Who did that?
“Your sister left,” I accused.
Mavis smiled. “You scare the shit out of her.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Why?” I asked.
She tilted her head, pursing her lips and trying to decide how much to tell me, I was sure.
In the end, she gave me a bone.
“My sister has been a different person these last two years,” Mavis started. “Do you know that when it first happened, she wouldn’t even leave the house?”
The thought of Fran, so scared like that, literally tore my heart to shreds. “No.”
“She brought you a present at the police station,” she said. “Did you get it?”
I had. It’d made me happy that the girl was all right.
But I’d had my own struggles with leaving the department. Trying to figure out how to go about doing that while also being able to live. It hadn’t been an easy time in my life, and I felt like a shithead now for not thanking her for the gift.
“Yes.”
“That was the first time that she left the house on her own.”
Now I really felt like shit.
“Yeah?” I rasped.
“Slowly but surely, she’s come out of that protective shell. But this bootcamp? You? This is the first time that I’ve seen the real Francine Pope in a really long time.” She paused. “You probably don’t realize it yet, but Fran could’ve easily stayed holed up and lived in fear the rest of her life. Very comfortably.”
I knew the name Pope was synonymous with money around here. The Popes had founded the fuckin’ town. The matriarch Pope, however, was a bitch. I hadn’t met her but one time, but the one interaction I’d had with her was enough for me to realize two things. One, I was a lowlife because I didn’t have an office job that made me a shit ton of money. Two, I didn’t have a lineage I could track back to aristocracy.
They were rich and powerful.
“Yeah,” I said.
“But my sister hates our grandmother even more than I do. Two stubborn people that think they’re right… and in the end, she was stubborn enough not to let her win,” Mavis continued. “This is something that Fran will share but… we’ve had a rough childhood. We may have the Pope name—at least most of the time—but we definitely don’t have the Pope love.” She inhaled roughly and brushed her lips across Vlad’s head. “The money released each month is like blood money. It reminds us of how much we should have had but don’t. That we’re on a leash when we’d rather be flying free. And that money is what Fran lived on for a year because of me.” Mavis paused. “Before you and CrossFit, she was working with her errands business, trying to make ends meet, but wasn’t really giving it her all. I mean, what’s the point? She’d already been hit hard too many times to count. If anyone deserved to live and do nothing, it’s her. But then you and this bootcamp came along, and I’ve watched her change. Flourish. Turn into the person that I hadn’t seen since before the attack.”
I felt raw inside.
“She’ll come around,” Mavis promised. “Just give her another day. She has more to tell you. And I think that she’ll figure it out with herself rather quickly. Especially with the way she whined last night about how she’d pushed you away.”
That gave me a small smile to wear.
That small smile eventually fell off my face as I closed up the gym with Madden.
Sadly, despite my Gran’s attempt to cheer me up, the night went to complete shit about halfway through dinner, thanks to another murder.
Even worse, there were news reporters at the house, and frustrated, one of the other officers that was there controlling the police barricade let it slip that there’d been a witness to one of the murders.
Who had that witness been?
Fran.
Son of a bitch.
CHAPTER 18
If the bar ain’t bending, you’re just pretending.
-Text from Fran to Taos
FRAN
“I told Taos to give you one more day,” Mavis said as she spoon-fed Vlad some green baby food.
Peas, I thought.
“What?” I asked, sounding shocked. “Why?”
I practically all but thrust my entire face into hers to better witness her explanation.
“Because you looked like you needed to work up the courage to finish telling him everything,” she said simply.
I felt my stomach jolt.
“There’s not really much to tell,” I admitted. “I just… I’m scared to talk to him. I’m scared he’s going to look at me differently.”
She rolled her eyes, then cursed. “Dang it. I forgot to go get the paper. Can you take over for a second?”
I rolled my eyes as she took off for the front door, handing me the spoon as she passed.
Vlad shrieked in protest, but I picked up the jar—yep, I was right. Peas—and brought a spoonful to his lips.
He ate it hungrily.
I laughed at his exuberance—oh, I wished he would keep loving peas—and fed him the rest of the jar before Mavis returned with the paper open as she walked into the room.
“Anything?” I asked.
Vlad’s father, Bayne Green, was on the way into town with his band. She wanted to make sure that she wasn’t anywhere near him and his scheduled appearances this weekend, so she was double-checking everything.
I didn’t blame her. Bayne Green was a dick.
When he’d learned that he’d had a kid with Mavis, he’d told her to ‘get rid of it.’
Mavis went out of her way not to associate Vlad with Bayne, and the good thing was, when you looked at Vlad, all you could really see was Mavis and me.
Thankfully, Bayne’s good looks were nowhere to be found in Vlad.
Bayne whose hometown was good ol’ Paris, Texas. Which was now becoming a local presence in and of itself thanks to it being the hometown of the bad boy of rock and roll.
“Okay, we’re all set.” She heaved a sigh. “The article in the paper says that…”
My eyes went to the paper as she got closer, and my eyes took in the photo on the front page.
My stomach sank as I got a good close up of my freakin’ house.
It was a photo that had my house and the house featuring the dead woman thanks to the serial killer, side by side.
Both looked really gloomy and ugly, thanks to the recent rainstorms battering our area.
Even my dead flowers near the mailbox added to the effect.
At first, I didn’t realize what I was seeing.
Not until Mavis got close enough for me to read the headlines.
I felt my stomach bottom out at the fear that started to overtake me.
It was back.
The gnawing, clawing, living, twisting thing inside of me.
I’d felt this feeling before.
It was my old friend, fear.
I read the headlines, then the article in the paper again, feeling my insides start to scream.
One witness has come forward on the grisly murders of twelve women over the Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana tristate areas. Francine Pope, thirty years old, of Paris, Texas. She is a registered nurse, as well as a critical pillar in the community.
I stopped reading, praying and hoping that more didn’t come of the words that I read.