Killer: A Dark College Romance (Hillcrest University Book 5)

by Candace Wondrak

  I nodded along. Lincoln was still at the house, getting everything ready. The time drew near for our plan to commence. I kind of felt like being sick when I thought about it, but I knew my nerves would have to shut the fuck up.

  After a few minutes, Markus pulled us into the parking lot, and we were on our way inside. I did my best not to look like a nervous Nelly, knowing if I looked nervous, I’d only look guilty. And I might’ve been guilty of some things, but I did not kill Brooklyn or that old couple in the trunk. That was all Ray.

  They brought me into the same room I was in that night, sitting me down in the same chair. An empty room with a camera hanging in one of the corners, its little light blinking red every few seconds, letting me know that each and every thing said in this room would be recorded and probably watched again and again. They had three bodies to deal with. It wasn’t like this was some random shoplifting case. This was huge.

  Markus sat in a metal chair beside me, his long legs crossed under the table. He didn’t even look at me; he kept his dark gaze locked on the door, waiting for someone else to come in, for a detective to come and question me.

  We waited for nearly fifteen minutes before a woman walked in. Her brown hair was pulled back in a tight bun, not a single stray frizz or flyaway anywhere to be seen. I recognized her face immediately, because I’d seen her before. Not on the night Ray kidnapped me, but a different night. Or, technically, day.

  She gave me a tight-lipped smile, offering her hand to me, which I hesitated to shake. “Officer Melendez. I trust you remember me?”

  I nodded. Oh, yeah. I remembered her. She and another officer were the ones who were supposed to investigate my hit-and-run. They were also on William’s case, too. Wonder why nothing ever happened with that? Maybe the crimes weren’t bad enough, or maybe they simply ran out of clues.

  “Good,” she said, sitting down in the chair opposite me. She brought a manila folder with her, and as she opened it, I saw pictures of a floor stained with blood. That…wasn’t a picture of the crime scene with Brooklyn.

  That was…I froze—that was Will’s apartment.

  “Let me start this off by saying I don’t think you’re a suspect. Unlike some other officers here, I want to get to the bottom of this. I want to get to the truth. In order for me to do that, I’m going to need your help, Ash.”

  I nodded again. “I’ll do my best.” It was only a quick relief to hear that she didn’t suspect me. A quick relief because if she didn’t suspect me of committing the acts themselves, she might still think I was an accomplice. Accomplices could get arrested too, for being an accessory to a crime.

  “I have a theory, so bear with me.” Melendez grabbed the top photograph, spinning it and showing me. I instantly grew queasy at the sight of the blood, blinking and picturing the way Brooklyn’s body was ripped apart like some gory Halloween decoration. “Let’s start at the beginning. William Briggs was stabbed in his apartment.”

  Technically that wasn’t the beginning of it all, but I nodded again anyways.

  “William claims he didn’t see who his attacker was, but when you brought up Ray Ruiz, I went back and reexamined his case,” Melendez spoke, her dark eyes on me. “The location of his stab wound is the same place where Ray Ruiz stabbed his victims before strangling them. Can you think of any reason why Ray Ruiz would go after Will—and leave him alive instead of strangling him and ending it right there?”

  I glanced to Markus, finding he wore his stern, fake-lawyer expression. This was not something we went over, so I had to be smart about what I told her. Still…unlike Markus, I wasn’t well-practiced in this shit. What would be too much to say? What wouldn’t be enough?

  “I don’t know” was what I settled for saying.

  Officer Melendez took the picture back, searching in her stack for whatever was next. “That was the same night you were hit by a car and left unconscious on the road. You didn’t get a good look at the car, nor did you see the driver.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Fast-forward to the weekend before Halloween. You were at the same party Brooklyn Tatum was at. Her friends claimed you and her got into a scuffle, though no official report was ever filed. Care to tell me what happened that night?”

