Watching Their Steps

by Alana Terry

  Jordan cleared his throat and looked a little uncomfortable as he moved back to where he’d been standing. “Sorry. This is . . . kind of an unusual situation for me.”

  I had no doubt about that. He’d been looking for me for a very long time, only to realize that I didn’t remember him. His blue eyes roved over me under the new lighting in a polite but interested way. I tried not to squirm self-consciously.

  “What happened?” he asked, tapping his lip.

  I tucked my lips between my teeth and tried to think of an explanation. “I . . . walked into a . . . door.” Yeah, like he’s gonna believe that . . .

  Jordan frowned and slid a look to my right that fell somewhere between questioning and accusing.

  Marx crossed his arms indignantly. “It wasn’t me.” I had never meant to suggest that it was, but somehow we’d gotten there, and I wished we could un-go there. “I believe I mentioned she was in the hospital earlier this week.”

  Jordan’s face lit with understanding. “From when the killer broke into her apartment.” Technically he hadn’t broken in; he had keys.

  “I’m fine,” I said quickly before Jordan could form the question he’d no doubt opened his mouth to ask. “Could we get started? I’m kind of tired and I don’t really wanna be here all night.”

  He grinned, and it was a full, warm smile with a hint of mischief that revealed dimples in his cheeks. “Staying the night isn’t so bad. I’ve done it a time or two. The chairs are almost comfortable and there’s always burnt coffee and day-old doughnuts to look forward to in the morning. And if it’s too quiet for you, you can always prop open the basement door and listen to the drunk prisoners serenade you with unintelligible ballads.”

  “Temptin’,” Marx grumbled unenthusiastically.

  Jordan nodded down the hall. “I have a room set aside if you two wanna follow me.” He looked at Marx and then back at me before heading down the hallway.

  Marx fell in step beside me as we followed Jordan. “A door, Holly?” he asked quietly. “You do realize that’s code for the man standin’ next to me hit me and I can’t tell you.”

  “I . . .” No, I hadn’t even considered that. I just hadn’t been able to think of anything more creative than a cliché in the moment. “Sorry?” I offered, looking up at him sheepishly.

  He chuckled softly at my pained, apologetic expression. “It’s fine. I couldn’t care less about his opinion of me.”

  “Do you actually care what anyone thinks of you?”

  “A few people, yes.” The look he gave me made me wonder if I was one of those few people.

  I looked around the new environment as we exited the hallway into a large room. We passed a few empty offices and occupied desks. A female deputy was escorting a handcuffed man out of the room as he pleaded, “Come on, Belle, I was just using the cans for target practice.”

  “Beer cans,” the female deputy pointed out matter-of-factly as she dragged him through a doorway into a stairwell. “That you chugged dry before lining them up on the gazebo in town square and shooting them with a handgun.” The door closed, cutting off their voices.

  Jordan pulled open the glass door to a small office, and Marx ushered me through the doorway ahead of him.

  Jordan perched on the edge of the conference table. “Before we get started, there’s probably a few things I should mention. One, this town has less than fifteen hundred people, which means the two of you are not gonna go unnoticed for more than thirty seconds. You’re new, which makes you automatically interesting. Detective, you might be able to slide under the radar for a while because you have a wedding ring, but Holly . . .” He glanced at me. “Most of the guys in this town rarely see a woman they didn’t grow up with. And they haven’t dated a woman their first and second cousins haven’t dated first. I would expect some extra attention.”

  I stiffened. I didn’t want extra attention, especially that kind.

  “What’s the second thing we should know?” Marx asked.

  “We don’t get a lot of crime here—the occasional bar fight or domestic dispute, but never murder. What happened to Holly’s family turned this town upside down. News travels fast in a small town. If a single person figures out who she is, it’ll be all over town within the hour,” he explained. “People will bombard her with questions, try to take her picture. The local newspaper will probably try to interview her for an article. People will follow her around hoping for a crumb of information they can gossip about.”

