The shouting outside only intensifies as the voices boom closer and closer to the house.
Kelsea is already at the door, yanking it open to look outside.
"Hey!" She shouts. "Hey, stop!"
Taylor and I rush through the kitchen, looking around Kelsea to see out the back door.
"Missy!" Aries is still screaming my name out at the top of his lungs and grappling with Dallas at the bottom of the stairs. "Missy! You have to talk to me!"
Dallas shoves him backwards hard, Aries flying off of his feet and landing with a thud in the snow.
"Get the fuck out of here!" Dallas screams over him. "You've done enough!"
"I didn't!" Aries scrambles to get up, slamming back into Dallas's shoulder as he tries to get by him to get up the stairs. "Missy, please!"
"I should kick your sorry ass for everything you've done!" Dallas growls, yanking Aries back by the back of his coat.
"What do we do?" Kelsea turns wide eyed to me in the doorway.
"He cannot be here, Missy." Taylor chides from my side, still craning his neck to see around her. "It won't look good for us. He needs to leave."
"You think I don't know that?" I snap at him.
"What do I do?" Kelsea asks again, frantically looking back and forth from me to out the door.
"Please!" Aries shouts again.
If I didn't know the situation and couldn't hear the words being thrown over each other, it would look like they were hugging.
Both men struggle to find purchase in the thick snow, grabbing onto each other's shoulders as they power struggle to get loose from each other.
"Leave, you piece of shit!" Dallas is saying while Aires just continues to beg me to speak to him. He calls to me over and over and my eyes burn with tears.
He sounds so desperate, but of course he would. He's scared because he knows he's caught. He knows he's going down.
Taylor is right, him being here is wrong.
I need to keep my distance from Aries no matter how much it hurts to hear him screaming my name that way.
"Stop it!" Kelsea turns to yell at them again, but neither of them are listening. They're both in a death match for their own mission.
Aries to get to me.
Dallas to make sure he doesn't.
Meanwhile the rest of us stand by in horror watching it unfold.
What must only in reality be seconds, feels like an eternity.
"You have to talk to me!" He's screaming and Dallas throws him to the ground again.
"She doesn't have anything to say to you." Dallas grits through his teeth. "You've done enough to her."
"I didn't-." Dallas kicks him in his side and Aries falls back, grabbing fists full of the snow and dirt below him, groaning in pain.
"Stop!" I scream, rushing forward but Kelsea grabs me before I can make it out of the door, pushing me back into the kitchen.
"Don't." She warns, holding me tightly.
"I've got to call this in." Taylor says, digging through his bag to find his phone.
"No, please," I try to grab at his arm but Kelsea won't let me go. "Don't." I beg him. "He's leaving!"
He stalls and I turn back to the door, struggling to see around Kelsea. "Aries just leave!" I yell at them where they've managed to make it onto the stairs. "I don't want to talk to you! We are gonna call the police if you don't leave!"
What Aries lacks in size compared to Dallas, he makes up for in determination.
Aries turns sharply and Dallas's boots slip against the stairs and he stumbles back just enough for Aries to break into a run up the stairs and in to the kitchen.
Kelsea still holds me from behind but Aries grabs at my shoulders. "You have to listen to me!" He shouts. "I swear, Missy, I didn't do anything! You have to believe me!"
"I can't!" I yell back, tears free flowing down my cheeks. "You killed them, Aries." I fall slack against Kelsea's grasp. "You did this to me."
He reaches for my face but Kelsea slaps his hand away. "You need to go, Aries." Her voice is calm but the tone says everything she's holding back.
Dallas storms into the room and yanks Dallas back by the shoulders, his shoes skidding across the linoleum.
"Stop!" I scream at Dallas.
"You're always defending him!" He shouts back at me, looking like he's trying to figure out how I can be so dumb.
"Missy," Aries still pleads as he shakes free from Dallas. "I had to talk to you. Everything they're saying is lies!"
"I saw the pictures, Aries." I fire back, shaking furiously in Kelsea's arms. "They couldn't make those up."
"That's why I had to talk to you." He protests, folding his hands in front of his face like a prayer as he stares into my eyes. "You wouldn't take my calls or text me back and I had to make sure you knew it's not true! You have to believe I would never do this!"
I blink through the tears. "You haven't called, Aries." I say back in confusion. "I haven't gotten any messages from you. And it wouldn't matter if I did!"
