One (Count to Ten Book 1)

by Jane Blythe

  “We’re divorced,” Julia reminded him, her orange prison jumpsuit clashing with her blonde hair. “If you’ve met someone, you don’t need my permission to do something about it.”

  “It’s kind of complicated,” he stammered. He may not need Julia’s permission to do something about his feelings for Annabelle, but he certainly wanted it.

  “Complicated how?”

  “She’s a victim in a case Kate and I are working,” he explained. “Her whole family was murdered but the killer left her alive. At first we thought it was a murder/suicide, but then the evidence suggested Annabelle had been framed, she was pretty mad at us for accusing her of being a killer…”

  “And you felt guilty about it,” Julia inserted.

  “Right.” He was unnerved at how well Julia knew him even though they had been divorced for three years. “Then another family was killed in the same manner and then another and another. The killer left a note with the last family saying he was finished, and we think we know who he is, we’re just trying to track him down…”

  “So what’s stopping you from being with this Annabelle?”

  “Like I said, it’s complicated.”

  “Well, it won’t be soon, you and Kate will arrest this man and you’ll be free to start dating her.”

  “It’s complicated because of you.”

  “Because of me?” Julia repeated. “I'm in jail and our daughter is dead. It’s not like I'm going to be the kind of ex-wife who’s causing your new girlfriend any grief.”

  “Annabelle thinks that I'm just using her,” he explained.

  “Why would she think that?”

  “Because she was…” he trailed off, not wanting to say the word around Julia.

  “Because she was raped?” Julia finished for him.

  “Yes.” He wished for probably the millionth time that he had gone home to spend the evening with his wife that night so long ago.

  “Well, why does that mean she would think you’re using her?” Julia’s eyes narrowed in confusion.

  “Because she decided to investigate me and she found out about you.”

  Understanding dawned. “And now she thinks that she’s a replacement for me and a chance for you to rectify the mistakes you made the first time around.”

  “Right.”

  “So tell her she’s not.” Julia lifted a slim shoulder dismissively.

  “I did, but I kind of got mad that she went behind my back and researched me.”

  “Why? Didn’t you do the same to her?”

  Annoyed that the three women in his life had all jumped on that, he huffed out a breath. “Fine, I was an idiot about that,” he acknowledged.

  “But…” Julia prompted. “I know I have all the time in the world, but would you please spit out whatever it is you came all the way here to ask me?”

  “Annabelle asked me if I was still in love with you,” he choked the words out.

  She turned as still as a statue. “And what did you tell her?”

  “I told her I wasn’t, but…”

  “But you’re not sure?”

  “Why wouldn’t you plead insanity?” Xavier demanded, a little more forcefully than he intended.

  “Because I knew what I was doing,” Julia answered plainly. “I knew I should have told you that I was raped. I knew that you would move heaven and earth to find the man who hurt me, but I chose not to. I knew I should have told you when I found out I was pregnant that the baby could have been my rapist’s, and I knew when our daughter was stillborn that I should have told you it was my fault…”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he interrupted.

  She waved him quiet. “I spent the whole pregnancy wishing the baby was dead, and then she was. Of course it was my fault.”

  Hating the matter-of-fact way his ex-wife said that, he began, “Julia…”

  She ignored his concern. “I knew what I was doing, Xavier. I knew how devastated you were by our daughter’s death. I knew how important it was to you to be a dad. When I saw that couple walking with their baby past our house, I chose to get the gun and shoot them. I chose to take that baby and I intended to keep her. I chose to do all of that, and I knew it was wrong. I wasn’t insane, Xavier.”

  “You were in shock; you’d just been through two traumas. Temporary insanity, you could have gone to a psychiatric hospital, gotten some help, gotten better, you didn’t have to end up here.” He had begged her more times than he could count to do that.

  “I killed two people.” Teardrops formed in her dark blue eyes. “I orphaned that poor child; I deserve to be punished.”

  “Do you still love me?”

  Tears spilled out. “I’ll love you till the day I die. Do you…do you still love me, Xavier? After everything I did, do you still love me?”

  * * * * *

  9:41 P.M.

  Annabelle had certainly made his job a lot easier today.

  Other than a trip to a small café, she had remained tucked up inside her motel room.

  Earlier, he’d been sure she’d known she was being watched. At the door to the café she had paused, looking around frantically, panic written all over her face. But then she had turned away, and he knew that he had remained undetected.

  It would ruin everything if she saw him now.

  He wanted her.

  He couldn’t deny it any longer.

  Neither could he deny that there wasn’t much time left.

  The police were on to him. They were closing in on him. And it wasn’t going to be long before they found him. He had to keep playing things smart. If he fell apart now, it would ruin everything he’d worked so hard to achieve, and he refused to let that happen.

  He had worked so hard on this, and everything had fallen so smoothly into place. Sure, he had altered things a little as he went along. It really had made things more interesting with Rawlin Rankling to have him conscious, just as he’d suspected it would be after Callie Jenner had awakened at the last second. Since Rawlin had been such an enjoyment, he had decided to improvise even further and gone all out with the Littleton family.

