The hours that came after that were terribly loud, terribly awful. I, who had chased after sensation and light and touch and sound, would have given almost anything for a bit of peace, a bit of silence.
Marla had been dead for some time before I got there. Nothing I did or said would have kept her alive.
Stefan had likely killed her immediately after that email.
She’d never had a chance.
Neither had Seth.
Oh, Seth was alive. But he’d never be the same after this. I spent a great deal of time in the hospital. They wouldn’t let me go in to see him. I wasn’t family. He had nobody listed as next of kin, though I knew he did have family. There was a rift between them, caused by the trouble he’d gotten into, and stubbornness, he’d told me, on both sides.
So he was alone in there.
And I was alone here.
Jenks had climbed into one of the cop cars.
There had been a low, furious argument between him and the older cop, his boss, I thought. But in the end, Jenks had climbed into that car and I had the feeling that if he hadn’t climbed willingly into the front seat, he might have been handcuffed and thrown into the back.
My clearest memory of all of it was the way Stefan had looked at me as the cops dragged Jenks off him. Bloody and broken, his eyes were still cool as they sought out my face.
I’d stared into the face of a madman.
And he had smiled.
“Enjoy your time away, wife,” he murmured as the cops had slapped a pair of handcuffs on him.
He truly believed he could get out of this. While Marla’s blood had cooled at his feet, he’d thought he could get away with what he’d done.
There was no reasoning like that of a lunatic.
And he still managed to fill me with fear. It was a fear that followed me, even now.
When my phone rang and I saw a familiar name on the display, I almost didn’t answer. My gut was tight and cold and my head throbbed. Blood roared in my ears and the metallic taste of fear in my throat was thick and heavy.
Detective Neely.
Swiping my hands down my skirt, I debated whether I should answer and I waited too long.
It went to voicemail and maybe that was better.
It let me stop and panic, stop and pace, stop and almost puke each time the fear got too strong.
Neely was the cop who’d found me on the road all those years ago.
He was a detective now and he’d heard about what had happened. It was enough, he thought, to re-open my case. But he needed to talk with me.
He left a number.
My hands were aching and I looked down, saw that I had them clenched so tight that my knuckles had gone bloodless.
Neely called me three times over the next week.
Seth’s mother called many times. I’d tracked her number down and called. She hadn’t been home and I’d had to leave a voicemail. I panicked and handled it badly, said he’d been hurt.
She called back within the hour, her voice tight with fear and I wanted to smack myself.
The sanitized version didn’t calm her and the next time I heard from her it was to ask if I had the number for the hospital. There were other calls—could I recommend a hotel near the hospital, did he need clothes…
There were no calls from Jenks.
Not a one.
I went to the cottage and it was shut down tight, as if he’d never even been there.
I called and spoke with Detective Barry, gave her his name, told her what I knew. Asked if she knew where he might be.
And I was told I might need to let things lie for a bit. I didn’t understand that.
But it made it easier to know what to do when the day came and Neely called again and told me that they needed me to come back to Boston.
It had been almost three weeks since I’d stared at my ex-husband over a pool of cooling blood while death stained the air.
Boston was the very last place on earth I’d ever wanted to see again.
But it was becoming very painful to stay here as well.
An airport is a terribly lonely place at three a.m.
But I’m used to being alone.
Seth had been out of the hospital for almost two weeks. Last week, his brother came up, along with a brother-in-law, and they packed up his things. He was leaving, moving back to Savannah. He wanted to be near his parents, his sister and their kids for a while. He might stay there, he might not. He didn’t know. Losing Marla made him realize he needed to mend the rifts between him and his family and it was time to do that.
I understood.
But I missed him.
He might have come back to see me off if I’d asked him, or maybe he’d text me if I told him what was going on.
They had reopened the case against Stefan and they needed me to come back to Boston. Apparently two acquaintances of his had disappeared. One shortly before he met me, and one from almost ten years ago.
What they expected me to tell them, I didn’t know.
Although I could tell them about Keilani.
Jenks’ sister.
He hadn’t told me about her, but that hadn’t stopped me from finding out.
I should talk to the cops, tell them they needed to start looking for evidence to connect Keilani to Stefan.
It was time, though, to face the specters of my past and lay them all to rest.
I was just going for a few days, for now.
Eventually, I might have to go back for a trial.
I wondered what would happened if they found evidence against him back in Boston. They planned to try him for Marla’s murder and the assault on Seth.
Three years ago, nobody would say one word against the man. Now, I was flying back to speak with a cop about what Stefan had done to me.
And…I sighed and pulled my iPad out, opened the bookmarks to the website.
She had a pretty face. She was darker than Jenks and they had different last names, but you could see the similarities—in their eyes, the shape of their mouths. Her eyes were just as dark as his, not quite as intense. Her hair was black and razor straight, falling halfway down her back. Her smile managed to be both seductive and sweet, all at once.
The picture was one I’d found on her website.
She was the artist of the picture Jenks had shown me all those months ago.
The art was likely how Stefan had found her. Stefan had always had an eye for talent, and a love for seducing artists. Breaking them.
Her name had been Keilani and she’d disappeared a month before I escaped hell.
She’d met him sometime while he was still married to me. I was left to piece it all together on my own, but I could see how it all happened. She’d moved to Boston the year before I tried to divorce him, had a showing at a smaller gallery. He had bought a few of her pieces and still had them in his gallery—I had seen them when I did a search.
She might have been one of the women he taunted me with. She might have been one of the women I never knew about. She was most certainly one of the women he’d hurt, though.
