“You’re avoiding the question,” she said. “And you should know I’m very good at interrogating people. If you don’t tell me, I may have to step-up my techniques.”
“Okay,” I conceded. “His name is John Zimmer. He’s an English professor.”
There was something that seemed to move under her skin. I had always found the conspiracy of lizard people—lizard-like aliens that can make themselves appear to be human in order to take power in politics—amusing, but the primal anger and viciousness I saw in her face was something I had only seen in animals. I blinked and she was back to smiling.
“I’m guessing we’re talking about Tuskmirth College?” she asked. “Go Bulldogs, right? That’s your mascot? Bulldogs?”
I nodded. “Yeah. John is my crush.”
She took a sip of her drink. “Does he like you the same way?”
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t think so. I guess not. I know he likes me as a student. He told me he considered me to be one of his most talented.”
She skimmed her finger over her lips as if she were applying lipstick or remembering a kiss. “That wouldn’t be a problem if he didn’t have so many students.”
“It’s not like I can get rid of them,” I said. She smirked.
“Maybe,” she said. “And maybe if you really, really want something, you get creative.”
She kept popping into my life after that, reminding me that if I truly wanted something, I would do anything to get it. The last time I saw her was after I helped kill Victoria. She seemed to know that I had gotten rid of her and she was pleased. When I mentioned to her that I thought John was interested in this medical examiner, Mira Solano, she told me that I might have to take more drastic measures, but she would also help me “handle the situation.” She said I might have to prove my love for John by dealing with her and test his love for me as well.
I never told her that I had committed murder, but everything about her screamed murder. It was under her skin like that reptilian anger I had seen before. It was both frightening and invigorating. In her, I found a whole new idol. I wanted John’s love, but I wanted her approval.
But, now, I feel everything crashing down. My only option left is to take John, run, and hope that he eventually sees that everything I did was an act of love. If love is the most powerful force in the world, then every single person on Earth could try to track us down and still fail to hurt us.
If he doesn’t love me in return, then there’s nothing left for me here. I will have failed him and failed her as well. I won’t be able to handle that.
Chapter Eleven
Mira
Anna had sent a manifesto to several news channels and all of them have posted the whole thing on their websites. I’ve pored over them, but John hasn’t read a single word.
“You’re not even curious?” I ask as I scratch inside my arm cast with a pen.
“Detective Stolz just released a statement saying that you’re no longer being accused of murder and you’re hung up about the ramblings of a serial murderer?” he asks. “I mean, come on…what could she possibly say that would excuse her for what she has done?”
I close the laptop and walk over to him, wrapping my left arm around him. He runs his fingers down my hair.
“I just thought that reading what she has to say could make you understand that it’s not your fault,” I say. “She was crazy. And it sounds like she thinks some woman influenced her into killing those people. Do you think there could be a third person involved?”
“No,” he says. “You saw how crazy Anna was. It was all her. She was insane all on her own.”
“Some kinds of insanity are easy to influence,” I say. “I wonder why she never said who it was. She never had a problem naming the victims or Alex. Maybe she wanted to protect this woman. She seemed very fond of her.”
John steps away from me. “Can’t we just let this go? Why do we need to keep going down this road? The two murderers in this case are dead. There’s no room for a third one.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re right. I guess my mind is just so wrapped up in this case that it’s hard to step out of it. It’s changed so much in my life.”
He steps back toward me, embracing me, his face nuzzling into the curve of my neck. As his lips touch against my skin, I shiver. This love should feel new and fragile, but it curls around us so naturally that I can’t imagine my life without it.
I pull away from him, a thought chasing itself around my head.
“You get creative,” I mutter.
“What?” John asks.
“That’s what Anna said the woman told her. You get creative,” I say. “I’ve heard that before.”
“From who?”
I tilt my head. “I can’t remember.”
“Well, I’m sure plenty of people have said it,” he says. “You wanted to go to your parents’ house, remember? You haven’t seen your brother since he got out of the hospital. We should get going.”
I nod. “I just need to shower.”
“I thought you already showered.”
“We’re not going to have this argument this early in our relationship,” I say, giving him a quick kiss. “I’ll be quick.”
I strip out of my clothes as quickly as I can and wrap my arm in plastic to protect my cast. Once in the shower, I try to wash everything away—the brutal deaths, the grief, Anna’s manifesto—but no matter how hard I scrub, I feel like I’m a few centimeters away from grabbing something important, something that I need to know.
I step out of the shower and dry myself. I redress in the clothes I had been wearing since I haven’t had time to return to my apartment—or, if I’m honest with myself, I haven’t wanted to be too far away from John considering we’d both been kidnapped by a sociopath.
As I open the bathroom door, I hear a woman’s voice.