  Now that had been a bundle of fun.

  The mix of shock and horror on Kerralyn’s face when she had awakened to see him standing over her, his knife pressed to her throat. Despite that, she had put up quite the fight on the way to her sister’s room.

  A few whispered threats had been all it took to ensure that big sister Kaitlin was co-operative as they rounded up mom and dad.

  The little rendezvous in the bathroom was positively invigorating. The pure power that had surged through him as he’d instructed Kaitlin to tie up her parents and then bind her own ankles, before releasing Kerralyn to finish the job.

  The teenager had made a bolt for freedom once she had bound her sister’s wrists. She hadn't gotten farther than the door.

  Kerralyn had been the first to die, followed by mom and then dad, and finally Kaitlin. Much to his amusement, when he lifted the girl up, he saw she had wet her pants.

  The bath had worked well to collect all the blood, and the additional stab wounds had produced a little extra—he hadn't wanted to waste a single drop of the precious liquid.

  He had to admit he may have gone a little overboard—painting the Littletons in their own blood and rolling them across the floor, plus all the love hearts on the downstairs walls. But, hey, what could he say? He’d been in the moment, and all that blood was so intoxicating.

  Still, what was done was done, and what still needed to be done was waiting on the other side of that door.

  Climbing from his car, he was about to head for Annabelle’s room when another car pulled into the parking lot. When he saw who it was, he let out a frustrated breath and returned to the safety of his car. He watched as Detective Montague stalked determinedly to Annabelle’s door.

  Oh well, he thought, if Xavier Montague got in the way of his plans for Annabelle Englewood, then he’d simply have to take the detective out of the picture.

 
; * * * * *

  10:13 P.M.

  His heart was pounding as he knocked on Annabelle’s motel room door.

  Xavier knew he shouldn’t have left it so long. But he’d been mad yesterday, and he hadn't wanted to face Annabelle. Now he hoped he hadn't made things worse between them.

  Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal that she had investigated his past. Annabelle, Kate, and Julia were right; he had done the same thing to her, although for very different reasons. He did kind of understand where Annabelle had been coming from.

  When she didn’t answer, worry began to prick at him. When he got back to his house last night and realized that Annabelle was no longer there, he’d considered calling in to get someone to watch her, but in the end decided against it. There had been no more attempts on Annabelle’s life, nor any attempts on any of the other survivors’ lives, perhaps Dr. Daniels really had fled town.

  He hammered on the door a little harder this time, then let out his breath with a whoosh when it finally cracked open. “Annabelle.” Butterflies took up residence in his stomach for the second time today. “What took you so long? I thought something had happened to you.”

  “I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to you,” she answered in a small voice.

  “Fair enough.” He knew he deserved that. “Can I come in?”

  She hesitated long enough that he thought she was going to refuse, but then she relented. “I guess.”

  He followed her inside, knowing what he wanted to convey to Annabelle but not sure how to say it. “We need to talk about what you asked me yesterday. About Julia.”

  “I'm kinda tired.” She moved away from him. “Maybe we could do this another day.”

  “Annabelle, wait,” he grabbed her arm to hold her in place. “Please, I really want to work things out.”

  “Do you still love her?” Annabelle’s white eyes peered nervously at him as though they weren’t positive they wanted to hear the answer.

  He hesitated, then sighed—it was better to get this over and done with as quickly as possible. “Yes, I still love Julia.”

  Annabelle maintained a stony stare for a moment before her eyes welled up with tears and she recoiled from him. Without another word, she turned and took a step toward the motel door.

  Hurting her was the last thing he wanted to do. “Belle, wait,” he called. Grabbing hold of her wrist, he spun Annabelle back to face him.

  Her devastated eyes refused to meet his. “I don’t see what else there is to talk about, Xavier,” she mumbled quietly.

  “Well, I do.” He counted, keeping one hand on her wrist in case she suddenly decided to flee. With his free hand he took hold of her chin and tilted her head back so she was forced to meet his eye. “Yes, I still love Julia, but that’s not all I feel for her. I’m angry that she didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth in the beginning. I’m angry that she didn’t trust herself enough to get the help she needed. I’m angry that she thought I cared more about being a father than I did about her. I’m angry that she thought the answer to her problems was to kill two people and steal their child. I’m sad that she didn’t love me the same way I loved her. I feel guilty that I didn’t protect her, that I wasn’t there when she needed me, and I feel guilty because I’m mad at her and she was raped. I love her, Belle, but I’m not in love with her, because…” letting the sentence trail off.

  “Because…” Annabelle echoed.

  Seeing that she needed to hear him say it, he released his hold on her wrist and slipped his arm around her waist, drawing her close. “Because I think I’m falling in love with you,” he whispered, cupping her cheek in his hand.

  For the longest moment she did nothing but stare at him with her enormous white eyes, and then he saw the last of her fight, her spirit, drain from her body and he knew he had lost her. “It’s not enough, is it?”

  When she spoke her voice was trembling, “I’ve already lost everything,” she murmured. “I can’t start something with you if there’s a chance that you’re going to go back to your ex-wife.”

