Monday
February 5
My attempt at doing something normal was a bust. I slam the front door, chuck my bag on the floor by the side table, and look around for my housemates. No one spends a lot of time in his or her room, so if no one is in the living room or kitchen, it’s likely I’m home alone.
Before Sonny died, I loved coming home to an empty house and getting a bit of time to myself. Now, I have a knot of stress in my stomach at the thought of being on my own, despite having Officer Grey outside to keep watch.
“Hey?” Chace says from the living room.
“It’s me,” I reply, my shoulders lowering with relief. He’s sitting on the sofa watching an early episode of Game of Thrones.
“You weren’t at the library long,” he states.
I shake my head, then flop down on the sofa beside him. I feel like a failure. All I wanted was to get back to a routine, but I ended up freaking out. When Mom and Dad died, Riley and I got a lot of unwanted attention. People were only trying show their concern and help, but for me, it made losing my parents feel even worse.
Frowning, he shifts on the sofa until he’s facing me, muting the volume on the television. “What happened?”
“You know when you walk into a room and everyone turns to look at you?”
“Ah. People were talking about you, about Sonny…all of us.”
My palms itch. “I don’t like being the center of attention like that. I’d rather be ignored.”
“That’s not going to happen with all that’s going on, Lylah. You’re going to have to learn to ignore them.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what Officer Grey said.”
That’s also what Riley told me after I had my second panic attack when my parents died. But right now, ignoring stares from strangers is like asking a fish to breathe in the desert.
“You’ve never cared what people said about you before,” Chace reminds me.
“This is different. And what do people usually say about me?”
Chace laughs. The sound is deep and gravelly. It does things to my insides that make me forget about everything else.
“No one is saying anything bad. I promise.”
“That you’ve heard,” I say with a frown. “Where is everyone else?”
“Sienna and Isaac went to the gym before class, and Charlotte was going to meet a friend to get some notes for class.”
“They all have someone with them?”
His head tilts to the side. “Yeah…”
“Just checking.”
He pauses and gazes into my eyes. “Are you okay, Lylah?”
Chace sounds like my brother.
“I worry about them,” I say.
“They’re safe,” he assures me. “Did something else happen?”
“I ran into Zak, who was really nice, and Sarah, who wasn’t so nice. She told me to stay away or else.”
“Like brother like sister,” he scoffs. “She’s as intense as Jake.”
“You would compare her to a killer?”
He shrugs and opens his mouth, but is silenced quickly by sirens screaming down the road. Chace and I leap to our feet and dash toward the front door and out onto the front step.
The vehicles pull to a stop outside a house two doors down from ours where a few people are gathered on the sidewalk.
He looks at me. “Well, at least the crowd isn’t gathering outside where we live.”
“Yeah, but what’s going on?” I instantly think the worst.
Gatherings of people used to mean parties. Now they mean death.
Detective Alexander is the officer who was home with Chace. He is on his phone and walking toward us. He touches Chace’s arm and gestures for us to go back inside the house and stay there. Officer Grey runs toward the commotion.
This isn’t good.
I duck back into our foyer with my hand covering my thumping heart. “What’s going on?” I demand of Detective Alexander. Chace shuts the door and folds his arms.
Hanging up the phone, the detective says, “There’s been an incident.”
“What kind of incident?” I ask.
“Do either of you know a Nora Wilson?”
“Yeah. Well, kind of,” I reply.
He frowns. “Kind of?”
“She’s also a student at the university. I know her enough to say hi or exchange small talk. We’ve gone out in a group with other friends, but we’re not close. I don’t think any of us really know her.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to her,” Chace says in agreement.
“Is she okay?” I ask.
He clears his throat. “She’s been murdered.”
Overwhelmed with emotion, I lean against Chace. “That’s terrible…”
“Do you think Sonny knew her?” the detective asks.
“Potentially, but she’s not really the type of girl that Sonny would go for,” I say through the lump in my throat.
“Why’s that?”
“I think she’s very into her studies. I always see her in the library. Like Charlotte, Nora doesn’t go to parties much. I wouldn’t think she’d have been on Sonny’s radar.”
“That’s helpful,” the detective replies, nodding.
Chace speaks up. “What happened to her?”
What he’s really asking is Was this the same person who killed Sonny? Was it Jake?
Detective Alexander clears his throat. “She was stabbed, but I don’t know any more than that.”
“Does she have her heart?” The words are out of my mouth before I remember that is restricted information we are not supposed to know.
The detective’s eyes widen, either shocked that I know this detail or at my bluntness. Yeah, I don’t want to be asking these questions either, but here we are.
