Page 17 of Honest Neglect

“If you’re sure,” I muttered, and I took my seat again and watched with concern as she headed outside. I had to relax. I was sure she was going to be okay with Grace, and it would do her a world of good to see Silver again.

I wrapped my hands around the mug of tea, trying to focus on the heat emanating from the mug. There was a question on my mind, a question I couldn’t stop thinking about, though I was sure it was doing me no good to ponder it.

What if Mark had been planning to kill me out there in the woods?

If they had killed Marcy, he might have been planning to finish me off, too. And I had no reason to think it would have been anyone else, what with the convenient appearance of the body right when they needed to frame somebody. Had they been keeping her on ice all this time, just waiting for a moment they could use and abuse her even further?

I might have been destined for the same fate. He had kept me alive as long as it took to get me out there, but that might just have been because it would be easier to dispose of the evidence somewhere far from Oakville. Or perhaps Mark had been planning to keep me alive for some other reason. Ugh, even the thought of that made me sick.

I wouldn’t say anything about this to my mom. The less she knew about what had actually happened out there, the better. I could tell from a glance she hadn’t been sleeping, and she would be tossing and turning and torturing herself all night long with the possibilities if I shared more than I needed to.

No, I would wait for Warren to be done with Leroy, and then I would tell him everything. I would tell him what Mark had said to me up there, and what I suspected about Marcy. I would have to tell the others, the other women who had been hurt by Tony, what had happened to her, though the thought of it made me ill. I knew how scared they were going to be, how sure they would become that they’d be next.

If they hadn’t already heard that Warren was the one who’d done it. Surely, they wouldn’t have believed that. But I didn’t even know what I could trust anymore. Tony and Mark had tossed such doubt and confusion into the mix, it was hard to know where the line between truth and fiction lay any longer.

I heard Mom and Grace coming back to the house, and Mom seemed markedly perkier now she’d had a chance to see Silver.

“She’s looking so much better,” Grace told me.

“She’s lost so much weight,” Mom remarked, shaking her head. “But other than that...”

“She’s in remarkably good form, given what she’s been through,” Grace finished up for her. “In my professional opinion, that is. Are the guys still talking?”

“For now,” I replied, shooting another look toward the door and drumming my fingertips on the mug nervously. How long was Warren going to make me wait before he told me what was actually going on? I needed to know. I needed to hear about everything that had happened and who was on our side.

Because, soon enough, we were going to need to rally the troops. And to take down the McCarthys, we would need something close to an army if we were going to stand a chance.

Chapter Ten

Warren

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EVEN THOUGH I HAD ONLY met Leroy once before this, the look on his face the moment he closed the door behind me told me everything I needed to know. He was worried about what was happening here and, with the McCarthys ready to make their move at any moment, I couldn’t blame him.

“Thank you for taking care of Lily,” I told him as soon as the door was shut. “I don’t know what might have happened to her if you weren’t there...I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you and your wife.”

“We look out for people who need it,” he replied curtly. I could feel the tension coming off him in waves and felt beyond guilty knowing I had been the one to cause it. If I had taken my eyes off Lily, she would never have made it all the way out here, and knowing how much danger she had been in sent a shiver down my spine.

“I’ll be honest with you, Warren,” he remarked. “I’m not too keen on having her here any longer than she needs to be. We’ve had some encounters with the McCarthys over the years, and I don’t doubt that they’ll do whatever they can to get us to hand her over. I know what they’re capable of.”

“You’ve dealt with them, too?” I replied, raising my eyebrows in surprise. He grimaced and nodded.

“Unfortunately,” he muttered. “He was strutting around these parts a few years ago, trying to buy up land from the farmers in the area, and from Grace and me—heaven only knows what he intended to do with it when he got his hands on it, but I managed to scare him off.”

“Oh, yeah?” I replied, the flicker of a smile passing over my face. The McCarthy men might have liked to think they were tough, but I knew all too well the reputation Leroy had, and I doubted they would have been able to handle him.

“I had words with Mark, the father, and he seemed to back off,” he replied. I wished I could have been there to see it. Leroy had served in Vietnam, and when he got it in his mind to do something, nothing would stop him.

“I don’t appreciate men in suits coming to this part of the county and waving checks in our faces,” he added, his voice dropping, as though all the anger was flooding back to him right then and there. “There are plenty of people who’ve made their lives out here, in the mountains—they deserve to be able to live them out in peace. Grace more than anyone.”

The way he spoke about his wife, his feelings for her were obvious. In the short time I’d been aware of him, I didn’t know he had this kind of tenderness in him, but maybe that was the very reason he had been able to help Lily when she had needed it most. I was so relieved there was someone around who was willing to help us, when it felt as though the whole world had turned against us back in Oakville.

“So what are you dealing with?” Leroy pressed me. “I spoke to Lily a little about it, but she had a hard time explaining it. What have the McCarthys done to you?”

I took a deep breath. Where to even start? Tony had been tormenting us for so long, and his campaign against Lily had gone on for so long before that, when he had driven her out of her hometown and sent her on the run. I figured the best approach was to start at the beginning, and I took a deep breath and launched into it.

I filled him in on everything, from Lily dating Tony to everything else that had come as a result of it—up to now, with the kidnapping and the attempt to get me thrown in prison for a crime I never could have committed. Just because I had managed to get out now didn’t mean it was over, even if this place was a welcome respite.