by Jane Blythe
The car stopped outside her building, and he couldn’t help but stop and survey the sidewalk for anyone who looked suspicious. When he’d called Florence’s partner Jake yesterday to get some ideas on what Florence liked to eat and what her favorite treats were, they’d also discussed her stalker.
That the cop was worried about Florence’s safety was enough to amp-up his own concerns. This serial killer was dangerous, just because he hadn't succeeded in killing her when she was a child didn't mean that he wouldn’t now. The man was obsessed with her, and even if she was brushing things off and downplaying them, he wasn't.
There was no way he was leaving her alone until the guy was off the streets.
He would either be spending every night at her house, or she’d be spending it at the hotel, or a combination of the two, but there wasn't a chance in Hell that he was letting her stay here alone while a serial killer had her in his crosshairs.
When he didn't see anyone loitering he headed inside. Florence was probably going to be annoyed that he’d followed her here, but he was pretty sure that he knew the perfect antidote to her irritation. If they were quick they probably had time to take a shower together before she went to the gym, and he went to work.
With a goofy grin on his face, he took the lift to her floor. Since he met Florence, he couldn’t seem to stop smiling. It didn't matter what he was doing or who he was with, he was always grinning because he was always thinking about Florence.
How much better would things be once they were engaged?
Then married?
And if he had his way, there would be a bunch of little cocky, stubborn half Florence half him babies entering the world sometime in the near future.
“I know you said you wanted some time for the gym and I'm supposed to be preparing for a meeting but…” he trailed off as he opened Florence’s apartment door and stepped inside.
The door hadn't been locked.
That should have been his first clue that something was wrong.
If he’d been paying attention and not picturing what he was going to do to Florence once he got her naked and in the shower, he would have noticed. He would have stopped, realized what was going on, called the cops, and avoided this.
Unfortunately, you didn't get do-overs in life.
Instead of doing anything remotely helpful, he had walked right into a hostage situation, and he knew without anyone having to say anything that his presence had made things worse.
Florence’s gaze flew his way, her blue eyes widening in first surprise, quickly followed by regret, then fear came next.
That Florence was afraid told him that this was bad.
She had a gun in her hands, and it was pointed at a man with dark hair going gray, who appeared to be in his late forties.
He’d seen the same man leaving the building the day he found Florence lying unconscious in her apartment.
Florence’s stalker.
The Coffin Killer.
Seemed the guy had finally surfaced and he knew what he wanted.
What he wanted was the one who had gotten away.
Florence.
The serial killer had a gun in his hand, it was pointed at Florence, but the second he entered the apartment it swung in his direction.
Before he had a chance to react, Florence had moved so she was between him and the weapon.
What was she thinking?
She was the one the killer wanted not him.
“Ah, Eli Lennox, we were just talking about you.” The man shot him a smile. It wasn't pleasant.
“Eli, this is Toby Lane,” Florence said without looking over her shoulder at him. Her weapon never wavered, and although he hated that she had put herself between him and a potential bullet, he had to admire the fact that she would so confidently and selflessly put her life on the line for him.
“Toby, huh? aka the Coffin Killer, I presume,” he said trying to move so that he could get closer to Florence. It probably wasn't his smartest move, but he couldn’t stand the idea of her in danger. So even though she was the cop and he ran a real estate company, he couldn’t not want to protect her.
Without even turning to look at him, Florence seemed to know where he was and where he was going and adjusted her position accordingly. “This doesn’t really have anything to do with you, Eli, this is between me and Toby. I want you to leave, Eli. Go right back out the door and go to work.”
“I don’t think so,” Toby said.
“This is nothing to do with him, Toby,” Florence said again, her tone was calm and controlled, smooth like she knew she was in control and didn't have to yell or argue to get her point across.
“Actually, this is everything to do with him because he’s the one who ruined everything,” Toby growled. “You were mine, you were always mine, and then he comes along, and now you think you belong to him.”
“Florence doesn’t belong to me,” he said, incensed by the notion. “She’s not a piece of property, she’s a person. A person who is free to make her own choices and decisions.”
“Eli, stop talking,” Florence ordered.
Ignoring her, he continued, “And she wasn't yours, she was never yours. You two weren't a couple, you didn't date, you were involved with her mother and used that to assault and try to murder her. You drugged her, you put her in a coffin, if she hadn't woken up and run away you were going to bury her alive.”
“Eli, leave,” Florence hissed.
That wasn't happening.
There was no way he was leaving her alone in here with an armed and dangerous man.
“He. Doesn’t. Leave,” Toby said, over-enunciating each word. “This is what you're choosing over me? You might be the only one who survived, but that doesn’t make you any less mine than the others. I was your first, I'm the one who claimed you. You know that you’ve always been mine, that’s why you’ve been single all these years, and if the only way to make you single again is to take this guy out of the equation, then that’s what I'm doing.”
