She wonders if the police will find them and how long she has before the rock shifts under the weight and she plunges to her death. Before she can think about any way she might make it out of this alive, the seat belt squeaks. She lifts her eyes up to see that there’s a tear in the belt where the metal clasps meet—damaged from the crash. The material sounds one more warning groan, and then it gives out and Sasha falls from the upside-down seat and crashes onto the roof of the car, which is now underneath her.
She doesn’t dare cry or scream bloody murder the way she wants. She holds perfectly still, shocked that the jolt didn’t tip the vehicle over the edge. She sees that in the back of the old-model cab, the center window slides over to open, no power required. She has to try. She has no idea what her fate will be if she waits much longer, hoping and praying the truck doesn’t fall.
She maneuvers herself into a position to push the backwindow open. She grunts, using both hands. It’s stuck like it’s never been opened before, but she is filled with fury and adrenaline and so she keeps pushing until it slips open with a hard smack. She begins to cry tears of gratitude and relief, but tries to stay calm so she can carefully push her body through the small square, shaking and praying for one more second, just one more second until she can find her feet on the rock beneath her. Then with one more blind thrust, she’s through the open window and sobbing at the feel of the rain pounding on her back as she crawls, trembling, out of the truck and onto solid ground. She drops to her knees and tries to calm her racing heart so she can collect herself enough to figure out what to do next. She looks up the cliffside, sharp and steep, and there’s no way she could climb it. Then she looks at the steep drop below, and she sees him.
Tom is there, bloody from his hand wound, but also an injury to his head. The blood runs in streaky fingers down his face and he looks even more terrifying than before. He’s caught. His jacket is snagged on a flag of metal. There’s a safety rail here just like the one they crashed through above, protecting hikers from the edge. Tom must have been thrown from the truck and hit the rail, breaking it—it looks like he’s caught on a jagged piece. He’s hanging there, only the torn arm of his jacket and the one hand he’s gripping on with keeping him up. He can’t bear weight on his wounded hand, so he’s shaking with the effort. He calls to her.
“Help me,” he barks in a hoarse voice. She can see the outline of him only because one headlight from the car is still shining, so she feels her way over.
“Pull me up,” he hisses, and she can see his grip slipping, his face red and bloody. She crawls over to him carefully because she has to help him. She can’t let the man die, no matter how despicable he is. She’s not that person.
“I can’t,” she cries, because she knows there’s no way she can hold his weight, but he’s helping by pushing up with one hand and getting a foothold on the jagged rocks below him. The collar of his jacket rips, and he slips down a little farther, feeling for her hand, begging her to help him.
She gives him her hand, and he grips it so tightly it steals her breath. She thinks about Jack and Andi, but mostly she thinks about what this will do to her children, whom she’s gone to such great lengths to provide a normal life for—getting Drew away from the dysfunction of Raff back when he was descending into addiction, even though it killed her. This will forever write on the slate of who her children are. It will change them and shape the people they become when they inevitably find out who Tom is, and then she thinks about Raff. How Tom has spent time scouting out his property, setting him up, piece by piece, taking advantage of a vulnerable man after everything they already put him through—Tom and his family took Raffy’s life, stripped him of his dignity and future, and then when he became a shell of a man who could no longer cope after so much trauma, after he crumbled under the weight of it, Tom framed him for his own crimes.
But not Raffy. You don’t fuck with Raffy. Sasha will protect him to the end. And then she can’t tell if it’s the rain battering down on them that makes her hand slip... or maybe she let go?... but in one final tear of Tom’s jacket, she loses her grip and Tom falls. She sees him drop from her sight and then she can only hear his cry echoing off the cliff walls as he’s swallowed by the darkness. She can’t witness him crash onto the rocks below.
She moves away from the edge, panicked, hiccupping sobs taking over her body, and she kneels on the ground, heaving. She tries to catch her breath. She screams for help but only hears her own voice echo in the black air, so she curls up in a tiny ball and, as the rain beats down on her body, she prays to God that help will come.
Chapter Thirty
Andi
Two weeks later
Tia’s funeral is on a Friday afternoon, and they want to keep me in the hospital longer, but I insist on being there, so I’m reluctantly sent home with orders to rest. They’ll continue to monitor me closely for signs of infection, but after two surgeries, I’m ready to get out.
