Chapter Thirty-Six Her

Chapter Thirty-Six Her

Present Day

I woke up on a startled scream. The sound broke through my consciousness and cut off the low mumble of voices around me.

“She’s coming round,” Mom said.

That was me screaming?

“Wait...” That’s all I could choke out as I looked up through a hazy blur to see Elias and Mom staring at me with matching

concerned frowns.

“Addison?” Elias’s grim tone mirrored his expression.

“Call 911 again. Or the police.” Mom grabbed Elias’s arm. “Do something.”

Instead of racing around, following her commands, Elias sat down. The cushions next to me dipped. The couch. I was on the

couch in the television room. The area probably had some fancy-house designer name. I thought of it as the sacred space where

I watched rich housewives from cities I’d never visited bicker on a big screen attached to the wall.

“What happened?” I touched the side of my head and immediately regretted the choice. The area around my temple pounded. Squinting

blocked out most of the offending light but not all.

“That’s our question.” Elias studied my face, looking less happy with every second. “Why were you outside the gate?”

I’d ignored his warnings and advice and regretted that choice, but I’d been lured there... sort of. “The camera.”

Mom let out a strangled sound. “You were taking photographs?”

“No, I—” Got up too fast and swear my bones rattled before I settled back into the stack of pillows behind my head. “Damn.”

“An ambulance is on the way.” Elias glanced at his watch. “I called when we were bringing you inside.”

“A flashy vehicle with sirens is not what we need.” I had enough unwanted attention, thank you very much. “Cancel it.”

“No.”

A typical Elias response.

Mom shook her head. “Elias is right. If the Rothmans hadn’t come by and—”

“Who?” The name wasn’t a bit familiar.

“Glenn and Kitty Rothman. Your neighbors.” Mom waved a dismissive hand in the air. “They live directly across the street.”

Those were their names?

“For some reason Kitty was wearing a designer dress in the middle of the afternoon. Ice blue and very pretty, almost like

a cocktail dress, and not at all an appropriate match to her husband’s buffoonish plaid golf outfit.”

What the hell was Mom babbling about? “You mean Mrs. Nosypants and her silent husband? The two who are never outside except

when terrible things happen to me?”

Elias sighed, as always. “Since they found you passed out on the lawn and used the intercom to call your mom for help we like

them today.”

The events that landed me here rushed into my head on fast-forward. The camera. The footsteps. The odd smell. Being thrown into a fucking tree—twice. “Did they see who hit me?”

Elias blinked a few times. “You were attacked?”

“Do you think I spontaneously fell down?” Now it seemed obvious. I probably was supposed to notice the tilted camera and go

out there to investigate. I messed up the sequence, but the end was the same. Someone caught me off guard and got the upper

hand. That was the last time I’d ignore or downplay a warning. “Apparently the notes weren’t just for show.”

“Notes?” Elias asked. “What are you talking about?”

He had one hand resting on the pillow near my head and one on the back of the couch cushion. The concerned fatherly act trapped

me. Kept me from sitting up. That meant there was no way to call the words back now. Both Mom and Elias kept staring, making

it very clear no one was going anywhere until I fessed up.

Fine. There was no reason to keep the mess a secret now. “There was a threat written on the wall of the primary suite in top-secret

paint, though it’s now more of a smear. Then I got a note in the mailbox. Those predated being slammed into a tree.”

Mom held up three fingers. “How many do you see?”

“I’m not loopy.” Well, I was but still.

“I knew I should have checked out that bedroom since you were so secretive about it. I’m going to look at this painting.”

Mom reached for her cell. “I’ll take a photo, if that’s possible, and be right back.”

Elias waited until Mom left the room. “Why didn’t you mention these threats before now?”

He seemed to know I wasn’t making this up or embellishing, even though I excelled at doing the latter. This you will pay bullshit was all too real. No matter how I tried to laugh it off, ignore it, and work around it, the threat had grown until it sucked out the tiny bits of lightness in my day.

“I didn’t think anyone would believe me.” I also thought I could handle the pressure. Like so much of my life, the plan was

to get through the worst with as little damage as possible. I hadn’t counted on anyone moving security cameras and throwing

me around like a rag doll.

Elias’s shoulders stiffened as the dark tension swirling around him ratcheted up again. “Who would do this?”

Blame the dizziness or the unexpected wave of vulnerability, but I answered honestly. “As far as I know, only one person in

this world wanted me dead. He told me every day of our marriage... except on the day someone shoved him down the stairs.”

Richmond Fucking Dougherty.

Elias frowned. He’d been doing that nonstop for the last five minutes but this time showed more curiosity than concern. “Does

not saying the words that day mean something?”

“I left the house and went to the diner because he was working, and I needed some air.” But that wasn’t all. There was the

part I always left out of the story because I had to... until now. “And because his mood had changed. Overnight he switched

from shitty to conciliatory. He made me coffee when I got up, which I didn’t drink because I’m not a dumbass. Even talked

about us going for a ‘nice’ drive and enjoying dinner out at a restaurant near the water.”

“So?”

The potential for poisoning or drowning struck me as obvious, but the unexpected niceness was the true tip-off. All of a sudden the blackmail I had on him didn’t seem to matter. He had no way to win the battle. Despite that, until the very end, the sick little narcissist looked for a way to work around the evidence I hid. He never believed he’d fail. He didn’t think losing was a possible outcome for him. Ever.

On that last day something clicked in his warped brain. Between the rumors he’d planted and those “accidents” of his, he must

have believed he’d flipped the advantage in his favor. He was wrong.

“Because I knew from the way he was acting that he planned to kill me and the countdown had started.”