"Missy, I have called." He argues. "I've called a million times and you wouldn't talk to me so I had to do something. If you don't believe me, Miss, no one will."
"Mr. Carter," Taylor straightens his back and stares him down. "You being here is completely inappropriate."
Aries ignores him though. "Missy, please, you know me."
A knife.
It's a blade to the heart, meeting in the middle with the one he'd stabbed into my back the day he decided to come up with this whole twisted scheme.
I thought I did know him.
I still can't fit the man standing in front of me with the killer he is.
"Please just go." I whisper. "I'm in enough trouble."
His face crumples as he looks at me. He has the nerve to look at me as if I'm the one betraying him. Like I'm the one breaking his heart when he's the one who is shredding whatever was left of mine.
"I can leave." He says. "But please at least promise you'll call me back. We have to talk about this, Missy. I didn't kill anyone. I don't know how they have what they have on me, I don't." He catches his breath. "I would never do this to you. Please say you'll answer this time when I call. Please don't ignore me."
His ploys at tugging on my heart strings just makes me more angry.
"I haven't ignored you, Aries." I snap and he flinches back. As if him calling me after everything I've found out about him would just slip my mind.
"I've been calling and calling."
"No!" I shout. "You haven't! Now get out of my house!"
He looks so wounded, but I can't let his pain hurt me anymore.
"Missy, look." He comes forward, tugging his phone out of his pocket but when he does something else falls out into the floor between us.
We both look down at it.
My eyes widen in shock and terror.
"Call the cops!" I shout, jerking free from Kelsea's hold and looking over at Taylor. "Right now!" I shout again.
"Missy, I-." Aries looks up at me, his expression gone slack. "I swear I don't know-I didn't- I don't know..."
His eyes shoot up to look at Taylor as he speaks hurriedly into his cell phone, backing out of the room.
We can hear him prattling off my address and Aries looks back at me, his expression completely unreadable.
He turns sharply, going for the door but Dallas blocks his path.
"You're not leaving now." Dallas growls. "You had your chance for that."
Aries turns back to me, opening his mouth like he's going to say something but then he suddenly darts back around.
"Oh my god!" I scream as he punches Dallas right in the nose, making him stumble to the side.
Aries shoves by him and takes off running down the back steps.
I run to the door, grabbing onto Dallas, turning his bloody face to look at me and then looking out the door.
Aries stops in the back yard for only a second. "I'm sorry." He says, tears running down his face before he turns and runs.
"Dallas, oh my god." I grab at him but he pushes me back gently, using the back of his sleeve to wipe at the blood rushing out of his nose and sprinkling across the floor. "Are you ok?" I didn't even realize I was still crying until I hear the desperate shaking in my voice.
"Missy?" Kelsea whispers from behind us, still standing where I'd left her.
Still holding onto Dallas's arm I look over my shoulder at her, then down to the ground where she is staring.
Right there on my kitchen floor is a gold locket. The chain broken like it was ripped off of the neck that used to wear it, the claps still in tact.
I stare at the locket, seeing Amie in my head as she stood beside me in that diner toying with it absently as she spoke to me.
Amie Farmer's necklace is on my floor, and it came from Aries.
A guttural cry springs from my lips as I fall back into Dallas. His arms catch me and pull me up to him, tucking me under one arm to hold me close to his chest.
All of the doubts I still subconsciously held onto rush out of my body like a flood, leaving me cold and ravaged by pain.
I still didn't want to believe it. I was still trying to make sense of it. I still wanted to believe I knew him, but I was wrong.
So, so, so wrong.
I never really knew Aries.
That realization hit the moment the necklace clattered to the floor.
"Police!" A voice booms from the other room and through a blur of tears I watch helplessly as officers pour into the kitchen, guns drawn.
"Where is he?" The first one asks.
Kelsea backs into the wall, letting the officers rush around her as Taylor points them to the back door.
"He took off!" Taylor tells them, looking frazzled.
Dallas tugs me back a little as they move for the back door.
Detective Mayfield rushes into the kitchen, following the lead of the other officers who are running out the back door now.
"Which way did he go?" He asks me. "Which way?"
I point with a shaky hand towards the left of the yard and Mayfield runs out with the others, radioing for backup and sending patrols on the lookout for Aries.
