“Life.” I pull out a chair and lay my gun and knife on the table before sitting down. Reaper lays his head on my knee, and I run my fingers over it, feeling a sense of calm. “But you already know that, don’t you. Now tell me, why the fuck did you kill Dean, and where are the rest of them?”
Chapter
Five
GABE
Ican’t wrap my mind around what the hell is happening right now. So much has transpired in such a short timeframe that I’m feeling overwhelmed. Not only did I learn that Tara is, in fact, alive, but she is now sitting in our house looking nothing like the girl she was a year ago. But at the same time, she looks exactly like the same girl. I mean, for fuck’s sake, she is carrying an impressive 9mm handgun, a butterfly knife, and has a damn attack dog. When Reed yelled, and I turned the corner of the house, I never thought I would see her there.
Everything clears when Tara says, “Now tell me, why the fuck did you killed Dean, and where are the rest of them?”
“Wait a fucking second. Them?” I ask as I sink down into the chair across from her.
Tara looks at me with her eyebrow arched in confusion. “Okay, I’m seriously confused.”
Demon—or Jackson as I now know—sits beside her, and Reed takes the chair beside me. “I think we should start from the beginning,” Demon says. “Tell us what happened to you, and we will fill you in on what happened to Dean.”
Tara takes a deep breath and looks down at her dog before she starts. “After I left Gabe standing in the parking lot, I wentback into the bar. I was hurt and pissed off. I ordered a beer and decided to drink the pain away. After two beers, I was getting ready to call a taxi when a group of people walked in, and I recognized a girl I met at the salon a week prior, Lilly. She came over and asked if I wanted to hang out with her friends. I reluctantly agreed, even though all I really wanted to do was go home. But…” Tara looks up and over at Reed.
“What?” He asks.
“I tried to call you three times within the hour I sat there, but you never answered or called me back,” she says, and Reed stiffens beside me. She turns her eyes back to her dog and continues her story, not giving me enough time to grill Reed about why he didn’t answer. “I ended up having an okay time with everyone. When they started talking about going to a party, I agreed to go. There wasn’t room in Lilly’s car, but Dean and a guy named Ned said I could ride with them. They seemed cool and harmless.” She shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head.
My hands are clenched so tightly that my fingernails have broken through my skin. “The moment we got in the truck, I knew I fucked up. Their whole personality shifted, and for the first time, I felt scared. They were talking about something falling into their laps and how they needed to jump on the opportunity. Instead of following Lilly, they said they knew a shortcut to the party that would get us there faster. When I told them that I changed my mind and wanted out of the truck, Dean, who was in the passenger seat, turned around and punched me. I must have blacked out because the next thing I knew, I was on the ground with him above me.”
A growl falls from my lips as the first tear falls from her eyes. “I tried to fight them off, but they were too strong. When Dean finished, Ned took over and flipped me onto my stomach. I was able to get to my phone because it was in my bra and called Jessie, but I guess he didn’t answer. I don’t know becauseI blacked out from the pain. Ned was…” Tara stops to suck in a shaky breath.
“When I came to, I heard them talking about how this was perfect. How this was was going to help them get into some group they had been trying to join. I tried to stay still and quiet, hoping they would leave me there, but I was wrong. I must have made a noise because the next thing I knew, there was a burning pain in my side, and I blacked out again. The next thing I knew, I was being thrown down a big ditch.”
“How did you end up in Hawk’s Bend with Elio?” Demon asks as Tara sucks in a shaky breath.
“He found me in a field and took me in. When I woke up, I learned that I was shot in the side and had multiple deep cuts in my private area,” Tara says, a blush forming on her face like she is embarrassed. She shakes her head and finally looks up, but only at Reed. “Now tell me how you found out about what happened that night and how Dean ended up dead.”
“When you didn’t show up the next day, Gabe called me, and we went to the police. I might have pulled some strings to get them to start the search before the twenty-four-hour mark. Lilly came forward and told us about you hanging out in the bar but said you had left alone. Your car was reported thirty minutes away in Clearwater abandoned. The police dogs followed your scent and found an abandoned shed where there was a lot of blood.
“After two days, the police declared you dead, but we started our own investigation. Nick tracked down a guy named Phillip who was at the bar and quickly uncovered the lie about you leaving. Nick found a video on a guy named Ben’s computer that showed what happened in the shed, well, the assault, but we couldn’t see who was doing it,” Reed says.
“Okay, then, how did you get to Dean?” Tara asks, still refusing to look at me.
She might not want to look at me but she will eventually. “Reed took a job at the new college that was just built to find the people who hurt you. Ben provided us with a couple of names of people who were at the bar that night. With each name, we kept getting closer and closer. Then Reed met a girl named Ali. It turns out that she was being stalked, although she didn’t know it. When we started looking into who was targeting her, we found a guy named Blaze, who just happened to be a name we already knew, thanks to us looking into your disappearance. Blaze not only gave us who was stalking Ali but gave us Dean,” I say.
“We didn’t kill Dean. Ali did, but to be fair, it was self-defense,” Reed says.
“And Ned?”
“We didn’t know there was more than one. We never got to talk to Dean before he was killed,” I say, praying that she will look at me, but she doesn’t.
“Whose idea was it to start looking for me?” Tara finally looks at me, but only for a second before she looks at the others.
“Mine. I never believed you were dead. We met Demon while helping Ali, and he said he would be able to find you,” I say. Tara’s eyes snap to mine, and I’ll take it even if they are full of rage.
“Why?” She asks, and I get instantly angry.
“Before he answers. Can I ask a question?” Demon raises his hand as if to stop a fight from breaking out. “Why stay away so long?”
“Why would I come back when it was clear that I wasn’t important to anyone here.” Tara’s voice wobbles only slightly. “Look, it’s been great, but I got my answers and need to get going. Looks like I still have work to do.” Tara stands, but before she can move away from the table, I’m up out of my seat.
I slam my hands down on the table, which I should have thought about beforehand because her damn dog stands andgrowls at me. “I’m not scared of your fucking dog, and you aren’t going anywhere. For a fucking year, I’ve never stopped looking for you, praying that you were still alive, and I’m not about to let you walk out of this fucking house.”
