Page 5 of Into The Rabbit Hole
“I swear I won’t say anything,” his mother said, gripping her hand to her chest; blood continued to gushout.
“No you won’t, Rachel,” Ben said with a smile. It was the look on Ben’s face that held Aaron’s attention. It held his mother’s as well. “Jackson, do me thehonors.”
Aaron’s heart jumped into his throat as Jackson produced a small hand gun from his back pocket and held it to hismother.
“Please have mercy.” She screamed. “Please. I have achild.”
“You should have thought of your child when you started sticking your nose where it didn’t belong,” Bensnarled.
“No, please. I swear I won’t say anything. Please just let me go. My boy needsme.”
Tears rolled down Aaron’s cheeks as he watched, completely horrified. Horrified and terrified. The ache in his heart wasindescribable.
“Yes, he probablydoes.”
“Ben, please. You have a son the same age as mine. All my boy has is me. All he has is me. Please, please. Have mercy. I promise I won’t sayanything.”
Her words trailed away in his mind. All he could see was Ben’s reaction. Aaron watched him. Ben looked at Jackson and smiled, then he returned the focus to hismother.
“Rachel, I have too much at stake to just let you go. My family, yes indeed, and my job. You could destroy me with all that you know. I can’t take that risk.” Ben spoke as if he were talking about something as simple as the weather. “You know just a bit too much for myliking.”
When his mother looked over to where Aaron was hiding, bile rose into his throat and burned his heart. It was like he just knew what was going to happen next and felt that that split second was their last momenttogether.
The horror of the thought snapped him into action. Screw the promise, he had to dosomething.
He pushed against the hatch door at the same time that Jackson pulled back therevolver.
His mother saw him and screamed, “No!” It was a resounding, high-pitched sound that ripped through every fiber in his being and froze him in place at the same time that the gun wentoff.
She screamed again, even as the bullet pierced her heart and her eyes held him in place, begging him to go back inhiding.
“No! Don’t do it!” It was her final scream and warning to him as Jackson fired the gun again. This time shooting her straight in herhead.
Her eyes never left Aaron’s. They pleaded with him, even as the life left her body, to stay back. To stay hidden. It was her last motherlyact.
It highlighted the promise he made to her in his mind, and at that moment he abandoned the promise he made to his father. The promise to take care ofher.
Aaron shook, his head feeling light as the air left his lungs. There was blood everywhere.Everywhere.
“Throw her into the sea,” Ben ordered and walkedout.
The sea.That cruel place, that wilderness where she would be lostforever.
It must have been instinct that moved him as Jackson looked around and Aaron lowered back the hatch door. It must have been instinct and adrenaline that took over his body and mind because an intense grief and despair wracked him from deep within and all he wanted to do was scream and cry. Scream and cry. Scream until there was nothing left of him. Scream until his voice left, and dissolved in thewind.
They killed his mother. His mother who was his everything, his mother who meant more to him thanlife.
They killed his preciousmother.
And he had to sit there and listen to Jackson gather her up and take heraway.
She was never found, never laid to rest properly, just nomore.
Through the screaming and crying, neither Ben nor Jackson noted that in those final moments she wasn’t talking to either of them. They’d stopped listening and indulged on the evil that drove them to kill for what theywanted.
Aaron waited until Jackson left, and for hours after, before he came out of hiding. Moonlight lit what it could of the barn inside. It bounced off one single object on the floor. His mother’s wedding band. It was just visible through the clumps of hay on the ground. That was all that was left ofher.
They’d taken her car, so he had towalk.