Winter’s End: Winter Black Series: Book Nine

by Stone, Mary

  If it were later in the day, she’d curl up with a hot chocolate and be in her pajamas. She made a mental note to do that later. She wondered if she would be able to talk Noah into joining her.

  With Justin safely put away, safe for him as well as for others, she could finally think about other things. Yet, it was Justin who kept creeping into her thoughts. Justin wouldn’t let her concentrate even now for more than a moment on anything else. She took another sip of tea.

  The evidence against him was overwhelming. The video he’d sent her was condemning enough, there was no way out for him but a lengthy sentence. It should have bothered her more than it did, and she wondered for a long time if she had been an agent for so long that she couldn’t be a sister anymore, or a lover for Noah, or a…a person. Was she an agent and no longer capable of being anything more?

  Justin’s attitude toward her, the way he’d behaved when she saw him was disturbing. How much of that was acting? How much of that was really the way his mind was broken, and how much was just a ploy to get away with murder? She didn’t want to think that of him, but even without the theatrics, the fact was…the man she’d talked to wasn’t her brother.

  But if not him, then who?

  Could you break someone so thoroughly that they became a monster? Whatever she’d been talking to was not her brother. He was a twisted version of him, a version created by Kilroy.

  Winter stared at the Christmas tree until everything blurred into a multicolored kaleidoscope of flickering lights. She was mourning Justin again, as though he’d died rather than having been taken away to jail.

  A knock on the door interrupted her reverie. Glad to have the break from sitting alone with her thoughts, she went to answer it, delighted to find Autumn waiting outside.

  “Hi!” She stood aside and let her friend enter. “I just had the pot on, want some tea?”

  “Yeah.” Autumn nodded, already shrugging out of her coat. “I would like that very much, thank you.” Autumn set a leather bag down on the couch and followed Winter to the kitchen, taking down a cup while Winter turned the heat on under the kettle. “I mostly stopped by to say hello and see how you are doing.”

  Winter leaned against the counter and took a sip of her own rapidly cooling tea while trying to figure out how to answer that. “I’m doing…okay. I saw Justin the other day.”

  “I heard.” Autumn chose a tea bag and dropped it into her cup. The water was already warm, so the kettle began whistling almost immediately.

  “I told Noah about being in a collapsing church.”

  Autumn shuddered at the memory, nearly causing the scalding liquid to miss the cup as she poured. “What did he say to that?”

  “That I wasn’t allowed to go into basements of falling buildings anymore.”

  Autumn laughed. “Good advice.”

  They carried their tea to the living room and Winter pointed to the satchel. “What’s this?”

  Autumn lifted the tooled leather and showed it to her. “My brand-new briefcase. I saw this beauty on sale yesterday and fell in love with it.” She handed the satchel to Winter, who looked at the bag appreciatively. She didn’t open the flap; the contents were none of her business.

  “I heard about your visit with Justin,” Autumn said, opening the bag. “That’s another reason I’m here.” She pulled out a report folder and showed Winter the front. The name on the label read “Justin Black.” “I’ve been assigned to do his assessment.”

  “You?”

  Autumn nodded. “Will that be a problem for you?”

  “Me?” Winter looked surprised at the question. “No. I can’t think of anyone I would trust more.”

  “Thank you.” Autumn took a breath and looked uncertain, uncomfortable. “Can I ask…how it went with Justin?”

  Winter sighed and looked to the flashing lights of the tree. “Rough. There was a lot of rage and bitterness at first. Well, at first, he seemed happy to see me, then he became bitter and angry. Then…I don’t know, he acted like he had a great migraine, and suddenly, he’s four years old again and screaming for Raff.”

  “‘Raff?’” Autumn asked, eyebrows raising.

  “That was the stuffed giraffe he had as a boy, dragged it with him everywhere. He was acting like a frightened little boy and was telling me how mean Kilroy was to him and all the bad things Kilroy had done to him. It was creepy as hell.” Winter couldn’t repress a shudder that ran through her. The hair on her arms stood upright at the memory.

  “Have you ever heard the term D.I.D.?” Autumn asked her.

  “Did?”

  “Dissociative Identity Disorder. It used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. It’s where the victim creates new personalities to ‘share the burden’ as it were. If it’s not the victim getting beaten, then it’s someone else. This other identity can take the pain and humiliation so the victim doesn’t have to.”

  Winter thought about this a moment. “How does that make the pain any less?”

  “It doesn’t, not really. But it helps the victim to compartmentalize the experience. The personality that needs to exist to take the abuse, the one that needs to exist to overcome that pain and still be able to perform at school or in public, what have you. D.I.D. is a response to severe and continuous abuse at a young age. It’s a coping mechanism.”

  “That’s why he killed those people?”

