Safe at Last (Slow Burn #3) (28 page)

“Get up, you son of a bitch,” Zack snarled.

With a defeated sigh, Stuart slowly crawled to his feet and staggered when he stood upright. Blood smeared his nose and mouth and he made no further effort to stanch it. He merely looked at Zack like a condemned man awaiting his execution.

Then he closed his eyes and when he reopened them, a sheen of moisture glistened.

“I knew this day would come,” Stuart said in a weary voice.

Shame was evident in every feature. He looked like he very much wanted to throw up. Well, that made two of them. Zack’s rage was so great that he couldn’t even form the words he wanted to hurl at his former friend.

“Why,” he finally managed to grind out between tightly clenched teeth. “For God’s sake,
why
?”

“You have no idea how sorry I am,” Stuart whispered. “It’s eaten me alive for years. Still eats at me. At times I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. All I can see are her tears. All I can hear are her sobs. And her asking why over and over. Jesus, I’m going to be sick.”

Zack hit him again and stood over Stuart’s fallen body, fists clenched as each and every one of Stuart’s words flayed him open inch by excruciating inch.

“You sick son of a bitch,” Zack hissed. “Did you enjoy brutalizing a sixteen-year-old girl? Did you get off on seeing—and hearing her cry? How many times did she beg you to stop and where was your fucking conscience
then
?”

“Kill me. I deserve it,” Stuart said dully. “I don’t have anything to live for anyway. My wife left me. She took the kids. I told her what I did. God, I had to. It was eating me alive. I couldn’t continue living a lie. She’ll never forgive me. And I don’t expect you to either.”

“And it never occurred to you to tell
me
what you’d done?” Zack roared. “You knew she was my life. My goddamn world! And you damn well know the hell I went through when she disappeared. That I looked for her for years. Never stopped looking for her! And you’re fucking worried about your wife and me forgiving you when the person you should be begging forgiveness from is the woman whose life you completely ruined!”

Stuart dragged himself up and sagged onto the couch, burying his bloody face in his hands. His shoulders shook with sobs and Zack hadn’t thought his disgust could have gotten any worse. Was he supposed to pity this pathetic piece of scum because he’d lost his wife and kids? What about the family he and Gracie had lost? The children Gracie had never held in her arms. The wife and children Zack would have even now if not for this sick fuck’s interference.

“You make me sick,” Zack said in a barely controlled voice.

He was perilously close to losing his shit and completely coming unglued. So many lives ruined. And why?

He got into Stuart’s face and grabbed his shirt, fisting the material and hauling him up until they were nose-to-nose.

“You’re going to tell me every goddamn detail. You’re going to tell me why the fuck the three of you thought the entire time you were raping Gracie that I had put you up to it and how the hell you knew Gracie could read minds. Because this was a complete setup. It’s too pat. Too coincidental. You set it up so Gracie would
think
I set you loose on her to get rid of her and make her think I was done with her. Why would you do something like that? Did you hate me that much? Did you resent that I had a great girl and a future in the pros? What the hell is
wrong
with you?”

Stuart’s face was haggard, and already swollen, bruises rapidly forming from the punches Zack had landed.

“It’s fucked-up, man. You have
no
idea how fucked-up.”

Zack shoved him back, releasing his hold on Stuart’s shirt. Stuart landed with a thud against the back of the couch, his head snapping back and then forward.

“Then how about you clue me in,” Zack growled.

“It was your old man,” Stuart muttered. “Jesus Christ. He was fucking obsessed with getting rid of Gracie.”

Zack went stock-still, his knees locking painfully as shock splintered up his spine. He shook his head, certain he hadn’t heard correctly. Then he advanced on Stuart, ready to beat the ever loving fuck out of him for coming up with such a lame-ass, trumped-up excuse to divert responsibility from himself.

Stuart put up his hands to ward Zack off and began talking fast.

“Listen, Zack. Just give me a minute to explain, okay? I have no reason to lie to you, for fuck’s sake. I’m guilty. Guilty as hell. But I’m not lying to you about your old man. If you’d just give me a chance to explain, I’ll tell you the whole twisted story.”