“You haven’t figured it out, have you?” she asks. “I swear, I thought maybe you had recognized me the moment we first talked in front of your office and you were just pretending to not know me, but you really have no idea, do you?”
“I’m sorry,” John says. “I meet a lot of people. I don’t remember where I’ve met you. I’m truly sorry.”
“How could you not?” she asks, her words cutting through the air. “How could you forget me that easily? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry,” John repeats.
Her voice is familiar. If I could strip away the intense anger in her tone, I’m sure I could figure out who she is. I carefully walk toward them, keeping close to the wall so she won’t be able to see me.
I stop right before I reach the dining room, where they’re talking. I want to peek around the corner, but if she’s facing toward me, she’ll see me.
“Stop apologizing. It’s too late to tell me you’re sorry,” she says. “You have no idea, and this is so, so sweet for me. I loved every second of watching you suffer. You, so upset about your students dying off, one by one, and sweating it out while everyone wondered, could he be the murderer? Could he have killed those sweet, sweet students? And you know what’s amazing? I can kill you right here and now and say that you were behind it all. That you and Anna were in on it together from the start. I’ll say that you told me you were jealous of your students. You didn’t want them to do better than you as a writer, so you killed them off. The media will love it. They’ll talk about it for weeks. It’s only a small leap for them to believe that you weren’t forced to let go of Anna—you chose to get rid of her too.”
I need a weapon. And I need to catch this confession on tape because it could be the only thing that guarantees this woman goes to prison.
“At the very least, you could tell me why you’re so angry with me,” John says, his voice strained with grief.
I take a few steps back and pick up a round paperweight with a feather inside. It feels like it weighs a little less than a pound, but it’s better than nothing. I only hope that I can use it just as well with my l
eft hand as I would normally be able to with my right hand. I move back to where I was standing before.
“Your brothers Jackson and Noah are already dead,” she replies. She snorts as if she’s repressing a laugh.
“Maggie Thompson,” he sucks in a breath. “I should have recognized your eyes.”
Maggie Thompson. He told me about her…she’s from his childhood. His foster sister—the one he watched being tortured by his foster siblings.
“You never would have,” she says. “Because you wouldn’t look me in the eye after that night. Why would you? You got what you wanted.”
I get out my phone and start a video recording. It won’t catch anything interesting on the screen, but it will pick up their voices.
“I was young and stupid, Maggie,” he says. “And I have blamed myself every single day for not saving you—”
“Stop,” she says. “Don’t give me your pity story about how you’ve been suffering. You hadn’t suffered at all until I found you again and pushed one of your students into killing your favorites. And still, it’s nothing compared to what happened to me.”
“Your grudge is with me, Jackson, and Noah,” he says. “You should have kept it that way. There was no reason to involve anyone else. Those were innocent lives you helped take.”
“But, see, I’ve been hearing all about you from Anna and I knew this was the easiest way to hurt you. Apparently, after you abandoned me, your heart grew and it became a huge target. Forgive me if I can’t help but see a target and shoot.”
I set my phone—still recording—on the floor. There’s a note of finality in her final word. I have to react.
I sprint into the room, the paper weight raised over my head. I nearly freeze when I see who it is, but the paperweight is already leaving my hand. It slams against her jaw and she stumbles backward. Her gun falls, skittering against the floor. John dives for it. He grasps it and spins over to point it at her.
She gets up onto her knees, staring at the barrel of the gun. Still watching it, she gets back onto her feet.
“Go ahead,” she says. “You might as well. You already killed me that night. You might as well pull the trigger and take the blame this time.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.
“Do it,” she spits back. “You’ve been a fucking coward this whole time, so for once in your life, grow a pair and pull the trigger.”
“No,” he says, lowering the gun a few inches. She launches herself at him. He sets the gun on the ground and slides it away from him as she pins him to the floor. I run to the gun as she tries to wrap her hands around his neck. He might not be willing to kill her in self-defense, but I’ll do what I have to in order to protect him.
But, instead of grabbing the gun, I find myself picking up the paperweight. As I turn back to the two of them, she has managed to get her hands around his neck and he doesn’t even seem to be trying to fight back.
Be creative.
I crack the paperweight against the back of her head. There is half a second where her fingers loosen around John’s neck and her body sways. Then she falls forward onto John, her body limp. John gasps for air as he grabs her wrist, checking her pulse.
“She’s alive,” he breathes.
I grab her around the waist with my left arm and pull her off him. Detective Stolz—formerly known as Maggie Thompson—lies still on the floor, another victim of obsession.
Today is the one year anniversary since Margaret Stolz was arrested. She was charged with accessory before the fact, attempted murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and first-degree murder of Jackson Montgomery and Noah Wallace. Against my protests, John offered to be a character witness to defend Stolz. He hoped to have her sentence shortened once the jury understood some of the mitigating circumstances, but she was found guilty of all her charges and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The police station quickly condemned and distanced themselves from her, but I feel like there’s still a lingering distrust toward them.
