Worth the Fall (33 page)
Authors: Mara Jacobs
I turn the key and lift the heavy lid. I open it slowly, as if something inside could strike out at me.
There are only seven items in the box. My birth certificate. My California driver
’s license. My Social Security card. A stack of hundred dollar bills totaling four thousand dollars. A picture of my father. A gun. And a sealed envelope.
The identification things I quickly move to the bottom of the box. They are no good to me now, and could get me killed. The cash is my safety net, it goes back into the box. The gun…the gun may be needed, but not today.
I finally come to the sealed envelope, not able to put it off any longer. I don’t know why the procrastination now, after I’d hurried like hell to get here before the bank closed.
Yeah, on some level I do know why. Because what I find it this envelope may blow my safe world apart.
I take a deep breath and place my finger under the flap of the envelope and quickly slash it across, causing a momentary flash of pain from a tiny paper cut. The envelope flap turns a diluted pink where I bleed, ever so slightly, onto it.
Holding the offending fingertip out of the way, I pull out the contents of the envelope, careful not to let them touch the bloodstain. Two photos. Both single shots of a man alone. Different men. The first is a face I know well.
Knew
well.
Or maybe, never really knew at all.
I see now that the resemblance to the handsome man in the desktop picture is surface, at best. Black hair, blue eyes, extremely good-looking, yes. But this man…my man…has a gleam in his eye, a charming predator look that draws one in.
Drew me in.
But I flew away.
I swallow down emotion, careful not to examine closely what the exact emotion is, and place that photo back into the envelope. Left remaining is a photo of Uncle Chazz. I take the folded printout of the desktop picture out of my pants pocket. I slowly unfold it, pressing out the creases with my now shaking hands.
I lay the picture from the envelope, a smaller snapshot, onto the table next to the unfolded printout.
He has aged, but it
’s Uncle Chazz. There are differences, yes. But even if I hadn’t been sure, and I now was, the man in both these photos has a small scar running through his right eyebrow. Very tiny, not very noticeable, unless you were looking for it.
Or looking
at
it. As I had, at five years old, when I saw him standing over my father’s body, gun in hand. He’d lifted his index finger to his lips as he watched me watch him, in a “shhhh” motion. It wasn’t necessary. I didn’t scream. I didn’t speak. I only stared at the man who had just killed my father.
My little eyes had followed the line of his index finger as if it were pointing straight up, and saw the scar that bisected his eyebrow. I suppose I was already going into shock because all I could think at the time – and I still remember this, twenty-two years later – was
“ I wonder how Uncle Chazz got that owie?”
My finger glides over the scar in the printout of the desktop photo, as if it might be embossed, and I could feel the nail in Uncle Chazz
’s coffin.
I
’m not sure how long I sit and stare, but I finally put the snapshot back in the envelope, careful not to look at the other picture in there. I fold up the printout and add it to the envelope. I don’t want it in my home. In fact, Nick Carpenter’s IMAC is going to be nothing but nuts, bolts and motherboard by then end of the day.
My hand slides over the gun as I place it on top of everything in the box. Yes, I silently tell it, I will be back for you soon.
I put the box back into the long drawer, call the woman in and we both lock it up and take our respective keys with us. I thank her and walk out of the bank, wondering how I can possibly drive home.
I can
’t. Not yet. I’m not even sure I’d be able to find my way home, as shaken up as I am. I look at the coffee shop across the street and head over. I spend the next two hours nursing a black coffee, turning a muffin into a pile of crumbs and plotting how to kill Uncle Chazz.
My hands stop shaking at some point and I know it
’s okay to drive. I clean up my mess, half expecting to see napkins littered with murder plots, but no, I’d done all the planning in my head.
On the drive home I turn over all the different ways to exact revenge.
No, not revenge. Vengenance.
Plots and schemes skim through my head, one idea more delicious than the next. I turn down my street and head toward my driveway. The entrance to my safe haven. My nest. A place I hadn
’t ventured far from for four years.
A soft sound, almost a wail, escapes from me as I realize none of these plans for Uncle Chazz will happen. None
can
happen.
I have finally found my father
’s killer.
And there
’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
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About the Author
After graduating from Michigan State University with a degree in advertising, Mara spent several years working at daily newspapers in Advertising sales and production. This certainly prepared her for the world of deadlines!
Most authors say they’ve been writing forever. Not so with Mara. She always had the stories, but they played like movies in her head. A few years ago she began transferring the movies to pages. She writes mysteries with romance, thrillers with romance, and romances with…well, you get it.
Forever a Yooper (someone who hails from Michigan
’s glorious Upper Peninsula), Mara now resides in the East Lansing, Michigan, area where she is better able to root on her beloved Spartans.
Mara first published in October of 2012 with 2 romantic mystery series and the contemporary romance Worth series. You can find out more about her books at