a minute between the time I hear my name to open my eyes. My hands are bound behind me, and I’m sitting in a chair. In front of me, at the far end of a lengthy table, sits Chip. A gun rests right in front of him, a silent, implicit threat. His eyes are red and swollen as if this were causing him pain.

“It was you,” I hiss, the accusation escaping my lips.

He bows his head and nods.

“Why?” I scream, tugging against my restraint. “Why are you doing this to me?”

Tears shimmer in his eyes. No! He doesn’t get to cry. “Please calm down, Kali. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

I seize up, a deer-caught-in-the-headlights response. How much more condescending can he be? How on earth am I supposed to calm down? With a level voice, I respond, “Besides the fact that you’ve already hurt me, I’m tied to a chair after being drugged! Again!” Okay, so my voice didn’t stay level. I’m screaming by the end. “Why would I believe you?”

My attention flickers to the gun and back to him. He catches the shift in my focus and sighs. Panic surges through me when he stands up, taking the gun with him. I jerk to the left, away from him, as if the inches of space between us will somehow stop a bullet. He places the gun in front of me and returns to his seat. I pinch my brows together. I’m not complaining. It’s not within his arm’s reach anymore. But it’s not of any use to me either.

“Where’s Ari?” My voice trembles as I demand an answer.

“The other girl and your friend, that was Carl.”

None of this makes sense.

“You want to know why, so I’m going to tell you. Then I’ll let you go.”

Let me go? I can almost taste the skepticism hitting the back of my throat. There is no way he’s going to spill his guts and then allow me to walk out of here like I just left a friend’s house.

I keep quiet, my heartbeat echoing in my ears.

He licks his lips, and a heavy sigh escapes him before he begins. “Beth was my high school sweetheart. Or Pearl, as you call her.” My eyes fly open wide. What the actual hell? They’ve known each other this entire time? “I always knew I couldn’t keep her. She was this wildfire, and I was the chubby kid in school who played oboe. Man, I loved her. I could feel it in my bones. But as I expected, she broke up with me when we graduated but kept me at arm’s length, just enough to leave me with hope. Until she met Paxton’s dad. He was able to tame her wildfire.”

It’s hard to accept he’s talking about Pearl. I replay the countless times we have all been in the same room, and I never sensed any history between them. “After Paxton’s dad died, she reached out to me. I had lost weight, became a cop, and was confident in myself. It was going to be our time. There was hope again.”

I glare at him like the pathetic man he is, recognizing the predictable narrative of a man driven by love…blah, blah, blah. Anticipating the next part of the story—she marries the man Paxton despised—I tune him out, scanning the room we’re in. Pictures of a family adorn the walls and various decorations catch my eye. Whose house is this? And where are they?

As he mentions Paxton’s name, my attention snaps back to him. “He was an asshole to that kid. A real jerk. And while his dad tamed Beth’s wildfire, Carl pissed on it. I couldn’t stay and watch him destroy that family. That’s when I moved to Blackburn.”

Why didn’t Paxton tell me about Chip? Did he recognize him when we were at Pearl’s house? Paxton would’ve been a teenager when Chip left town. He should’ve known who he was.

The entire sob story isn’t evoking any sympathy from me. Quite the opposite. He’s a loser consumed by an unhealthy obsession with his high school girlfriend. She took advantage of him, probably by making empty promises that led us here.

“How?” I ask. I didn’t question this when I was with Pearl, but now, knowing that Paxton grew up with Chip and said nothing, I don’t know who or what to believe. “Paxton said he hadn’t talked to his mom in years until she popped up at his work—after everything happened. But how was Pearl so positive that he’d find me?”

He twists his fingers in front of him on the table. “I had seen an article with him and his dog and showed Beth. She was excited to learn he was close, but she figured he’d want nothing to do with her. She wanted to see what he was up to, so she had me put a tracker on his Jeep. That was so long ago, she forgot we had even done that until he showed up in the diner. She had me pull the last year of info to see if he had been to the diner before. We found out that he spent most of his weekends at the ranch.”

Isn’t that illegal? He’s a cop, for God’s sake. She gets crazier by the minute. And he gets more pathetic.

“So, did you at least get the girl in the end?” I ask with a snide tone, lifting a brow, remembering their flirting. “Was it worth ruining your life?” A swift shadow of anger sweeps across his face. His jaw twitches and his eyes darken.

There’s the guy who buried me alive.

“I did until Carl showed up,” he says between clenched teeth.

“Boo-fucking-hoo. You still buried me alive!” I scream, letting my anger roll off me in waves. “You started this horror by putting me in a box and listened to me scream and plead not to do it. How can you sit there and be okay with your life?”

He shoots up, and the chair falls over from the force. “I’m not! Your screams haunt my dreams every night. They will haunt me until the day I die.” His admission hangs heavy in the air, and there’s a tiny glimmer of satisfaction inside me. I hope he lives a long life. “You weren’t supposed to wake up. Beth said you’d still be sleeping and wouldn’t be down there for long by the time Paxton found you.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, attempting to shake off the unbelievable ridiculousness of his words. “I can’t believe you went along with this plan. You’re a cop! You took an oath to protect people, not bury them!” I swallow the knot in my throat. “There is no way you would’ve known for sure that he would find me.”