“Don’t make things worse for yourself, Toby. At the moment, all we have on you is that you broke in here and held a gun on me. We don’t have any proof to tie you to the coffin murders. You shoot someone, and that changes. Eli is going to walk out of here, and you’re going to put your weapon down and your hands behind your head,” Florence said.
“He is all that is standing between you and I being together. He has to die.”
* * * * *
7:04 A.M.
As far as Toby was concerned, there was no other option.
Florence was his, and Eli Lennox was getting in the way.
“Eli, leave,” Florence ordered.
“You move, she dies, Eli,” he sneered. Florence was blocking him from getting a direct shot off at the man without also hitting Florence.
That he wasn't prepared to do.
Yet.
But if she gave him no other option, he wouldn’t discount it because one way or another, he was making her his.
Nineteen long years he’d waited.
When he closed his eyes each night, he could still picture the little blonde girl he’d first met when he’d gone home with her mother. The child had looked like a doll. She had delicate features and porcelain-like skin that had been as soft as it looked. Large blue eyes framed by long dark lashes dominated her face, and her lips had been a light pink and shaped like a heart. Long blonde hair had cascaded down her back in loose waves that shimmered when she walked.
She’d been perfection.
By far the prettiest of all the little girls whose paths had crossed with his, and he’d contemplated keeping the child. What he’d do with her he had no idea, it wasn't like he could take her home to his wife and children, what excuse would he have given for who the child was and where she had come from?
Regardless of the risks of keeping little Florence, and the difficulties in explaining why she was suddenly in their lives, he had definitely considered the possibility. Maybe his uncertainty had made
him slip up and not inject the correct amount of sedatives to knock the little girl out.
If it hadn't been for that mistake, she would probably have died because when push came to shove, he always chose safety over risk.
Toby knew that sounded odd given that he was a serial killer, which had to be the very definition of risky, but in reality, he was a very cautious guy. He checked both ways not once but six times before he crossed the street, he watched what he ate and counted calories every day, covered up in the sun, and waited a full thirty minutes before going in the water after eating. He also made sure that every child was properly cleaned before being deposited in the coffin, and that he wore a head to toe protective covering so he didn't leave any of himself behind.
It was his cautious nature that had allowed him to avoid detection for over two decades.
So why had he now thrown caution to the wind?
What was it about Florence Harris that had gotten under his skin?
Her china doll-like features?
Her sweet nature?
The fact that she’d had to fight for everything she had in life because she’d been handed a raw deal?
Whatever the reason, he couldn’t stay away.
He’d tried.
He had tried with everything that he possessed, reminded himself of the risks, and the consequences of continuing contact, but he just couldn’t stop. When she’d rented an apartment in this building, he’d rented the one across the hall so he could watch her whenever he wanted. As far as his wife knew he traveled a lot for work, and he supposed he did, only she had no idea that selling insurance wasn't what he spent the majority of his day doing.
Now he was standing in her apartment, pushed into claiming her because Eli Lennox had entered her life. No longer was she single, sitting in her apartment alone every night. Now when he tried to daydream about taking her for his own, he kept seeing this man intruding and stealing her away.
“Toby?” Florence’s voice dragged him out of his head. “You want to do the right thing here, I'm sure you do. You’ve been so very careful with everything you’ve done so far, it’s why we could never find you. Why I could never find you, so shooting Eli here and now isn’t the smart thing to do.”
“Don’t talk about me like I'm some helpless victim or something,” Eli growled, trying to move closer, but Florence moved with him, continuing to put herself between the two men.
“You were looking for me?” he asked, he hadn't realized that Florence thought about him at all except when he sent her letters. The idea that she had been as consumed by him as he was by her pleased him.
“Of course. What you did to me changed my life,” Florence said, also ignoring Eli. “I tried to find you, but all I knew was the fake name you’d given my mother. You made sure that we didn't have anything to use to find you. Who are you, Toby? Do you have a wife? Children?”
Toby nodded. “I’ve been married for thirty-two years. My high school girlfriend and I got pregnant when we were sixteen. We married just before our son was born. It was the right thing to do.”
“Yes, it was. That must have been hard, having a child so young, you were practically a child yourself.”
Florence’s soothing tone spurred him on. “It was hard. I was one of eight kids, we were expected to work in my parents’ restaurant from the time we were old enough to bus tables and clean dishes. I went straight from working at my parents’ business and chores at home to having my own home, a wife, and a baby. More work. Diapers, teething, a colicky screaming baby keeping you up all night. Responsibilities, work, a marriage, all I’ve ever done was take care of other people, I never got to just be me, never got to go to college and get the job I wanted because I had a family to support.”
“You never really got to be a child, just run and play with your friends, climb trees, swim in the river, play a team sport, have sleepovers.” From the tone of her voice and the sad, faraway look in her eyes, he wondered if they were talking about him or her.
