CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 26

Two hours later Brooke was behind the wheel of her Explorer, navigating the clog of traffic near the airport, her sister in the seat next to her. Night had fallen and the storm was in full force, rain coming down so hard that the wipers could barely keep the windshield clear, cars, buses, and trucks jockeying for position, the red glare of taillights stretching in an undulating line ahead of them. Fortunately, her headlights still worked.

While Brooke tried to maneuver the Explorer through the lanes, she told herself not to think about the gun and ammo tucked under the seat, nor the spy equipment and bracelet stuffed into the pockets of her jacket. She was tense, thinking ahead, calculating how much time she would have after dropping Leah off, then driving to the marina and confronting Gideon.

How would he react?

And how far would she go?

She intended to scare the liver out of him, to turn the tables on him, but what if, God forbid, it didn't work? White-knuckled over the steering wheel, she forced a calm she didn't feel. Leah and her bad mood weren't helping. She'd been spoiling for a fight ever since seeing Neal and Brooke getting along, teasing each other, assuming they were in love and their problems were only a recalcitrant teenage daughter and a dog that had wandered off.

If she only knew.

Leah kept drumming her fingers against the armrest, then checking her watch pointedly, then futzing with the radio.

"I knew we should have left earlier," Leah complained for the third time since they left the house. She'd been snappy and tense, nervous about the flight and about her upcoming battle with Sean.

Which was nothing compared to what Brooke was dealing with.

For the dozenth time Leah switched radio channels, stopping at a song by U2.

Good.

Mouthing the words Bono was singing, Leah checked her phone as if hoping to get a text that her flight to Phoenix was delayed. It wasn't. "Didn't I say so? Didn't I tell you I always have anxiety about missing my flight—that we should have left half an hour earlier?" she spat out, highly agitated and not bothering to mask it.

Brooke had seen her this way before, recognized the signs, told herself to tread carefully despite the fact that her own nerves were frayed to the breaking point. "You've got lots of time. Over an hour." Brooke flipped on her blinker and aimed the crumpled nose of her Explorer toward the off-ramp, but the driver who she'd hoped would let her in ignored her signals and stared straight ahead, inching his Dodge van forward. "Come on," she said.

As the van moved past, she eyed the driver of an older Volkswagen, a woman with puffy gray hair and a tiny dog lounging on her shoulder. The woman eased off the gas and Brooke waved as she wedged into the tight spot and exited the freeway. "See," she said to her sister, "you're going to make it."

"Next time we leave earlier!" Leah huffed and Brooke tried to tamp down her irritation. "Didn't I say so?" Leah flipped down the visor and peered into the passenger mirror, its tiny light illuminating her face. "If you'd listened to me. I said I would take an Uber, but oh no . . ."

Brooke braked as the traffic slowed to a crawl, taillights glowing in an unending stream.

"Now what?" Leah said on a disgusted sigh. She snapped the visor up again and glared out the windshield. "I don't know why I let you bully me around."

"Bully you?" Brooke repeated.

"You know you do. You always have!" She was steaming, still itching for a fight.

"Bully?"

"You know what I mean. You've always been bossy, telling everyone what to do. Get everyone to take the blame for you."

"What?" Where was this going? Why was it coming out now?

"Just ask Keith Turnquist," Leah said with a knowing smirk.

"Keith?" Brooke said. "What does he have to do with any of this?"

"I know what happened that night, Brooke. So does everyone else. He saved your ass."

"He nearly raped me," she replied.

Leah shot her an oh-really glance and Brooke turned her attention to the brake lights burning ahead.

"You assaulted him," Leah said. "I heard Mom and Nana. The only reason you weren't charged was because you were underage."

"That's not the way it was."

Leah snorted her disbelief, and for a few seconds Brooke remembered that night. The party. The crowd . . .

She and Keith had been drinking and arguing. They'd been at a teen party outside the city in a house in the woods, somebody's relatives' house who were away for the weekend. They were drinking and high when Keith talked her into stepping into a bedroom with him. She'd known it was a mistake the minute he'd opened the door, where two twin beds were positioned on either side of a window. In one a couple was already naked and going at it, moaning and so out of it they didn't know anyone had entered or just didn't care.

But Brooke wanted nothing to do with sharing the space and making out on some little girl's bed with unicorn sheets and pink-striped wallpaper. She spied a Barbie Dreamhouse tucked into one corner, tiny dresses hanging in the closet. As Keith used his body to block the door and walk her backward toward the vacant bed, she tripped over some toy, a sharp plastic dinosaur.

"You need to take me home," she insisted.

"Come on, Brooke," Keith said, pulling up her blouse and pushing her onto the rumpled unicorn sheets. Some little girl slept here.

"No." She wasn't about to give her virginity to him on a twin bed where some unknown child slept. Even half drunk she knew better than that, and she really didn't like the idea of the other couple, naked and groaning on the matching bed.

"It'll be good," Keith promised and was working at his fly, lowering the zipper.

"No, not here." She pushed hard, throwing him off her and stumbling out into the living room, filled with smoke and loud music and people she didn't know. Keith followed after her.