  Anxiety crawled through me. I had no desire to be a small-town celebrity with my personal life in the spotlight. “Marx,” I said worriedly as I looked up at him.

  “What can we do to prevent that?” Marx asked.

  “It’s the natural order of things in a small town. You and I can try to deflect attention from her, but that’s the best we can do. If all else fails, we can keep her here at the department.”

  I fidgeted uneasily. There had to be a third option. I didn’t want to hide in this building the entire time I was here—that would defeat the purpose of coming—but I also didn’t want to become a headline in the local newspaper.

  Marx looked at me. “We can still leave, Holly. I’ll take you back right now if you want.” I knew he would. Even as tired as he must be after that long drive, he would slide right back behind the wheel and take me home if I asked him to.

  But we had come here for answers and we needed them.

  I slid my hands into the back pockets of my jeans and puffed out a breath of courage. “I can do this.”

  “Okay.” He pulled a chair away from the table and gestured for me to take a seat.

  I gave him a strange look. “Is this another one of your perplexing male Southernisms? Because I can pull out my own chair. It has wheels.”

  Jordan choked off a laugh as he took a seat at the far end of the table beside a pile of manila folders, some of them so thick they looked ready to burst.

  Marx heaved an exaggerated breath. “You remember our conversation about the doors?”

  “That I’m incapable of opening my own?”

  “That is not what I said.”

  I pulled out a second chair, patted the back of it and declared, “This one’s for you.” I walked around him and took the chair he offered, just to be nice.

  He grumbled something about stubborn women under his breath and then sat down in the chair I had pulled out for him. He interlocked his fingers on the table and gave me a small, disapproving frown.

  I smirked.

  “I apologize for the hard copy files. I realize it’s a bit outdated and probably a pain, but like I said, we don’t have a lot of crime around here.” Jordan slid an overstuffed manila folder across the table to Marx. “So we can’t really justify upgrading.”

  Marx slapped a hand on it before it could slide off the end of the table. There was a file label on the edge of it that read, “Cross,” and a red stamp across the front that boldly stated, “HOMICIDE.”

  “I faxed you the bare bones of the case already, but this is a bit more in depth. It includes all evidence as well as the autopsy results for . . . each member of the family.” He shot me a troubled glance before adding, “There are also crime scene photos. I know I sent you a few close-ups of those already, but these lay out the entire scene.”

  Marx tilted the folder at an angle so I couldn’t see the contents as he flipped through the pages. His thoughts and feelings vanished from his face. Yep, it was bad.

  Jordan pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. I tried to appear completely calm as he covered the distance between us in three short strides. “I thought we might start you off with something a bit lighter,” he began. He set a thin folder on the table and slid it toward me with two fingers. “Pictures of the family, the house. Maybe something will jog your memory.”

  I shifted uncomfortably at his nearness, and took the folder. “I’ll . . . take a look,” I said, my throat tight.

  He lingered for a beat too long, and I didn’
t realize I was holding my breath as I waited for him to leave until my lungs started to burn. Marx cleared his throat, and Jordan looked over my head at him. There was a moment of silence as they stared at each other.

  “Let me know if you have any questions,” Jordan said in a gentle voice that didn’t match the irritated expression on his face. He walked back to his chair. I released the breath I’d been holding and sucked in another, trying to find my balance.

  Jordan was pretty for a man, but much like paintings, I appreciated him more from a distance. I stole a quick glance as he sat down, and then turned my attention back to the matter at hand.

  I opened my folder and looked at the picture of a house: two stories with evening-blue siding, a wraparound porch, and a barn-red door. The sight of it filled my mind with echoes of laughter and joy, swiftly followed by cries of fear and shadows of terrifying memories that I couldn’t quite grasp.

  Home.

  I moved the picture to the back of the stack and stared at the portrait of a family. I recognized my mother instantly from the other picture I’d seen. There was a man with his arm around her and then two children. I blinked a few times to be certain I wasn’t imagining things.