  That night I pushed Brooklyn down the stairs, almost hoping I’d break her neck and kill her. No, I didn’t want to tell Melendez what happened that night, but…but at this point, she clearly already had a story in her head, so I might as well fill in the blanks.

  Before I had the chance to speak, Markus spoke, his voice low and deadly, a type of serious that made me flinch, “What does this have to do with it?”

  Melendez, however, did not flinch. She stared Markus right in his soulless expression as she said, “Ash doesn’t have to answer, but it would help me understand better if she did. I have a theory, but I need to know all of the details before I bring this theory to the captain.”

  “Brooklyn and her friend dragged me to the basement,” I said. This might paint me in a bad light, but it was the truth. Besides, why would I kill Brooklyn and then wait there for the cops to come? Why would I incriminate myself like that? It didn’t make sense. Plus, there was no way my arms could move Brooklyn, let alone heave her up and chain her to a light pole.

  “Why?” Melendez asked pointblank.

  “She was going to have her friend…” I paused, not wanting to say it. That night had almost gone down so differently. If I had to choose between being raped and seeing Kelsey and Sawyer together, well…I guessed I’d go with the latter. No woman or girl should ever have something forced on them like that. “She was going to have her friend rape me, but I was able to get away.”

  Melendez reached into the tiny front pocket of her uniform, pulling out a small black book, where she jotted something down. “Why didn’t you call the police after that? Were you drinking that night?”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t touch any alcohol.” I shrugged. “I guess I just hoped it would all stop. I didn’t want to make a big deal about it.”

  “Do you know who the friend was?”

  “No.”

  “Why would Brooklyn want to have you raped, Ash?”

  “We…we’d crossed paths before, because of another guy.”

  Melendez nodded, scribbling more in her tiny notepad. “And was this other guy a mutual crush for you and Brooklyn?”

  I rubbed my hand along my arm, muttering, “I guess you could say that.”

  “Now…your hometown is up by Sumit, isn’t it?” The question caught me off-guard, and Markus shifted in his seat, frowning at her, causing her to add, “It’s pertinent to the investigation…or my theory, at least.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I grew up near Sumit.”

  Melendez pulled out another picture, spinning it towards me.

  Ray’s mugshot from when he was first arrested all that time ago, before he got let off. My gut instantly hardened; I hated looking down at him, hated what his mere picture could do to me, even after everything he did. I hated him, but a teeny, tiny part of me would always love him. He was my first love, as illegal and wrong as it was.

  “Ray Ruiz,” Melendez said. “He grew up in a town not too far from you—Midtown. He stuck close to home, even when he was…” Her voice quieted. “Hunting for his next victim. Sixteen bodies were dug up and linked to him.”

  Well, not technically linked, since he got off, but I guess she didn’t want to talk about how the judicial system had failed. Or, technically, her own comrades in blue for collecting evidence the wrong way.

  “They were all your age. All young, pretty girls like you.”

  Of course they were. Why would Ray go for old, ugly women who were on their deathbeds?

  “Reports said an anonymous tip from an unknown female tipped them off about the location of his cabin and the bodies. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Melendez’s line of questioning had my mind spinning in circles.

  “No, my client doesn’t know a
nything about that,” Markus said. “Let’s get back to the investigation at hand, Officer Melendez.” His handsome face was twisted in a scowl, and Melendez couldn’t argue with him.

  Melendez turned her dark stare to me. “Did you ever see this man before the police caught him and he was all over the news as the Midtown Strangler?”

  “No.” My answer came a little too quick, and I knew Melendez picked up on it.

  “Maybe you didn’t,” she said, leaning back in her chair, playing with the pen she held onto. “But I think he knew you. Do you want to know what else I think, Ash?”

  I was silent, not knowing what else to say.

  Melendez took that as a sign to keep going. “I think Ray Ruiz was obsessed with you. Maybe he killed those girls because he didn’t want to hurt you. I think the moment Ray was released, he tracked you down and saw that you were getting close to William Briggs—he is the brother of your roommate, isn’t he? I think Ray stabbed William, left him alive, knowing he’d be taken to the hospital, knowing your roommate would get a call, and hoping you’d tag along.”