“You never did either,” he said, taking a step toward her. “You had to fight just to stay alive, you had to take care of yourself because your mother sure as hell wasn't. You had to work two jobs to put yourself through college, and you still work long hours just to pay your bills. I know what that’s like. To just want to take a break, to just lie down, close your eyes, and rest.”
“Like the girls. You put them to sleep so they could forever be peaceful children. They’d never have to grow up, never have to work for anything, they got to be little forever. You gave them the life you wished you’d had.”
He’d never thought of it that way before, but there was a lot of truth to what Florence was saying.
As far back as he could remember, all he had wanted was rest.
Just to sleep in in the morning and not have to be up and at the restaurant to help before school. After school there was no hanging out with friends, no sports practice, it was working at the restaurant, homework, then bed. Weekends were more of the same, schoolwork and work.
Work.
Work.
Work.
All he’d needed was a break.
A break that had never come.
He’d never had a childhood, so he’d gifted those little girls with a childhood that would last forever. No growing old, no responsibility, no work, they got to stay little forever, the best years of their life would never end for them.
But he’d failed Florence.
He hadn't given her eternal peace.
Instead, she had gone on to continue living in poverty, going hungry, no electricity or running water, no one to care for her and look after her.
He hadn't saved her.
Her continued suffering was on him.
That was something he needed to rectify.
“Put the gun down, Toby. You’ve been so careful to make sure that this didn't end with you in prison, you don’t want to do that to your family. You’ve taken care of them, provided for them, made sure that they would never find out the truth about you. Don’t ruin that now.”
His family would never find out the truth.
The cops had nothing to pin on him, and there would be no way for them to connect him to Eli Lennox’s murder.
“No one will know it was me,” he said.
“That’s not true, Toby,” Florence said. “We have something, you left a fingerprint behind when you were here the other morning. Sooner or later, they will connect that fingerprint to you, and when they do everything you’ve worked so hard your whole life to build will fall apart. The best thing you can do for yourself and your family is to turn yourself in, don’t make it worse for your wife and children by spending the rest of your life looking over your shoulder.”
The cops having his fingerprints sealed things in his mind.
He was done.
Finished.
What he wanted was standing right before him, and he was taking it.
* * * * *
7:17 A.M.
He wasn't going to do it.
He wasn't going to put the gun down.
Florence could see it in his eyes.
Toby Lane had just come to the realization that this wasn't going to end the way he had envisioned. He wasn't walking out of here with her in tow. They weren't going to live out whatever fantasy he had been dreaming about. And he certainly wasn't going to be killing the man she loved.
Loved?
She hadn't realized until that moment that she was in love with Eli.
Everything had happened so fast, and she barely believed in falling in love let alone love at first sight, but that was pretty much what had happened. That connection had been forged the second they touched, and it had only grown. It didn't matter that she’d been wary of getting involved, of letting anyone in for fear of being hurt, he had barreled into her life, turned it upside down, and in the process had finally helped her break free of her past.
They had their whole lives ahead of them, a future where she could just be he
r, a normal woman who wasn't ruled by her messed up childhood.
There was no way she was losing that.
She was not letting the serial killer who had nearly taken her life and played such a large part in shaping the person she’d become take anything else away from her.
“Don’t do it, Toby. I can see in your face what you’re planning, and it’s not the way to play this out,” she said.
“He has to die, it’s the only way,” Toby insisted, shifting to try to get a clear shot at Eli.
That wasn't happening.
Eli should have listened to her and left while he’d had the chance, but the stubborn man wasn't going to leave her alone in here with an armed man even if she was the one who was trained to deal with situations just like this.
Florence both loved him for it and was annoyed with him about it.
“Killing him won't change anything,” she said, moving with him to keep herself as a barrier between the gun and Eli. The man was determined to take Eli out, and he wasn't going to put his weapon down, the best she could do was keep his attention on her and then seize an opportunity when it presented itself. “I'm not yours. I was never yours. All I am is someone you tried to kill. There’s no other connection. You're the one who couldn’t let me go, who kept sending me letters, bragging about your kills like they were conquests that I would be proud of you for accomplishing. The only reason I was looking for you was to arrest you, put you in prison where you belong. I didn't want to find you to be with you, I hate you, Toby. I don’t know what kind of relationship between us you’ve built up in your head, but it’s not real. There is nothing between us.”
Toby’s eyes bulged, and his face turned beet red.
Because she’d been a cop a long time, she could read in his expression what he was going to do before he did it.
He was a representation of every killer she’d ever dealt with. He took his issues and painted them onto his victims, killing children because he envied them their childhood and yet also wanted to protect it for them. He wanted her because she was the one who had bested him, over years of stalking, he had built up this idea of her in his head that was never going to match up to reality.
