Hindsight (27 page)

March 4
th
, 2015

I snapped my eyes open to take in my surroundings. Nothing was familiar and it took me a second to realize where I was. The hospital. I worried what would happen when Tony found out where I was. And that’s when it all came back to me.

The bathroom.

The blood.

Death.

I turned my head to my right and noticed a body sitting in a chair, hands covering their face. It took less than a second before I recognized who it was and let out a deep sigh, earning his attention.

He looked up at me with wide, amber eyes and jumped from his seat. He ran to the door and called for a nurse before coming to my side. His tear-filled eyes sent an ache through me like none I had ever felt before.

I tried to reach up to his face to wipe away his pain, but my arms wouldn’t move. Straps held my arms to the sides of the bed, and the more I pulled on them, the more pain shot through them. I began to squirm frantically in the bed, trying to move and failing.

“We need you to calm down, Mrs. Paulette,” the nurse said from the computer.

I looked to Sean, but before I could say anything, someone else walked into the room. It was a large, dark figure and it caught my attention. I felt panicky, fidgety, and all I could think about was getting out of there. The closer the man came to me, the more nervous and shaken I became.

“If you’ll excuse us, I need to have a word with Charlotte,” he said in a deep, baritone voice to the nurse and to Sean.

I looked to Sean, begging him with my eyes to not leave. He smiled at me and kissed my forehead before nodding to the burly man. He whispered in my ear that everything was going to be okay and then the nurse told him she’d be at the station outside the door if he needed anything. Why would they all leave me with this man? Couldn’t they see how dangerous he was? Did they not care?

He pulled a chair up close to my bedside once the room was clear and the door was closed. Even as he sat next to me, I had to look up to see his face. He had dark facial hair that looked in desperate need of a trim. Bright green eyes pierced through black, long eyelashes. He looked menacing and scary, yet his approach to me was anything but.

Who was this man?

“Hi, Charlotte. I’m sorry to have to visit you here and tell you this while you’re laid up, but I need to fill you in on some things and ask you a few questions.” He waited until I gave a slight nod before he continued. “My name is Rusty Garcia. Does that name sound familiar to you at all?” he asked.

I shook my head, having never heard that name before.

“I was hired to kill you.”

Oh my God. He was the man Tony had talked to about killing me. He was there, in my hospital room. I began to shake and then pulled hard on my restraints. I wanted to scream but couldn’t find my voice. Tears pulled in my eyes and ran down my face, leaving a trail of ice in their wake.

“Please calm down, Mrs. Paulette. I’m not going to hurt you. I am an undercover investigator assigned to the Nepson case. Are you familiar with that name?” he asked and I nodded. “I was there to keep an eye on things, listen to things. Nothing about that case was easy. We barely had a motive, the scene looked too easy, and pieces of the puzzle weren’t matching up. So I was there, acting as an ally to his friends until the trial was over.”

“The trial is over,” I stated in a shaky voice, still trying to calm my nerves.

He nodded. “Yes, so you can imagine the surprise I felt when I got a call two days ago asking me to carry out a hit on someone.”

I shook my head violently, cutting him off. “I don’t understand. Do you kill people?”

The man in front of me, Rusty Garcia, laughed. It was deep and throaty but light. His size was intimidating but his soft demeanor reminded me of a teddy bear. “No, ma’am. I don’t kill people. I work undercover. I wasn’t even going into this group as someone that would do that, but in this line of work, you have to be quick on your feet. In order to gain their trust, I led them to believe I have killed people before for money.”

It was so much to take in, so many things didn’t make sense. Why would an undercover detective that was only there to keep an eye on this Nepson guy be hired to kill me? “What would the Nepson case have anything to do with me?” I asked, not able to understand what he was trying to tell me. “How did you even get involved in this?”

“Erich Nepson ran in a small crowd. A bad group of characters. They keep their noses clean most of the time, from what we know, so we have never been able to go after them for anything. But this case has allowed us to dig deeper into their organization. I was there to find out as much as I could about Erich Nepson and his wife, and also to see what I could get on the others. I had to infiltrate the group, become one of them, in hopes that we would be able to get some information. The problem with that is, the guys aren’t stupid. They don’t let just anyone in. They are loan sharks that mask what they do as legal activity. Erich was an enforcer… meaning when someone didn’t pay off a debt, he’d go out to collect. Without Erich, they needed someone else. That was my in.”

“I still don’t understand. I mean, I understand your part in their group, but I still don’t see how I became involved in this. What do I have to do with loan sharks? I haven’t taken any money from them.”

“Two days ago I got a call, giving me the details of a hit. You.”

My mind went back to the time I had overheard Tony telling someone to kill me and make it look like an accident. I knew better than to think I had been spared that threat.

“What day is it?” I asked, not having a clue how long I had been there.

“March fourth.”

“And you got this call when?”

“Two days ago. March second.”

I thought back to that day. Tony had called me, threatening I would never be free of him unless I was dead. “He was really going to do it,” I said to myself. I wasn’t sure why it had surprised me so much that Tony would actually follow through with it, but it did.

“What do you mean?” Rusty asked.

“A little over a month ago, I had overheard him on the phone, telling someone that he needed me gone and that it had to look like an accident. We were tight with money since he had to take the case pro bono; he upped my life insurance policy and I knew he was trying to have me killed for the money. But nothing had become of it. I kicked him out of the house and recently filed for divorce. Two days ago, he called me and told me I would die before I would ever be rid of him.”

He looked at me with sympathetic eyes. “You almost did.”