  I sat in front of our mother, but the girl sitting next to me with little white flowers in her hair and a frilly dress was a mirror image of me, except . . . she looked serene and sweet, while I looked like I might shave someone’s eyebrow off while they slept.

  “Gin was my twin.” I lifted my eyes to Jordan.

  “Yeah. She was the innocent, bubbly one. You were . . . kind of a tornado,” he said with a crooked smile.

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Marx mumbled with amusement under his breath as he continued reading through the file.

  I knew it was probably a silly question where twins were concerned, but I wanted to know. “Who was born first?”

  “You were. Gin was, I guess you could say, a bit reluctant to come into this world. She was a little . . . slow,” he said carefully, as if trying not to offend me. “Oxygen deprivation during birth.”

  The memory slipped through me as if it had always been there:

  We sat side by side on the grass in the backyard. Gin wore a white dress with bright red strawberries embroidered all over it—so delicate—while I looked like I’d been rolling around in the dirt and grass in my striped leggings.

  Gin lifted up the hem of her dress and smiled. “I feel pretty today.”

  “You’re pretty every day, Gin-Gin,” I told her.

  She leaned forward as if to share a secret and whispered, “It’s because I look like Holly.”

  “No, it’s because you look like Gin,” I said, poking the tip of her nose for emphasis. She broke into quiet giggles.

  “Can I play catch with you today?” she asked, and her brown eyes were so wide with hope and excitement. Gin couldn’t catch a ball if her life depended on it, but I couldn’t shatter that hope.

  “Not in that dress. Mom wouldn’t be happy if you got grass stains on it.”

  “I’ll wear my green one. You can’t see the grass,” she whispered.

  I smirked. Mom might not be able to see the grass, but Gin would tell her without hesitation that there were invisible grass stains on her dress, but since they were invisible it was okay.

  “Okay. But don’t tell Mom,” I warned her.

  She bounded to her feet in excitement. “I won’t. I promise. Unless she asks.” She dashed up the steps and into the house to change.

  “Oh Gin,” I murmured despairingly as I looked at her sweet smile. Why would anybody ever hurt her? She was as innocent as innocent could be. “What did he do to her?” I forced myself to ask. I looked up when no one spoke. Marx and Jordan exchanged an uncertain glance, and it irritated me. “I’m not a child,” I reminded them.

  “We know you’re not a child, Holly,” Marx said softly. “But you don’t need to know all the details.”

  “You of all people know it’s too late to shield me from the harsh realities of the world. I can handle the details.’’

  Marx pinched his lips together unhappily. “That doesn’t mean you should have to.”

  “Jordan,” I said, looking at him expectantly.

  His eyes held mine. He looked as reluctant as Marx to share the details with me. But then his gaze wavered, falling to the table, and he said, almost too softly for me to hear, “Her, uh . . . her throat was cut.’’

  The breath rushed out of me, and I dropped my eyes back to the picture. Little Gin with her strawberry dress and gentle nature, my baby sister . . . my imagination failed me when it came to her death, and for that I was grateful.

  “Did he . . .”—the words clung to my throat as I tried to push them out—”hurt her in any other way?” If he’d hurt my mother in such a way that Marx refused to describe it to me, what had he done to the rest of my family?

  “No,” Jordan said. “She didn’t suffer. Evidence suggests he dragged her out of bed at the last minute and took her into the master bedroom. She was still in her nightgown, and it didn’t look like she was bound at all, so she probably slept through most of it.”

  That was a small comfort.

  I drew in a breath of courage. “Okay, what about the rest of my family?”

  Jordan cleared his throat, and I realized for the first time that this must be difficult for him too. He’d known my family. “Your father was found bound to a chair, beaten, with his throat cut.”

  I hadn’t been able to see my father that night, but I had assumed he was bound in some way. I should’ve taken the time to untie him, and maybe then he would’ve had a fighting chance. Maybe he could’ve saved Gin . . .

