The Witness

by Nichole Severn

  Again? The heat left her hand the longer she stared up at him. “What do you mean? You were ten years old. You’re not the one who pulled that trigger. You’re not responsible—”

  “If it hadn’t been for me, my mother never would’ve been there, never would’ve led a killer into her home and never would’ve died protecting me. She got herself killed because she let her emotions get in the way of the job.” Finn held the mug of water with one hand, his grip tight as he faced her. “That’s why I have to make this clear to you, Camille, before you get any more ideas of me being some kind of hero or start thinking something might happen between us. Until Jeff Burnes appears for his trial date, you’re my witness. Nothing more. Because I’m not willing to make the same mistake my mother did.”

  Chapter Six

  She hadn’t said a word to him for the past hour, yet his awareness of Camille had hit an all-time high. From the way she used a wall of long, red hair to block her view of him, to the fact she’d unpacked and repacked the overnight bag six times now and had changed into a shirt to replace the one she’d borrowed from him.

  Finn had tried reading the report on the victim recovered near Camille’s home sent by Florence police nearly a dozen times, but not a single word registered. Because of her. Because the second the words had left his mouth that she was nothing more than his witness, the hollowness he’d lived with since he’d been a ten-year-old spread. He’d been an ass, but that didn’t alter the truth. This job took enough of him and enough of his concentration without him having to worry about someone else relying on him to make it through the front door. Someone who might be put in danger because of the nature of his work.

  He’d had relationships in the past. A few weeks here, a couple months there. Nothing serious and nothing long-term. He moved around the state enough with his assignments that run-ins were far and few between, and that was the way he liked to keep it. But with Camille... There was nothing casual about her. She’d been engaged, ready to commit herself to one man for the rest of her life. In the end, that man turned out to be a serial killer, but before that, before she’d known how familiar evil could be, she’d been prepared to jump off the cliff of holy matrimony. Prepared to give herself to somebody else, to trust them completely. His heart slammed against his rib cage. Had anyone trusted him that way?

  Finn pushed to his feet, tossing his phone onto the mattress. There wasn’t any way in hell he was going to be able to read that report with her doing her best to ignore him for the rest of the time they were forced to spend together. The mattress dipped with his added weight as he took a seat, every nerve ending he owned strung tight at the urge to sweep her hair out of her face and make her look at him. “You think we can break our record of using the silent treatment against each other for another hour?”

  “Guess there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” She refolded the same shirt she’d been working on a few minutes ago, still refusing to look at him. “And if you only came over here to raid your stash of chocolate, I’ve got bad news for you. I ate it all when you weren’t looking.”

  “Can’t say I didn’t deserve that.” Finn caught sight of the empty silver foil ripped to shreds beside her. Goose bumps trailed down the backs of his arms as she smoothed the sheets where he’d laid next to her a few hours ago. He’d fallen asleep with her pressed against him from shoulder to toes, as though she’d subconsciously sought him out in the middle of the night, and an illogical part of him wanted to experience the feeling of being needed for something other than hired muscle again. “What I meant earlier was it’s my job to keep you alive, Camille. That’s my only concern—to make sure you walk away after the trial with your heart beating as strong as when you came into the program. If I’m the smallest bit distracted from that job, it could cost you your life. Or mine. Do you understand?”

  “Of course, I understand.” She stuffed her folded clothing back into the duffel bag one piece at a time, but her tone and jerking movements suggested they weren’t on the same page at all. “You’ve got a job to do, and everything you’ve said or done over the past year has been because of this assignment. Not because you led me to believe we’re friends, or because you actually give a damn about my mental and emotional well-being. As long as my heart is still beating when this is over, you get to move onto your next detail with a clear conscience.” She slid off the bed and got to her feet. “Thank you for clearing up my misconceptions about our relationship and assuming that because I’ve shown you the slightest bit of appreciation for saving my life that I wanted to get into your pants.”

  Oh, hell. That wasn’t—He hadn’t meant it like that. “Camille, I didn’t—”

  “Don’t worry, Marshal. I’ll try to make this easier for you from now on.” She set fiery aquamarine eyes on him, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. “The next time I’m having difficulty processing the fact a man I used to share a bed with is trying to kill me and a bunch of other women for no discernible reason I can come up with, I’ll be sure to keep my mouth shut and deal with it on my own. Like the good witness I’m supposed to be.”

  She brushed past him toward the kitchen. Lucky for him, there weren’t too many places she could run. Not as long as she was under his protection.

  “I enlisted as a combat medic because of that night.” His gut soured as she slowed in his peripheral vision. When she didn’t turn to face him, he studied the uneven rise and fall of her shoulders. “I didn’t ever want to be in a position again where I couldn’t help someone I cared about. I didn’t want to have to stand there and watch them be taken from me, and it might not seem like it, but I care about you, damn it. Probably more than I should. Definitely more than I have with any other witness.” He got to his feet. His skin still felt hot where she’d set her hand over his heart before. He couldn’t imagine how hard that’d been for her—to reach out to another person, to reach out to him when he’d needed it. Even after everything she’d been through, she’d somehow broken past her instinct to stay in the shadows and walked back out into the light. Now it was his turn. “So if I’m being honest, there’s nothing you can do to make this easy for me, Red. Every minute that psychopath is out there hunting you is another shard being driven deeper into my lungs. I know from experience that any one of those minutes could be your last, and I don’t want to be the one responsible for that.”

