SAY YOU LOVE ME (Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Book 4)

by Willow Rose

  “Listen,” Matt said after a few minutes of silence that I used to gather myself. My hands were still shaking, and I was beginning to get cold in my wet clothes. I didn’t have anything to change into, though, so there wasn’t much I could do about it. Matt saw me shaking and found a blanket on the back of a chair that he wrapped around me. It helped.

  I turned to look at him. I couldn’t help smiling. His hair was beginning to dry, so it was pointing in all directions. He looked like a wet puppy.

  Matt continued:

  “I know I was the one who backed out and all, that I told you to go be with Chad and your family, but … well, I don’t want that. I have to be completely honest with you and with myself. That’s why I came here now. To tell you that I want to be with you. I love you, and I believe we belong together. I don’t want to give you up, and I’ll fight for you if I have to. Now, if you’d rather be with Chad, and you tell me so, then I’ll respect that, of course, but …”

  I shook my head with a chuckle.

  “What?” he asked. “What’s so funny?”

  “Of all the times … you and Chad both choose to do this in the middle of a hurricane?”

  Matt wrinkled his nose. “Chad? What did he do?”

  I shook my head again. “Nothing. It’s just that … well, to be honest with you, I’m not sure where I’m at right now. I haven’t had a moment of peace to think about this. I think I have to wait before I can give you my answer — before I can tell you what is in our future. Can you live with that?”

  Matt swallowed hard and looked away. He was disappointed. I couldn’t blame him. I took his hand in mine.

  “I love you. I really do,” I said. “With every fiber of my being. I have never loved anyone more than I love you. That’s the truth. But I have to think about my kids too. You know, I do.”

  I rose to my feet and walked away, tears welling up in my eyes, feeling even more confused than ever. I walked into the cafeteria where they had set up coffee pots and sandwiches, then grabbed a couple and devoured them before filling up on the warm coffee.

  For a few minutes, I stood and sipped my cup while thinking about my future, when I spotted Chris and Lauren sitting on a bench, chatting away. In the doorway, a few feet from where they were seated stood Mr. Jenkins, glaring at them.

  Chapter One Hundred One

  “We need to keep an eye on Chris,” I said as I returned to my grandmother’s bed. I had brought two coffees and handed David one of them since Matt had left.

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Mr. Jenkins is here. I haven’t seen his family, so I’m guessing they made it off the island in time. But if he is the Leech, then Chris is in danger.”

  David rose to his feet. He walked with me to the cafeteria, where I let him see for himself. Jenkins was on his phone now, texting. I grabbed my own phone from my pocket and thanked God for waterproof phones. I realized we had a signal there. That was a good sign. We weren’t completely cut off from the world. The Internet even worked on my phone.

  “Well, we can’t let him get to him, then,” David said. “We must keep a close eye on Jenkins. I’ll take the first shift.”

  I left the cafeteria and went back to my grandmother, then laid down on an empty bed next to her. I felt like the room was spinning around me as a million thoughts overwhelmed my poor brain. Yet, I still somehow managed to fall asleep. After about two hours of deep, dreamless sleep, I opened my eyes. The noise from the wind outside had grown stronger and was like a constant howling in the air.

  My grandmother was awake and sitting up.

  “Eileen,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve had better days,” she said and felt her head. “But I guess I’ll be all right. Thanks to you.”

  I chuckled and sat up. Alex came to my bed and crawled up to me, then put his small arms around my neck.

  “It’s scary outside, Mommy.”

  “I know, baby. But in here, we’re fine, remember? This is a safe shelter. We have police here and everything.”

  Alex nodded. “They say the eye will be over us soon. What does that mean?”

  “That means we’re halfway there. The storm is like a circle, right, and we’re in the middle of it now. Listen?”

  “I can’t hear anything,” he said with a sniffle.

  “Exactly. In the eye, everything is completely still. There’s no wind and no rain. But as soon as the eye is gone, it’ll start again.”

  “I hear something now,” Alex said. “What’s that knocking?”

  I took in a deep breath, remembering this from my childhood. “That’s people banging on their pots and pans. It’s an old tradition. Once the eye of the storm is over you, you go out on your porch or stand in your doorway and bang on pots and pans to let your neighbors know you’re alive.”

  Alex gasped lightly. “Wow.”

  “I know. There are still people out there, but by the sound of it, they’re okay.”

  “I wanna go bang on a pot,” Alex said and jumped down.

  I grabbed his arm.

  “Oh, no, you don’t. You stay inside; you hear me? Inside is safe.”

  “Okay.”

  Alex gave me a disappointed look then took off to be with his newfound friend. As he left, I spotted David walking up to me, a serious look on his face.

  “What’s up?” I asked, my heart rate going up as I sensed that something was very wrong.

  “There’s a new live video,” he said and showed me his phone. “He just started it. And it’s coming from inside this shelter.”

  Chapter One Hundred Two

  “He’s live right now,” David said and showed me the screen. “Looks like it’s in the cafeteria.”

