Take a Risk (Risk #1) (26 page)

‘Brett made his own decision about your relationship,’ Lyssa said. ‘He loved you, but he believed that you weren’t ready to be with him. Brett was comfortable with who he was—‘

‘So was I! I was comfortable.’

‘I haven’t seen Brett for several months,’ Lyssa said. ‘I don’t know where he is. I know that he left his partner because he couldn’t live the lie anymore. He wanted to be free of the deception and let the world know how he loved you. By denying him that right he felt that he was suppressing a part of himself. You weren’t comfortable with who you were, with being in a same sex relationship, and he felt that you didn’t love him like he loved you. Your unwillingness to be open hurt—‘

‘It wasn’t like that!’

‘Forgive me,’ Lyssa said, seating herself on the bed in front of Suzette, whose volume was increasing. ‘But you have been in a relationship with a woman, a relationship that was supposed to culminate in marriage. How do you identify your sexuality?’

‘I heard what Brett said when he left me. I heard it when he told me that he didn’t believe I was ready to be in a relationship with him… I thought maybe he was right and I… I knew that being gay would hurt everyone in my life and…’

Now that the shouting had stopped she began to feel that she was getting through to him. ‘Being in that position must have been very difficult.’

‘I knew that if I couldn’t be with Brett that I couldn’t be with any man…’

‘So you sought out Suzette?’

Shaking his head, he maintained his aim with the gun, but lowered his focus. ‘No, I didn’t look for her.’

‘If you were conflicted, you could have sought out professional help yourself. Losing someone you love is a—‘

‘I did! I… I went to a pastor.’

‘A pastor,’ she repeated, that hadn’t been the kind of help that she had meant.

‘Yes, he gave me advice and he… I went to a doctor that he recommended. The pastor promised that this doctor could cure me and I did everything that he told me to.’

‘Cure you,’ she said. ‘You thought that if you couldn’t work out your relationship with Brett, if you couldn’t have him, then you couldn’t be gay? Is that what you thought?’

‘I did everything the doctor said,’ Pete murmured, his shoulders sagged but when he lifted his attention she saw tears in his eyes. ‘He gave me drugs, they made me really sick, and he gave me injections, and I had to watch movies…’ Rubbing his eyes with a free hand, she didn’t know if he was trying to erase the tears or the images the so-called doctor had put in his mind.

She’d heard of these conversion camps and had done limited research on them. Everything that she had learned of them made her sick. These places should be outlawed as far as she was concerned because there was no use in a person denying who they were. Often the camps did severe, long-term psychological damage to people who had no pre-existing conditions other than their aversion, or anxiety, about admitting who they really were.

‘What you went through must have been very traumatising,’ she said, leaving the bed she took half a step toward him. ‘Denying who you are is never the answer.’

‘I know that now! I know that!

‘Ok,’ she said, holding up her hands again. ‘Good. I’m glad that you are ready to move past that experience.’

‘I met Keith at the camp, we were supposed to… to support each other, and make sure that we didn’t… revert.’

‘Keith knows that you are here today?’

‘No, I couldn’t admit to him that I… that I failed.’

‘You haven’t failed,’ she said. ‘This is a triumph and you should be proud of yourself for recognising your true self. You have nothing to be ashamed of. If being with a man, in a relationship with a man, is what makes you happy then you should embrace that.’

‘How can I? The only man I want is Brett and I already lost him. You made sure of that!’

‘Maybe it’s not too late,’ she said. ‘Maybe you can get in touch with him and—‘

‘I can’t find him! He left me and he took everything with him! The man I love is gone! That’s why I’m here.’

‘Why you’re here?’ she asked, unsure what she was meant to do about the situation.

‘You’re going to undo this. You’re going to find him. You must be able to find him.’

‘I… I don’t think that I have a phone number or an address for him. We could go downstairs and check for—‘

‘No! I don’t want your lies and your manipulation! Fix it! All I want you to do is to fix it.’

When a tear skittered down his face, she saw an opportunity. ‘Why don’t we start by making sure that when you do find Brett, that you can be with him and never find yourself in this situation again.’

From the way his brow shifted she knew that he hadn’t considered this. ‘What…? What do you mean?’

‘Well Brett wanted to be with you and it was your reluctance to be open about your relationship that caused it to end.’

‘No! No, it was you! Brett loved me but you told him to leave me!’

‘Is that why you’ve been doing all of this?’ she asked. ‘You blame me for losing Brett?’

Moving back until his back hit the wall, he strengthened the arm that was holding the gun, it had to be tiring from being held aloft for so long. ‘I came to find you. I wanted to talk to you. I… I called your office, but as soon as I told you I was the partner of a patient you refused to see me. I didn’t get to explain, I didn’t even mention Brett and you cut me off.’

It was her policy not to treat both sides of a relationship without the express consent and knowledge of the other party, and even that was rare. Usually when she saw both partners it was as a couple with only perhaps the odd complementary solo session if that was what was needed.

‘It can create a conflict,’ she explained. ‘If you told me that you were the partner of a patient and that the patient didn’t know you were contacting me I would have been against treating you. It’s only fair that my existing patient takes priority.’

‘But he wasn’t your patient, he had already left me! But you didn’t let me explain.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, assuming that she had been busy, or perhaps his erratic nature had come through on the phone.

‘I started to watch you, to see if you’d been telling the truth about your patients, and if Brett was still coming to you. I thought then that he might still be in the city.’

‘You watched me through the city network of cameras,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t the appropriate thing to do.’

‘It’s no big deal to get into that system,’ he said. ‘If they really wanted to keep people out then they would protect it and they don’t.’

After the truth of what Pete had done came out in the press, the city would no doubt be more particular about the security of that system. But that would be too late to help her and Suzette.

