Your Mid-Week Update for 04/24/19

I apologize, dear readers, I meant to write an update last week but I was exhausted. A lot has happened since I last wrote to you. I’m not currently at my home which makes writing this update a little difficult. I’m currently in a motel far from everything I know. It’s cold and the water only sometimes works. There are four of us sharing a room and it smells like garbage. For the first time in a very long time, I’m scared.

I am on the run.

Last week – I want to say Sunday – Charlotte came back. She said she had another “assignment” for me; and this time she decided to stay for dinner. It was uncomfortable to say the least. Answering all of Jason’s questions took time and a lot of dancing around, avoiding telling Casey too much of what she didn’t need to know. It was like Jason wanted her to know. He kept alluding to that time everyone thought I was having an affair with her husband and how she used to come over all the time but suddenly stopped around the time Daniel disappeared. Some twisted revenge or spite by revealing the truth. After dinner and after Charlotte left, Casey helped me clean up dinner and she did what Jason expected: asking me all sorts of questions I just couldn’t answer about our family’s history and what exactly Charlotte was doing here. She left suspicious, I know that.

Tuesday night, Charlotte came for my answer on the assignment and I don’t know what possessed me, but I told her no. I said I wouldn’t risk it again and I wouldn’t be blackmailed into becoming an assassin. At the time it felt brave. Now I know how stupid it was.

James was working late that night so I went to bed without him. Around 1am, I get a phone call from him, telling me that Jason was at the police station and he’d been arrested. For the murder of the politician. I don’t know what Charlotte did to convince them that he did it but they used the phrase “irrefutable evidence.”

James heard over the radio that they were coming to search the house, the garage, the cars, everything. There was no time to clean, we had to get out. This was it. There was no way we would let Jason take responsibility for anything the FBI found so our only recourse was to run.

I woke Casey and told her to pack a bag, no questions. I got stuff for James and me – and a few things for Jason. Just in case. Then we loaded the car and just drove. We ditched the car at the city border, met James in a car he stole from the impound lot and kept driving.

As we drove, I remember looking in the back and hearing rustling noises. I asked James and he told me to look at the “present he picked up for me.”

Charlotte was tied up in the backseat of the minivan, just for me.

Casey stayed uncharacteristically quiet while we drove through the night and well into the next day. She didn’t help while we switched cars twice and Charlotte continued to struggle. But she didn’t run or scream for help either. She stayed silent while we booked the room and snuck everything upstairs.

And now we’re here. We’ve been in THIS motel for two days and we’ll be leaving soon.

We know what the end of this journey will be: what we hope it will be and what it will likely be are not the same at the moment. I’ve seen our faces on local news sites but it hasn’t quite reached international yet.

Casey knows everything. I answered every question she asked once we were settled in that first motel. She didn’t flinch when I shared all the gory details. She cried when I told her about Sandra and what I did to Daniel. The only question of hers I couldn’t answer was what we were going to do with Charlotte.

She’s spent most of the trip bound and gagged. I’ve let her out to pee and I’ve fed her occasionally. I’ll keep her alive until I decide what to do with her. I won’t kill her yet. Not until I find an appropriate ending for her. This woman who was a friend, and then a villain, and now a prisoner. What does she deserve for what she did? I can’t help but feel as though she can do one more useful thing for me. As soon as that’s done, then she can die.

The last I heard, Jason was in prison, vehemently denying any involvement in the assassination and otherwise saying nothing. James left money with him for a lawyer and maybe bail – we’ll find a way to get him more if he needs it.

I can’t stop thinking about how he’s alone. My parents won’t go see him, and James’ parents wanted nothing to do with us from day one. He is all by himself and I don’t know how to help him. I can’t just break him out of prison, I need to take it all back. I need it to be like none of it ever happened. Can you do that, dear readers?

I don’t know where to go from here.

Stay Safe