"What's wrong with you?" he demanded.

"I want to go home." And she was out the door, determined to walk the three miles if he didn't take her.

"Brooke!" he yelled through the hot summer night. "Goddamn it, Brooke. Well, fuck!" and he was jogging closer to her. "Okay, I'll take you home."

But she didn't believe him. Freaked out, she took off, running across the side yard, past the parked cars and into the surrounding woods. Moonlight pierced the leafy canopy, but she was drunk and scared and he was thundering behind her, catching up.

She didn't see the exposed root and stumbled. His hand caught her shoulder, twisting her back, but she went down, landing hard, a sharp rock piercing her neck.

Pain screamed through her shoulder.

And there he was, leaning over her, just like he had in the bedroom. "Get away from me!" she screamed.

But he kept coming, on his knees, touching her. "It's going to be all right," he said, a dark shape. Oh God, was he unzipping his fly again? She didn't wait to find out.

She felt the rock beneath her hand. Sharp on one side, wickedly sharp on the other. Her fingers curled around it, and as he got closer she swung, smashing the sharp edge into his face.

He howled.

Blood spurted, warm and raining.

She struck again.

Bam!

Bone crunched.

Again.

"You fucking bitch," he screamed, rolling away from her. "You goddamned, fucking—" And then there were voices and lights and the world spun as she passed out. Only later did she hear that she'd broken his nose and cracked the orbital socket around one eye. He'd nearly lost his vision, which she'd thought was tit for tat because she'd nearly lost her virginity.

Except the police hadn't seen it that way, nor had his parents and their lawyer. She'd been accused of assault, but she was underage, the records sealed, but everyone knew. And Keith, in the end, convinced his parents to let it go.

"You could have gone to JD," Leah said, switching the radio to a country station. "That really would have screwed up your life, wouldn't it? To spend time in juvie? Don't think you would've married Neal then. Just think where we would all be if you'd served your time?"

"I don't know why you're bringing this up now." Brooke never wanted to think about that time in her life.

"Because you always think you can twist things around to the way you want, pretend life is different than it is and boss people around just to get your way."

"What does that have to do with—?"

"I'm just saying you can't tell me what to do. No more."

"You're being irrational." Brooke turned her attention to the upcoming exit. "Is this really because we didn't leave when you thought we should?" Of course not. It was years of resentment piling up and finally erupting.

Leah checked her phone again. "I'm just letting you know that I'm not putting up with your BS anymore."

"Like you ever do."

Leah pronounced, "Next time I'm not letting you tell me what to do!"

"Next time?" Brooke repeated, her own irritation growing.

"If there is one. I don't think I'll be back!"

"Wow." Brooke snapped off the radio. "So, let's talk about the next time you come to visit."

Leah snorted, as if there was no chance she would be returning. She flipped down the visor with the mirror again and touched her finger at a smudge of lipstick at the corner of her mouth. "What about it?"

"Maybe it won't be for money." There, it was out.

"What?" Eyebrows knit in frustration, she was still rubbing at a bit of lipstick.

"I know Neal loaned you fifty thousand dollars. And that was just now. Before that, there was more."

"A little," she admitted with a lift of a shoulder as she pushed up the visor.

"A little? Are you kidding?"

Leah let out a breath. "It doesn't matter. It's secured."

"I know. By some sort of lien on the cabin. Our cabin. Yours and mine. The one we inherited."

"And your point is?"

"You lied. You both lied. You said you needed fifteen."

Leah threw up her hands. "Okay, so you caught me. Big deal. I could use the money. More than you."

"I'm not sure about that. Marilee's going to college in a few years." She eased onto the approach to the airport.

"And I'm dead broke, okay? But you don't care!"

"Of course I care."

Leah scoffed, "What's it to you anyway? The loan's secured. You never want to sell the damned cabin, so I figure it's a win-win! You end up with ‘our' cabin and I get a little cash."

"A little? Leah, I don't see—"

"Of course you don't!" Leah cut in. "You never do! You never see anything from anyone else's point of view!"

"Wait a second. What are you doing? Why is this all coming out now?"

"Because I saw with my own eyes how fucked up you've made everything with Neal, and with Marilee, and with me. So, okay, I'm finally doing what my therapist said and telling you how I feel."

"Now?" Brooke said, disbelieving, as traffic started moving again as the terminal loomed ahead at last, the tower lights visible in the rain.

"Why not? The truth is, Brooke, you just take what you want and don't care what happens to anyone else!"

"That's not true!"

"Of course it is!" Leah charged angrily, her emotional floodgates, shut too long, suddenly overflowing. "It always has been!"

"I'm trying to drive, damn it!" Brooke said. "I can't do this right now!"

"You started it," she pouted. "Bringing up the money."

"You started it by coming up here just to get money! I don't know what the hell you have over Neal, but he sure seems like your personal ATM."

"Oh Jesus. Is that what you think?" Leah let out a breath of disgust and yanked her purse from the floor to her lap. "That's sick, Brooke."