‘It’s very intrusive,’ she said.

‘The cameras are there to watch people who need to be watched, and if you were going around telling people to break hearts then that makes you dangerous. I wanted to know how you could live with yourself, and what made you so special that you thought you could determine who should have love and who shouldn’t. So I just tapped in now and then to see how you lived your life after you had ruined mine.’

‘But your need to see me grew?’

‘I saw you with your friend, happy and laughing, and I couldn’t understand how you could be happy when you’d torn my world apart.’

‘So you wanted to hurt those I cared about? Was that your goal?’

‘No,’ he said, his gun slipped lower, and Suzette was beginning to quiet.

Worried about her friend’s wellbeing, Lyssa glanced back to see that Suzette was listening, she was obviously interested to see how she was involved. ‘Why get involved with Suzette? Were you trying to convince yourself that you were straight?’

‘I wanted to get closer, to talk to you, to make you see that what you were doing was wrong. I also wanted to be around, in your life, in case Brett came back to see you or got in touch with you. I even thought about getting into your office to find out if you knew where Brett was. But I couldn’t approach you directly, so I got a job at the hospital where you had privileges and sought Suzie then.’

‘To seduce her? I don’t—‘

‘How she could be friends with such a callous person was beyond me,’ he carried on as though Lyssa hadn’t spoken, further displaying his narcissism. ‘Suzie gave me the chance to get close to you, she made it clear that she was interested in me. When she started to lose interest, or noticed my lack of interest rather, I proposed. Maintaining interest in her when I knew my heart was Brett’s was difficult, after the proposal I didn’t have to, she just ran with it.’

‘You used her,’ Lyssa said, wondering if he saw the callousness of his own actions. ‘But I don’t understand the rest, the flowers, the notes, the brick through the window?’

‘You told Brett that I wasn’t a good person to have a relationship with. I proved you wrong, I sent flowers, and was attentive in watching you everywhere, just like I would watch over Brett. You should have been impressed that I was so thoughtful… you took it all the wrong way.’

The first note saying, “I see you” creeped her out, apparently it was supposed to make her feel watched over, that was probably his reasoning behind the photographs and the video too.

‘You were filming me.’

‘To protect you,’ he said. ‘I showed you what it was to protect someone. I’ve done more for you than your own supposed boyfriend. You told Brett to get rid of me because I hurt him, and I wanted to prove to you that I wouldn’t hurt him, that I could be the best boyfriend there was.’

‘Is that why you killed Bobby?’

‘He was telling people that you were sleeping with patients. If you lost your licence then Brett would never come back. Lee was pissed at you too after Archie showed up in his session. I protected you. I am a good partner and you’re going to tell Brett that.’

‘I can’t, I don’t know where he is.’

‘You’ll find him,’ Pete said. ‘You will find him and you’ll make him come back to me, you’ll tell him all the nice things I’ve done for you, how I’ll do anything it takes to protect someone important to me.’

She somehow doubted that even if she found Brett he would be tempted to come back just because Pete sent her some pretty flowers and murdered people who were mean about her. But it was clear that Pete wasn’t in his right mind, perhaps he had always struggled with mental illness, or it could have been the conversion camp that tipped him over the edge, but his rational mind was long gone now.

‘What about the brick?’

‘I wasn’t happy when Suzette told me you had taken all my good deeds in the wrong way and were calling me some kind of crazy stalker who was set on scaring you,’ he said, his weight was against the wall now and he looked woozy, like maybe it was all too much.

She wanted to correct him and say that she hadn’t been scared, but being freaked out was close enough and she wasn’t going to argue semantics.

‘You were angry at me?’ He’d already been angry at what he saw was her interference in Brett and Pete’s relationship. ‘You wanted me to be scared?’

‘I wanted you to think twice about what you were saying to patients. I had no idea how many happy couples that you were breaking up.’

‘That doesn’t explain the brick through the window or the shooting outside Risqué.’

His smile inched up. ‘The brick was just a bit of fun, I wanted to see you scared. I thought it would serve you right to feel a tiny bit of the fear I felt when I lost Brett. That’s why I paid that kid to throw the brick through the window while I was there. I wanted to be there to see your face when it happened.’

‘No wonder you wanted to run away so fast afterwards,’ she said. ‘You didn’t want to talk to the cops. You wanted to get out of there.’ Her sympathy for him was waning.

‘It was my chance to get you and Suzette apart. Like I said, I didn’t want her involved. I wanted her to stay away from your poison and I didn’t want her to be here now, for this.’

‘You didn’t want anyone looking for you,’ she said. ‘You didn’t want Suzette to support me because you didn’t want to be caught. But surely you wouldn’t have married her? She would have been hurt when you dumped her.’

‘I planned to be gentle,’ he proclaimed. ‘By then you would have ensured Brett and I were back together and Suzette would understand where my heart truly lay. When I had Brett, I would have left quietly, and none of this would have happened… then Warner got involved.’

‘Colt? What has he got to do with…?’

Sirens outside broke her concentration and Pete grabbed hold of her to drag her through the house and into the living room. Holding her body in front of him, he peeked past the edge of the curtain. There outside in her street were a dozen police cars and as many officers organising a cordon as were focused on the house.

‘What have you done?’ Pete shouted, throwing Lyssa back.

She stumbled on the edge of the rug and collapsed next to Archie’s body, but she kept her eyes on the gun. ‘I think they’re here for you.’

‘You were supposed to call them off! What am I supposed to do now?’

His panic matched his alert eyes and edgy movements, she still had questions, but those would have to wait until he got over his surprise at this latest development. Suzette was in the bedroom and was crying again and trying to scream, but it didn’t matter. The police knew that they were here, they just didn’t know who would come out alive, and right now, neither did Lyssa.