“We had a plan for that. We would’ve tipped the police off to your whereabouts if he hadn’t found you by late afternoon.”

The thought process they put into this ruse is beyond comprehensible. “If I wasn’t supposed to be awake yet, why torment me? Three shovels at a time! Why?” My voice scratches from screaming so loud.

He picks up the chair and drops back down into it, scrubbing his face. “It wasn’t meant to torment you. It was a way for me to focus on something else. Almost a mechanical movement. It was the moments in between that I regretted every second. But I was in too deep, so I forced myself to continue. It wasn’t intentional.”

“I don’t believe you. For something not intentional, how did it become a thing?” The anger radiates off me. “You or Carl tormented me with that three times bullshit over and over.”

He rubs his temple and sighs. “The college stunt? That was Beth’s idea. She figured it was a trigger for you. That was me. You were pulling away from Paxton, and Beth was worried. She believed that a small push would bring you back to him. They manipulated me over and over, using my fear to fulfill her dream.”

She’s a narcissistic psychopath.

And he’s her minion.

“Where does Carl fit into all of this? Why did Pearl say he did this to me?”

“She was trying to protect me.”

I roll my eyes. How noble of her.

“Carl must’ve bugged Beth’s place, because he knew about what we did to you when he showed up one day. He wanted Beth back. So, he blackmailed both of us. Her into going back to him, and me into telling him everything that happened. Every detail. We made sure not to tell him you had won the lottery, though.”

I blink twice. “Thanks?” Give them the friend of the year award.

His finger pokes at the table, getting defensive. “If he would’ve known, he would’ve found a way to get that money out of you.”

“Why did he take Shanna Clark? Why did he have to kill her?”

“Beth tried to run away. She went and saw Paxton that day to say goodbye. Carl got wind of it. It was his way of punishing Beth. He kept reminding her that it was her fault, she made him do it. It was his way of controlling her. As long as she stayed with him, he’d not do it again.”

“Pearl was with him a couple days ago, flying back from Hawaii. She was still with him. So, why did he take Ari?”

He shakes his head. “I’m not sure. She told me she saw you on the flight when he pulled that stupid stunt, knocking three times. They got into a huge argument afterward. She told him to get out, that she never wanted to see him again. He got physical with her, so she locked herself in the bathroom and called me. By the time I arrived, he was gone, and that’s the last time she saw him.”

They’re all sick.

The room falls silent. It seems his energy has drained as well. What’s his next play? If he truly is sorry, then why am I here, tied to a chair? Why would he go through the trouble of kidnapping, drugging, and tying me up just to apologize?

“How could you act like nothing happened when I saw you after?”

His mouth forms a hard line as he shakes his head, shrugs, and then shakes his head again, telling me there’s no reasonable answer. He finally says, “I had to tell myself that you were doing great, that you were getting the life you always wanted.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “A life with nightmares, thanks to you. I could’ve had that life without the added PTSD.”

“If I could go back and make different choices, I would.”

“But it’s too late for that. You know what happens next.” He’s going to jail right next to Pearl. I look around the room and then back at him. “They probably know by now who took me.”

“I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

He pushes his chair back, walks toward me, then unties the knots. As soon as the rope loosens and my hands are free, I lunge forward and grab the gun. Putting the table between us, I slide around and keep the gun pointed at his chest.

“Don’t get any closer to me,” I warn.

The gun is heavy in my hands, so I keep both wrapped around the handle, steadying it. He casually walks back to his chair and sits down, leaning on one elbow with his hands folded in his lap.

“I’m going to walk out of here,” I threaten, “and I will shoot you if you come after me.”

After a simple nod from him, I run out the front door, glancing over my shoulder once to see him staying seated. It’s not until I’m outside that I see that we’re in the middle of nowhere. Heavy wooded trees surround the house, and the long winding road disappears in between them. I run to the police cruiser, searching the front seats for my purse. I spot it on the floorboard on the passenger side. Again, with a quick glance, checking that he’s not coming, I run around the car, open the door, and grab my purse. My fingers tremble as I power on my phone. The seconds feel like eternity. My heart pounds against my ribs. When the apple finally disappears and the phone lights up, I call Paxton.

“Where are you?” he snaps.

“I…I don’t know. He took me to a secluded wooded area.”

“Chip?”

“Yes. It was him. He’s the one who kidnapped me. Well, not Ari or the other girl, just me. He’s taken me to some ranch.”

Someone says something in the background, but I can’t make out what they said.

“Martinez says that he found your location. We’re on our way. Are you hurt? Where is Chip now?”

Bang!

I jump and jerk my gaze up to the house where a single gunshot rang out. The air around me gets eerily quiet, as if nature itself is holding its breath. Noooo! I shake my head violently. My head screams at me to run toward the house, but my feet stay rooted, freezing me in place. I squeeze my eyes shut. This is why he wasn’t worried about what would happen next. There was no next for him.

“What was that?”

“Kali!”

“Answer me!”

It takes a moment for me to regain my senses and hear Paxton yelling through the phone. “I’m here. I’m okay.”

“Was that a gunshot?”

Tears roll down my cheeks as emotions get clogged in my throat. “I think…” I hiccup. “I think it came from in the house,” I mutter, staring at the open front door.

“Was Chip in the house?” he murmurs, understanding the heaviness.

“Yes.”