  What the…

  “I think he wanted to take you that night, but his plans were foiled when someone hit you with their car and left you for dead, not knowing you’d come out with only bruises,” Melendez paused, studying me. “Brooklyn’s friends grew a lot more talkative after her death. They didn’t tell me about the incident in the basement, but they did say that Brooklyn had confessed to hitting you with her car.”

  I wanted to look at Markus, to wordlessly ask him what to do, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t look away from Melendez’s knowing stare. This woman…she’d pieced it all together, just like that? And Ray…was it possible what she thought was true? That he’d planned on kidnapping me that night at the hospital?

  He was there. It wasn’t my delusions talking. He’d told me I was going to be alright.

  “So he couldn’t take you,” the officer went on, her lips drawn into a slight frown. “And he couldn’t take you after that, because someone had tried to kill you. If I had money to bet, I’d bet that Ray Ruiz stuck around trying to find the person who hit you with their car—and that person was Brooklyn, the same girl who was found in multiple pieces in an empty parking lot in the middle of the night, along with you and two other corpses stashed in the trunk of a car.”

  That whole night replayed in my head, and I grew nauseous.

  Melendez watched me, probably noting how pale I was. “The two corpses were identified. They’ve been dead for weeks. Their house was wiped clean of any prints, along with the car. I think Ray had been staying in their house while watching you. The thing I don’t get is, after he had you, after he killed Brooklyn for you—using a car, the same way she was going to kill you—why didn’t he take you with him? If I’m right, it’s always been about you, Ash.”

  Me.

  It’s always been about me. Didn’t I tell Declan the same thing that night at the hospital? That it wasn’t about him or his brother. It was about me. Why hadn’t it ever occurred to me? What if…what if Melendez was right, and Ray hadn’t been killing for years? What if he only started killing once he was with me? What if I set something off in his brain? What if he desperately wanted to kill me, but also keep me forever? Maybe molding me into a killer like him was his way of trying to make me his in the only way he could.

  “The one thing I can think of,” Melendez went on, “the one reason Ray Ruiz didn’t take you right then and there was because he was angry.”

  “Angry?” I whispered. Angry was an understatement. Ray had been pissed at me for walking away from him, for going back to my Hillcrest guys.

  “Yes, angry at you for turning him in. Now, that part I can’t prove unless you tell me otherwise. Unless you tell me that you have seen Ray before that night in the parking lot, I don’t have anything to go on but my theories, and theories aren’t enough around here.” Melendez grabbed one of the last pictures in the manila folder, showing it to me.

  The gravesite. The mounds where Ray buried his victims at his literal murder cabin in the middle of the woods.

  “Help me, Ash. Help me catch this guy so he can’t do anything like this again. Help me get him,” Melendez pleaded, pausing before she added, “before he gets you.”

  Oh, God. How the hell was I supposed to deny her when she said it like that? How was I supposed to look her in the eyes and tell her she was wrong in her theories? Ray had wiped the house clean of my fingerprints, meaning no signs pointed to me when it came to that, but…if I confessed to seeing him before that night, what would that mean for me?

  When I said nothing for a while, Melendez asked, “Did you see Ray Ruiz before that night in the parking lot?”

  I looked to Markus, not attempting to be sly about it at all. His brown eyes were on me, and I could not read his expression to know what I should say.

  Finally, Markus spoke to the officer, “Can you give my client and I a minute?”

  “Of course,” Melendez said, getting up after gathering the pictures and stuffing them back into the file.

  Once she was gone, the door closed and Markus and I alone, I said, “What do I do?” I didn’t want to admit anything since I was fairly sure the camera was still recording, and I had no idea whether anyone was behind the two-way mirror on the opposite wall, watching us. Watching me.