The early-November cold snap has brought with it a dusting of snow as everyone gathers at O’Malley’s pub after the service to raise a drink—a celebration of life, Ray calls it—just like she would want. Inside the warm bar, tables are overflowing with people and pints, winter coats hanging on chairs and a fried-food smell that wafts through the air. There’s a sense of safety nobody has felt in a long time now that the monster is gone—there is a sense of peace amongst the mourning for Tia.
I didn’t tell anybody what I did. They only know Tom killed Tia. In fact, Ray tells everyone I’m a hero—that my bravery in confronting Tom is what led to the domino effect and set the subsequent events in motion that ultimately ended Tom. I know the truth, though. Does keeping this secret make me the worst person to ever live, or is what I’m telling myself—that this is the best way to protect my family—the truth? Why tell anyone when we found the real killer?
Maybe because laid out in front of me is now a life of shame. I’ve learned what I’m capable of and, frankly, it scares the hell out of me. I’ll be living a lie for the rest of my life.
Footage of Tom’s father, Al Blanc, whose real name is actually Murphy Terreli, as it turns out, plays over and over on the news—his dramatic arrest and updates on his charges and trial. The TV is muted behind the bar and nobody is paying attention, but I stare at the clip for the fiftieth time, wondering how this one man with nine alias names and a rap sheet a mile long got away with so much. He’s turned my entire life upside down, but he just looks like a guy. Just a regular guy who always brought chocolate marshmallows for the grandkids and liked a G&T at the neighborhood parties. I stare at the close-up of his face—the cold eyes I never noticed in the handful of times I met him—and I shudder.
I don’t even need to have the sound playing to know what the next news clip says. A photo of Thomas Blanc along with all his aliases shows on the screen. He was found on the rock ledge of the cliff where he fell, thirty feet below. He suffered multiple injuries, but he’s not dead. He’s at Mercy General, in a police-guarded room, awaiting transfer to prison once he’s well enough to await trial. I’m glad he’s not dead. He’ll get to pay for all he’s done instead of taking the easy way out.
Carson comes over with a pint of Guinness in hand and kisses me on the head, then takes Dez to play pinball in the back room. Roxie brings over a couple of coffees and sits next to me. She slides one my way and we sip on them, watching the news silently together for a moment. We’ve tried to shield the kids from news footage, although it’s hard to keep them from all of it. She hadn’t seen this angle on the story yet. Her face lights up and she puts her arm around me and gives me a squeeze.
“Wow,” she says, watching the closed captions and looking at me. “You’re famous.”
I know the story the news is playing by heart: fearless and brave Andi, Regan and Sasha, three women forever linked by tragedy and heroism as they worked together to bring down one of the biggest white-collar organized crime rings in the tri-state area. But I didn’t know it was Tom when I stormed over to Sasha’s. I’m just a liar who was in the wrong place at the wrong time... again. The fallout of a bad situation has dictated my life and maybe that’s not how I want to live anymore.
“You’re a hero, Mom,” Roxie says with pride in her eyes. But the words from the news repeat in my head.There’s a sense of safety nobody has felt in a long time now that the monster is gone.Is the monster really gone, though? Or just sleeping?
Chapter Thirty-One
Regan
Since people learned Jack was alive, it’s been a hell of an undertaking explaining to everyone how that’s possible. I’m exhausted from distilling history and details into bite-size sentences to offer up multiple times a day when it’s truly none of their business. Of course they want to know. It’s shocking. All of it is too much to wrap their heads around, but it’s the same for me, too, so I try to lie low as much as I can.
When I walk into the pub for Tia’s memorial gathering, I pull my woolly hat down over my ears, keeping my eyes downcast while I make a beeline for the booth I see Andi and Roxie sitting in.
“Hey!” I hear a few guys at the bar yell. One starts to sing “for she’s a jolly good fella,” but the man next to him gives him an elbow in the ribs, reminding him of the occasion. I give them a nod of recognition. Someone shoves a drink inmy hand and pats me on the back. Before too much fuss can be made, I slip into the booth and Andi pulls me in for a hug.
I have to hold back tears as we hug each other for a long moment. We’ve talked about it so many times now—I didn’t save her life; the medics did. She didn’t single-handedly bring down evil—it was a strange series of events and all of us played a part we never wanted to be cast in. But our lives are forever entwined now in the baffling, unsettling turns they’ve taken.
It’s really Roxie and Drew who should be taking the credit, but Andi reminds me of all the illegal things they did to get the information they got, and she doesn’t want their lives even more disrupted, so Sasha and I both agreed to leave their names out of it.