Tuskmirth College built a monument to remember the lives of the students they lost. There’s a dogwood representing each of the students who died: Victoria Glassman, Everett Pine, Iris Knight, Eliza Brandt, and Kiona Hill. There was some debate on whether Alex should be included—considering he was also murdered—but the community decided against it. In the center of the trees is a decorative marble lantern with each of their names carved around the top of it.
John and I stand in the crowd of people who have come to honor their lives. The school has set up photographs of each, but mostly the event was organized by students and professors. It’s cold, but nobody seems to notice.
“I feel like everyone is staring at us,” I whisper to John. He wraps his arm around my waist.
“They’re probably wondering how someone like me got someone like you,” he whispers back.
“Should I tell them that I got you drunk and seduced you?” I tease.
He raises an eyebrow. “Is that how you remember it?” he asks. “I remember very clearly trying to seduce you.”
“Maybe I got you to think that’s what you were doing,” I say. “But I did all the heavy lifting.”
“I’m fairly certain that I did a lot more—Dr. Pierce! How are you doing?” John asks as Dr. Cameron Pierce—Victoria Glassman’s biological father—walks up to us.
He forces a smile. “I’m better. What have you two been up to? Found any more cases to investigate?”
“No, we’re done with that,” I say. “We’re actually co-authoring a book right now.”
“It was the editor of Current Times magazine who came up with the idea after he enjoyed all of Mira’s articles about working as a forensic scientist,” John says.
“I’ve read them all,” Dr. Pierce says. He nods at me. “When you wrote about the Stolz case…thank you for not mentioning that I was Victoria’s real father. I’m sure it would have created more interest in your story, so it was truly good of you to not mention it.”
I shrug. “It’s not my secret to tell. But it probably would be best if you tell someone, eventually. You don’t want that secret to eat you up.”
“I told my wife,” he says. “A couple weeks after Victoria’s death. She…well, she’s dealing with it.”
“Macmillan is coming over,” John whispers to me. He smiles at Dr. Pierce. “It’s great that you’re doing better, Cameron.”
They shake hands before Cameron continues walking to his daughter’s dogwood tree. Detective Macmillan steps up to the two of us.
“Hello, Mira. Dr. Zimmer,” he says. “How are you two doing?”
“Great,” I say. “Everything is good.”
He nods. “I guess so. It’s crazy, right? A whole year has passed.”
“It must have seemed especially slow to you,” I say. “I heard the FBI interrogated you for awhile.”
He shrugs. “Interrogate might be a bit strong of a word, but they made certain that I didn’t know anything about what Stolz was doing.”
“Have you visited her at all?”
He shakes his head. “I knew her and liked her as a colleague, but we were never close on a personal level. Maybe if we had gotten beers together or something, I could have seen what her real personality was like, but…we can’t change the past. We just have to accept it and hope that the future is better. I’m fairly certain that my current partner isn’t a homicidal maniac, but at least this time, I’ve gotten a beer with her and her only weird trait is that she enjoys watching tennis.”
His phone’s sudden high-pitched jingle makes all of us flinch.
“Sorry,” he says. “I need to answer this.”
As he walks away, John kisses my temple. We walk up to the memorial. For some inexplicable reason, one of the flowers on Victoria’s dogwood tree is still clinging onto one of the branches. John and I both watch it until the wind snaps it off the branch and it gets carried out of sight.
In the spring, new flowers will grow
back. I don’t believe everything happens for a good reason—I’ve seen too many deceased children to believe that—but as I touch the peach pearl in my engagement ring and think of everything that happened a year ago, I know that we must allow new growth and not cling to what drains us or else it could destroy us.
And this life is too good to be destroyed.
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Charlotte Raine is a bestselling romantic suspense author. She lives near Vail, Colorado with her cat Jackson. If she isn’t writing her next novel she is skiing, meditating, gardening or chatting up the locals at her favorite coffee shops. If you are ever in the high country of Colorado look for her at Yeti’s Grind or Loaded Joe’s.
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A Trinity of Death (Romantic Suspense)
Do You Want To Play (Prequel)
Voice of the Spirit
Violence of the Father
Vengeance of the Son
Titanium Blood Series (Paranormal Romance)
Blood Family
Blood Run
Blood Honor
Blood Bound
Blood Oath
Blood Rite
Grace Ellery Series
Teacher Beware - FREE
Disturbed Mind
Grant & Daniels Series
Midnight Sun
Devil’s Dawn
Blood Moon
Complete Series Box Set
The Gun Runner - Short Story Series
Major Threat
Trigger Point
Particles of Obsession (A Shadow of Death Romantic Suspense Book 2) Page 13