  Markus leaned closer to me, whispering, “Well, considering everything…why don’t you tell her you need some time to think about it, and then after it’s done, you can give her what she wants, provided they don’t try to pin any of it on you.” We both knew what he meant by it’s done—after Ray was dead. “I’ll come with you, make sure they don’t try to slip anything over on you.”

  “What if I need you again after you leave?”

  Markus gave me a smile. It wasn’t a smile that made my gut warm; it was a smile that told me he had many other things to do, and that this was already taking a good chunk of his time away from the family and whatever the hell it was they did. “Travis always knows how to reach me, but I would advise you try to stay out of trouble once I’m gone.”

  I knew he was right; I couldn’t depend on Markus forever, let the whole family come to me and try telling me I owed them for the help. As it was, I was sure Travis would have to pay for it somehow, but that was something I could push from my mind, at least right now.

  Once I gave him a nod, Markus got up, his figure almost ridiculously tall, and went to the door. He poked his head out in the hallway, gesturing for Melendez to come back in. She returned, meeting my eyes with a smile.

  Hopeful.

  She was hopeful I’d tell her yes, and that would be it.

  I would crush her hope, at least momentarily, by telling her I needed time to think about it. Melendez and the rest of the department would be none the wiser when it came to Ray Ruiz and the fact that Markus and Lincoln had taken care of him.

  Ray’s end, I knew, would be a bloody one, and even though I wanted to be there to see it, to know he was dead, I didn’t need any more blood in my life.

  No, I’d help them get him, but that was it. My part in the killing stopped there.

  I was no killer.

  Chapter Four – Will

  I wasn’t waiting forever. It needed to happen soon. I was on Hillcrest’s campus, although I wasn’t with Ash or Declan. It was late in the afternoon, almost night. The evening crept closer and closer with each passing minute, and I stood at the base of the administration building. My father’s office was inside, on the top floor.

  He’d already left for the day. I made sure to wait until I saw him leave before coming closer to the building. I couldn’t have him walking in when I was planting it.

  Finally. After all this time. I just couldn’t wait any longer.

  I had my hands in my coat’s pockets, something hard and stiff stuck between my back and my shirt in the waistband of my pants. I had gloves in my pockets; I’d wiped it clean before coming here, knowing my fingerprints couldn�
��t be on it just in case the police decided to dust it. Hopefully they wouldn’t, but either way, it was better to be safe than sorry.

  No, I couldn’t mess this up. This had to go perfectly.

  The diary. The journal. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was the only thing I had of Sabrina’s. I hated keeping it for so long, but really, there wasn’t anything else to do with it yet. No one suspected my father of any wrongdoing. No one looked at him twice. The police had questioned Declan when Sabrina was found, but not our father.

  Dean Briggs was not the nice guy he pretended to be. Our father had secrets, and those secrets I was hellbent on exposing to the world.

  I headed inside the building, going upstairs to where I knew my father’s office was. I’d been here a few times growing up; he’d been the dean of students for quite a few years now. It was time that reign ended. He didn’t deserve the position, or the money, or the respect that came with it.

  Our father was a terrible man who did terrible things, and once the world knew what he’d done…there would be no comeback for him. He’d fall so fast and so heavily that he wouldn’t be able to get back up.

  The elevator took me to the top floor. I passed a few other offices that were closed, their lights off. I walked with a purpose, heading right to his office door. A big, wooden thing, the only windows nearby on the wall beside it. The blinds were drawn and shut; no one would be able to see inside.

  I threw a look over my shoulder, my eyes darting around to make sure I was alone, and that no cameras were in sight.

  I was alone, and there were no cameras.

  It was…almost too easy.

  Not just easy. Simple, too—because I’d made a copy of his office key while I was at home for Thanksgiving.

  I was in his office in a matter of seconds, slowly closing the door as I dropped the key into my pocket and slid on a single black glove. Flicking on the lights in the office would only draw attention to it if someone happened to walk by, so I kept them off. There was a little light still streaming in through the outside windows anyway; it was more than enough.