Emma. I run back to my car and drive to where I first saw Jason. Did I miss something?
I get out of the car and look around in complete and utter confusion. I’m about to get in my car and head to the house to meet the police that are surely waiting there already when I hear rustling in the woods nearby. A tapping sound like a branch on a tree, only it’s methodic, like a song, not like an animal stepping on a twig.
I grab a flashlight from my car and shine it into the woods. I see nothing and start to lower the light when a flash of color stops me. I raise the light a little and shine it to the left and gasp. Emma is lying on the ground. Tears streaming down her face, tape over her mouth, her hands and feet bound. She’s trying to scream at me. I go to run toward her when an arm reaches around my waist.
“I guess your braking skills are better than your driving skills,” a voice says.
I try to turn but my eyes meet a barrel of a gun.
“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” the voice says, “brother.”
My eyes widen as Jason releases me and steps forward.
“Jason…I…what’s happening?” I can’t process that he’s here. The brother that I just wept over, the brother who just drove a car over a cliff is standing beside me.
“You’re really an idiot, aren’t you? Just another pretty face like your mother. Newsflash, moron, I threw a rock on the gas pedal and jumped out. You, however, were supposed to follow me over the edge of that cliff. So, I guess we have a change of plans. I was gonna kill Emma here and make it look like you did and then jumped the cliff in a moment of regret, but now I think a murder-suicide by firearm looks like the option.”
I step back from him. “Jason, you aren’t making sense,” I say slowly as my mind catches up with my reality.
“God, it’s amazing I’m as smart as I am. Dad didn’t bother checking all the screws in his engine. You didn’t bother checking your surroundings. Emma, here, thought I was just a nice guy. Surprise, you’re all fucking wrong. I’ve spent my whole life planning this. Everything I’ve done is to get back at you and your fucking family for ruining mine. Now, I just have to deal with Blythe. I think a nice suicide off the penthouse balcony will work, don’t you?”
I lunge forward, and he aims the gun at my head. I freeze mid-step, placing my foot down. He motions with his gun.
“Now go stand by your pretty little girlfriend.”
I walk slowly to Emma. She’s shaking and tears continue to slide down her cheeks. I want to take her in my arms and tell her it’ll all be alright, but I’m not sure it will.
“Good. Very good. At least you can follow directions,” Jason snarls. “Now…how to arrange you…” He trails off and leans down, grabbing a knife from his pocket. Emma visibly shudders as he cuts the zip ties holding her hands and feet. He rips the tape off her mouth. “There, that’s better. Have to make this look good, don’t we? I’m going to be so upset when I find you this way, after escaping from the stalker. You two just couldn’t handle the pressure anymore. You went crazy, Grady! I tried to stop you before you put that final bullet in your head.”
He aims his gun at me first. And then two things happen that I’m not expecting. First, Emma jumps up and stabs Jason in the side with his knife. It must have fallen out of his pocket as he got up a minute ago. And, cop cars pull up to my car on the trail with sirens blaring.
“Put the gun down,” Dean’s voice says from a loudspeaker. But Jason is already lowering the gun as he clutches his side, his eyes wide in shock. He touches the knife in his side. He starts to say something, but a shot rings out and Jason’s eyes widen. I watch as a circle of red forms on his chest. His eyes glass over and he falls to the ground, the gun falling a few feet away from him.
I don’t move and neither does Emma for a long second.
“Oh God!” she finally whispers as she falls to her knees beside Jason. “Oh, God! Oh God!” she repeats, her hand over her mouth.
I snap out of my shock and scramble to her, pulling her into me. Her body begins shaking as she sobs uncontrollably.
“Are you both OK?” Dean asks. I look up, not even realizing how he got here beside us.
“Y-yes,” I stammer, keeping my arms tightly wrapped around Emma. Someone hands us blankets. I wrap Emma in one and throw one over my shoulders as I carry her to the police cars on the trail. The next few moments are a blur as the adrenaline leaves our bodies. An ambulance pulls up, and we are ushered inside. A medic checks us over. Emma doesn’t speak, she just trembles. Eventually, her sobs turn to small whimpers.
“She’s in shock. We’re going to bring you all in to make sure everything is alright,” the paramedic says.
I nod.
“No,” Emma whispers.
The guy stops and stares at her.
She shakes her head. “No. I-I’m fine. I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
“Miss, you’re in shock. It’s best if we take you—”
“I said I’m fine,” she repeats in a much stronger and clear voice. “I-I’m sorry,” she says, turning to me. “This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have gone with him.”
I pull her onto my lap and hold her there, stroking her hair. “None of this is your fault, Emma. None of it,” I say, pulling back and looking her in the eyes. “Do you hear me? None of us knew…” I trail off and look back out into the woods where a white sheet now lies over my half brother.
“I’m sorry,” she says again, searching my eyes. I lean down and kiss her lips softly.
“You are alive and so am I. That’s all that matters right now,” I tell her.
“There’s something you need to know,” she says in a low voice. “He…killed your dad. It wasn’t an accident.”
I try to process what she’s saying, as Jason’s last words about my father and screws come back to me. No, it couldn’t be. My mind begins to scan all my memories of that terrible day at the racetrack, but as I’m about to ask her what Jason said, Dean walks over.
“We need to debrief you both if you are up for it. It’s better if we get the story now,” he explains.
We both nod.
“I’ll speak with you all now, but Grady needs to hear what Jason told me,” Emma explains.
“OK. I’m taking you to the local sheriff’s office,” Dean says to us. We follow him to a car, and he drives us in silence. Twenty minutes later, we’re sitting in a small office with cups of coffee.
“Emma, why don’t you start,” Dean encourages as a police officer turns on a recorder.
She begins with the restaurant, and then everything that happened once she woke up in the trunk of the car. I add in the details with the cars and cliff and we both share our versions of the last few minutes of my brother’s life.
When we finish, Dean stops the recorder and looks at us. “The forensics we did on the early sticky notes came in right after you left, but we couldn’t get you on the phone. We were able to pull a partial off one that the cops hadn’t been able to match previously, but with new technology, we got an eighty percent match to Gerald Hogan. He was caught stalking another Indy driver’s house and went to jail a while back. He died in there from a heart attack. The new notes, while very good copies, had subtle differences that our team was able to pick up on. When we ran all our suspects from your mother’s apartment back through the system and widened our search, we came across Jason’s military background. He had been training as a medic when he got a dishonorable discharge for stealing supplies. He was also hacking computers and that’s how he got copies of some of the evidence from the original stalker case. Gerald was more interested in your dad than you, thus the reason the notes stopped after your father died. Everything else recently was a copycat case. Looks like Jason got out of the military three years ago and has been slowly planning all of this. We found a fingerprint at the garage and matched that. Cops just picked up a Billy Whitaker about an hour ago for vandalism. The kid says some guy paid him five hundred to trash the garage. We assume it was a distraction so Jason could take Emma.”