by Mia Thompson
“Then I had a date with this girl today, Ginnifer with a G… and I realized, with absolutely no help from Barry,” Aston watched a truck swerve around them. “I’m fucked up too.”
“No shit!” Sapphire motioned to the freeway chaos going on around them.
“Because,” Aston turned to her. “As I sat there on this nice normal date, having lunch with this nice, normal woman I realized, she was boring me to death.”
“Oh my God!” Sapphire covered her eyes as a semi cascaded toward them. “Get to the point already!”
“So, I thought,” Aston said, “all I can hope for in life, is to be lucky enough to find someone who is just as fucked up as I am. Someone who keeps me on my toes as much as I keep her on hers. That’s when I knew what a dumbass I’d been. Because I’d already found her.”
Sapphire stared at him as the semi swerved around the car, barely missing them. “What?”
“Well, someone obviously needs to keep a constant eye on you to make sure you stay out of shit storms. So… let’s be fucked up together.” Aston pointed to the right freeway sign. “I can take you back home if you want, or,” he pointed to the left one, “we go to Vegas.”
“What’s in Vegas?” Sapphire asked confused.
“My question is…” The seriousness burrowed in his stomach. “Will you marry me?”
Sapphire stared at him in shock. “What… what about the duffle bag, the box? Weren’t you leaving?”
“I hope I am.” Aston nodded. “The duffle bag is full of clothes for the honeymoon. So, right or left?”
She looked at him in silence, then stared at the freeway signs forever. In that forever Aston saw their past. He saw a thousand moments of her which led to this single one.
Sapphire, the woman he’d spent nearly a year chasing, finally took her eyes off the signs and gave him a careful smile. “Left.”
Every nerve inside Aston settled and they were replaced by ecstasy. He leaned over and gave her a hard kiss, then pulled the gear in drive.
Because of his parents’ divorce, he’d always thought marriage was death. As he grabbed the hand of the woman he’d happily spend the rest of his life being fucked up with—Aston Ridder realized how good it felt to be wrong.
“If your clothes are in the duffle bag,” Sapphire suddenly said. “Then what’s in the box?”
“You’ll see.”
• • •
She watched him dump the contents of the big box out on the hard sand in the middle of the desert. Aston doused gasoline over the items and Sapphire’s throat parched.
“This is it.” He held out a match book for her. “For the last time, are you done?”
All her stuff from the attic lay in a pile in front of her feet. Her files, tools, articles, trophies.
“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”As far as the court system knew, Shelly McCormick was the Serial Catcher, and should any activities continue, all eyes would go to Sapphire. There was no way to hunt.
“There’re always ways around things.” Aston gave her a look. “And that wasn’t an answer. Are you done?”
Sapphire looked at Aston. Her father’s death brought the death of the need that had possessed her to hunt serial killers. She knew she would wake up tomorrow without the urge to watch the news or read the paper to find her next killer.
She took the match book, and swiped for fire. Sapphire flicked the match onto the pile and watched it all vanish in a ball of orange and black. She gazed as the numbered files melted, and with them, the last of her obsession. They stood there for a few minutes before Aston held his hand out. “Ready, future Mrs. Ridder?”
Sapphire took his hand. “Ready, future Mr. Dubois.”
They drove for miles in silence, windows down and radio on, watching the sun sink deeper into the ground. Then the music broke, and the news came on. The newscaster spoke of a woman, Mary Dunnigan, who’d gone missing a few days ago.
Sapphire looked out at the setting sun as the notion dawned on her.
All she’d focused on lately was the guilt of her doings. She’d forgotten how many lives her captures had saved. What she did may have started from her father’s darkness, but it had turned into something of light. How many women would’ve been dead had it not been for her? More important, how many women, like Mary Dunnigan, needed her help at this moment?
The sun became a mere red sliver before it disappeared and Sapphire closed her eyes. She could almost hear a faint voice calling for help, desperate for someone to find her.
As the newscaster urged people to call the police if they’d seen Mary—short black hair, and blue eyes—she felt his eyes on her. He was waiting for her to react, to choose.
When Sapphire looked at Aston Ridder, her bold thoughts came to rest.
Perhaps she would hunt again, but not today and not tomorrow. After that, who knew what the future held for her and Aston. Whatever it was, it would be something new and unexplored.
Sapphire Dubois smiled at her husband-to-be and turned off the radio.