  He tightened his hold on her. “There is no chance of that.”

  She remained unconvinced. “You say that now, but what about when she gets out of jail? Or if you could convince a judge that she wasn’t in her right mind when she did what she did and you get her moved to a psychiatric hospital? What if she needs you and you feel so guilty that you go running to her side and then you find out that your feelings were stronger than you thought? I’ve already lost enough; I can’t lose you too.” With that, she gently extricated herself from his grasp and reached up a hand to trace along his cheek.

  Grabbing hold of it, he pulled it to his mouth and kissed it. “I’m falling in love with you, Belle. Your strength, your gentleness, your beauty. I think that you are amazing and I want to get to know you better. I want to see if we can have a life together.”

  Looking more defeated, more lost, more alone, more heartbroken than he’d ever seen her, she tugged back her hand, and with one last wistful look, she backed away from him on wobbly legs.

  “Belle.” He was thinking of what she had asked him yesterday. “I want you to be Belle. Please.”

  “Xavier, please, please just leave.” Her voice was as trembly as her legs.

  Reluctantly, he agreed, only because he didn’t want to alienate her further. “I’ll leave for now, but I’ll be back. I’m not giving up on you. I’ll find the man who killed your family, I’ll find the man who hurt you, and then I’ll convince you that you are the most amazing woman on the planet.”

  * * * * *

  10:31 P.M.

  Inside her room, tears were already streaming down her cheeks by the time the door clunked closed behind Xavier, and Annabelle worried that she had just made the biggest mistake of her life.

  She made it only a couple of steps towards the bed before exhaustion took over and she crumpled to the floor.

  Before she fell completely asleep, she wondered how long Xavier would stand out there watching her closed door.

  * * * * *

  11:37 P.M.

  The man who had been impatiently watching the exchange could have told her that it was at least an hour before Detective Xavier Montague finally climbed into his car and drove off into the night.

  At last he could get on with things, he was muttering to himself. He patted his pocket where a small vial of sedatives was tucked away, a little souvenir from his last visit to the hospital pharmacy.

  In silence, he crept to the motel door. With his lock picking tools, he was inside in seconds. He delivered the sedative, then scooped the unconscious girl into his arms and disappeared into the night.

  * * * * *

  11:52 P.M.

  Kate was pretty sure that Xavier would be here.

  Although he hadn't said anything, she was also pretty sure that he had gone out to the prison to speak with Julia earlier today. Xavier was clearly shaken up by being confronted about his feelings for his ex-wife. Hopefully, talking with Julia had helped him sort out just where he was, because Kate didn’t want to see her partner or Annabelle hurt if they started dating only for Xavier to realize later on that he was still in love with his ex.

  Thinking that he’d head to Annabelle’s when he’d finished at the prison she’d driven to the motel, hoping the two had already reconciled. Arriving, she’d found the room dark, Xavier’s car nowhere to be seen. Assuming either things hadn’t gone well with Julia or with Annabelle, Kate had thought about where Xavier would head next.

  This had been the only place she could think of.

  Shining her flashlight to guide her, the last thing she wanted to do was break an ankle tripping over a gravestone. Reaching the gravesite, Kate found who she was looking for.

  “I don’t want to talk, Kate.” Xavier’s voice rumbled out of the shadows.

  “Okay,” she agreed. She carefully chose a patch of grass that didn’t seem to have too many twigs and leaves and sat down, happy to wait until Xavier was ready.
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br />   “You don’t have to hang around,” Xavier said a few minutes later once it became clear she wasn’t leaving.

  “I know.”

  A couple more minutes passed before he spoke again. “I went to see Julia.”

  “And…” she prompted.

  “And I asked her why she refused to plead insanity.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said that she knew what she was doing. That she chose to do it. That she deserved what she got.” The disappointment and disbelief in his voice were obvious.

  “I’m sorry,” Kate consoled, not sure what to say.

  His shadow moved in the thin light, and a moment later, she felt him sit nearby. “Maybe I was kidding myself all along. Only seeing what I wanted to see. Maybe it was always obvious that Julia knew what she was doing and I wanted so badly to believe that she wasn’t capable of murder. It was a lot easier for me to believe that everything she did was because of the shock and trauma, that it wasn’t really her fault, but now…now I don’t know what to think.”

  She knew that he wanted her to reassure him, that he wanted to hear that he was right and that Julia wasn't responsible for her actions. However, Kate also knew that it didn’t matter what she thought. Xavier had to come to terms with things for himself in order to move on.

  After another long silence, he spoke again. “Julia said she still loves me, that she’ll always love me.”

  Kate thought that Julia had always loved Xavier more than he had loved her. He had loved Julia, of that she was one hundred percent certain, but she’d always felt like their relationship was more one-sided.

  “Then she asked me if I still loved her.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her I was sorry,” he answered sadly. “That I still cared about her deeply, that I still loved her, but that I wasn’t in love with her anymore.”

  The beam of the flashlight caught Xavier’s face as he hunched over and she could see tears gleaming in his eyes. She knew hurting Julia was the last thing he wanted to do, no matter what she had done. “Did you tell Annabelle?”