One of the pictures of her I found online had her wearing a necklace of pink pearls. I’d been forced to wear such a necklace to a gallery showing. And I remembered seeing her. I only remembered her because I’d noticed how beautiful she was, and then I saw the hurt in her eyes, the misery, as she stared at my necklace, then looked at the man behind me.
A part of me had thought, You can have him.
I’d worn the necklace only the once, because when we got home, he ripped it off of me after he’d raped me, then he blamed me for being so careless with my lovely new gift.
My belly hurt just thinking of it.
I didn’t know what he’d done to her.
But I’d have to tell the police about the necklace.
If I ever saw Jenks again, I’d have to tell him as well.
That moment, though, seemed years away from here and now. In the dark, quiet airport where everybody seemed to exist in a fog. Including me.
My eyes felt gritty and tired but I couldn’t sleep. Not here. Not exposed. I’d come to grips with the fact that I would never be normal, never feel normal. I might get closer and maybe the dark didn’t bother me as much as it once did.
Maybe the day would come and I could face my ex-husband in court, watch as they handed down a sentence and I could know he would be locked away, never able to hurt me again. I could think of it, pray for it.
Maybe after that happened, I could stop being so afraid and I could look at him and tell him that he no longer had the power to hurt me.
But I could never let my guard down the way I might want.
Then again, I didn’t know if I really wanted to let my guard down. I’d tried.
I’d trusted somebody.
I’d had my heart ripped out. I still didn’t know why Jenks had ever approached me at all, what he’d wanted. Or why he’d just walked away from me.
It had been weeks and not a word.
The last time I’d tried to call him, I was told the number was disconnected.
It was as if he no longer even existed.
A weary sigh worked its way out of me. Instinctively, I reached for my bag and pulled out a sketchpad. It was a fresh one and I rooted around until I found a pencil. The lines of his face were familiar to me now, as familiar to me as my own. Even as familiar to me as the devil who’d haunted so many nightmares.
And just as real.
As his face came to life before me, I locked on that, focused on it. He was real.
He just didn’t want me.
Neely met me at the airport.
He stood there, solid and square, in a suit instead of a uniform and I looked at him, my eyes immediately finding him in the crush.
Neely had a wide, friendly face, the sort of face that made you want to trust him.
He had a partner and he’d told me all about Ginny Chadwick, but she wasn’t there with him.
It was just us, and I was glad.
His hands came up, caught mine. I squeezed and tried not to think about how the wind had ripped his voice away and the lightning had cast his face in stark relief that night so long ago.
Three years ago.
A lifetime ago.
Maybe even two lifetimes.
I was no longer the girl who had jumped at every sound and let men spy on her as she walked to the beach three times a week.
I don’t know who I am and I don’t know how long it will take to figure it out.
But I could let him squeeze my hand and when somebody bumped into me, I didn’t jump in fear.
I’m getting there. One day, I might even be whole.
“You look well,” Neely said, his voice soft and steady. He didn’t even sound surprised as he said it.
With a shrugged, I tugged my hands back and adjusted the strap of my bag. “Some days, I almost even feel well.”
“You’ll be okay, kid.” He looked as though he wanted to say more but, in the end, we just sought out the baggage claim and walked there in silence.
Outside, Boston gleamed beautiful and clear in the fall. There had been a time when I loved Boston in autumn. The crisp, cold air. Now, I was dispassionate and I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to get on a plane and fly back home to warm beaches and soft sand and sunshine…and Jenks.
Damn him.
“…lunch?”
I looked over at Neely, distracted. “I’m sorry. My mind was wandering.”
“It’s okay. I was wondering if you’d like to get some lunch. Settle a bit before we have to get to work.”
Settle.
Eat.
No.
My bag came down the carousel and I caught it. Neely didn’t offer to help and I was glad. I needed to keep my hands busy. Fiddling with the strap, I looked at the rest of the bags on the conveyor belt and then turned, cutting through the people before I stopped and looked back at Neely.
“I want to go there,” I said softly.
He didn’t pretend not to understand.
Three years had passed.
I didn’t know how this place had looked before, but I’d never forget how it looked on that night.
It was nothing like this.
Pretty homes.
Nothing like the elegant, graceful house where I had lived with Stefan, but pretty. The sort of place a young family would want to live. I saw a mom walking with her young son, an older couple walking hand in hand. It seemed an insult that he would bring me here, keep me here, in a place where happy people made homes.
But horror thrives everywhere. I’ve seen that firsthand.
Neely stopped in front of a house that had vacant windows, pulling the car to the curb and letting the engine idle. “He still owns the house. Had it rebuilt exactly the way it was before it was destroyed in the tornado.”
My breath started to come in erratic stops and starts. Fumbling with my seat belt, I finally managed to free it and climbed outside, my legs rubbery, yet stiff at the same time. I could hardly move. Could hardly breathe. The sunshine was warm on my skin, but I was cold to the bone.
“Rebuilt,” I said, my lips barely moving. “Exactly.”
I stared at it, searching for one of the windows that had let me see the lightning. Lightning that had lit my way to freedom. The storm had sent debris flying and it had busted open the door to the small room in the basement that had been my cell.
Was it still there?
I didn’t remember moving, but I must have because Neely’s hand caught my wrist and I looked down, dumbstruck at the sight of the rock in my hand.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice gentle. “I understand the desire, but don’t. You got out. That’s something that will eat at him for the rest of his life.”
“It shouldn’t be here,” I said, and I had to force each word out, as if dragging them out from the very depths of my broken soul.
“No. It shouldn’t.” His eyes were flat as he shifted his gaze past me to look at the house. “It should be torn down and the earth salted so nothing ever grows here, nothing ever thrives there. But it’s not up to us.”