Page 36 of Rescuing Carolyn

“At first I was hoping you were the one in the building,” he continued, “but it was your sister. Then I decided that would be fitting. Too bad she lived.”

My fear was dissipating, and I’d mostly mastered my anger, even in the face of his comment about Charlotte. I needed to be calm, to face him as an adversary as I’d learned in all my years of martial arts training. Anger would solve nothing. Control and mastery of my movements were all that mattered.

“You haven’t said why,” I said, keeping my voice bland. “Why target me and my store?”

“Your mama didn’t explain it to you?”

“I know our mothers were in business together, and they dissolved it.” I didn’t bring up that his mother had been sleeping with my father.

“Your mother screwed her over is more like it.” His tone became belligerent. “Wasn’t enough to take the business away from her, was it? She had to go and trash her name around town, too.”

I couldn’t imagine my mom going around badmouthing anyone…but Springwell was a small town, and since Marta and my dad had been openly together, people had probably been able to draw their own conclusions. It didn’t seem like a good idea to bring that up, though. “I—I’m sorry to hear that,” I said instead.

“Do you know what that did to her?” Dale kept rolling up on the balls of his feet and back down as he spoke, putting himself off balance. I might be able to take advantage of that.

“Tell me,” I invited softly.

“She kept getting fired from job after job, plus there was me and Gloria to raise. We lived on nothing, while you and your sister got everything you wanted. Regular little princesses.”

That wasn’t even remotely true, but he seemed to believe it. He also didn’t seem to realize his mom might have gotten fired from jobs because she wasn’t a good worker. But from the sound of it, Marta had been happy to blame all her problems on Mom, and her son had followed her lead.

“And then Gloria died.”

“That’s too bad,” I said, sympathetically. “She must have been young.”

“Nineteen. Cancer. And we couldn’t afford the treatments.” He waved the gun at me again, his finger poised over the trigger. “That’s your family’s fault, all of it. Gloria’s death and Mama’s. They died because your mother took everything away from us.”

I wanted to argue, to defend my family, but I knew that nothing I could say would get through to him. He’d been wrapped up in his sense of grievance for so long that he’d lost the ability to be rational. All he cared about was hurting someone. Hurting me. I felt my stomach sink. How was I going to get out of this alive?

I heard my phone ring from the office. I’d left it there while talking to the adjuster. The buzzing seemed to spark something in Dale. His eyes gleamed with hatred and fanaticism.

“Now it’s time to even the score.”

18

ZACH

Idrove back to Carolyn’s house that afternoon feeling twisted up in knots. On the one hand, I was still upset that she’d done something so risky after promising me that she wouldn’t. I’d told her that I’d take the lead in the investigation. Her charging in on her own made it seem like she didn’t trust me. After the weeks I’d spent showing her in every way that I could that I was there for her and Austin, that I wasn’t going to leave them alone, that we were in this together…that lack of trust stung.

And it made me act like an asshole.

Hurt feelings were no excuse for freezing her out like that. We were supposed to be the kind of people who talked now. Who listened. Who didn’t let fears or insecurities put a wedge between us. I owed her an apology, a big one. The fact had nagged at me all day at work. My supervisor had even sent me home an hour early because I wasn’t focusing. I hadn’t bothered to argue the point, because the man was right. I didn’t have my head on straight.

I grabbed my phone off the seat next to me when it rang, hoping it was Carolyn. Disappointment hit me when I saw Steve’s name on the screen.

“Hey, Steve,” I answered as I turned onto Carolyn’s street.

“I’ve got some new intel on that name you gave me. Dale Huntly,” Steve reported.

“Yeah, what?” I had filled Steve in about any possible lead, including the history with the Huntly family.

“Dale Huntly works for All That Sparkles’ IT company. He’s been there for about nine months. Records show that he helped install tech at the store, and he had access to their email and other accounts. Strange coincidence, if you ask me.”

It could be a coincidence, but I was sure it wasn’t. This was connected to Carolyn’s problems. I could feel it in my bones. “Can you tell if Huntly sent those fake emails?”

“I’m unraveling that as we speak. It took some work, since he pinged the messages off other IP addresses to cover his tracks, but I’ll get to the bottom of the rabbit hole.”

“We’ll need proof.” I needed documentation I could take to the police, something that would get their attention and make a criminal case against this guy stick.

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