Page 123 of A Forgotten Mistake

“Well, maybe that’s the difference between us… you’re stronger than either of us ever were,” she says.

I don’t have an answer to that.

“How long did Mitch work with them?” I ask.

“I don’t know… he was very vague about it. And I… I think guilt kept me from asking too many questions. Mitch stopped after a short while. He started to speculate what was happening when he saw an article naming one of the women he’d beeninstructed to deliver to them. Her body had been found… she’d been hit by a car, and he knew… he knew they did it. He was paranoid the police would know he was involved. Mitch hid himself in his house for days until his addiction won out and he went back to them. He told them he wasn’t going to be involved and they showed him that they had photographic proof of every single person he’d interacted with that was now dead. He couldn’t go to the police.”

“So it was better for more people to die than to go to prison?” I ask, wondering if I’m understanding this correctly.

“It was a long time before I knew what he had done. I never fathomed it was still happening,” Abby says.

“But you knew when this started. You could have told me at any point. Hell, you even protected him before.”

“Because he wasn’t guilty. I really thought it was him. And then I realized it was Sadie. When I saw her… when she shot at me back at Mitch’s… she didn’t realize who I was. She was trying to scare me off. I was afraid she was going after Mitch and was convinced I could explain to her how he wasn’t involved anymore. So… I wanted to protect him too. I told her that he wasn’t involved. I told her that Mitch never meant for any of that to happen because he didn’tknow.”

Abby closes her eyes like she doesn’t even want to talk about it anymore. Like closing her eyes will fix everything.

“But Mitch still had tapes? He wasn’t involved but he had tapes? Because someone removed something from his air duct.”

“He got them from Steven… Steven claimed he had them to blackmail the others if they ever went to the police.”

“So he knew Steven was involved. Who else was?”

“The only ones I knew about were Steven and Anthony. I don’t know this Cameron guy. Maybe I came across him at a party or something, but I don’t remember him. And I don’t knowwho else was involved. Neither did Mitch. Mitch just delivered the girls to Steven. That’s all I know.”

“Last time you swore you knew nothing,” I say, quite sour. “And here you knew exactly who killed your best friend.”

“I thought she drowned. I really thought she drowned in that ditch, and when I learned what they’d actually done to her… it’d been fuckingyears. I was in love with Mitch. I wanted to protect him. I thought we could have a life together. I never had a family, Liam. I didn’t know what it was like for someone to care if you came home at night. I used to think about the fact that if I just…died, there was absolutely no one who’d care. But Mitch would.”

“Yet now he’s dead. You tried protecting him, but at what cost?”

“Don’t you think I fucking know that?” Abby hisses. “Don’t you think I regret that? I regret everything I’ve done. I truly don’t remember everything from the night Mitch died. I asked to meet with Sadie and… next thing I remember, I was waking up in my bed covered in blood. She did something to me. It was a threat to keep me quiet. It was supposed to be my comeuppance for protecting Mitch instead of her sister. She didn’t want to kill me, but she wanted me to suffer for it. She thought having me take the fall for Mitch would be enough since I was Christa’s friend, but after you two left, I saw Sadie. And I was so upset over what happened to Mitch… I wanted to make her hurt like I did. It was so selfish. Everything was selfish.”

“Who did the tattoo on your wrist?”

“My wrist? What does that have to do with anything?”

“I believe they’re connected. There have been multiple people with identical tattoos who have been targeted. Whose idea was the design?”

“Anthony’s… but Christa and I wanted something that matched. And he was an artist. He drew it for us. There wasn’t anything else to it.”

“There was at least one other who died. Who knows how many were never identified.”

“I mean… I don’t know the tattoo artist…”

“You can’t remember a name?” I ask.

“Fuck if I know… you remember the name of the person who waited on you at a restaurant last week? He was friends with someone in the group, I guess… I remember seeing him at a party a few times, but I never spoke to him.”

“Was he at the club that time I met up with you?”

“I don’t know… I don’t think so.”

“What did you mean when you mentioned your father’s death and the whole monster thing? Was your father tracking them down?”

“Not for this… but he was trying to bust the guy Steven was getting his drugs from. If Steven had been stopped… maybe I would never have gotten wrapped up in drugs. Maybe Mitch would never have brought those men and women to the others if my father had caught them.”

“You think what your father was doing should have gone on? There is a lot of bullshit in all of this. You think if your father had caught Steven, it could have fixed it all? They would have just found someone else. Try to think about the tattoo artist. Anything you can think of, let me know.”

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