  Her hands fisted at her sides before she slowly turned around. The black long-sleeve shirt she’d replaced his T-shirt with folded across her midsection as she crossed her arms, the movement accentuating the hues of blue and purple around her throat. Her mouth softened at the corners, but there was still hesitation in the soft outline of her lips. “Finn, I—”

  His phone pinged from the end of the bed. Then again... Scooping the damn thing off the comforter, Finn moved to put the device on silent. Then he read the message. Defeat washed through him as reality pierced through the bubble they’d created in this small place. As much as he wanted to live in the fantasy she’d told him of nothing existing outside of these four walls, that wasn’t how the world worked. As long as the Carver was out still there, still hunting, Finn wouldn’t let down his guard. Couldn’t. No matter what happened, he wasn’t going to lose anyone else. “Jonah sent over the autopsy report for the woman killed near your house. Jodie Adler.”

  “Go ahead. I think we’ve more than made up for the hour we weren’t talking to each other.” She lowered her arms to her sides, then turned her attention to his personal duffel bag a few feet away. “Jeff—the Carver—was proud of what he’d done to all those women. I could see it in his eyes when he...” She motioned to her neck, then tugged the cuffs of her shirt into her palms and closed her fingers around the edge of fabric. Pulling back her shoulders, Camille smoothed her expression. “Why would he change the order of how he hurt me the second time?”

  “In my experience, MOs are unique to a serial killer like Jeff Burnes, the sam
e as fingerprints are unique to human beings. For him and others like him, killing is a compulsive need, and the only way he can get satisfaction from the kill is by following an obsessive routine. Serial killers can evolve over time. They can get smarter, they can hide what they’re doing better or they can lose complete control of themselves, but they rarely vary from that core routine. It’s the only way they know how to get what they need from their victim. So it doesn’t make sense for the Carver to suddenly forget the order he prefers to attack his target.” Surprise pulsed through him as he realized why she’d been staring so intently at his overnight bag. The file he’d hidden inside. The Carver’s file. His boots reverberated off the tiled floor as he met her in the center of room, then offered her the phone with the crime-scene report open on the screen. “But I don’t think you’re misremembering what happened, either.”

  The weight of vulnerability in her gaze stole the air from his lungs. Her breath shuddered as she stared down at the device, but she didn’t move to take it from him. “What are you doing?”

  “You know this case better than anyone out there, you know him, and you survived.” He knew what he was asking. He knew exactly how much trouble he could get in by sharing this information with a civilian, but if he was going to protect his witness against the oncoming threat, he had to know—without a doubt—which direction that threat was coming from. “You’re the only one who can tell us if the Carver killed Jodie Adler, Camille.”

  The bruising along her throat shifted with her swallow. “And if I’m wrong?”

  “Then I’ll spend the rest of my life on your protection detail, and you’ll owe me an entire stash of mattress chocolate.” The inside joke cut through the tension faster than he could draw his weapon, and she laughed. An amazing sound. One he never wanted to forget when this was over.

  “One file.” She took the phone, the brightness of the screen highlighting flawless skin, and maneuvered around him to sit on the edge of the bed. She rolled the hem of her shirt between the index finger and thumb of her free hand, rubbing the fabric back and forth under her thumbnail. She swiped her opposite thumb across the screen, past Florence PD’s initial report, before settling on the crime-scene photos. Her eyebrows drew inward a split second before Camille shot to her feet. “Finn, we have to get to that scene. Now.”

  * * *

  SHE’D BEEN IMPRISONED in the small town of Florence, Oregon, for a year, cut off from everything she’d known, everyone she’d cared about. But the past had still come back to haunt her.

  Shouldering out of Finn’s SUV, she battled for mental balance as her unofficial prison cell came into focus. Moisture from the river clung to the exposed skin of her face and neck, the soft sound of ripples lapping from the shoreline. It really was beautiful out here, but while tourists from all over the world flooded into the sleepy coastal city that played home to such beautiful wonders, she’d only felt more isolated. Alone.

  The sun clung to the tops of the pines surrounding the property and would vanish well below the tree line in the next thirty minutes. They had to move fast. She slammed the car door behind her, attention sliding to the unpaved trail leading deeper into the woods beyond the property. She pointed to the opening between the trees. “You can get to the scene from that trail there, but I need to get something from the house first.”

  “You’re sure about this?” Finn rounded the hood of the vehicle, armed with a flashlight in one hand and a weapon in his shoulder holster. As much as she’d hated the idea of coming back here, having him with her softened the rough edges of her anxiety. “The crime-scene techs have been over every inch of these woods since the body has been discovered. Several times.”