  My heart pounded loudly in my chest. If the Leech had started a live-video, that meant he was planning on something happening, something that he wanted to capture on camera, and show to his fans. Could it have to do with what he tried to get Chris to do? Was he waiting for him to fulfill his demands? Had he gotten to him somehow and threatened him to do it anyway? To save Adam?

  No matter what, it couldn’t be good.

  I didn’t think about it twice, but I ran through the commons area toward the cafeteria. I ran into some lady on the way and made my excuses before hurrying on.

  Inside the cafeteria, I stopped, panting and agitated. David came up behind me.

  “Where is he?” I asked. “Where is Jenkins?”

  “He was right here a minute ago when I left the cafeteria,” David said. “He was standing over there, on his phone.”

  I scanned the area and the many people getting coffee and putting sandwiches on plates.

  “Where is Chris?”

  David exhaled. “He was with Lauren over there, but …”

  I rushed to Lauren. “We’re looking for Chris. Do you know where he went?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe he went up to get something to eat?”

  “I don’t see him anywhere. Dang it.”

  “Did he talk to anyone before he left?” I asked.

  She nodded. “There was this guy who came over. He said he wanted to talk to him and asked if he could come with him. They walked down that corridor.”

  I glanced in the direction she pointed, then hurried toward the opening. David looked at the screen, following the live-feed.

  “He’s in a corridor now. He’s filming the brick walls.”

  “Is he saying anything? Is anyone commenting?” I asked.

  “He just said that the video will start in a few minutes and urged his fans to hold on. He also said it’d be worth the wait, that he had something really grand planned.”

  I felt my heart skip a beat. Was he going to shoot inside the shelter? My kids were here. I couldn’t let this happen. I couldn’t let him hurt any more people.

  I felt for my gun, then remembered it had been in the car, in my purse when we were submerged in water. It was probably gone. I realized I was no match for him if he had brought a weapon
to the shelter. I couldn’t stop him by myself.

  I needed help.

  Chapter One Hundred Three

  I asked David to keep an eye out for them, while I hurried back to the media room where I had last seen Detective Foster. But as I opened the doors and walked in, I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t find Deputy Corel either. I walked through the library and into another corridor when I spotted a leg in the doorway to the bathroom.

  Oh, no!

  I ran to the door and pulled it open. On the floor lay Deputy Corel, motionless, his head resting on the tiles, his eyes wide open. A pool of blood surrounded him like a halo. My heart rate went up rapidly as I frantically checked for a pulse, but realized it was in vain. He was gone.

  A patch of blood on his back caught my attention, and I realized his shirt had been ripped. As I looked closer, I could see that something was carved into the skin. It looked like letters, shaping a word:

  GOODNESS

  “Another Fruit of the Spirit,” I mumbled.

  I stared at the dead deputy, wondering why the Leech had carved the word into the man’s body when he hadn’t done that to any of his other victims.

  Because he’s sending you a message. He wants to make sure you know it was him. He knows you’re on his trail.

  Realizing this, I hurried back toward the cafeteria where I found David coming toward me.

  “I haven’t found them yet. I walked both of those corridors, but they were nowhere to be seen. The broadcast is showing just a white wall and a clock counting down. It started at ten minutes, and now there are six left.”

  “Six minutes till his big event, huh? We need to stop him,” I said. “Before it’s too late. I found Deputy Corel dead in the men’s bathroom. He killed him and carved the word Goodness into his skin to make sure we knew this was his work. We need to find Detective Foster and tell him. He’s armed; he can stop him, but I haven’t been able to find him anywhere.”

  “Me either,” David said. “I asked around, and no one seems to know where he is.”

  “I’ll go down the east hallways and look inside all the classrooms if you take the ones on the west side,” I said.

  David nodded, then grabbed my arm. “Be careful, sweetheart.”

  I almost complained about his choice of word, but for the first time, I didn’t mind. If I was completely honest, I actually kind of liked it.

  I sent him half a smile.

  “You too.”

  “Detective? Foster?”

  I walked into a classroom and found a family of five sitting in there, eating their food. The kids were playing with toys on the floor. The parents looked worn out. They had that look in their eyes that told me they had lost everything in this storm, that they might be in safety but feared for what awaited them once they got back home. A house submerged in water?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was looking for Detective Foster; have you seen him around?”

  The mother shook her head. She was too tired even to say a word. I left them and walked down the hallway until I met a man who looked like he had been through Hell and back.

  “I’m looking for Detective Foster,” I said. “Tall slim guy with brown hair. He wears a badge, have you seen him?”

  The man stared at me, his eyes blank with shock. “It came from everywhere. The water was just there all of a sudden. We were doing all right till the water suddenly came up. My poor wife, she crawled up on the kitchen table till it collapsed and she … she drowned on me.”

  I stared at the man, who obviously couldn’t quite figure out what had happened.

  “I keep walking these corridors because I don’t know what else to do,” he said. “I keep thinking she’s back there waiting for me, but she’s not. I can’t seem to be able to sit still.”

  “I am so sorry,” I said.

  The man didn’t say anymore, he just nodded, and then continued walking. My heart broken for him, I ran down the hallway, looking into each and every classroom, yelling Foster’s name, feeling more and more terrified as I went along. I knew the clock was ticking, and I couldn’t really see how I was going to stop Jenkins in time.

