The Perfect Couple (29 page)

"Why do you need to look for her?" his father asked.

Colin's muscles ached from the tension. "Because she could be in danger. You just told me yourself--someone took her."

"Was that someone you, Colin?"

"No!" Colin wasn't willing to give up yet. He could lie his way out of this just as he had out of every scrape in the past. His mother was the only one who could see through him when he made shit up. She'd tried to beat the devil out of him, but that'd just heightened his desire to hurt and maim. "I know it seems like quite a coincidence. But it wasn't me. If I'm not at work, I'm with Tiffany. I could never get enough time alone to snatch one kid, never mind two."

"I thought of that," Paddy said. "The whole ride over here, I told myself I had to be crazy to be feeling such fear. It couldn't be you. Not my son. For the sake of holding my marriage together, my family together, maybe I let your mother get a bit too harsh when you were little. I feel bad about that. But Tina's been out of the picture for a long time, Colin. You could've gotten some help. I offered, more than once, to pay for a therapist, but you always insisted you were fine. You pointed to your grades in school, your law-school diploma, your happy marriage, your lovely home. And I figured anyone who could achieve all that had to be fine. But we both know how Tiffany worships you. She'd slit her own wrists if you told her to."

With anyone else, Tiffany's presence in his daily life would provide a foolproof alibi. But this was his father; Paddy had had a front-row seat to the way they interacted.

"You're underestimating Tiffany," he said. "She'd never go along with kidnapping and...and attempted murder!"

His father wanted to believe him. That was why he'd come over, to convince himself that his suspicions were unfounded. "You're sure it's her I've underestimated?"

Colin grabbed his arm. "Are you kidding me? You're just like Mom.

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Full of false accusations. Always thinking the worst."

His father didn't like being compared to Tina. Rocking back, he searched Colin's face. "You didn't hurt those kids? Tell me the truth, Colin. I can't help you if I don't know the truth."

Paddy's doubt made it possible for Colin to breathe again. He gave a skeptical-sounding laugh. "Relax. I haven't hurt anybody," he said. But then Samantha started kicking and screaming upstairs and, even with the added insulation, Colin could hear her calling, "Help! Help me! Please! They've chained me to the floor. Call my mom! Please help me."

Colin's father's ashen complexion made it obvious he'd heard her, too.

"Good God," he whispered and broke away, headed for the stairs.

Paddy thought he could save her. He thought Colin would just stand there and let him pass.

"Not so fast," he said and shoved his father so hard he fell, striking his head on the corner of the wall. A gash on his forehead oozed blood and left him dazed. He blinked up at Colin as if he couldn't quite focus, but the sight of him lying there didn't bother Colin in the least. He felt only relief. "You never should've married Mom, you know that? She was a mean bitch, even if she was a helluva lot smarter than you. And you shouldn't have come over here alone," he added. Then he smashed his head with the base of a lamp.

When he was sure his father was dead, Colin leaned back on his knees, winded but wildly exhilarated. Killing an adult wasn't much different from killing a kid. "You're not so big and tough these days, are you, Dad?"

he said, then he grimaced at the dent he'd created in the brass lamp. "Now look what you made me do. That lamp was expensive."

Dropping the makeshift weapon onto the carpet, he listened for Sam.

He hated her at that moment, hated her more than anyone in the world. He'd kill her in the most painful manner of all, he promised himself. But the house was quiet. As far as he could tell, Zoe hadn't responded to her daughter's calls, which probably meant she was still in a stupor. And Sam had either given up or given out. Either way, he could take care of them later. He had to deal with Paddy first.

Breathe deeply. He shut his eyes in an attempt to overcome the adrenaline rush causing his hands to shake. Everything was okay. He'd had a close call, that was all. But he'd saved the day. All he had to do was dispose of his father's body and he'd be fine.

But how?

Standing, he paced back and forth across the carpet. He'd drag his father into the garage, out of sight, and clean up the blood. As soon as Tiffany returned, he'd have her drive Paddy's car to the pool hall the old man 190

visited almost every weekend. Then, later, when the neighbors were asleep, he'd drive his own car into the garage, put his father's body in the trunk and take it into the mountains to bury. Tomorrow, Paddy Bell would be just another missing person.

