Pippa Baird had always had so much love and generosity in her heart, even during the final stages of her disease when she’d been in such terrible pain. Charlotte knew her mother had fought to stay alive that last year only for Charlotte and her father. Pippa had been the center of their small family, the glue that held them all together.
But her father, he’d been so brave too. Three days before her mother passed away, Charlotte had accidentally witnessed a moment of heartbreaking tenderness between her parents. Her father had been holding her fragile mother in his arms, tears wet on his face. Then he’d kissed her on the forehead and said, “It’s okay, Pip. You can go. We’ll be all right.”
Her mother had wrapped her arms around his neck, whispered, “I don’t want to go.”
Unable to bear any more, Charlotte had left them and walked outside to sit on the old tire swing in the garden, crying where it wouldn’t hurt either one of them. Now though, she smiled through the ache of old grief—because she knew her parents would’ve loved Gabriel. Her dad would’ve been in raptures at having another rugby fan in the family, never mind the fact that it was the Bishop, and her mom would’ve loved him for how he treated Charlotte.
Triiiiiing!
Almost spilling the coffee she’d been about to pour, Charlotte returned the carafe to the stand and dug out her cell phone. The number was unfamiliar but local. “Hello,” she said, having trained herself never to answer a personal call with her name.
“Charlotte?”
Her knees trembled. Stumbling to a seat at the break room table, she tried to suck in air. “Detective Lee.” She’d never forget that voice. Detective Mei Lee’s was the first one she’d heard after the hours of terror, the other woman’s hands gentle and kind as she released Charlotte from her bonds while telling her she was safe and that Richard was in custody.
A patrol officer then, Mei Lee was now an experienced homicide detective who’d made sure Charlotte was kept updated on Richard’s parole hearings. “Is it time for another hearing?” she asked, having testified at two so far.
“No.” A pause that made the hairs rise on the back of Charlotte’s neck. “Charlotte, I’m sorry to tell you this, but Richard is being released next Monday. I’d have given you more of a warning, but there was a screwup and I only just got the report.”
Her heart was ice. “How can they let him go? He’s got time left to serve.”
“According to sentencing guidelines, he’s served the maximum time possible under his sentence.” Detective Lee’s voice was clipped as she added, “You know what I think of the judge who sentenced him.”
That judge had given a lot of weight to Richard’s otherwise clean record, and “bright future.” One mistake, the judge had said, terrible as it was, shouldn’t condemn this young man for life. Other mitigating factors are his early guilty plea and his unhidden remorse.
Both of the latter, Charlotte had thought at the time, had been carefully calculated moves to gain the court’s sympathy. It had worked, Richard sentenced at the lowest end of the scale for the level and brutality of his offense.
Charlotte’s hand shook, her pulse a sickening rattle. “Do you think I’m safe?” Richard had never sent Charlotte any threatening messages or letters, but she couldn’t forget the way he’d looked at her the day he’d been led away by the bailiff. He’d turned, pinned her with the frozen blue of his eyes, and smiled.
That smile had haunted her nightmares for years. It said he was going to come back, and when he did, he’d finish what he’d started. But that had been five years ago. Maybe he’d forgotten her.
“No, you’re not safe.” Detective Lee’s words punched all the air out of her. “A man with Richard Wilson’s tendencies doesn’t turn over a new leaf. He’s still a good-looking psychopath used to manipulating people, and you beat him. He won’t have forgotten that.”
No, Charlotte agreed silently, he wouldn’t have. As with the warning he’d received from the police, he’d have spent his time in jail stewing and obsessing and planning exactly how he’d make her pay for daring to put him, the golden boy, in prison. “Do you have any advice?” she asked, telling herself she was stronger now, could deal with this.
But terror, it had a clawed grip on her throat.
“If you’re living alone, stop,” the detective said. “You should also get a monitored alarm system if you haven’t already. I’ll have a patrol car do more regular drive-bys in your neighborhood as a deterrent, but you know he’s intelligent and cunning. I’m guessing he won’t target you at home, but somewhere else where you feel safe.”
Charlotte nodded, forgetting the other woman couldn’t see her, her mind beginning to numb over despite her admonitions to the contrary.
“I’ll keep an eye on him as far as possible,” Mei Lee said, “but he’ll be a free man once he’s out, and his lawyer’s made it clear that any extra police attention will be taken as harassment. If I’m not careful, he could stop me from going within a hundred feet of him.”
“Charlotte?”
Looking up at Gabriel’s voice, Charlotte tried to say something, but her voice stuck in her throat as everything hit her in an avalanche. Richard was going free and there was a very high chance he would come after her. This time he wouldn’t leave her alive to testify.