Eight

She’d known what they were even before she’d reached inside but that didn’t stop her fingers from jerking against the envelope. Instantly rejecting the cool, slick paper as soon as she touched it.

Photographs.

Sabrina forced herself to pull the stack free and spread them across the kitchen table. Forced herself to look at what Ben wanted her to see. Blood and death—so much of both that for a moment, she felt dizzy.

She closed her eyes, splayed her hand across the pictures in front of her. In the neighboring room, she could hear the movie Christina and Alex had chosen for the evening. Pacific Rim, one of her favorites. Under normal circumstances, she’d pop some popcorn on the stovetop and join them while waiting for Michael to come back in from the barn.

Her current circumstances were anything but normal. But they used to be. Once upon a time, what laid on the table had been as normal as breathing to her …

Just another case. Just another body.

Her old mantra came back to her. Pulled her in and calmed her. She opened her eyes and looked at the photos beneath her hand.

Three known victims in the space of twelve months. All showing signs of dehydration. Malnourishment. Rape. Torture. They’d been kept before they’d been killed. Ligature marks and antemortem injuries suggested for several days, one for as long as a month, before being executed.

Victimology was all over the place. The first victim, Danielle Watson, was forty years old. Another victim, Stephanie Adams, had been in her twenties. The latest victim, Isla Talbert—found two weeks ago—had been only twelve. She’d disappeared while on a bike ride to a convenience store, two blocks from her house. Found two weeks later inside a roadside shrine, naked, bound with bailing wire, and posed as if she were praying. Like the rest, cause of death had been a quarter-sized hole punched into the base of her skull.

Sabrina pushed the photos to the side, concentrating on the ME and investigation reports that accompanied them. Mixed in with official reports were full backgrounds on each of the victims. Scattered throughout the reports were highlighted portions that wove the victims together.

Still, she couldn’t find a reason Ben would feel the need to drop this case in her lap. It took her nearly an hour of combing before she found it—to anyone else the notation would mean nothing. Less than nothing. A few sentences at the end of a lab report marked Stephanie Adams. An oddity chalked up to an almost crippling backlog at the lab and not enough manpower.

For Sabrina, it changed everything.

–––––

She’d gone to bed alone, though she’d waited for what felt like hours for Michael to come back inside. It’d been long enough for the movie to run its course and the kids to put themselves to bed before she finally gave up and closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep.

He’d come in sometime afterward, the weight of him sinking into the bed beside her. He reached for her, whispered her name against the nape of her neck and she’d turned toward him. Let him pull her under. His mouth and hands on her skin. Let herself believe, at least for a while, that none of it had happened. That the pictures and reports she’d been poring over just a few hours before had been nothing more than a bad dream.

She woke just before dawn to find him sitting in the chair he kept by the window, staring out into the dense gray beyond it. It was nothing new. More often than not, she’d wake to find him like this, half dressed, watching the night sky like he was waiting. Like he knew it was only a matter of time before someone came and took it all away.

The manila envelope Maddox brought her rested almost casually on his knee.

“Can we talk about it now?”

He’d known she was awake and he nodded at her like he’d been waiting for her to ask. “Yeah, we can talk about it.” He swiped a hand over his face, nodding his head. “When are you leaving?”

The question, the finality in his voice scared her. Sent panic clawing up her spine. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m not leaving. I’m staying right here.”

“There’s an active serial killer in Yuma, Sabrina,” he said with a look that told her he thought she was being ridiculous and stubborn. “He’s killed four women in the past year.”

“So what?” she said. Sitting up, she fumbled for her tank, searching for it in the tangle of sheet and blankets. “It’s got nothing to do with me.”

“Okay, let’s ignore the obvious—that the killing started less than a month after your very public and very tragic demise.” He tossed the envelope onto the bed where it landed less than a foot from her hand. “We’ll focus on the fact that the second victim was found with traces of Melissa Walker’s DNA under her fingernails. That means it has everything to do with you.”

Melissa Walker. The girl she used to be. The girl who’d fled to Yuma when she was just sixteen, her twin siblings in tow. She’d left Jessup, the small Texas town where she’d grown up, in a desperate attempt to start her life over. To protect her grandmother, protect Tommy, the boy she’d been in love with … In the end all she’d done was manage to get herself killed. She’d been abducted. Tortured and raped for eighty-three days before being left for dead in a churchyard. When she woke up, Melissa Walker was gone—the person she was now was all that was left of her.

That’d been nearly twenty years ago, when DNA evidence had been in its adolescence. And like most adolescents, it’d been unreliable and fickle. Most cops back then had been too old-school, too skeptical to trust it, relying rather on what they considered real police work. Will Santos, the detective assigned to her case, had not been one of them.

