Time to find out what's been going on!
xXBalorBabeXx, Yes, yes she is. Or at least when her family is threatened! Like husband, like wife!
Cheryl24, I'm glad you asked! Hopefully this chapter will clear a lot of things up.
Mandy, I'm so sorry your dad isn't doing so well and I'm sorry that you're having a bad time too. Try to remember that while every day might not be good, there is still good in every day, you just need to look for it. Big hugs.
ViolentHugger03, Can't beat a good female villain every now and again. Keeps things interesting (I hope!)
Phoenix lord of rebirth, Yep, it was sneaky Dr. Merrick the whole time. Although I guess he's really only the sidekick to the big bad at this point. Expect revelations to come!
Rebel8954, I sort of see Seth and Roman's wife becoming a badass double act keeping Dean and Roman in line more than anything. If this was a 70's show, they would have their own spinoff for sure!
Wolfgirl2013, Thaaaanks!
Skovko, Maybe...but first we've got a motive to untangle and a few more twists and turns to come!
Lunatic789, Possibly. Possibly not (although there will definitely be feels coming. Not that I'll be saying if they're good or bad…)
Martha, Yep, mess with the things Roman cares about and he's going to mess you up in turn (or his wife will, but eh, same difference!)
XwwecoyoteX, Ooh, I'm glad I fooled you with Merrick. Plus, Roman's wife is very cool. Imagine how kickass their daughter is going to be when she's older (haha). Hmm, no, I've never read the Alpha Omega series, but rolling pins are always a useful kitchen item to have to hand! Good for pastry and when murderous doctors come a-calling.
Minnie1015, Lol. I'm sure Mrs Reigns will be very proud you want to be just like her, although hopefully minus the homicidal doctor part! Yay, I hoped Merrick would be a curveball. Now I only hope the rest of this makes sense (fingers crossed!)
Here we go then folks. Answers...
TWENTY THREE
For a woman who had supposedly been stone cold dead for the last two weeks, Ella Hurley is surprisingly switched on when it comes to the business of holding people at gunpoint at nearly freaking midnight in the middle of a church. Because first she makes Christopher and Henry tie Dean up and then she makes her husband tie up their own son, before doing the honors herself for her beloved, after having made them first march back into the chancel where three chairs have been set up and where the lights are back on. Or at least the lights are on where they are. The rest of the place however is still buried in gloom, which makes the whole thing seem even more frustrating. Because how has she found the light switch? What the fuck is that about?
For their part and possibly none too surprisingly, Christopher and Henry are sort of blinking in shock, which is probably split between being taken captive and their wife and mother being, well, not dead. Oh, and possibly the gun she is carrying.
Because that's not a good sign.
Dean twists at the ropes, which he had hoped the Hurley men would be smart enough to tie loosely, to give themselves at least some chance of escape. But nope. They're instead they're pulled as tight as a duck's ass, which means he needs to buy some time to think of something. Which also means one thing. He needs to talk her up. Her. The woman he's being trying to avenge all week. Her. The woman who isn't freaking dead. Which he figures seems like as good a place to start as any since she's pacing around in the front of them like a proud looking cat.
He scowls,
"Okay. Congratulations, you got us. A billionaire, a nerd an' a private detective who was too busy dealin' with these two idiots to freakin' hear you sneakin' up."
"Hey," Henry Hurley frowns back, probably at the nerd thing, or the idiot part maybe, but which Dean ignores pointedly because he freaking well is.
"So what now, huh? I mean, what's goin' on here? Is this the part where you reveal your evil plan an' tell us how you faked your own suicide an' oh holy crap, you totalled my car."
He shouts the last part into the chancel as the realization hits him smack between the eyes and in response Ella Hurley smiles winningly at him and then crinkles her nose cutely. She's not the woman from the park. Or probably not. Dean's not a hundred percent on that one, because honestly, they both look pretty much the same and he can't get a look at the hair beneath the headscarf since it's pulled too tight and she keeps moving around.
"Oh please. That wasn't a car. It was a scrapheap, we did you a favor driving the damn thing off the road and besides, you can't honestly say we didn't warn you."
