Page 143 of A Forgotten Mistake

Clearly, I have learned nothing.

“I’m so glad you don’t have a bodycam on at this moment,” Gabriel says. “Can you imagine them reviewing that footage?”

“It wouldn’t have stopped me,” I assure him.

We move forward the second Ryan runs out of bullets. When we near the door, he’s trying to crawl back, but Gabriel is on him in an instant. Ryan takes a swing at Gabriel, trying his hardest to grab him, but Gabriel is quick as he shoves him down and starts patting him for any other weapons. Once I feel confident that he has the situation under control, I step into the house.

“Abby, there’s nowhere to go,” I call, positive she’s still inside the house. With her recent head injury and just getting out of the hospital, I have my doubts she’s capable of a sprint, and I don’t think she’d go up. There’d be no easy way out if she did. She’s in no shape to leap out of the second floor, so I move farther into the large home.

I reach the only closed door and knock on it. “Abby, open up.”

“I will tell them everything you did. Every detail,” she snarls. “I know you killed that man. I saw you bury the fucking body. I was in that garage; I can give them details of every inch of it. How you killed him, things they wouldn’t have released to the public.”

“Why’d you do it, Abby?”

“Why did you?” she asks as I try the doorknob. It turns, but there’s something in front of the door. I give the door a kick a second before I hear a bullet hit the door. Apparently, Ryan wasn’t the only one with a gun.

I shove the door again, pushing it open just enough to see into the darkened room. “Abby, we are nothing alike.”

“I knew we were alike the moment I met you. I knew you desired the same things I did. You know that these people are just scum. They don’t care what happens to you. They want to break you down, tear you apart. And when they finally succeed, they question why you’re not perfect.”

“I don’t kill innocent people.”

“No one is fucking innocent. You have absolutely no idea what they’re doing when no one is looking, especially the ones who look perfect. They’re all monsters, Liam. Every single one of them. No one ever believed me, no one ever trusted me because my father was perfect. How could he not be? It’s because they were all monsters too.”

I pull my phone out and send a quick text to Gabriel.

Me: Back of the house, second room from the left. Draw her attention to the window.

Gabriel: Got it.

“Abby, we are nothing alike. Your group has manipulated and destroyed the lives of numerous people all for your sick pleasure.”

“They deserved it,” she snarls. “They fucking deserved it!”

I hear something ping off the window, telling me that it’s Gabriel’s distraction, so I shove hard against the door. It gives enough to allow me to slip in and aim a gun at Abby’s head before stilling as I see that she’s not alone in the room like I had assumed. A young woman is kneeling on the floor, the makeup running down her face telling me that she’s been crying for a while. Have they had her for long? Is she the next victim, likely intended to be used to distract us in some way? To possibly pull our sights off Abby?

Abby has her gun pointed at the woman’s head. “Do you know who this is?”

I have absolutely no interest in playing her game. “Abby, drop the weapon now.”

“This is Jonah’s daughter. You know… the man you killed. He killed your father, sweetie. He stabbed him to death with a screwdriver in your father’s garage. I know this because I caught him.”

Sirens begin to sound and Abby gives me a smirk. “They’re here just in time to hear my story. I’m well aware I’m not making it out of this as a free person. But I sure as fuck am going to take you down with me. I’m going to tell everyone about what you did. And this lovely lady here can confirm that I know exactly what the garage her father was killed in looked like.”

“You killed countless people, and you think pinning one of them on me is going to just… solve everything?” She’s clearly backed into a corner and knows there’s no way out of it.

“Why the fuck would I kill the man who murdered your mother?” she snarls.

“How would I even know who killed my mother? Did you figure it out and because you were obsessed with me, you killed him? You were a monster who wanted to find other monsters just like you. You wanted to collect people who were broken inside and willing to go to the darkest depths for you.”

“You told me how he smashed her head repeatedly against the wall,” she says. “You told me how you followed my father to that bar.”

The young woman is giving me a pleading look. She needs to be freed from this situation, but she knows I’m the only hope of getting her out.

“Have you ever even killed anyone?” I ask. “You’ve always made others kill for you, haven’t you? Manipulated them into it. So put the damn gun down. You’re not going to shoot her.”

Abby gives me a cold laugh. “You really think I wouldn’t shoot her?”

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