Baltimore 03 - Did You Miss Me?

sleep.
    In her nightstand drawer he’d found the will in which she’d left the house to him, God bless her. But bundled with Betty’s papers he’d also found his mother’s diary and when he’d read that , everything changed. Well, almost everything changed.
    He still loved Cole and still hated his stepfather. That hadn’t changed.
    But now he understood the pain his mother had endured. Mitch had always thought his stepfather was a player, screwing a different woman every night. What he learned by reading his mother’s diary was the opposite. His stepfather had one woman, all those years, one who was also married. He’d left Mitch’s mother every night for a woman who’d rubbed the affair in his mother’s face. Who’d laughed at her, considered her a joke.
    Mitch now knew that woman’s name.
    He sat down at the old desk and pulled the drawer out, revealing the leather-bound volume. Carefully sat it on the desk and opened it to the page he knew by heart. Read the words penned in his mother’s hand on an autumn night eight years before.
    Tonight I followed him. I did. I put the baby in his car seat and I followed him. To the Motel 6 in Winchester, VA.
    Motel 6? Really? I was so relieved. Just a prostitute, I thought. He’s not in love with someone else. And then her car pulled up. A Bentley. A Bentley in the lot of Motel 6. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been crying.
    Because Daphne Elkhart got out of the car. He took her in his arms. Right there in the parking lot.
    How do I compete with a woman like her? She’s beautiful. She’s rich. I can’t compete. But I can’t just give up without a fight. I’ll give her one more chance. I’ll go see her. I’ll ask her to leave my man alone. I’ll take Cole with me. She’ll see he has a child. That she’s wrecking a home. And if she doesn’t back away, I’ll tell her husband. He’ll fix her. He’ll make her behave. And if Travis won’t, his mother will. I’ll make someone listen if it kills me.
    Mitch closed the diary, put it back in the drawer. The entry was dated two nights before she killed herself. There was one more entry, the following night. His mother had confronted Daphne, begged her to leave her husband alone. And Daphne had laughed at her.
    The ME had placed time of death sometime the day after that last entry.
    Knowing who had destroyed his mother’s life had rocked him soundly, making him hate his stepfather all the more. He and Daphne deserved each other. So he’d started to plan how he could get them both. All at once. If he could use them against each other? Even better.
    Mitch had been setting things up for months. His stepfather’s endgame. Daphne’s endgame. The Millhouses taking the fall so that nobody suspected him. Things had finally started to cook last night. The next days would bring the payoff.
    He walked to the only area of the shelter he’d changed, walling off two small rooms, lining them with extra insulation. They were three feet underground with concrete walls twelve inches thick, but cops had sophisticated equipment these days. He didn’t want to risk that anyone searching above might pick up a heat signature. They were to hold his stepfather and Daphne, once he had them both. But at the moment someone else inhabited one of the rooms.
    Kimberly MacGregor looked up when he unlocked her door, hate in her dark eyes. He’d tied and gagged her, so she couldn’t speak, not with her mouth anyway. Her eyes expressed everything she couldn’t say. She hated his guts. Which he could live with.
    She was sitting on the cot, back against the wall, shivering even though she was wrapped in a blanket.
    ‘Hi, Kimberly. Just wanted to see if you’re still alive.’ He removed the gag, then stepped back. He’d had to stab her thigh to keep her from running to her car the night before, but she’d got in a couple good kicks with the other leg. ‘Let it all out,’ he said.
    ‘Where is my sister?’
    ‘Safe. For now. But close enough that I could get to her before my temper dies down. So don’t make me angry, Kim.’
    She glared, but toned it down. ‘You said you were going to talk to Ford, only talk !’
    ‘You wanted to believe it, because it made it easier for you to justify betraying him.’
    She swallowed hard. ‘Is he alive?’
    ‘Last I checked.’ He studied her carefully. ‘Who was the cop?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ But she looked away briefly as she said it.
    She’s lying . ‘ You saw what I did to