Chapter 50

He couldn’t wait to rip apart that damn cupboard.

Uncle’s car moved like a shadow through the trees, cleared the last visible bend.

He tore for the cupboards. Heard Ryker’s whining, shut up in the bedroom. “Just a minute, dog!”

Sweeping the pots and pans aside hastily into a toppling mess, he shone his light on the narrow crack at the back of the cupboard, saw the thin edge of the envelope, and pulled at it carefully.

And there it was. The tattered envelope in his hand, Hero scrawled across the top of it in Uncle’s disjointed handwriting.

He sat on the faded linoleum floor. His eyes lit on the first line, and he read. The next page, the next. He poured over the documents, and as he did, the horrors of just what had taken place in this cabin, in the name of Hero, made him ill. Physically ill.

He stumbled out the door. Retched the lovely breakfast with Amy onto the hard, packed dirt. His eyes swam with tears.

His dad had done the deed. Dates, times, proving matters.

A long list of his mother’s crimes against the Hero family, all in longhand. The strong assertion that she’d been the downfall of a good man, and even led him into mental illness.

And the assertion that Paul Michael Hero had acted of his own accord when he’d killed Meaghan Hero. Chronicling too of his mental disorder, though not as detailed as that of Meaghan’s.

He looked around at the yard where they’d played ball with his dad, while his mom made them dinner, or a snack. After, they’d all relax on the porch. Argue about sports or games or some such silly nonsense.

All of it had ended brutally, just meters from here.

Back in the cabin, the damning documents shook in his hand. But there was more to read, a second grouping.

And there, still in his uncle’s scrawled handwriting, was a plan he’d hatched against the good people of Jack’s Bay.

Uncle had made a judgment against them, and many sins and slights were noted. He was going to exact a very specific revenge, targeting the personal data of a number of the area’s residents.

Well. The delusions of grandeur never stopped, did they? God. He hoped it wasn’t hereditary. The man was a nutcase.

But worse, he was going to have to go to someone with this information. Tell them that Mortimer Hero, the man who’d finally ingratiated himself with the town, and whom people were starting to like and include, albeit slowly but surely…

…had it in for them.

There was absolutely no way he could predict the success of Uncle’s scheme. In fact, the way he proposed to use the personal data didn’t really even make sense to him. He’d done a stint with the military working with cyber security, and it didn’t ring true.

But if he did expose him…seeing he and Uncle were the last local members of the Hero family—what would that make him look like? The fact that he’d actually hidden the documents for weeks?

His family, all of it, including his dead mother and his father, would look like crap. Just when he’d been unexpectedly repairing its reputation, giving them a decent name, he believed, despite the tragedy.

His cell phone dinged, and he quickly looked at the display. A heart.

Just a damn pink heart, with a motley looking dog after it. From Amy St. James.

How would this reflect on her? Her choices and plans, her dreams? Would she decide that her new boyfriend was too much trouble?

He turned the cell phone off. He didn’t want any more messages. His chest, suddenly, was numb.

He didn’t know what he was going to do. It maybe should have been obvious, but…but…

It wasn’t.

To finally have what he wanted, so clean, so unbelievably satisfying, and then to lose it…

It was too hard.

One thing he did know. This feeling nonsense was way beyond him. He’d tried it ….twice before? His parents, then Lisa. With tons of little forays here and there that hadn’t worked either. And now the third big one had fallen flat around him. Like a parachute that wouldn’t open, just hurtled him to the ground without any help. Just additional weight attached to him to plummet him even quicker to that deadly landing on terra firma.

One thing he knew for sure. He was done.

Time to shut ‘er all down.