  “They didn’t know what they were looking for. I do.” Camille headed toward the front door of the house, hesitant to walk back into the lonely life of the woman who’d lived here for the past year. But she forced herself to turn the doorknob and push inside. Jodie Adler needed her to be strong, to face the possibility that the Carver had started his sick, twisted cycle of obsession all over again. That just because she’d changed her name didn’t mean the killer had forgotten her. Finn’s boots echoed loudly through the empty kitchen, hiking her nervous system into overdrive. She moved automatically, step by step, until she reached the hallway. Then slowed.

  “Camille?” he asked.

  A black-and-white flash of rose petals perfectly placed along the hallway rushed to the front of her mind. She reached for the wall as slices of the adrenaline-fueled minutes that followed threatened to drag her back to that night, but she hit a mountain of muscle instead. Finn. Curling her fingers into his shirt, she shook her head as reality broke through the panic clawing up her throat. “I’m okay. I just... It’s all coming back in one giant wave that I can’t stop.”

  Callused fingers wound around her wrist, his thumb pressing against the sensitive skin below her palm. Her pulse pitched against his touch as he tugged her closer. His body heat penetrated through her clothing and straight past muscle and into her bones. “I’m right here. Everything we do here, we do together. You’re not alone this time.”

  She knew that. No matter what happened, he’d protect her because it was his job, but the dark hole of nothingness that had set up residence in her chest since the attack a year ago reminded her his protection only applied to her physical body. Nothing more. Despite his promise that they’d face this threat together, he’d outright told her the emotional connection she’d thrived on since the attack would only be one-sided.

  “Thank you.” She released her grip on his shirt and stepped completely into the hallway. She was sure the first door on the right—the one just before her bedroom—had been closed by one of the law-enforcement officers after they’d finished processing the scene. Finn’s warmth stayed with her as she twisted the knob and swung the door open. She flipped on the light. She faced two rows of seemingly empty picture frames leaning against the walls, but as she edged closer, color bled into focus. Photographs. Some of the very last ones she’d taken. Tentatively reaching out for the first frame, Camille swept dust from the wood. She peeled a smaller frame from against the wall, air building in her chest before she finally had the thought to exhale, and handed him the photo. “This is it.”

  Surprise or confusion, she wasn’t sure which, drew his eyebrows together and deepened the lines across his forehead as he studied the shot. He smoothed the same fingers that’d been grasped around her wrist across the glass. “This looks like—”

  “The exact location where Jodie Adler’s body was found.” She folded her arms across her chest, a meaningless protection against all the pieces of her life showcased in these frames surrounding her. Every photograph in this room represented the woman she’d been before the attack, but the photo clutched in Finn’s grip memorialized the one who’d died at the hands of the Carver. “When I relocated to Florence, I couldn’t leave this house. I couldn’t talk to anyone without getting suspicious of their motivations for wanting to get to know me. I couldn’t sleep, and when my body forced me to, all I could see was his face when I closed my eyes.”

  She intertwined her fingers together and spread her elbows wide. “Within a couple of days, I barely recognized myself in the mirror, and I knew I had to get help. So I started seeing a trauma therapist in town. Dr. Gruner. He didn’t know me. He didn’t know about the case. But by the time I left his office that first session, he’d convinced me to pick up my camera for the first time since the attack and try to reclaim that part of me Jeff Burnes had taken. To just go somewhere quiet, somewhere I felt safe. I picked that spot and managed to take a single photo before the memories of all those women had a chance to take over.”

  Finn met her gaze. “It’s beautiful.”

  “That’s not why I wanted to show you this picture.” Taking the photograph from him, Camille studied the sweeping effect of light across half of the shot, then crouched and slammed the frame onto the ha
rdwood. Glass burst into dozens of jagged pieces at her feet, slicing white lines into the surface of the photo.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  She tipped the framed to get rid of the excess glass. Using her nails, she pried the paper from the frame, turning it over to the back. “This is why I needed you to see it.”

  She pointed to the date stamped on the back of the photo in the top right corner. Almost one year before the exact date Jodie Adler’s body had been found in the location this photograph was taken. “I took this photo a couple weeks after I was relocated to Oregon, and whoever killed Jodie Adler knew that. They knew where I was relocated. They knew how I was attacked and where to place her body to get my attention.”

  “How is that possible?” Glass skidded across the floor between them as he stepped into her and took the photo from her hand.

  “I don’t know, but it’s too much of a coincidence, don’t you think? Almost a year after I take this shot another victim is found in that location killed using the Carver’s MO.” A shiver chased down her spine. “Whoever killed her might have escaped, but Jeff Burnes was still behind bars when I went out there that day, and I’ve never had this photograph published. This is the only copy. There’s no way he could’ve known I was in that clearing that day or gotten his hands on this photo.”

  Not without help.

  “You said your therapist urged you to pick up your camera. Dr. Gruner.” Finn’s voice dipped into dangerous territory as he locked sea-colored eyes on her. “Did you tell him where you’d taken the shot or show him the digital file in one of your follow-up sessions?”

  “I...” She felt the blood drain from her face in a rush. Nausea rolled through her stomach and weakened the backs of her knees. No. No, no, no, no. Shaking her head, she mentally tallied all of the details she’d revealed in those therapy sessions from her attack. She recounted the interest in his expression when he asked her to walk him through it again.