Unhinged, page 2
Instantly, a voice called out, “Come in!”
She didn’t. Instead, she glanced around the door jamb and through the window, looking for any traps.
But through the window, she spotted a large man, with a wide frame, sitting in a wooden chair. He wasn’t fat, but he was built solid. Clearly, he spent a lot of time lifting heavy things.
She pushed through the door now, deciding that he wasn’t armed.
Gabriel Finch sat across a small wooden table, blinking up at her and shifting uncomfortably the moment she entered.
“Hey there,” she said slowly.
Gabe was once again wearing that stupid flat cap of his, peering out at her from under the brim with a speculative expression.
He was a broad-shouldered man with the look of a linebacker or lumberjack. A tall man, at least six foot two, with sawdust on his rolled-up flannel sleeves. His curled and unkempt hair pushed from beneath the brim of his cap, looking dark at first, but when he leaned back, the sun caught it through the window, giving it the faint sheen of straw.
Cora shifted uncomfortably, her hands pressed against her tattooed arms. Her own hair was cut short on one side, nearly to the scalp, but left shoulder length on the other. Her injured shoulder made the posture of crossing her arms somewhat uncomfortable, but stubborn as ever, she didn’t change her stance, if only out of a desire not to project weakness to this man.
“So?” she said simply, arms still crossed, teeth set tight. Cora’s sea gray eyes met Gabe’s intelligent, blue gaze.
The last time they’d spoken in person, she’d tied him up and threatened to torture him.
Not the friendliest start.
She glanced around hesitantly, eyeing the floor.
“No one else here, either,” Gabe said.
She looked up sharply, eyes narrowed.
He scratched at his chin and shrugged. “Spotted you looking around outside. Earlier,” he said, jamming a thumb over his shoulder. “Think I saw you checking the trees.” He gave a disarming smile. “Just me. This isn’t a trap.”
“Trap? Why would you say that?” Cora snapped, tense now, her eyes still darting to the windows.
“It isn’t. It’s not a trap! Hey, chill, Cora.”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Umm...it’s your name, isn’t it? What should I call you? My mom talked to your parents, by the way. They weren’t sure if they should say anything about you.” He flashed her a smile. “I told my mom I’d ask you if you were gonna be at church this Sunday.”
Cora sighed, massaging the bridge of her nose. “Your mom sounds like mine.”
“Must be a great lady, then.”
“Oh, shit. Dammit. Just cut it out. I get it, you’re country bumpkin charming.”
He frowned. “That’s racist.”
“No,” she corrected. “It’s elitist. A posture I’ve reserved just for you, Gabe, as I’m still not sure that you didn’t kill my sister. So, how about we cut the chatter. Tell me why I’m here. You said you found something. Well?” She raised her eyebrows significantly, then—if only to relieve the strain in her shoulder—she extended a hand, wiggling her fingers.
At the mention of her sister and the half-accusation, Gabe sobered. He inhaled slowly, fidgeting. He didn’t look quite scared, but certainly nervous. To his credit, the last time she’d tied him up and threatened him, he had summoned no small amount of courage.
And now, that same iron will could be glimpsed as chips of flint in his blue eyes.
“I had it in a bank deposit box,” he said slowly. “Had to wait until Monday to withdraw it. And so, I did.”
“Withdraw what?”
He held up a finger. “I’m going to reach in my pocket. Don’t, you know, shoot me. Stab me. Break my neck. Whatever.”
“We’ll see.”
“Funny,” he grumbled. But slowly, he reached into his pocket. He shifted a bit, and then withdrew four folded white envelopes. The paper was stained. Old and worn. He rested the four letters on the table, glancing up sheepishly.
“What are they?” she said.
“Letters.”
“I can see that, Sherlock. What type of letters.”
“Are you always this rude to people you’re intimidating? Is it tactical?”
“God dammit, Gabe. Just tell me what the letters are.”