Epilogue
It was happening again.
She woke up from the soothing dream at the sound of his tires against the gravel outside. She saw the headlights through the crack in the wood he’d placed over her window so no one would see her.
She lay curled in a fetal position on the cold, dirty floor. She had to sleep this way to keep her body warm. She moved slowly, careful not to yank on the chain around her foot too hard. The skin on her ankle was hardened from the vicious cycle of chafing and healing, but it still hurt. Sometimes the throbbing was so bad it woke her up from her dreams, the only reprieve she got from this house.
Tonight the chains hadn’t woken her. Tonight her dream had been so wonderful no pain could take her away.
She heard the engine shut off and knew what would happen next. Yet, she couldn’t help but drag her sore foot toward the crack in the wood. She pressed her hands against the board and her eye to its slim gap.
He’d been gone for a while this time, maybe a week… or more. She wasn’t good with telling time. She knew it was longer than usual because she’d had to ration the dog bowl of water and kibble for the last few days.
The first few times he went, she hadn’t understood the bowls. She’d drank the water too fast and ate the bad tasting kibble in two sittings. Now she was older, and understood she had to save. She didn’t know when he’d be back to refill it.
She shivered from the cold. He kept the house freezing, even in the summer. Sometimes she wondered if it was because he knew how cold the attic got. He never left her any blankets, or new clothes to wear. She’d been in her Princess and the Frog t-shirt and yellow shorts so long they’d turned brownish and grown riddled with holes.
She watched him step out of the truck. When he moved to the back she held her breath though she knew what she would witness.
He pulled out the woman, tied by her arms and ankles, from the covered truck bed and tossed her over his shoulder. Her hair, like all the others, was short and black. This one was awake. Sometimes when they arrived they were asleep, sometimes not; she never knew what made the difference.
He said something in a low voice and the woman tried to wriggle her way out of his grip.
“My name is Mary Dunnigan!” she shouted. “You have the wrong person!” They always said that. They never understood him in the beginning. But soon, just like the others, Mary Dunnigan would play along. After she did, she would die.
He walked inside and slammed the downstairs door so hard it rattled the window behind the wood.
She hurried back to her spot by the nearly empty bowls, knowing he would come soon. He didn’t like it when she moved about—he beat her if he caught her—yet he allowed the chain to be long enough for her to do so.
She heard the woman scream downstairs until the second door closed. He’d put her in the basement. The room was especially for them, just like the attic was especially for her.
His heavy footsteps sounded,
and she held onto her chains as the door opened.
He stood in the doorway, a dark shadow against the downstairs light.
“Good evening, Rosie,” he said.
“Good evening.” Sometimes she responded in the right way, other times the wrong way. It was hard to tell which was which until he got angry.
He threw her the stack of clothes she got to wear for the dinners. “Put them on tomorrow. I want you at your best behavior.”
“Yes,” she replied.
As horrible as the events that would follow would be now that the next one had arrived, she would get to drink soda, instead of dirty water and eat warm food, instead of dog kibbles. She felt guilty for looking forward to the pot roast, knowing its purpose would result in Mary Dunnigan’s death.
He stared at her, and she froze. What did she say or do this time? Was she sitting wrong, breathing wrong? She still had bruises from the last time he got angry.
“Yes, what?” he asked, grinding his teeth.
She panicked, not knowing what he wanted her to call him today. “Yes… sir?”
He stood still, his body tense, his glare on her. He seemed to be deciding between letting it go and punishing her. The tension rested in the attic and the hair on her arms stood. Then, just as quickly as he came, he left and locked the door behind him. She was safe… for tonight.
She waited until his footsteps were off the stairs before she got back up, and walked over to the boarded window. She wanted to see the stars, and the moon. Besides tonight’s dream, it was the only beauty she had to look forward to.
She pushed her eye against the gap and sighed. The sky was gray with clouds, but at least she still had her dream.
Sometimes she dreamed regular dreams, other times she dreamt of things that were to come. She had ever since she was really little. She dreamt of her mother’s death before it happened, and she dreamt of her long, cold nights in the attic before she was put here.
Her special dreams weren’t always of bad things, sometimes they were good.
Tonight, she dreamt that a woman with long dark hair arrived. This woman was different from all the others before her. She was strong and when she looked him in the eye, it wasn’t with fear, but in defiance.
