"Aries, stop!" I scream, kicking and thrashing against him as he drags me back into the garage, using his boot to slam the door shut behind us. "Please!"
He pulls me to the back of the garage, turning me to put my back against the wall and caging me in with his hands on either side of my face.
"I can't let you leave." He says, glancing around quickly. "Did you come alone like I asked?"
Fear chokes my voice out of me.
I can't seem to answer even if I wanted to, but I don't even know what the best answer is. I could say no. I could lie and make him think I brought the police with me and then maybe he'd let me go, but I can't do anything. I just stare back at him.
He looks down on me, his eyes boring into my face, making my knees want to buckle beneath me.
How could I have been so wrong about everything? And now here I am with him, the property littered with the proof of his crimes, and I'm alone.
Just me and Aries.
"Tell me." He leans down closer to my face. "Did you tell them where I am?"
Tears pour from my eyes. "I-I-..."
"Missy, tell me! I need to know how much time I have!" He slams one palm against the wall beside my face.
He looks at me again, his eyes moving slowly over my face and down my trembling body.
He slides a hand behind the nape of my neck and pulls me to him.
I push against him as he folds me into his arms and presses my face against his chest.
I can hear his heart hammering out of control beneath my cheek.
"Please." I cry, trying to push out of his hold.
"I'm so sorry." He says at my ear, his voice and those words just echoing over and over in my mind. All of the times he's said it blurring over each other. "I'm not trying to scare you."
He lets me push him back and I back myself into the wall again. "You are." I cry, and he watches the tears fall down my cheeks.
"I just need to explain." He says, taking a step back to give me some more space.
I look behind him, knowing I can't get by. The door into the basement is at my side. I glance ever so slightly towards it. I could try to run into the house, but then what?
He's bigger and stronger than me.
He'd easily catch me.
"How could you do this, Aries? How?" My voice shakes and I hear my own internal pain etched into each word I gasp out.
He furrows his brows and his face pulls down like he's going to cry right here too.
"I didn't do anything, Missy, I swear." His voice is even and controlled.
I blink at him. "I saw it." I whisper. "I saw the stuff in the shed and the truck and that..." I look over his shoulder at where the blue Kia is parked. "That's her car." I start crying again. "I defended you!" I cry out, lurching forward to shove him.
He catches my fists where I try to hit them against his chest and he holds them while I try to fight them away. I want to hurt him. I want to inflict the pain on him that's he's been giving to me. But I can't even do that.
"Look at me." He shakes my hands, clutching them against his chest tightly. "Look at me!" He shouts and I blink through the tears to meet his eyes.
"It wasn't me, Missy." He says gently, holding my gaze. "I'm so sorry, but it wasn't me."
"Aries, the-."
"No." He cuts me off. "You've gotta listen to what I am saying to you, ok? Just listen. Will you do that, please?"
"Aries..." I cry his name and he tries to hug me again but he lets me push him back.
"When I came to your house, Missy," he starts speaking. "I just wanted to talk to you. You weren't taking my calls or replying to my messages and I had to see you."
"I don't want to hear this!" I cover my face with my hands, sliding down the wall to the floor.
He drops to his knees in front of me and puts his hand on my head while I cry into my knees.
"I didn't hurt anyone, Missy." He says. "When they brought me in the last time, when they started showing me all of this evidence on me. The boot prints at the scenes that matched mine perfectly...I knew something was wrong. I wasn't there, Missy. I swear to you. I followed you to that alley but I never went in, and I never came back." He tells me urgently, talking so fast my brain can hardly separate the words flowing from his mouth. "The only way they'd have that stuff on me is if I was getting framed. I knew that then, but then when I got to your house and that fucking necklace was in my pocket, I was even more positive. I didn't have a choice but to run, Missy."
I lift my head to look at him, and he wipes at my tears with his hand. "I thought so too." I whisper. "I thought it was a cop who was trying to pin the blame on you, but now..."