  I had left both of them there unable to defend themselves because I’d been scared. That knowledge made my heart ache.

  “Your mother . . .” Jordan kept his eyes on the table as he spoke. “She was . . .”

  “Jordan,” Marx said sharply.

  Jordan glared across the table at him. He didn’t bow down to Marx’s experience or authority; it only seemed to strengthen his resolve. “She has a right to know, whether either of us wanna tell her or not.” He shifted his attention to me and asked with some difficulty, “Have you ever heard of . . . death by a thousand cuts?”

  I stared at him blankly for a moment, and then my hand went to the cut on my forearm as the reality of what he was saying finally sank in. The killer had taken that terrifying knife and done this to my mother over and over again until she eventually died.

  He’d . . . tortured her to death.

  God, why?

  The thought turned my stomach. I needed some fresh air. I pushed away from the table and ran out of the room with the men’s protests echoing in my ears.

  I weaved through the office, trying to ignore the stares of the deputies seated at the desks, and found my way back to the front door. My shaking fingers fumbled with the lock. I flung the door open and stepped out onto the dimly lit sidewalk. I took in a few gulps of refreshing cold night air.

  Marx pushed the door open a second later and stepped outside with me. “You shouldn’t be out here, Holly. It isn’t safe.”

  “I know,” I said. I leaned back against the side of the building and shoved my hands into my jacket pockets to keep warm. I stared at the stretch of darkness ahead that was probably a field. “I just need some air.”

  Marx sighed. “Just for a minute and then we’re goin’ back in.”

  I tipped my head back and gazed up at the night sky. It was like glittering black velvet; there was no orange city haze to mute the glow of the stars. It was amazing. If ever there was a moment I questioned God’s existence, this was proof enough that He existed.

  “About your family . . . “ Marx began.

  “I like the sky better here,” I interrupted. “It’s so much clearer. It smells different out here too. Like . . . grass and hay.”

  “And cows,” he added dryly.

  “Don’t like cows?’’ I asked.

 
; “I like my cows medium rare and smothered in onions.”

  I smiled. “I like mine with a mountain of French Fries and another mountain of ketchup. Really, the steak is just there for decoration.”

  He laughed. “So you just want the fries?”

  “Yep. Lots and lots of fries. And maybe a chocolate milk shake.”

  He opened his mouth to say something else, but his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and frowned at the caller ID. “Holly, would you mind givin’ me a minute? I need to take this in private.”

  I peered at the caller ID curiously: Sully. That was the man he’d called after I told him about my memories. He’d asked him to look into a few things, which probably meant he was one of those computer wizards.

  “Um . . .” I didn’t really want to go back inside, but he wouldn’t step inside and leave me out here alone. “Sure.” He answered the call as I retreated into the building.

  “Sully,” he said by way of greeting. “What do you mean hacked? I don’t . . .” He trailed off as he listened. “What files did he access?” Another beat of silence as he listened. “Just hers?” He closed his eyes. “Is there a way to trace it back to him?” He listened and then swore under his breath.

  Chapter 34

  MARX HUNG UP AND LOOKED as though he was ready to throw his phone into the weeds. He squeezed it in his hand and grumbled under his breath.

  “Everything okay?”

  I jumped at the sudden voice behind me, and my concern about Marx’s phone call gave way to irritation. People needed to stop doing that. I turned and glared at the person who had spoken.

  Jordan.

  A small, apologetic smile played across his lips. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms as he looked past me at Marx on the patio.

  I followed his gaze. “Yeah, everything’s fine. It’s just been an intense couple of months.” I knew this case was wearing on Marx, and the complications of my past were only adding to the crushing weight of it.

  “Have you two known each other long?”

  I tilted my head in thought as I tried to mentally calculate the exact number of weeks we’d known each other. It felt a lot longer than it had actually been. “About two months, I guess. He was assigned my case.” I wondered if he ever regretted it; I couldn’t blame him if he did.