He’d insisted on collecting and cataloging every scraping and swab they’d taken from her and entering them into the system in hopes of someday finding the man who raped and tortured her. But not even Santos could have predicted that her DNA profile would somehow wind up in the results of a report generated almost twenty years later.

“Like you said, I’m dead.” She found her tank and pulled it on. It’d been too much to hope for that he’d miss the notation buried in the stack of reports. Michael was too meticulous, too exact to miss something like that. “And thanks to Croft, everyone knows it.” Jaxon Croft, the reporter who’d taken her whole sordid story public, had made her death national news. A few years ago, his constant hounding had been a nightmare, but when Ben had faked her death and Michael’s, it had been a godsend. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t—”

“Sure you could,” he said, still watching her. Appraising her. “You’ve gained a good twenty pounds. You’re softer. Fuller. You’d definitely need colored contacts. Different hair color. Maybe a cut. But with Ben clearing the way, you could slip back into the world without even a ripple.”

He was right. She knew he was right. Instead of admitting it she just shook her head. “Why are you pushing this?”

“Because,” he said, cutting his gaze back to the window, “I think you’re staying here because you’re afraid.”

“Afraid?” Laughter scraped against her throat, erupting from her mouth, rusty and cold. “Afraid of what?”

“Not what,” he said without looking at her, his hands fisted against his knees. “Who.”

Wade.

Neither one of them had said his name out loud in what felt like forever. Not since she’d told him the truth—that after she’d killed him, Wade had started talking to her. That the only thing that made him go away was Michael. In the year they’d been together, Wade had faded away into nothing more than a vague and unpleasant memory. Leaving Michael would change that. It would open a door. The panic that had clawed up her spine started chewing into her throat, making it hard to breathe.

“I’m not afraid of him and fuck you for thinking otherwise.” Fishing her underwear from the foot of the bed, she swung her legs over the side, yanking them up before she stood. “And the only place I’m going is the bathroom.”

“We both know how this ends, Sabrina,” he said quietly. “We both know you were never meant to stay here forever.”

The words nailed her feet to the floor. Stopped her in her tracks. Stole her breath, had her pressing her fist into her sternum, trying to find it.

We both know how this ends …

She turned toward the window to find him standing in front of it, arms loose, shoulders slumped. The manila folder was on the floor between them. “Marry me.” The words tumbled out, rash and impulsive, but she meant them. As soon as she said them, she knew. Rushing forward, she closed the space between them. “Marry me.”

Michael sighed, shaking his head. “Sabrina—”

“Do you want me to leave?” Even though saying it out loud made her voice shake, she had to know. “Are you trying to end it?”

“What?” He jerked back, looked at her as if she’d hit him. “No, I’m—” He shook his head, suddenly frustrated. “I’m just trying to do the right thing here,” he said, swiping a rough hand over his face. “Why won’t you ever let me just do the right goddamned thing by you?”

“Why do you always think you’re the only one who knows what the right thing for me is?” she nearly shouted, tempering her voice at the last minute so she didn’t wake the kids. “You? This—this is the only forever I want,” she said, her tone sharp-edged and hot. He was frowning down at her and she lifted her hand to skim her fingers across his brow. She took a deep breath in an effort to cool the heat in her words. “Marry me.”

Instead of answering her, he reached up and caught her hand. “You’ve never allowed fear to control you. Sooner or later, you’ll remember that and you’ll leave,” he said, pressing her hand against his jaw. She could feel it, how hard he was fighting for control. “The right thing for me to do is to let you, maybe even encourage you … but I love you too much.” His voice sounded tight, like he had to push the words out. “I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want to do the right thing—I want you to stay here with me … with us.” His hand dropped away from hers. “But you’ll end up hating me and yourself if you do.”

“You’re right about one thing.” She said it quietly, letting her hand fall away from him face. “I am worried Wade will find his way inside my head again if I leave here.” She backed away from him until the back of her knees hit the edge of the bed and she let herself sink onto it. “But what absolutely terrifies me is the possibility of leaving and not being able to find my way back … but if you marry me, that’s a promise.”

Michael sat on the bed next to her, lifting her hand from her lap to hold it between his own. “The kind we’d both have to keep,” he said softly, understanding perfectly. It would be an assurance that in each other, no matter where they went or how long they were apart, they would always have a home to come back to.

“Exactly.” She pressed her lips to his shoulder before perching her chin on top of it. “Will you marry me, Michael?”

His hand tightened around hers for a moment before he lifted it to his mouth, kissing each of her fingertips before pressing his lips to the center of her palm and whispering, “Yes.”