Finding Tessa by Jaime Hendricks (best ereader for comics .TXT) 📗

“Can I come in?” Her eyes are rimmed red, so I know she’s been crying. “Drew is here. He found you. We need to talk.”

My carefully cultivated world spins out of orbit in front of me. Drew is here. He found you. The words, while spoken aloud, don’t register immediately. Yet I nod, surely white as a ghost, and move away from the opening to let her in, and she shuffles past me inside. I stick my head out the door and look left to right to see if she’s been followed. Someone—Drew—could be hiding anywhere at the end of the cul-de-sac. Hell, he could be in the bushes right outside the front door and launch an attack. I need to protect her, and myself.

I close the door slowly, quietly, like I’m keeping the whole meeting a secret.

I wish I made more noise and caused a ruckus, one that would inform the neighbors, because after I turn to her, I only remember pain.

Blackout.

When I wake, it’s darker, but not proper nighttime so I assume I’ve only been out an hour. What happened? My head hurts. My hands are tied. How did—

“Welcome back, Tessa.”

Maribel is sitting in front of me in the kitchen, a gun in her hand.

At the sight of the gun, my anxiety kicks in and the sweat starts to run down my back. A gun. Wait—a gun? Maribel. She’s not on my side. What happened?

“Where’s my dog?” Motherly instinct.

“The dog is fine. Locked in the office. I’m not a monster,” she says, although that’s exactly what she is. “But you’re about to find out what I’m really capable of.”

Fear hits my insides like a lightning strike, and the woman in front of me no longer looks the way she did the last time I saw her, months ago, when she told me she’d help me put Drew away. Now, she’s dressed in monochrome black like a vigilante, pointing the cool steel barrel of the gun toward me.

“I don’t understand.” I struggle with the ropes. They’re loose. “Let me out!”

As I writhe on the ground, she watches with a smile. “Really, Tessa, what are you going to do if you get out of the ropes? I have a fucking gun. You might want to think twice about trying to escape. You aren’t in charge anymore. You never were.”

“What are you talking about?”

She scratched the side of her head with the tip of the gun and I wonder for a hot second what I’ll do if she accidentally blows her brains out right in my kitchen.

“You, Tessa. What’s so fucking special about you?”

“I don’t know what you mean. Why are you doing this? You were helping me!”

“I was never helping you, you pathetic bitch! How thick are you? Drew is mine, and he always will be.”

“You can have him!” I shout. “I’m married to someone else! I don’t want Drew!”

“Oh, maybe not. But Drew wants you. Hasn’t stopped talking about you since the day you left. I had to tell him I was working with you, because I wanted him to know what a whore you really are. Jumped right into bed with this latest one, didn’t you? For sure Drew would know I was better suited for him, but no, he wants his perfect life on paper back. The obeying wifey, who cooks his dinner and cleans his clothes and runs his errands and comes to business functions in designer dresses. Me? I’m his plaything on the side—he didn’t let me slide into your spot the way I should’ve after you left. It should’ve been easy. Help you disappear, and he’d get over you. Didn’t. Quite. Work. That. Way.” She emphasizes her words.

“No,” I say and shake my head. What she’s saying doesn’t land. “You helped me frame him.”

She scoffs. “That’s what I wanted you to think. That’s why you were able to find the one article—so you could think I was on your side. I was hoping you’d tell me where you were so I could take care of this sooner. I’d never put Drew away. We love each other. And you, you idiot. You had previously told me you were going south, but on the phone, you said you were going out to the shore. Everyone knows that means New Jersey. How stupid are you? You didn’t go far enough away. And that’s a problem for me.”

“Oh Maribel, no.” She fell into the same trap I did. “No, he’s going to do the same thing to you.”

She laughs a hearty laugh. “To me? Me? I work at a hedge fund. I have an MBA. I’m not someone to be fucked with. But you? Shit, he told me all about you, you piece of shit. Fucked by foster daddies and shuffling from truck stop to truck stop? He knew what you were. A white trash waitress. A target. Someone who could be fucked with. So, he did.”

“Don’t you see what type of person that makes him?”

She waves the gun, and I wince.

“No, no, no, sweet, stupid Tessa. He acts like that to you, because that’s all you deserve. I deserve better. I command better.”

“I don’t understand. I thought the cops had evidence against him?”

“Jesus, you’re not listening to me. I never told the cops about the affair. I never put my grandmother’s ring in your bedroom or planted a gun in his sock drawer or put the blood in his trunk. Yes, there was one casualty—his job. The firm looked at the original report as a distraction. After the initial brouhaha died down about you being missing, everyone just assumed you left. No biggie, right? Spouses leave all the time.” The gun goes to her lips, as if she’s deep in thought. “But no, Drew became obsessed with finding you. He’s not used to losing. And our little plan stopped working for me. And as fate would have it, when we found you, I