"That's what it looks like!" Brooke tried to maneuver to the curb while arguing with her sister. A convertible, vying for the same space, honked loudly. "Shit!" she yelled, yanking on the wheel. "Prick!"

The sleek car squeezed ahead of her with inches to spare. The driver, a woman in her twenties, shot a finger into the air.

"Idiot," Brooke muttered.

Leah didn't notice. She was too hot. "You just don't know how to count your blessings. You have a good man in Neal. A damned good man!"

"I know that." She eased toward a space at the curb.

"And yet you don't appreciate him."

"What? Of course I do."

Leah let out a breath of disgusted air. "I don't know why you don't divorce him and get it over with!"

"What're you talking about?" Brooke hit the brakes and the Explorer jerked to a stop. "Seriously, do we need to do this now?"

Leah was undeterred. "I've seen what's going on!" She opened the passenger door, and the noise of the airport under the portico—echoing voices, running engines, horns, tires humming on pavement—seeped inside the vehicle. "I know what you're up to, Brooke." She stormed to the back door and flung it open. "And, by the way, Neal does too!" She jerked her bag from the back seat.

"What?" Jesus God, did Neal know about Gideon? Did Leah?

"So you're not getting away with anything."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Sure you do." Leah glared at her for a minute, her eyes a dangerous shade of blue. "You know, Brooke, things would've been different, a lot different, if I married Neal."

"What!" Brooke said, stung to her core. "You're still upset about that? Oh my freaking God, Leah! It's been years."

"And three marriages for me. How many do you think it would've been if I'd had the chance to marry the man I loved all those years ago?"

"You were too young—"

"But I knew what I wanted! Too bad for me! It's the story of our childhood. If I wanted something, you took it!"

"This is crazy!"

A horn behind her blared.

"I have to go," Brooke said.

Leah wasn't finished and her eyes snapped fire. "Take my advice, Brooke. If you're so damned miserable in your marriage, just get it over with and get out."

"You're being irrational."

"Am I? I don't think so." All the repressed anger of fifteen years burst to the surface.

"And don't worry about having to put up with me again. From now on I won't bother you."

"Don't say—"

"I'm serious, Brooke. I'm done with you!"

"Even if you need money again?" Brooke threw back at her.

Leah gasped.

The guy behind her laid on the horn again.

"Wow," Leah said. "Harsh. But I should have known. You know what, Brooke, you're a heartless bitch!" She was nodding, agreeing with herself, as if she were alone under the canopy crawling with vehicles and travelers. "You always have been. Always will be. I'm over this. So don't worry about it because I'm not your problem. Not anymore. And you should be happy because I promise you, you'll never have to deal with me again. In fact, you'll never see me again!" She slammed the door.

Brooke pounded the steering wheel. Damn it all! Why now? Why? And what the hell did she know? What did Neal know? The two of them had lied to her about the loan. Had they discussed Brooke's affair? Neal's fascination with another woman?

Tears of frustration burned in her eyes as she watched her sister head into the terminal. Did she believe she'd never see Leah again? No. But still, it was hard to accept that they couldn't just move forward, have a normal relationship, whatever that meant.

Brooke put her SUV into gear and caught one last look at her sister.

Dragging her roller bag, Leah strode away, pushing her way through the crowd and never once looking back.

Don't worry about ever having to put up with me again.

How many times had Leah threatened to stay completely out of Brooke's life over the years? Every time the anger had simmered for months, sometimes years, but this time . . . Did she mean it?

I'm done with you!

You'll never see me again!

Brooke watched Leah disappear into the throng as she swept through the glass doors. What the hell had set her off? Why did she have to bring it all up here? Now?

Pull it together, she told herself, viciously cranking the wheel as the attendant stepped back, whistle in mouth, making rolling gestures to the traffic in general. Brooke forced the Explorer into the thick traffic and threaded her way away from Sea-Tac.

She told herself she didn't care what Leah threatened. It wasn't the first time and she doubted it would be the last.

Trying to convince herself that she was better off without her needy, drama queen sister, she blinked back tears and ignored the scar over her heart that Leah always seemed to rip open.

She'll be back, she told herself as she switched lanes and headed north. Like a bad penny, Nana used to say. Brooke told herself she had to forget about Leah at least for the moment, let her younger sister have her self-serving proclamation of independence.

Right now Brooke needed to focus on Gideon and finding a way to get rid of him.

Forever.

She had a gun.

If only she had the guts.

"One way to find out," she said to the empty car as she drove through the South End of Seattle, the wipers slapping the rain from the windshield, headlights bright on the shimmering pavement.

At the first stoplight, her stomach in knots, her muscles tense, she reached under the seat, found the pistol, and slipped it into her jacket pocket. She followed with the clips, listening to the wind howl over the rapid beating of her heart.

"God help me," she whispered, the interior of the Explorer turning an eerie red from the stoplight.

You can still change your mind. Just go home to your family and cozy home on the hill overlooking the city. Give this up.

But then she'd never be free.

She swallowed back her fears.

The light turned green.

She hit the gas.