  “No.” Autumn shook her head. “Motive is something I can’t assess until I talk to him. The problem with D.I.D. is that women who have it can often hide it successfully, even from themselves. They become victims again, in abusive marriages, unable to hold down jobs because sometimes one personality doesn’t know how to do the job they’ve done for years. Men with D.I.D. are usually violent, passive aggressive. They’re easy to anger. The next moment, they’re calm and don’t understand why people are afraid of them.”

  “So, people with D.I.D. lose time? Like blackouts?”

  “Not always, no. They retain memories, or think they do, so that there is no gap in their day.”

  “Then is…does Justin have D.I.D.?” Winter wasn’t sure which answer she wanted to hear.

  “I don’t know. I have an interview set up with him tomorrow. I’ll have a better idea then. Until then, I was hoping you could tell me what you talked about and how he reacted.” She opened the folder and turned to a blank page and produced a pen. “You said he was calling for his stuffed toy. What was the name?”

  “Raff,” Winter said. “He couldn’t say ‘giraffe’ at that age, and Raff was as close as he could get. It was his constant companion. I remember that mother used to despair at how dirty that thing got, but he wouldn’t let it go long enough to put it in the washer.”

  Autumn made a note and Winter saw the compassion there, but Autumn was a professional, and a good one. Along with compassion, there was determination. Autumn would do her job and do it well. “Tell me what you remember about Justin from before the night your parents were killed.”

  Winter did a double take. Autumn’s request was almost word for word of what Noah had asked her the other night. “I…ah…I remember he was mischievous. He was always getting into things, always leaving little sticky fingerprints on everything. He liked to take things apart but didn’t have much interest in putting them back together again.” Winter took another sip. She shrugged. “I don’t know. He was only six. I sometimes think that he was taken before he had been there long enough for me to get to know him.”

  Autumn made another note. Winter stared at the pad of paper in Autumn’s hands and wondered what she was writing down. “There’s no conflict of interest like there was for Noah?” she asked, frowning.

  “No.” Autumn finished the note she was writing and looked up. “No, I’ve been cleared by the judge and by Justin’s lawyer.”

  “And by Aiden?” Winter asked over her cup. She could swear Autumn was blushing.

  “Aiden? What about him?”

  Winter hid her smile in taking another drink. She
’d hit a sensitive spot. “Just asking if the Bureau had a problem with you taking on this case.”

  “No,” Autumn answered a little too quickly. “No, he didn’t have a problem with me.”

  “He?” Winter asked.

  Autumn put the pad away and lay the folder on the coffee table. “All right, I’ve been thinking lately that—”

  “He’s a good man, Autumn.”

  Autumn bit her lower lip and grinned. “Yeah. He is.”

  “Cute too.” Winter couldn’t resist digging in a little.

  “Yeah, I suppose he is. I hadn’t noticed.” She pressed her lips together, but the blush gave away her feelings. “It’s a professional relationship. It didn’t occur to me to notice one way or the other.”

  Winter grinned and held her cup out. With a wink, Autumn clinked their teacups together.

  Winter’s smile faded away. “On another, less handsome subject, I want to thank you for hanging with me while we were trying to catch him.”

  Autumn smiled and covered Winter’s hand with her own. She felt a rush of love seep from her friend’s skin and into her own. “Can I be Lucy next time?”

  Winter laughed. “Of course you can. You can be Lucy or Ethel or Thelma or Louise. Your choice as long as you never stop being my friend.”

  To Winter’s surprise, tears glimmered in Autumn’s eyes. “Friends to the end.”

  The hair raised on the back of Winter’s neck, but she managed to keep her smile firmly in place. “There are no ends. With friends…or family. Only beginnings.”

  Autumn lifted her cup. “To beginnings.”

  The sound of the clinking cups was sweet. “Beginnings.”

  As they sipped, the door opened and Noah stepped in. He was carrying a pile of gayly wrapped presents, a big smile on his handsome face.

  Winter’s heart squeezed with love. Love for him. Love for her friend. Love for the life she’d made for herself.

  She didn’t know what else was to come for them all, but she was looking forward to figuring it out.

  With them.

  41

  “Thank you for seeing me today,” Autumn said softly.

  Justin rattled the chain through the eyebolt and grinned at her. “Not a lot of choice, really. I’m glad now that I did.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “Because you’re really pretty.” Justin’s smile grew wider even as his eyes grew colder. “You don’t need to be afraid. I’m chained up here pretty well. I can’t hurt you.”

  Autumn took a steadying breath. “Is that what you want? To hurt me?”

  “You drive pretty well for a girl,” Justin said. When Autumn frowned in confusion, Justin laughed. “When you lost me at that furniture store, driving between those posts. That was a thing of beauty.”