"Listen, ok?" He begs. "I thought so too." He nods at me. "I figured it must be someone on the inside because that's the only way that anyone could create the evidence like this and plant things on me."
"It's not though!" I fire back, leaning away from his hand on my cheek. "I saw a cop with the truck...or what I thought was the truck...fuck. I thought it was Gillians trying to railroad you to cover his own tracks. So I came here to warn you and now...god, I'm so stupid."
"You're not stupid, Missy." He shakes his head. "Not at all, don't say that." He says quickly.
"You're here with all of this stuff, Aries!" I shout. "I'm absolutely stupid because I refused to believe anyone else! I trusted you!"
"I know you did." He reaches out for me again but I lean away. "I know it looks bad, ok? I get that. But that's why I needed you to come here. I needed you to see it and hear me out."
"What is there to hear you out about now?"
"When I left your place I knew I was fucked." He tells me. "I knew that's all they needed to lock me up and there would be no explaining my way out of it, so I tried to think of someplace to hide. Somewhere they wouldn't look and that I could squat for a while to try to figure this shit out. I figured a cop was setting me up, and I didn't trust talking to anyone but you. But after the way you looked at me that day, I didn't even know if I could trust you either."
I balk at him. The audacity to accuse me of being the one not trusting him when he's given me nothing but reasons not to.
"Look, I knew Mrs. Statham was taking ownership of this place so I figured it was a good place to go and try to get my head straight. Try to figure out a plan to either prove I'm innocent or a plan to get out of town." He goes on. "But when I got here..."
"What?" I ask and his features crumble again, his eyes going wet.
"Someone had been staying here, Missy." He tells me slowly, watching my face with scrutiny.
"What do you mean?"
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "The back door was unlocked, so I didn't even have to break in like I'd been planning to do, and when I got inside it was obvious someone was living here." He says and my breath stills. "There was food in the fridge and the pantry and when I went upstairs there was a bedroom with a cot and sleeping bag and blankets and stuff like someone had been sleeping here."
"It was probably the people working for Mrs. Statham, Aries. They had people coming and going I'm sure-."
"No." He shakes his head. "She and I had talked before you came back. She'd told me how she was going to be selling both places and she was telling me how glad she was to be done with the work here because it took weeks to get all of the stuff packed up and moved out of the house and into storage for you two to go through and sell. The house has been empty for at least a week or two before you got back."
"So you knew I was coming?" I ask, watching him.
"She mentioned it over lunch with me one day." He nods. "I didn't know if I'd see you, but I knew you'd be here a few days to settle everything." He shakes his head a little. "That's not the point, she said they were done here. There was no reason for anyone to still be here, much less sleeping and eating here."
"It could still have just been someone from the crew or whatever who knew the place was empty now." I point out.
"No." He says again. "Missy, when I saw that bedroom I started looking around. I came into the basement...Miss, there was blood stains all over the floor."
My eyes go wide and my breath hitches. "What?" I gasp.
He nods, grimacing. "It looked half cleaned up, but you can definitely still tell what it was. There was bleach and stuff in there, like whoever it was was going to come back and finish wiping it up but never did."
"Aries." I stare at him, my fear intensifying.
"It wasn't me, Missy." He says again. "I came in here and that's when I saw the car, and then I looked around out back and found that truck and the stuff in the shed."
"I'm supposed to believe you just stumbled across all of this?"
"You kind of just did the same thing, didn't you?" He counters but I shake my head.
"No, you led me here, that's different."
"Missy, you wouldn't be here alone right know if you didn't at least believe me a little bit. You know I didn't kill those girls. I could never. I'm telling you, I came here and this is how I found it all."
"It's too much, Aries." I shake my head slowly at him. "Why would the killer be here of all places? And you show up here and just find all of this stuff and you haven't seen anyone else come here, right?"