“So help me God, if you’re fucking with me, I’ll twist your balls off and shove them down your throat,” Zack said in a dangerous low tone.

Stuart was visibly agitated. Pale, jittering like a junky in withdrawal and sweating profusely. He nervously licked his lips and his eyes were wild and unfocused.

“He was pissed that you were so obsessed with trailer park trash—his words not mine. He saw you as his ticket to easy street. He had it all planned out. He was going to convince you to let him act as your agent and manager and when you went to the pros he was going to retire as chief of police and live it up. Off your money and fame. When Gracie came along, your focus shifted entirely, and you were only concerned with her, your future with her, and suddenly your father found himself on the outside looking in.”

So far Zack could see exactly what Stuart was saying. It certainly matched up with his father’s actions and words. But to suggest he had something to do with Gracie’s rape? No matter his faults, he was still an officer of the law. Being an asshole wasn’t against the law, and his father was a straight arrow when it came to the law.

“He became increasingly agitated and honest to God he went off the rails. He started asking me, Bryan and Kevin all kinds of questions. Wanted to know if you and Gracie ever fought. If Gracie was manipulating you. If you ever talked about breaking up with her. And when we told him you were absolutely serious about her, he lost it.

“And then, Jesus, he told us some crazy shit. About how Gracie could read minds but it was some big fucking secret and that you and she didn’t know he knew. He overheard you talking to Gracie on the phone or some shit like that. And he came up with this insane plan.”

The blood leached from Zack’s face and a knot formed in his stomach that felt like a giant bolder. No way. It was too . . . crazy. So far-fetched no one would ever believe this crap.

“He told us that she’d cut off your balls and was leading you around by the dick. That you hadn’t even made it with her because she was holding out for marriage. Said she was manipulating you and trapping you into marriage. Hell, he was so convincing with examples—examples that we had all witnessed—and we began to wonder if he was right. And then . . .”

Stuart closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands.

“Then
what
?” Zack said harshly, though he knew, goddamn it. He knew and he was sick to his soul. But he had to hear it. Had to hear it said aloud. Had to
hear
what a complete twisted bastard his father was.

“Then he set us up and he blackmailed us,” Stuart said bleakly.

“How?” Zack snapped.

He was reeling, his mind spinning out of control. His life had been a farce. The only real thing in his life had been Gracie. And he’d lost her. He’d lost her in the most horrifying, repulsive and heartbreaking manner possible. He was utterly gutted and his grief was overwhelming. He would never recover from this. How could he?

“He pulled us over for a bullshit traffic stop and planted enough drugs to charge us with possession with intent to distribute, a felony. Locked us up and told us he’d throw the book at us. Unless we did him a ‘favor.’ He then explained exactly what he wanted us to do, and Zack, he was off his rocker. He was unhinged and incoherent. Kept mumbling about how that bitch was going to ruin things for
him
. He snapped, I mean
completely
lost his shit and all sense of reality. Told us he would ruin our lives like she ruined his.

“God, the stuff he told us. At first we thought he was having paranoid delusions. But he was absolutely serious when he said that Gracie could read people’s minds. Well, imagine how nervous that made us. I mean what the fuck? Then he said he had a plan to make it look as though you were behind the whole thing and that it was up to us to be convincing enough that she believed it.”

“And you just went along with it,” Zack said bitterly. “You just violently raped a young girl and why? Did it never occur to you to come to me and tell me what the hell my father was planning? You didn’t think I’d put a stop to it?”

“We were facing felony charges and serious jail time,” Stuart said wearily. “We were young and scared. Had our whole lives ahead of us.”

“And it didn’t scare you that if Gracie had pressed charges you would have gone to jail for aggravated rape of a minor?” Zack asked incredulously.

Stuart sent him an uneasy glance. “Your father told us not to worry about that. He said he’d provide us all an alibi. He’d say we were all out at his place the night in question and that no one would believe some girl from the trailer park over the chief of police. He was smug about it. Patted himself on the back for having such a foolproof plan.”