He tapped a long, calloused finger against the letters. “These,” he said cautiously, “are love letters. Written in cursive. They were sent, oh, I dunno, about a month before Rose was taken.”
Cora had gone still now. No longer shifting side to side, her arms were still wrapped around her form as if in an attempt at an embrace. Cora took a hesitant step forward at last, dislodged from her momentary stasis. She stared down, frowning. The envelops simply had her sister’s name written in messy cursive. Each one was addressed to Rose.
“You sent these to her? So, why are you showing them to me.”
But Gabriel Finch waved a long finger back and forth. “Nu-uh,” he said. And for the first time, she glimpsed a look of pain in the man’s eyes. He shifted uncomfortably, leaning back in his wooden chair, and causing it to creak. He puffed air, sending a couple of curling strands of hair up out of his eyes. “Not me,” he said, that hurt look still lingering, and his tone suddenly cold.
It took Cora a second, but then she snorted. “No way,” she snapped. “Rose was not two-timing you.”
He shrugged. “I found these in our old...umm...spot.”
“Spot?”
“Yeah, you know.”
“Make-out spot. Gross, Gabe. So, you found those where you hooked up with my baby sister?”
“Shit, we were the same age, Cora. Don’t say it like that. But yeah. She left them there. Or...well...Someone left them.”
“When?” Now Cora’s tone went cold.
“Umm...” he couldn’t quite meet her gaze. He glanced out the window, exhaling faintly. “Just, you know...”
“No, Finch, I don’t know. When did you find those?”
He mumbled something nearly inaudible. And she leaned in now, knuckles pressed against the table. “The night she went missing? Are you kidding me, asshole? You didn’t tell the cops about them?”
Gabe leaned back now, angry as well. “I didn’t know what to do, alright! I’d just found out my girlfriend was cheating on me. I loved her, Cora! I really did!”
“Loved her enough to make her pay?” Cora said, barely able to conceal the rising fury. “Is that right? You wanted to give her what was coming, right? She cheated on you, so you hunted her down and—”
“Hell no!” Gabe snapped, lurching to his feet and sending the wooden chair toppling. He was breathing heavily, his muscled chest rising and falling against the fabric of his flannel. She realized just how intimidating the physical form the farm boy was up close. But she didn’t back down, instead she raised her eyes to meet his, but kept her cold, accusing gaze affixed.
His burst of emotion had propelled him to his feet, but it didn’t quite keep him there. The large man sagged against a dusty, wooden support beam. Now that he was moving, Cora was both angry and attentive. Her training kicked in as she started calculating risk and trajectory. If he had a gun strapped to the back of the post, she’d kick the table into him, use it for cover, then come up fast.
The thoughts occurred quick and unbidden. Her natural instincts rising within.
But even as she considered the possibility, Gabe’s head sagged, and he spoke in such a small voice that the part of Cora not currently furious felt a pang of sympathy.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he murmured. “I was embarrassed. Angry. I...I didn’t know what I was supposed to do...” he said, his voice shaking, sounding pathetic but also hurt. “I...I found those letters, and I thought she was breaking up with me, you know?” Now when he looked at her, there were actual tears in his eyes. She stared, stunned. Part of her wanted to slap it out of him. Sensitivity was not the name of the game in her line of work.
But Gabriel composed himself, continuing in a quiet, shaking voice, “And then, the next night, cops showed up asking me about her. Some seemed to think I had something to do with it. And...they had the same reaction you had,” he said. “I knew they would have thought I’d done something. So...so...”
“So, you didn’t tell them about the only piece of evidence there was?” The sympathy snuffed out like flame in a gale.
He opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off. “You withheld evidence,” she said, her finger shaking as she pointed it at him. “You could’ve come forward years ago! Years ago!” she flinched, realizing that she was yelling now.
She took a moment and consoled herself, eyes closed. At the same time, her mind sped. Was he telling the truth?