  That was when I saw Chris. He was standing by a big wall of artwork made by the school’s children, leaning on his crutches. Seeing him made me breathe in relief.

  “Chris!” I yelled and waved.

  He looked up, then smiled.

  “Are you okay?” I asked as I walked closer to him.

  He nodded. “I’m okay.”

  I breathed, relieved when suddenly I sensed that everything was wrong. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted someone, movement; someone was running down the hallway toward Chris.

  It was Jenkins.

  “Run, Chris, Run!” I shouted, even though I knew the boy couldn’t because of his crutches. I sped up as I saw the man storm toward Chris and leap for him.

  Chapter One Hundred Four

  Chris ducked down as the man jumped him, and seconds later, they were rolling on the floor.

  “Get off him,” I yelled as I ran closer. “Get off him, you sick bastard!”

  Chris managed to get out from beneath Jenkins and tried to get away, but Jenkins grabbed his legs and pulled him back. Chris yelled loudly as he was dragged back, and he received a punch to his face. Chris answered by driving something sharp into his neck. Jenkins stopped in the middle of a movement, blood gushing from his wound. Stunned, Jenkins stumbled backward and fell against the tiles. Chris shuffled backward, crabbing across the ground to get away from Jenkins.

  I stopped in my tracks as I saw the man bleeding on the tiles and Chris, who was panting on the floor. My entire body was trembling as I watched Jenkins fight to breathe his last breaths, the blood spitting out of his throat.

  Chris crawled closer to him, staring at Jenkins, probably making sure that he was actually dead.

  “We should call for help,” I said. I looked at Chris, and our eyes met.

  Chris shook his head. He placed his hands on the floor and pushed himself up. “No. Let’s not do that.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Chris rose to his feet without any help from his crutches and stood in front of me, all five-foot-six-inches. I was suddenly very aware of the fact that he was extremely well trained.

  “Let’s not involve anyone else. This is just between you and me now.”

  He must have noticed my expression changing as the realization washed over me. So much information was running through my brain, bombarding me, all the things I missed, all the signs, all the alarms.

  “Your face. Your disease … Cutis Laxa syndrome.”

  “Is a rare, inherited or acquired connective-tissue disorder in which the skin becomes inelastic and hangs loosely in folds. Patients develop a prematurely aged appearance,” he said. “But it doesn’t require me using crutches, no. That one I added for effect, sympathy, and well, so no one would suspect me. But yes. My disease makes me look like I’m forty, maybe even older with my sagging skin.”

  He watched me and I him. There was no use in pretending anymore. We both knew the truth.

  “The hardest thing when growing up with something like this is the other’s gaze. The children’s mockery, even the adult ones. And the fact that you can’t live a normal childhood or youth. You are automatically and involuntarily thrown into the adults’ world. You miss one of the steps of your life. The one which, normally, is the most beautiful, the one where you’re thoughtless, where you can meet others without being victim to judgment. As a child, I was called, Oldie or Grandpa. Kids feared me. Can you blame them? I looked like an old man at the age of four. They were scared of me, ran away if I tried to play with them. Once I was mistaken for a teacher at the school, or for a kid’s father. I was even kicked off a school bus once because the driver didn’t believe I was a kid. When suffering from Cutis Laxa, you must always justify yourself, at school, at work, everywhere. You have to answer the question: How old are you? Your worst enemy is the mirror. I look twenty-five years older th
an I am. In this society, where everything is based upon appearance and youth, I wanted to be young too. But how can I? I’m locked inside this old body and face. I was only nine when I started having jowls on my face; I was five when I developed the loose, floppy skin on my neck.”

  “But it also made it possible for you to pretend to be an adult,” I said. “To go to bars and order beers and kidnap women, or to liquor stores and kidnap men like Jeff Facer, even though you’re only fifteen in reality.”

  “You shouldn’t have come here, Eva Rae Thomas,” he said. “I mean, I am personally glad you did because you helped me push myself to get bigger than what I could ever have imagined. Do you know that I now have more than ten thousand subscribers to my page, huh? I‘m finally as big as I wanted to be. I am finally being seen. The thing is, when you grow up like this, is that no one actually sees you. You’re always hidden away. I grew up with my grandmother, and she’d keep me away from visitors so they wouldn’t be scared when seeing me. She refused to take me into town because I might scare people. And once you do get to meet someone, sure, they’ll stare at you for a few seconds until they realize it’s impolite, and then they remove their glare and pretend like you’re not there anymore. That’s what most people have done my entire life, pretended like I wasn’t there. The teachers won’t call on me in class because then they’ll have to actually look at me. See, I make them uncomfortable. Looking at me makes everyone uncomfortable, so they choose to ignore me. All my life, I’ve been ignored and overlooked, but not anymore. Now, they see me. Now, I am forcing the world to look at me.”

  “There are other ways of getting attention, you know,” I said.

  “Smile, Eva Rae Thomas,” he said and lifted his phone. I realized he was filming me. “Our live video has just begun, and today, you’re my very special guest of honor.”