He pivoted and made another pass. Would that work? It should. Paddy hadn't told Sheryl what he suspected; Colin was sure of it. He wasn't the type to share information like that until he was absolutely certain. But if his stepmother knew Paddy was coming over here, Colin could face some questions.

It wouldn't matter. She'd never seriously believe he'd hurt his father. It was her son she'd blame. A notorious hothead, Glen Hagen had busted up the business partnership he and Paddy had going when he walked out of the lawn-mower shop they owned together.

Yes, Glen would get the blame. If Sheryl or anyone else placed Paddy in the neighborhood, Colin would simply say he stopped by on his way to see Glen about patching up the rift between them. She knew Paddy wanted to make peace with Glen. These days, Paddy didn't like being at odds with anyone.

All Colin had to do was pull himself together, be more careful--be smart.

But no sooner had he dragged the corpse into the garage and started to clean up the blood than someone knocked on the door.

As he stood on Colin Bell's stoop, waiting for a response, Jonathan checked his phone again. Nothing. While emergency crews cleared away the three-car pileup that'd kept him sitting in traffic for twenty minutes, he'd sent three texts to Zoe--but she hadn't returned a single one, and she wasn't answering when he tried to call.

What was going on? It didn't make sense that she wouldn't keep her phone handy, just in case he had news.

When Colin finally answered Jonathan's knock, he opened the door a crack. Jonathan could tell he didn't really want to be bothered. But his smile was as friendly as ever. "Sorry for the wait," he said. "I was in the garage."

Colin nodded. "No problem. I'm looking for Zoe. Have you seen her?"

"She was here for dinner."

"How long ago did she leave?"

His eyebrows knotted as if he was thinking hard to come up with the correct time. "'Bout an hour ago."

"Did she say where she was going?"

A drop of sweat trickled down from his temple. Jonathan would've 191

thought he'd been working out, but he was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and he wasn't wearing shoes. Had he just finished exercising, stripped off his clothes to hop in the shower and put them back on at the sound of the doorbell? If so, it was no wonder he didn't want to be interrupted....

"She mentioned she was tired," he said. "But maybe Anton saw her heading to her car and waylaid her. They broke up, you know."

Jonathan peered at Lucassi's empty driveway. "Her car's not there."

"Maybe they left together."

That possibility didn't make Jonathan feel much better. Perhaps he was wrong about her. Perhaps she'd go back to Anton, regardless of all her talk about a "loveless relationship." Maria had returned to Dan, hadn't she?

And he was the man who'd broken her nose and her arm--and eventually killed her.

"I guess they could have," Jonathan said. "Thanks." But he managed to contact Lucassi on his cell phone only five minutes later, and Lucassi swore up and down that he hadn't seen Zoe since she'd left his house last night.

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Tiffany's knees buckled when she saw her father-in-law's body.

Covering her mouth in horror, she slid down the inside wall of the garage, staring at the pool of blood fanning out from his head. "He's dead," she said through her fingers. That was obvious. The minute she walked into the house and caught him cleaning up, Colin had said as much, and this was proof. But seeing wasn't necessarily believing. Since they'd married, Colin had been somewhat ambivalent about his father. Sometimes he blamed him for not stopping the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother. Other times he seemed to forgive and forget. But Tiffany had always had a soft spot for Paddy, who, unlike Colin's mother, had been kind to her from the beginning. If he knew they were coming over, he kept her favorite cookies on hand. "The ones with the M&M's," she thought distantly.

"Get up!" Colin growled. "I need your help." She didn't move, so he gave her a little kick. "Come on. What the hell's wrong with you?"

She blinked, then focused on her husband. "What's wrong with me?"

She tried to control her voice, but it went shrill anyway. "You just killed your father! You're going to spend the rest of your life in prison, just like my brother!"

"Shut up!" he cried. "Do you want someone to hear you?" Raising his fist, he loomed over her as if he'd hit her, but she didn't cower. She was too bewildered to be afraid of him.

"Why, Colin?" she murmured, struggling to come to terms with what she saw. "Why would you do such a terrible thing? I--I loved him."