She uses the gun to point towards his eye, which is a lot less swollen now that it had been, but is still sort of yellow and mottled looking around the bone, from where the big guy in the ski mask had jumped him.
He blinks,
"Hold on a freakin' second, that was you? You were the other one there in the dog park? So who the hell was the first guy? And the driver tonight? Who the hell has been doing this with you?"
"What are you talking about Ambrose? Been doing what?" Christopher Hurley puts in from beside him, looking as lost as a god damn nun in a whorehouse. Or possibly Henry Hurley in a whorehouse. Because no way in hell has that kid ever been laid.
"You wife here," Dean spits the word out bitterly, "Is the one who paid me a little visit the other night and tried to cream my head on a park bench and she's the person who ran me off the road."
"But why?" Hurley splutters, "I don't understand it."
In response, Ella snorts at him resentfully.
"Huh. You never really were very smart were you honey bun?" her tone is practically dripping with scorn, which makes it double hard that the woman stood in front of them is the one that Dean has been blaming himself for. The woman he felt he hadn't protected and had wanted justice for. He'd even fired his best friend because the guilt of having failed her had been so consuming. And yet, there she was being a murderous bitch and not only that, but a god damn freaking cruel one.
Christopher blinks at her,
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," she snarls, whipping the gun in his direction and making them all tense against the backs of their chairs. Dean tries again with the ropework. Nothing, "I mean we were married for twenty six years and in all of that time you never once figured out how much I hate you."
Whoa. Low blow. Henry Hurley lets out a gasp, whereas Christopher decides that disbelief is the better option, which is hardly surprising. He shakes his head,
"You don't mean that."
Ella lifts a bored looking eyebrow,
"Is that right? So I didn't hate being married to the serial philanderer who snuck away from every single party we ever held to have a five minute stand with some twenty year old waitress, or our nanny or even the fucking coat check girl and who hit on my roommate when I was in therapy."
"Ha. I freakin' knew it," Dean hisses in the pause, which doesn't really help. Everyone just sort of stares at him, "Oh sure, I'm the crazy one. Hello? She has a gun."
Henry Hurley leans forward,
"Is that true dad?"
In all of the excitement his thick rimmed glasses have steamed up, so in the end what he actually asks is the lectern, although his father still responds like he hasn't.
"Of course not. Damn it Ella, I said that was an accident," he's pulling against the ropes around his hands as he huffs, like outrage alone might make the knots loosen, "And those other dalliances were all in the past. Besides which, they hardly make up for whatever the hell this is. I mean, for god sakes woman, I saw you dead."
Henry Hurley rocks forward in eagerness,
"W-wait," he splutters, "I've read about this. Lewis and I did a story for the website. In certain conditions a potent cocktail of chemicals and exposure to cold water could send someone to sleep and make their vital signs seem nearly invisible to the naked human eye. Then, all you would need is an accomplice on the inside to swap your body with a Jane Doe and let you out of the morgue," he seems wide eyed with Murder She Wrote style excitement, although Dean has a sneaking suspicion it isn't that, since suddenly what has actually happened seems obvious. Well, obvious and gut wrenching, "Is-is that what you did?"
Dean sets his jaw,
"No, she murdered her roommate an' then strung her up to make it look like her."
"Oh."
In response Ella Hurley wiggles her eyebrows, then taps on her nose and points the gun at him,
"Bingo."
Christopher nearly tips over sideways,
"You did what?"
"She wanted to help," Ella shrugs, not showing so much as an inch of emotion, which was always a good sign in a hostage situation. Not, "I mean at first we were simply going to fleece you, but after I came in and saw you and her I decided to switch my grand plan up a little and pretend to be dead. Using her body of course."
"So it was her I met that night," Dean snorts bitterly, "That's why she liked Seth."
It's not a question as such, but since Ella seems to have watched too many Bond films and is clearly revelling in the geniusness of her plan, she shrugs and decides to pretend that it is one,
"She didn't take a lot of convincing to do that and I mean, we did look pretty similar after all. Poor girl, she thought I'd already fled the country and that she was helping to set me up with an alibi for when Christopher over here met a sticky end for being the worst damn husband in the universe. Which of course, was never the plan. But then again she wasn't to know that. Poor bitch would have done anything I asked and it wasn't like she had much of a life left anyway. I mean, Christ, she even dyed her damn hair. Never saw it coming for a second."