I couldn’t help but look down at myself and take it all in. The hospital bed, the restraints, the bandages. Just seeing it, knowing I was alive, caused tears to fall once more. It was all too much to take in.

“I have gone through Tony’s office, both at home and at work. We’ve looked into his computer, his emails and files. You had sent him an email that contained several attachments on February first. Can you tell me about that?” he asked with hopeful eyes.

Fuck hope. Hope never got me anywhere, and I certainly didn’t want to see him looking at me with it. I took in a deep breath, preparing myself to answer any of his questions just to get it over with and get him out of my room.

“Yes. It was the morning I had kicked him out. Several months ago, I started recording my injuries, recording our fights and taking pictures of the aftermath. Some were voice memos and others were videos, even though you couldn’t really see much from them. Anyway, I had kicked him out and then sent him the files in an email, threatening him with it in case he was thinking about coming back.”

“So he was abusive?”

I gave the man a sharp look, indicating that abusive didn’t quite cut it.

“Okay, that’s what we thought when we saw it. What happened after that?”

I rolled my eyes and answered anyway. “He left and stayed away. He called me a lot, begged me to forgive him. But he never came back home. I never had a reason to do anything else with those files. And then he called me two days ago… you know the rest.”

“Is there anything else you can think of?”

“Who called you?” I didn’t need the answer but wanted to hear it out loud.

“Your husband,” he answered quietly, sounding as sad as I felt.

“Where is he now?”

“We have him, and he’s not going anywhere for a very long time.”

I nodded, taking it all in. Was I finally free of him?

“If you think of anything, give me a call. That’s my cell number. Anything, Charlotte—anything at all.” He took a card from his wallet and placing it on the small table next to me.

I nodded, wondering how I would be able to get the card let alone the phone with my hands in restraints but didn’t voice that question. He smiled at me and then began to walk out of the room.

My voice stopped him before he opened the door. “So Tony’s in jail, right?”

He spun around and smiled. “Yes. He won’t be coming after you anymore. But the more you remember and can tell us, the safer you’ll be.” And with that, he was out the door.

The nurse that had been there before walked back in with Sean at her heels. The sight of him had me in tears once more. I felt as though I had done nothing but cry for weeks and I was tired of it. I just wanted it all to go away.

Sean sat by my side again, exactly where he was before the detective came in, while the nurse typed away at the computer. She took my blood pressure and temperature, logging that information as well. After I informed her that I was okay and not in need of pain medication, she left the room, giving Sean a look that told him to call her if he needed to. I wasn’t sure why she did that; why would he need to call her?

“Talk to me, Char,” he pleaded, running a finger over my restrained wrist.

“When will they take these things off me? I can’t move.”

“After the doctor sees you, I think. He should be in here soon. Talk to me.”

I looked up into his desperate eyes, wondering how much I could say to him before he made the decision to run. I didn’t want to say anything but knew I had to. “You told me you couldn’t handle one more thing.”

His hand moved to my cheek, keeping my eyes on his. “Please tell me this had nothing to do with me. Please, Char,” he begged. His dark amber eyes began to water until they were liquid pools, matching my own.

I shook my head, answering his question. “It was everything.”

“We were finally there, Char,” he voiced in a loud, hurt tone. “We were there. I was picking you up and we were going to be together. You filed for divorce. Why? Why would you do this? Why would you try to kill yourself when we were finally able to be together? I don’t understand!”

I began to tug against the restraints again, needing my hands to feel him, to reassure him with my touch, and to hide my own cowardice face. The more I pulled, the worse the pain became. And the more pain I felt, the harder I cried.

“Just talk to me, Char. I’m begging you. Talk to me!” He was crying by that point, tears falling from his face to his shirt as he tried to calm my frantic moves. But nothing helped. Not his pleas, his protests of love, or his gentle touches.

I wanted out of there. I wanted it all to go away.

Out of nowhere, the nurse came running back in. She demanded that I calm down, and when I didn’t, she injected my IV with something. The effects were immediate and I quickly felt my eyelids droop, taking me under.

***

The next time I opened my eyes, there was an unfamiliar man in the corner where I had been expecting to see Sean. But it wasn’t Sean. It was a man in a white coat going through a file.

He must have sensed my movements and looked up at me.

“Ah, I thought I would have to come back. How are you feeling, Charlotte?” he asked in a pleasant and calm voice, pronouncing his words slowly and clearly. When I didn’t respond, he spoke again, moving closer to me with his chair. “My name is Dr. Woodruff and I’m here to evaluate you. I need to have a better idea of the risk you are to yourself. Can we talk for a few minutes?”

I nodded, strangely feeling very much as ease with him.

“Can you tell me why you tried to kill yourself?”

I looked down at the white gauze that covered both wrists as I answered. “All I wanted was to get away from him. I just wanted to be free. But I realized that would never happen.” My voice was monotone, reliving the desperation I had felt just before attempting to take my own life.

“And why did you think it would never happen?”

My eyes moved to my stomach. “I found out I was pregnant. I never wanted a baby with him. I never wanted my child to witness the things he did to me, or to go through it, too.”

“So you tried to end it because you didn’t want the baby?” he asked and I shrugged. “I’ve met Sean. What part did he play in all of this?”

“He was going to take me away. But I knew I could never have him raise Tony’s baby. He would never want that, anyway. I would never be free from Tony. Ever. I did the only thing I could think of,” I said as I finally looked at the man in the white coat sitting in front of me. I had expected judgment in his eyes, but there was no trace of it there.