He sighs. "I asked myself that too." He says quietly. "I've been asking myself a lot the last few days about how everything has been going down. Trying to make sense of how I could be getting blamed for all of this and having all of this evidence just keep collecting on me." He takes a deep breath. "No one else has come back here since I've been here, no." He says. "But I
think there is a reason for that."
"What?" I ask.
He looks at me, frowning. "I think he can't come back right now."
I stare at him, not understanding. "What do you mean?" I ask him. "Why would anyone choose to come here? It doesn't make sense."
"It kind of does." He says quietly, biting his bottom lip. I stare at him, blinking, trying to understand the pain in his expression. "Missy." He whispers my name. "I've been thinking about it...how my boot prints ended up at those scenes?"
"You still think a cop is framing you?"
He shakes his head. "Not a cop." He tells me. "I slept at your house the night before I went in." He says. "I'd left my boots by the door..."
"Ok?" I shrug, waiting for some sort of clarification.
"And the necklace?" He says. "It happened to be on me, again, at your house."
"What? One of the detectives? They weren't even there yet, Aries." I shake my head in frustration.
"Not a cop, not detectives." He says slowly. "Listen to what I'm saying..."
"What?" I sit up straighter. "You think I have something to do with this?"
He scoots closer to me, putting both hands on top of my knees. "Miss, I think my boots got swapped." He says slowly, watching my face. "I thought they didn't feel quite right but I didn't think much of it at the time. Like maybe I was wearing weird socks or something. But now...I think they were his boot prints at the scenes and he switched his with mine so that when they brought me in, I'd have the boots that matched."
Slowly what he's trying to say to me seeps through.
I shove his hands off of my legs and push myself up to my feet.
"You're accusing Dallas?" I balk at him. "That's my brother!"
He gets to his feet quickly and tries to come towards me but I dodge him, staring at him.
"I know, Missy, I'm so sorry." He says, hands up in front of him. "I've been thinking about it all, and Missy, it just makes sense." He says. "He shows up here out of nowhere?"
"He came looking for me!" I shout at him. "He just got here! He wasn't even here when those girls were abducted!"
"We don't know that, Missy, he could have been lying."
"He said he had his bus tickets and receipts!"
"But did you ever actually ask to see them?" He asks. "Did you see them yourself?" I open my mouth to respond but nothing comes out. Of course I hadn't asked him to show me the proof, it's Dallas. "Who else would know this place was empty and be comfortable enough around here to stay here and stash their stuff here? And he hasn't been back because he can't now with cops swarming your house and all of them knowing he's back now." He stares at me with conviction. "It makes sense, Missy. He switched our boots and he put that necklace on me to make sure I looked guilty enough that no one would be looking at you or him anymore."
"No." I say, then shout. "No!"
"Missy, I'm so sorry, I am, but you've got to believe me." Aries begs.
"No!" I shove at him. "You're wrong, or lying! Dallas wouldn't do that! You're wrong!"
"I wish I was." Aries says, letting me push him this time. "I don't want to be right, Missy, but I'm pretty certain that I am."
"No!" I shout again, shoving by him and running to the door.
I hear him following behind me but he doesn't try to stop me, just keeps following me begging and apologizing and then begging some more.
I rush back into the backyard, going to find Kelsea's phone so that I can call the cops. Aries is clearly unhinged and he's here with all of this evidence and accusing my brother of all people.
I see the light of it glowing up into the snow falling around it and rush to it, scooping it up off of the ground.
I dust off the screen as the flashlight continues to illuminate the truck in front of me.
I look at the screen and then back at the truck before my body just starts moving towards it.
"What are you doing?" Aries asks, watching me as I yank open the front door and lean inside the bed of the truck.
Nothing stands out.
Not even so much as a left over water bottle in the cup holder.
I lean further in and open the center console, using the phone light to look down inside of it.
It reflects off of something brown and leather.
A wallet.
I pull it out and turn away from the truck as I fumble to open it and hold the phone at the same time.
My heart stops beating in my chest as I stare down at the Colorado State driver's license in front of me.
My brother's face staring back.