  The memory of that night came back to her. It had been him. It was a good thing she hadn’t known that for certain in the moment, or else she would have been terrified.

  “That was you?” she asked casually, refusing to be pulled into his games.

  “Yeah.” Justin’s smile faded. “You didn’t know? People usually try to follow you like that in the middle of the night? It happens so often that you’re just used to it?” He ran his gaze over her face and down to her neck, then lower. “How did you up and vanish on me anyway?”

  “We’re here to talk about you.” Autumn opened the folder she’d brought with her. “You were born Justin Black and—”

  “No!” Justin slammed his hands down on the table. “No.” This time the word came out more quietly. “You tell me how you got away or this interview is over.”

  “This isn’t an interview,” Autumn reminded him. “This is an assessment to determine if you are capable of standing trial. This is a court-ordered assessment. This isn’t a choice.”

  Justin set his jaw and stared at her.

  Autumn sighed and relented. Give him something, and maybe he’d give her something in return. “Drive-through liquor store.” She tapped her pen against the folder. “I sat in the back of the building and waited for you to blow by.”

  Justin’s face cracked a smile, and he threw his head back with a raucous laugh. “That’s a good one. I never heard of that before. Drive-through liquor saved my life!” He cupped his hand and punctuated each word with a gesture as though he was reading a marquee and laughed again. “You’re smart. And good-looking. Let me tell you, if my hands weren’t cuffed, I’d…” The laughter died as quickly as it had come.

  “What?” Autumn prompted. “What would you do?”

  Justin licked his lips and laughed once more, but the sound felt forced this time. “Trust me, you’d enjoy it.”

  “Tell me about your grandpa.” Autumn looked down at the report and held her pen ready. When she looked up, she suppressed a gasp. She was looking at Justin, but she also wasn’t. The arrogant punk was gone, and in his place, a smaller, frightened-looking young man stared back at her.

  “Grandpa?” he asked in a small voice. “Is he mad at me?”

  Autumn searched his face for any sign that this was acting, that he was pulling something on her. “What happens when Grandpa gets angry?” she asked him carefully, not taking her eyes off him for a second.

  “He hurts people,” Justin whispered, his eyes searching the room. “I was supposed to carry out his mission, but I failed. I didn’t do what he told me. Winter was supposed to die too, but I didn’t do it. Grandpa will be so mad.”

  Will be? The hair lifted on Autumn’s arms at the use of present tense in reference to The Preacher.

  “His mission?” Autumn kept her voice soft. “What was his mission? Was that something he came up with?”

  Justin’s face fell, his eyes hardened, and his jaw became firm. “It’s a mission, lady. Good god, you’re as stupid as the rest. I said it was a mission. Missionaries are sent, they are called. Missionaries don’t just go off on their own randomly.”

  Autumn nodded, somewhat uneasily. She’d seen the shift happen that Winter had described to her, but still wasn’t quite sure she believed it. “Are you saying someone sent Douglas Kilroy to kill people?”

  “Not just to kill, but to educate!” Justin slapped the table for emphasis. “He was sent to wake a sleeping people and make them understand!”

  Missionaries were sent? Autumn wracked her brain, trying to think back through everything they’d dug up on Justin, on The Preacher, on every last relative in Winter’s family. “Who sent him?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Justin was small again and fearful. “You really don’t want to know. You think Grandpa was a bad man, but he wasn’t, not really, not in comparison. He was an only child, but his father, his father had lots of brothers and sisters. Lots.”

  “Who sent him on the mission, Justin?”

  “Don’t call me that!” Justin shifted in his seat as far as the chains would let him. “He hated when anyone called me that.”

  “Your grandpa isn’t here. You’re safe.”

  “No. Not grandpa. Uncle. Uncle is pure evil. He scared Grandpa. Uncle scares everyone. Uncle is a bad man.”

  “Who is Uncle?” Autumn asked softly, so soft she was barely breathing the word.

  “I can’t tell you!” Justin wailed. “He’ll hurt me if I tell you.”

  “No one can hurt you, I promise. Tell me who Uncle is. Please.”

  Justin ducked his head, looking up at her from under his heavy brows. She would have sworn he’d aged ten years in adopting that look alone. “Let me go, and I’ll tell you.”

  Autumn watched his face carefully. Watched it shift from Justin to Jaime and back again several times.

  Winter was right.

  Her relationship with her little brother wasn’t ending. It was only beginning.

  Starting now.

  The End

  ***Is this the last Winter Black book of the series?***

  Yes, for now. What is coming next is a spinoff series staring Autumn. However, if there is great demand for mor
e Winter after you've had a chance to read some of Autumn's series I'll revisit this. As always, thank you very much for your continued support!

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