If so, did that mean her sister had a secret boyfriend? Someone she hadn’t even told Cora about? The two of them had been so close...was Rose gearing up to tell Cora?
As these thoughts rounded through her head, she realized that Gabe was staring at the ground, his teeth pressed tight. For a moment, she thought he was angry, but then she studied him a second longer, and realized that his was a downcast look of shame.
She felt a pang of sympathy, but it competed with her anger and her frustration. He’d been young at the time of Rose’s disappearance. She could understand, perhaps, why a teenager might have concealed embarrassing letters. But on the other hand, if Rose was alive—or worse, had been alive—and Gabe’s withholding had cost her sister her life, Cora would never forgive him.
She knew what her parents would say about such an attitude, but she’d never claimed to be a saint. She let out a long sigh. The best she could do to extend grace to a man who’d compromised her sister’s well-being was to hold her tongue.
And if she found out that he was lying?
It wouldn’t go well for either of them.
She marched forward, snatched the letters before he could protest—which he didn’t even try to do—turned on her heel, and marched determinedly away.
He didn’t call after her, and she didn’t look back.
An aura of misery lingered behind her, emanating from where he stood, forlorn and staring at the ground. But she picked up the pace, the four letters clutched tightly in one hand, her thumb grazing against the cursive rendering of her baby sister’s name.
As she marched forward, she felt a lump in her throat, but swallowed it.
It was only as she moved back through the trees that her breath returned to her. She exhaled slowly, trying to think straight. Her parents had scheduled dinner tonight. But did she really want to brave those waters?
She gripped the four letters, crinkling them in her hand before realizing what she was doing and relaxing her grip.
She wanted to leave this town. To take the letters and disappear. But she also knew that she had no place to go. As she hastened back towards her vehicle, she remembered the concern in her mother’s voice. The commitment she’d practically dragged from Cora.
Dinner tonight. Urgent.
And so, with an air of despair, Cora resigned herself to a contentious evening. At the same time, she would have time before dinner to comb through these letters. Looking for what?
Anything.
Specifically, who had sent the letters.
Had Gabe forged them?
Either way, it was a lead.
CHAPTER TWO
Cora hurried up the driveway to her parents’ small, quaint country home. Her fingers grazed the worn, white rails as she took the steps two at a time. Her brow was furrowed, and she tapped one hand against her pocket, double checking to make sure the folded letters were still there.
No name on the letters. No way for her to know who they were from. None of them from Rose—that was something, at least. Sweet nothings, little more. Someone had sent these to her baby sister, but Cora didn’t have a clue who was behind them. On the drive to her parents’ place for dinner, she’d considered the possibilities before her.
How to narrow down potential suitors?
Her best bet was to ask her parents directly.
And it was this, in no small part, that caused her stomach to twist. She didn’t want to rip off a band-aid, to open old wounds.
Dinner with the family was already difficult enough. She hoped that, at least this time, her father and her wouldn’t devolve into shouting at each other while her mother chided Cora for not going to church. Her mother was a sweet woman and meant well, but Cora had never been able to look at her mom without seeing her dad.
And now, she hesitated outside the door to the house, which was peeling with old paint. She inhaled slowly, glancing to the side. A welcome mat settled the front porch. Two potted plants neatly kept on either side. These were her mom’s doing.
The peeling paint on the door?
Her father’s purview.
Her old man didn’t care for upkeep nearly as much as he cared for sparing a buck when possible. She could remember, as a kid, when her father had once forbidden the kids from flushing the toilet out of a desire to save water.
Another time, he’d shut the water off while she’d been in the shower, soap still in her hair, accusing her of taking too long.
Her mother had been the sweat one, though conflict averse. Her father had been the law, the judge, and the cops.
And until joining them, Cora had never been particularly fond of cops.
Still, she had a mission. She’d given her mother her word, and she needed to know who else, more than a decade ago, had been interested in Rose.