Outside, the gray clouds parted and the faint yellow light shined into the crack and onto her. She watched the big bright moon look down at her, and smiled.
As much as she feared the things that were about to happen downstairs with Mary Dunnigan, she also felt something she hadn’t for as long as she could remember: Hope.
She knew the one with the dark hair and the fearless eyes was out there somewhere, and soon this woman would come to save her from this house of horrors.
It was only a matter of time.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to start by thanking you, dear reader. Whether you just now came along for the ride, or if you’ve been with me since the dawn of Sapphire, hell, even if you only read the books while on the can, I’m eternally grateful that you’ve let my stories into your life.
I’d like to thank the person who again and again sacrifices his own writing time to come rescue me from the deep hole of despair that is Writer’s Hell. I’m, of course, talking about the love of my life/partner in crime/occasional scorpion slayer, Chadley Thompson.
As always, a ginormous thanks to the finest agent in the known Universe—possibly unknown Multiverses—Elizabeth Kracht, who changed my world four years ago and whose life I sporadically, and without warning, use for inspiration.
Many, many, many (preferably said in the voice of Police Academy’s Commandant Lassard) thanks to everyone at Diversion Books for everything, and I do mean everything, they’ve done for both me and Sapphire. A few extra shout-outs to Mary Cummings for all the hard work she has put into the Sapphire series over the years; editor Randall Klein for his tremendous help on this manuscript; Sarah Masterson Hally for always being so helpful; and Lauren Szenina for her meticulous eye.
A BIG thanks to editor Heather Lazare, who jumped into the third book without any knowledge of the predecessors, and rocked it like it was 1999.
Thanks to lawyers Chris Workman and Harry Moore for helping me with the research. With all due respect to John Grisham, I am not him, and the legal aspect of this book would have stunk the place up had it not been for these two men. A special thanks to Chris for answering all my emails so promptly and for giving me a “fictional license” on the things I could not sacrifice in the battle of fact vs. fiction.
I’d like to extend my gratitude to one of my favorite fans: the young, but wise beyond her years, Abby Hogenkamp for reading the first three chapters of Sentencing Sapphire in its early stages, and for her incredibly insightful notes.
Thanks to my family, friends, and in-laws for your continuous support of the books and understanding of the writing process. A special thanks to my parents for spending hours upon hours reading me stories as a child. And to my sister, for being a bookworm and for always letting me steal from her vast library. Without their influences, I might’ve gone with my secondary childhood dream and become a spy… a scenario we all should fear.
Lastly, I’d like to thank anyone I forgot to thank. Rest assure, it’s not due to your unimportance to me, but merely an oversight from the cluttered, chaotic, and senseless top floor, also known as my brain.
More from Mia Thompson
Stalking Sapphire
Sapphire Dubois is keeping a deadly secret.
While the young and obscenely wealthy of Beverly Hills spend their nights with trendy celebs and drugs at the hottest clubs, 22-year-old Sapphire Dubois has a different hobby: she hunts serial killers. Luring, trapping, and anonymously handing over So-Cal's most wanted to the police is a better high than any drug.
But Sapphire's secret may not be so safe, as one of the very people she hunts is watching her every move. Aware of her true identity and her unconventional activities, he's determined to put an end to Sapphire once and for all. Paired up with her involuntary crush Detective Aston Ridder for her own protection, Sapphire now has to rethink her strategy not only to keep Aston in the dark, but to figure out how to capture a killer who already knows she’s coming.
Silencing Sapphire
While setting her sights on a new serial killer, Beverly Hills heiress and vigilante, Sapphire Dubois, fights to cancel the wedding of the season in the sequel to the bestselling New Adult Thriller STALKING SAPPHIRE.
As a new serial killer dubbed the “Stripper Slayer” plagues Los Angeles, Sapphire once again sheds her socialite persona, this time to go undercover as a penniless stripper. Struggling to find the brutal man before he slays again, Sapphire finds that the thin wall separating her double life is cracking. Her family and friends expect her to walk down the aisle with the most eligible bachelor among the Beverly Hills elite; a man she doesn’t want. Meanwhile, the man she does want, handsome Detective Aston Ridder, is making her life hell as he closes in on the Serial Catcher’s trail.
Sapphire scrambles to keep the chaos at bay, unaware that someone else is tracking her as well. A serial killer from her past is back and will stop at nothing to get his vengeance.
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