“And so you just did it,” Zack said, his rage mounting with every breath. “The three of you raped her. And obviously you staged your fucking thoughts so that when she saw into your twisted, fucked-up minds, she saw
me
. You made her think that I put you up to a completely reprehensible and unforgivable act of violence.”

“I couldn’t do it,” Stuart said painfully. “I mean I tried. But I couldn’t . . . Jesus, it disgusted me. I couldn’t finish.”

Zack’s stomach lurched and he closed his eyes, taking deep breaths in an attempt to steady his raw, exposed nerves.

“You think that makes it better?” Zack asked hoarsely. “Am I supposed to feel better that you couldn’t keep it up long enough to get off raping the girl I loved? I hope you rot in hell, Stuart. That’s where you belong.”

Stuart’s expression was bleak. “I’m already there.”

Zack couldn’t form a coherent thought. His hands shook, his knees kept buckling and it took all his concentration and focus to remain upright. He was floored by the revelation that his father had orchestrated the entire thing. God, the thought and planning that had gone into it was mind-boggling. And how the fuck had he known about Gracie’s ability to read minds?

He had to have overheard Zack on the phone with her at one point, but Zack had always been so careful to guard Gracie’s secret and it made him sick that he’d evidently failed. He’d given his father the means to strike out at her in a believable way that would have destroyed her.
Had
destroyed her. No wonder she believed the worst. No wonder she was so convinced of Zack’s guilt. The evidence was overwhelmingly not in his favor.

He couldn’t even stand to look at the pathetic excuse of a man he used to call his friend any longer. It was repulsive. The entire sordid mess was repugnant.

“I hope you go to sleep at night with the sound of Gracie’s tears in your head,” Zack rasped. “I hope you go to bed seeing the disgust on your wife’s face and know that you’ll never get her or your children back. And I hope when you die that hell will be waiting for you with open arms.”

TWENTY-SIX

ZACK
stared out over the sprawling expanse of Kentucky Lake, hands shoved into his pockets, his thoughts in utter turmoil. The landscape had changed dramatically since he and Gracie used to come here so many years ago. And their tree had been cut down, only a rotting stump remaining. A place they’d spent many a night gazing at the stars and dreaming of their future. A future that had never happened.

In many ways the irrevocably ravaged landscape was symbolic of his broken dreams.

He pulled the small recording device from his pocket that had every damning piece of evidence Stuart had spilled. And it was a good damn thing he’d had the foresight to record the conversation, because who the hell would ever believe the outlandish, unthinkable events Stuart had confessed to? Hell, he wouldn’t believe someone with that kind of story. It was inconceivable that someone could be that diabolical. And that his own father, despite their many differences, had gone to such lengths to ruin his son’s future? For his own perceived selfish gain?

It defied all reason. His father was a psychopath in every clinical sense of the word.

In the distance, headlights shone and the faint sound of an engine registered, then shut off, followed by the headlights. Zack tensed, anger throbbing through his veins as he braced for the impending confrontation with his father.

He refused to go back to the house he was raised in. He’d give no physical evidence that he’d ever been there. Instead he’d called his father and told him to meet him here. He hadn’t responded to the questions, his father asking when he’d come back into town or why. He’d simply said he had something important to talk to him about and hung up, leaving him to make what he wanted of Zack’s cryptic statement. He hadn’t even known if his father
would
come.

Curiosity must have gotten the better of him. And as the old saying went, curiosity killed the cat.

A few moments later, his father shuffled up, a shadow in the darkness that blanketed the area above the lake.

“Zack?” he called.

“Here,” Zack said grimly.

The beam of a flashlight bounced erratically over the ground and then his father came into view. His appearance was shocking. He looked every bit his age, if not older. He had a beer belly that protruded well over his cinched belt, and he had the look of a longtime alcoholic. His hair had thinned considerably, a bald spot on top, and what was left was completely white.

The years hadn’t been good to him, a fact Zack took savage satisfaction in.

Harsh lines cut grooves in his father’s face and he had the haggard appearance of someone who didn’t sleep at night. Maybe his demons—and guilt—tormented his dreams. Zack could only hope that he endured half the hell that Gracie had suffered, though he doubted his father was capable of guilt or remorse.