Already some suitors came to Cora’s mind, but the jocks she thought of weren’t the sorts to weave poetry into cursive letters. The types of guys Rose had been attracted to were big, muscled, and a bit dumb.
Then again, she considered Gabriel Finch. He was big—he’d been an athlete—but he certainly wasn’t dumb. Though he sometimes played the role for her benefit, he was a shrewd man, only a couple years younger than her. As she pushed into the well-swept, small ranch house hallway, she considered how she’d treated Finch.
Perhaps it was not the kindest introduction, to kidnap a man and threaten to interrogate him, but she still wasn’t sure if he could be trusted, or if he was involved with all of it.
The paper in her pocket crumpled a bit as she moved into the house.
“Hey all!” she called out, trying to use an inside voice if only to anticipate ever-present correction.
She heard the clank of plates and silverware. A long sigh. Then a cheerful voice overriding the sigh. “Cora! We’re in the kitchen—come in, come in!”
Cora couldn’t help but smile a bit at her mother’s voice. All warmth, no teeth. Some women could simply communicate a mother’s hug by the tone they used.
Cora moved into the house, turned into the kitchen, and paused awkwardly in the door, glancing at her two parents.
They both looked as if they’d been clipped out of Farmer’s Weekly. Her father wore overalls and a neat, flannel shirt beneath. He had a dusty baseball cap on, bill pointing at the ceiling advertising some political candidate Cora had never heard of.
Her mother was busy with a tray of biscuits, moving them from the stove to the table, setting the tray on the surface, and then smiling over a column of steam rising from her prized creations.
Cora’s mother’s jam and biscuits had more than one award at the autumn fest. Three of the purple ribbons were displayed proudly on the fridge. Mr. Shields’s wife often took them down, embarrassed, but her husband—proud of his wife’s achievement—always put them back up.
It made Cora sad sometimes how much her parents loved each other. Her father was kind, playful, often smiling...
…Towards his wife.
Never towards Cora.
In a way, she knew it was probably her fault. And in another way, she resented him deeply for making her think such a thing.
“Mom,” she said politely. “Dad,” she said, her tone completely neutral. At least, she hoped it was.
The scent of the biscuits wafted over from the steaming tray. And Cora moved closer to the kitchen table, laying one hand on the back of an empty wooden seat on the opposite side of where her father sat.
Something was off. The two of them were both shooting hesitant glances at each other. Her father kept clearing his throat, glancing at a newspaper on the table, then back again.
Cora sighed, remaining standing. “What is it?” she asked, her tone more sober than it had been initially.
Her mother just gave a little wave as if to brush aside any questions. “Would you like jam, Dear?”
“What’s wrong? Did someone die?” Cora asked. “You’re acting like that time Aunt Louise died.”
Her father frowned and sat up a bit straighter. He glanced at his wife. “Martha,” he said vaguely, “Let’s just eat. We can talk later.”
His wife shot her husband a quick look. “We talked about this, Nils. Didn’t we?”
Her husband frowned. Cora knew that her mother often phrased disagreements in the form of a question if only to soften the blow. And while Nils Shields had something of a temper where others were concerned—where Cora was concerned—with his wife, he was often a very patient man. He nodded towards his wife and redirected, “Smells great. We got honey?”
“Of course—no, no, stay sitting, Dear. I’ll grab it.”
Cora didn’t glance over, but did listen as a cabinet door opened, then slammed. A second later, a small jar of naturally procured honey landed on the table. Her father gave his wife a quick kiss and snatched a still-steaming biscuit.
Cora was starting to feel like she was trapped in a horror movie. Her parents weren’t being upfront with her, and yet both of them were clearly holding something back. Not a death in the family. Her parents would have mentioned it by now. Something else?
It was also strange to see them both so animated. Bustling around the kitchen, in her mother’s case, like a fox making its den. In her father’s case, not only was he applying copious amounts of honey, but he was also humming as he did it.
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