So much is going on at one time, the house swarming with more and more police officers as the minutes tick by.
"Dallas?" I turn my head at the sound of Officer Gillians's voice.
I feel Dallas's body go tense around me. "Dal, I'm so sorry." I whisper but he lets me go gently, patting my arm.
"It's ok." He whispers to me, then turns to face the officer who was once his best friend. "It's been a while, Frank." He says to him.
Gillians's mouth is agape as he just keeps staring at Dallas. A long moment goes by before he stiffly straightens, schooling his expression back into one of controlled authority.
"Officer Gillians now." He says. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
Dallas shrugs. "Couldn't really stay away when you're trying to pin murders on my sister." He doesn't raise his voice, but Dallas doesn't have to. Just like our father, he has a tone that you know not to mess with when he's angry.
"The necklace," I say, still crying. "Aries had that." I point down at the floor.
Gillians takes a few steps forward and peers down at it before stepping around it and then Dallas and me as he walks out onto the back porch.
A second later he's back with Detective Mayfield in tow.
"Carter had that." He points down at it and Detective Mayfield squats in the floor beside the locket, scrutinizing it.
"Tell me exactly what happened." He says, staring directly at me.
A few minutes later, other officers are surrounding the necklace, one taking pictures of it before another picks it up with gloved hands and drops it into a clear evidence bag and passing it off to yet another officer.
Detective Mayfield and Officer Gillians walk us into the living room where Kelsea, Dallas, and I take a seat on the couch while Taylor stands off to the side of it.
The two of them stand in front of us, staring each of us down and we recount the events that took place over again for what feels like the millionth time.
It's not like it's hard.
This day will forever be a stain on my memory.
Aries's piercing blue eyes stare back at me in my mind and I wonder what it was like for each of those girls. For those eyes to be the last thing they saw before he ended their lives.
"Where the hell have you been all of this time?" Gillians asks when they are done with the formal interrogations.
"Does it matter?" Dallas replies cooly.
Gillians frowns deeply. "A little." He fires back.
"It's not illegal to disappear." Dallas says, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "People have that right, you know?"
"Dal." I chide, not wanting him to get into any trouble.
"No, really." Dallas sits up, eyeing both Officer Gillians and Detective Mayfield. "I think I had the right idea getting the hell away from this place. Look at the way your town does things." He scoffs. "You assholes were ready to lock up my sister," he pauses on Gillians. "Fucking Missy of all people. Meanwhile, that asshole was out there killing people and messing with her."
Detective Mayfield pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and sighs. "Your sister is the one who got herself entangled with that man." He points out. "We were just doing our jobs."
"I know." I interject. "I know how it looked, it's ok."
"The fuck it is!" Dallas snaps. "You almost got charged for this shit, Missy."
"They were doing their jobs." I snap back at my brother and Kelsea places a calming hand on my knee. I take a deep breath and look up at them. "What happens now?" I ask them. "Have they found him yet?"
Detective Mayfield shakes his head. "No." He tells me. "He's likely going to make a run for it."
"We have patrols set up and everyone on the lookout." Gillians says.
Dallas lets out a huff beside me. "Like those patrols you had on the field?" He scoffs.
Gillians narrows his eyes angrily at him, but Detective Mayfield speaks before yet another fight can ensue today.
"We are set up everywhere," he tells us. "He won't be able to get out of this town if he tries."
I nod slowly. "Ok." I whisper and Kelsea puts her arm around my shoulders.
"They'll find him." She tells me quietly, nervously eyeing the officers still coming and going from the house around us.
"Look, Ms. Jacobs." Detective Mayfield says to me, tucking a hand into his pocket. "We are going to need your help."
"Mine?" My mouth drops open.
"You know him." He says. "His next moves are going to be unpredictable, he knows he's in trouble."
The thought of him out there...it makes me sick. I should have made him stay. I should have done everything differently. Maybe then he wouldn't still be out there, still able to hurt more girls.
"Missy," Detective Mayfield comes closer to sit on the coffee table in front of me. "It's entirely possible that he's going to try to make contact with you again. We are going to need you to work with us to catch him."
"Now you want her help after everything you've put her through?"
We both ignore Dallas.
"He's dangerous." Detective Mayfield says to me. "He's a killer who knows he's been caught."
And there is nothing more dangerous than a killer with nothing else left to lose.