“Do you think she hired someone? Or had something done to her car?” I’d run through the list of possibilities earlier as I’d paced, waiting for James to come back, filled with dread as I’d imagined the different scenarios.
James nodded. “Either one of those is a distinct possibility.” His eyes finally focused on my face. “I can’t believe I never considered this before. I feel sick.”
“You were just a kid when it happened. And you can’t blame yourself for not thinking your mother could have killed someone. That’s not in the normal repertoire of maternal behavior.” I shivered just thinking about it.
“And now she’s threatening to hurt you.” James reached out for my hand. “I’m so sorry I’ve dragged you into this mess. I can’t even believe this is happening right now.”
“That’s because it’s unbelievable,” I said, squeezing his hand.
James
“Should we go home?” Audrey asked.
“Not yet,” I responded. “The safest place to be right now is near her. She’ll never do anything to jeopardize her own position. If we go back home, anyone could try to…” I let my voice trail off. I couldn’t bear to finish the sentence or even the thought. “I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation. This is insane.”
“We don’t know for sure that she did it,” Audrey said.
“As far as I’m concerned, she did it,” I said, scrubbing my hand across my face. “We should let them know that we know. They need to understand that if they’re playing hard ball, it’s going to come back to them. And it’s gonna hurt.”
“They?” Audrey asked. “And hurt?”
“My father has to be involved in this. There’s no way he didn’t know. And yes, hurt.” An image of Danielle crying that night, the night she died, flashed in my mind. Pain ripped through me then. She’d been so young, so full of promise and life.
And my parents had taken that away from her.
“What’s our goal here?” Audrey asked. “Besides keeping me alive?”
I looked at her beautiful face, and I was furious. I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation, but I pushed that part of me—the part that was reeling with both disbelief and pain—roughly away. I had to protect Audrey. I loved her, and I couldn’t let anything happen to her.
Especially not at my mother’s hands.
I had to show my parents that they were rapidly heading to the end of the line. I was the end of that line. And I was going to make them pay.
“Our goal is to show them that if they try to hurt us, we will destroy them,” I said. “It’s simple. This is war now, and I’m bringing the nuclear weapons.”
Audrey looked at me warily. “What are the nuclear weapons, James?” she asked.
“The truth about Danielle. And a healthy dose of jail time to go with it. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, last time I checked.”
* * *
“I have to contact Danielle’s parents,” I told Audrey a little later. We’d ordered room service and were spread out in our villa, which in the course of an hour had become a combination of tactical headquarters and bunker. I was afraid to let her leave. She seemed to be afraid, too, jumping at every noise and not straying from my side for more than a minute.
My f**king mother was going to pay for this. Hard.
“Her parents deserve to know what happened to her.”
Audrey looked at me and frowned. “Don’t you think we should have more facts before we call them? All we have right now are few off-hand comments from your mother and a bad feeling,” Audrey said. “It’s been a long time since it happened, James. Let’s make sure we handle this the best way for everyone.”
She stood up and started pacing again. “I had an idea,” she said, wringing her hands together. “What if I go back to your mother and pretend to try and blackmail her? What if I tell her I’ve guessed the truth about Danielle? And that I want money to keep quiet—or in exchange for my silence, she lets me stay with you? Sort of like a blackmail quid pro quo?”
“If she wanted to kill you before, this will seal the deal,” I said.
“But now I have something on her,” she said. “And I can tell her I’ve made arrangements for it to go public if something happens to me.”
I thought it through for a minute. “I don’t know if she’ll believe that.”
“I’ll make her believe it. In fact, I’ll do something—write a letter, something like that—and show her that I’ve already made the arrangements. I’ll tell her I’ve addressed letters to all the major Boston news outlets, and that I’ve asked friends to send them for me if something happens. And I’ll tell her the friends don’t include Jenny, so she doesn’t try to hurt her.”