"Wait, so it was her I saw in the morgue?" Christopher Hurley chips in in astonishment, two minutes slower than everyone else, "No. It couldn't have been. She was wearing your wedding ring."
"Well I didn't want the damn thing," Ella shrugs as Dean cranes his head to one side in bewilderment, which really hurts his arms and his shoulders.
Okay, fuck.
"Hold on a freakin' second, but are you saying when you looked at her, when they took you to ID her you only looked at her hand?"
Christopher Hurley looks down at his kneecaps,
"Well, I mean possibly."
"Oh Jesus freakin' Christ."
"Language," Ella snaps, waving the gun in Dean's direction, "We're in a church here."
Dean blinks at her,
"Seriously? Murder's okay but you draw the line at a little cussin'?"
She walks in closer and prods the gun to his temple, which does the trick convincing him it's best to be quiet and which could go either way until Henry sucks a sob in and then shakes his shaggy head. He sounds broken,
"Why mom, why?"
As Ella wheels away Dean blows a thankful sigh out and then tries to prize his hands free again. The ropes rub into his skin and make him grumble, but he keeps working at them because he has to get free. Since it seems unlikely that Christopher Hurley or freaking Gunhawk are going to do it and rescue their hides.
Ella seems to soften a little.
A very little.
Sort of minutely, but it's there nonetheless.
"Because I wanted a new start Henry."
"So then why not get a divorce?"
"Because your father," Ella Hurley spits the word out in fury, "Made me sign a prenup when the two of us got married, which meant that if I walked away I would get nothing. Not a dime. Despite the fact that every decent decision he's made in the last twenty years has been mine. Despite the fact that he's cheated on me constantly and made me feel like I was worthless."
"I never meant to,"
"Shut up," spinning around she points the gun at her husband and then wipes away what looks like an unsteady tear as her voice rings wildly around the high vaulting and off the aqua columns. She looks unhinged, "You shut up."
Frankly Dean figures that he should probably let her shoot him. Not so much for all the cheating but having not looked properly in morgue, which if he had could have saved them this trouble. Not to mention his god damn car. But instead for some reason, rather than letting her shoot him, he tries to distract her.
"So who's the accomplice, huh? Is it Batista? Because m' goin' with Batista. What? Did he notice how lonely you were? Offer to help you get rid of your husband if you split the money with him."
Ella blinks at him. Then laughs, which okay, so isn't the reaction he'd hoped for.
"Batista?" she snorts, "Call yourself a private eye? You really think I would go for that mammoth after everything I went through with my husband? God no."
"So then, who is it?"
Ella shrugs,
"Howard Merrick."
"Merrick?" Dean gapes, "Wait, Doctor Smoothie beat me up an' then freakin' checked on my eye in his clinic? Doctor Merrick tried to drive my freakin' car off the road?"
"He loves me," Ella blinks, as if the answer is obvious, "We want to be together."
"Hold on here, Howard Merrick?" Christopher Hurley gasps, doing his whole five-minutes-behind thing, "But, The Global Fund."
Oh.
Dean wants to slap his himself.
Ohhhh.
"That's why he set that whole freakin' deal up," he growls, as Christopher does his best impression of a fish. Opening and closing his mouth without speaking, "He doesn't give a fuck about makin' folk better, or helpin' people pay for mental healthcare an' all that crap. That was just a way of gettin' more Hurley money. You freakin' knew ol' heartbroken Chris here would donate a whole ton, an' then you an' the good doctor would take it an' fuckin' scarper. What was the plan, huh? Lemme guess. It was Maui, or no, somewhere further, like Bora Bora?"
Wherever that is, since geography has never exactly been his strong suit.
The murderess smiles,
"Well, what do you know. Perhaps you aren't such a poor detective after all. It's kind of a pity I have to kill you," she aims the gun at his head and his plans for getting his hands free die rapidly, "Goodbye Mr. Ambrose. Oh and by the way, it was Martinique."
I'm saying nothing...