done some reading about arson and had seen that the arsonist usually enjoyed watching their work.
“At first I was hoping you were the one in the building,” he continued, “but it was your sister. Then I decided that seemed fitting. Too bad, she lived.”
Carolyn’s fear was dissipating, and she’d mastered her anger, even in the face of his comment about Charlotte. She needed to be calm, to face him as an adversary as she’d learned in all her years of martial arts training. Anger would solve nothing. Control and mastery of her movements were all that mattered.
“You haven’t said why,” she said, keeping her voice bland. “Why target me and my store?”
“Your mama didn’t explain it to you?”
“I know our mothers were in business together, and they dissolved it.” She didn’t bring up that his mother had been sleeping with her father.
“Screwed her over is more like it.” His tone became belligerent. “Stole the business right out from under her.”
“I—I’m sorry to hear that,” Carolyn said instead of objecting to the falsehood.
“Do you know what that did to her?” Dale kept rolling up on the balls of his feet and back down as he spoke, putting himself off balance. She might be able to take advantage of that.
“Tell me,” she invited softly.
“No one would hire her, and she had me and Gloria to raise. We lived on nothing, while you and your sister had everything you wanted. Regular little princesses.”
That wasn’t true, but he seemed to believe it. Had his mother fed him a steady stream of lies about her family?
“She went to your mother once,” Dale continued, “asking for help, and she told her to go away—threatened to call the police on her and have me and my sister taken away. We hid for a couple years after that.”
Faith had no love for Marta after breaking up her marriage, but she’d never denied a person in need, especially children. Carolyn didn’t believe that incident had ever happened.
“And then Gloria died.”
“That’s too bad,” Carolyn said, sympathetically. “She must have been young.”
“Nineteen. She had cancer, and we couldn’t afford the treatments.” He waved the gun at Carolyn again, his finger poised over the trigger. “That’s your family’s fault, all of it. Gloria’s death and Mama’s. They died because your mother took everything away from us.”
His conclusions weren’t rational. Her family had nothing to do with their misfortunes, but his mother must have painted a very different picture. Carolyn imagined her being an embittered woman after losing her friend and business partner. And, of course, Carolyn’s father had left Marta, too, adding to the problem. Marta had felt abandoned and placed the blame on Carolyn’s family. Marta had poisoned her son with lies that he’d internalized, apparently going over the edge after his mother’s death. He’d been planning this for a while, she realized with a shiver.
She heard her phone ring from the office. She’d left it there while talking to the adjuster. The buzzing seemed to spark something in Dale. His eyes gleamed with hatred and fanaticism.
“Now it’s time to even the score.”
16
Zach drove back to Carolyn’s house that afternoon feeling like an asshole. He owed her an apology, a big one. The fact had nagged at him throughout the sleepless night and all day at work. His supervisor had even sent him home an hour early because he wasn’t focusing. Zach hadn’t bothered to argue the point, because the man was right. He didn’t have his head on straight and would be a liability if the security company had a call he needed to respond to.
He could have said something to Carolyn over breakfast that morning, but he hadn’t known what to do. He was upset with her for putting herself in danger. He couldn’t deny that, but suggesting she was anything like his mother was beyond the pale. He only hoped she would forgive him, even if it meant groveling. He’d do it. Being on the outside of her and Austin’s life was no place to be.
He grabbed his phone off the seat next to him when it rang, hoping it was Carolyn. Disappointment hit him when he saw Steve’s name on his screen.
“Hey, Steve,” he answered as he turned onto Carolyn’s street.
“I’ve got some new intel on that name you gave me. Dale Huntly,” Steve reported.
“Yeah, what?” Zach had filled Steve in about any possible lead, including the history with the Huntly family. A little digging around had netted that the son’s name was Dale.
“Dale Huntly works for