“I’ll take that silence as a no, she doesn’t have her heart anymore,” I reply. “Nora must have been killed by Jake too.”
Chace shakes his head. “But that doesn’t make any sense.”
Detective Alexander tries to calm us. “We’re not jumping to any conclusions.”
“What’s going on?” Isaac shouts, coming in the back door.
“We’re in the foyer,” I call back.
He and Sienna join us, their security detail trailing behind them. Isaac drops his bag with a thud. “What happened out there? No one would tell us anything, and part of the road is blocked off.”
“Has Jake been found?” Sienna asks.
“No, it sounds like Jake has killed someone else. Nora,” I say.
The detectives all glance knowingly at one another.
“What? I thought he wanted me next,” Isaac says.
I shrug. “We all thought that, but…”
Sienna’s perfectly shaped eyebrows leap. “Nora? Nora wasn’t exactly our friend, though she was a bit obsessed with you, Lylah. She really wanted you to like her. But we never spent much time with her. Why would Jake hurt her?”
Alexander listens to our conversation intently, no doubt making mental notes.
I shrug. “Maybe we got it wrong. Maybe Jake has a longer hit list than we originally thought.”
“Just putting this out there,” Isaac says. “What if it’s not actually Jake? I mean, did he even know Nora?”
Chace scoffs. “I think Jake’s proved that we never really knew him, so he could have known her.”
“That’s true,” I say in agreement with Chace. For all we know, Jake could have had a relationship with Nora. “I wonder what she could have done to make him so angry.”
I wonder if that is why Nora always tried to hang out with me—because she saw me with Jake. Maybe the two of them had a thing, he cut her loose, and she couldn’t accept it? So she tried to get him back by being friends with me? Nora lived in a different dorm than us last year, so Jake could have slept with her, and we would never have known.
“Yeah, but Jake was hung up on you, so it doesn’t make sense for him to have been with her,” Sienna says. “Especially since we never saw them together, and she didn’t mention him whenever she was around you.”
“Great, let’s keep bringing up my relationship with Jake.” I feel bad enough already. To think that I was a catalyst for so much hate makes me ill.
Alexander clears his throat. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Detective Lina will be here in a minute, and we’ll have some questions for everyone.”
I really don’t know how much help we’ll be. I didn’t know Nora well enough to know about her personal life. The times we hung out together were rare and included other people, and our conversations didn’t delve that deep. And Jake didn’t exactly put himself out there with many people outside of our group or his class. So I can’t see the connection. But someone needs to figure it out before someone else ends up dead.
• • •
Two hours later, I’m exhausted. Detective Lina had us all go down to the station, where she got us thinking of possible links between Nora, me, my friends, and Jake. Now my head is pounding. There is absolutely no tie that any of us can think of.
We’ve been over every detail, from first meetings to a week-by-week rundown of our time in college. It was especially challenging since the first year was a total blur.
However, I’m confident I can remember every nanosecond of my time with Chace.
I’m pathetic.
I haven’t seen my housemates for ages, as they are being questioned separately.
I’m in the waiting room, watching the clock tick by. It’s only been fifteen minutes since I was released from the interview room, but the fact that they’re all still being questioned makes me nervous. Why did mine go so quick?
Chace and I were called in first—probably because we found Sonny—so I expected him out at the same time as me.
Across the hall, the door to an interview room clicks open, and I leap to my feet.
It’s Chace. He looks tired. His usually light eyes are dark with stress. He rolls his shoulder and closes the door. “You okay?” he asks, dipping his head.
“Yeah. That was intense. She seemed to repeat questions a lot or ask them in a different way, like she thought I was lying.”
He comes closer. “She doesn’t think that, Lylah. The police have to make sure they’re thorough.”
“Could you think of anything?”
“Nope. I think Detective Alexander hates me though.”
“Why is that? What did you do?”
“Nothing…but thanks for your heartwarming confidence,” he says with a hint of sarcasm. “I wasn’t able to tell him anything he didn’t already know. He’s frustrated. Kids are being killed, and they have no leads on Jake. Detective Alexander has a nineteen-year-old daughter, so he’s extra concerned.”
“Maybe the killings are more random than we thought. That’s something we all need to fear.”
It’s heart-stopping knowing Jake is out there. I think I would rather not know the suspected killer, that way I wouldn’t see Jake’s face everywhere.
He’s out there, free, and it’s only a matter of time before he strikes again.
The note said Isaac is the next target, but he diverted from his plan.
I’m not sure what that says about the killer’s mental state, but I know it petrifies me.