His lips curled back from his teeth. "Oh, give me a freakin' break, will you? You hardly knew him."

As always, she'd taken off her shoes when she entered the house. The air in the shut-up garage retained the heat of an unseasonably warm day, but her bare feet felt like blocks of ice on the cool concrete. "I did too know him."

"Only how he was in later years. He wasn't so nice before. He always took my mom's side. When I was in high school, she tried to have me institutionalized, and he nearly went along with it."

"No, he left her. That was the last straw, he said."

"He almost went along with it before he left her."

She reached out to touch her father-in-law, fingered the rough calluses 193

that distinguished his hands from anyone else's. It took actual contact to convince her it was really him. His face was barely recognizable after what Colin had done. "So...that's why you did it? Because...because you're still angry about the past?"

Mindful of the neighbors, Colin kept his voice low, but his harsh whisper revealed his panic. "He walked in on me, Tiffany." He began to roll his father's body in a blanket. "He'd seen Zoe on the news, crying about losing her daughter. And he'd put it all together."

She let go of Paddy's hand as Colin tucked it into the blanket.

"But...how? That's not possible."

Breathing hard from the exertion, he straightened. "Are you stupid? I explained it before I brought you out here. You know how he figured it out."

"Rover told him about Master." She remembered that much, but the rest, the part where Paddy had connected the name Colin had made his sister use with the fact that Rover had disappeared from his neighborhood and Sam had disappeared from theirs--from the house next door--seemed unfathomable. She couldn't comprehend Paddy being involved in this most secret part of their lives. He'd always been so removed.

Colin bent to cover Paddy's feet. "Rover didn't tell him. It was on the news!"

"Rover had to tell someone. Does that mean he's come out of the coma?"

Finished, Colin wiped the perspiration at his temple and accidentally smeared blood on his forehead. "I don't know. But we have to act fast."

"Act fast," she repeated, mesmerized by that streak of blood. "What should we do?" Paddy was gone. Their lives would never be the same. Why did Colin have to do this? Why Paddy?

"Listen to me." He pulled her up by the shoulders and shook her. "I need you. Don't flip out on me."

"But..."

"But nothing," he said. "This is your fault. If you hadn't let Rover get away, we wouldn't be in this mess."

"I couldn't stop him!"

"Then what about Sam? She wasn't supposed to be conscious. How was she capable of raising such a ruckus?"

Tiffany remembered finding Sam passed out on her mattress. "I don't know. I ground up two pills and put them in a shake, and she drank it. I saw her! And the last time I checked on her, she was out cold."

"She couldn't have drunk it. Two pills would knock out a man my size--for hours. That makes this even more your fault."

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Her fault Paddy was dead? Tears burned behind Tiffany's eyes, clogged her throat. "But I loved him," she whispered again.

"He didn't love you. He didn't even love me."

"That's not true!"

Colin shook her again. "I don't give a rat's ass, do you hear me? If you do as I say, everything will be fine. If you don't, we're going to prison.

Understand?"

She told herself to wipe off the blood he'd gotten on his forehead, but she couldn't make herself touch it. "I just...I don't know what to do," she said. "Nothing will bring him back."

He released her and began dragging his lifeless father away from the door. "We're not trying to bring him back. I'm going to bury him where he'll never be found. But right now I need you to help me carry Zoe down here and get her in the trunk."

Zoe's name cut through Tiffany's shock and panic. "So you can bury them together?"

"No, so I can drive her to the motel room you rented and leave her there."

"Alive?"

With a final grunt, he shoved Paddy against the wall. "Yes."

"But then she'll wake up in the morning."

"That's what we need her to do."

"You said you'd kill her, but you killed Paddy instead!"

"What do you want from me?" he said as he came back toward her.

"You're the one who let Rover get away! I'm doing the best I can here, trying to save both our asses."

"But you said you were going to kill her." Tiffany couldn't get beyond that because she didn't want Paddy dead; she wanted Zoe dead. Then Colin would be as attentive to her as he'd ever been. She had to get their lives back on track, back to normal. She could do that with a pet. Colin had had pets before. It was Zoe who'd made this situation different, more difficult--