28 Days: a romantic suspense

by Lexi Buchanan

  The warden had asked him if he had any last requests, and the only one he’d been able to think of was to see his Saige. The form to have her vetted to visit had been completed, and he’d been assured she’d be granted access, but the rest would be up to her. As much as he tried not to get his hopes up, his heart raced at the thought that he’d get to see her one last time…even if there were bars between them.

  Would she really come to see him though? Time was ticking and his hands shook with the reality of what was about to happen to him. He tried not to think about it, but how could he not when he was living this hell.

  And what about his brother? Alex was due in a couple of days. It was a visit that he usually looked forward to, but now that he’d been moved and his death imminent, he didn’t know how to feel. His stomach was in turmoil, and he feared he’d puke.

  He’d escaped a lot of the violence that happened in prison because, as a death row prisoner, he’d had a cell to himself and the security was different, or so he’d been told. It didn’t change his longing for the life that he had started to dream of before it was taken away from him.

  The dreams had kept him going while Saige had been away at college, and the guilt he felt at being the one to bring her home the weekend she’d been taken still ate at him. He’d been sick and tired of his life, and had needed her badly. She’d heard his need through their connection over the phone and before he could say anything, she’d had a bag packed and was in her car.

  That had been the last time they’d talked.

  He missed her voice, her smile and, most of all, the feel of her arms around him. Even now, his heart swelled with the love they once shared, and no one could tell him it had all been a dream on his part. He knew that his brother believed the worst about Saige. She’d been the only thing to cause arguments between them over the years.

  “You done?” the guard questioned.

  They got edgy when he had a pencil in his hands. What they expected him to do with it, he didn’t know.

  He wasn’t a killer.

  “I haven’t thought of anything to write,” he admitted. “I thought the words would come, but now that I have the chance to write to her, I don’t know what to say. There’s so much.” He shook his head before he dropped his gaze to the sheet of paper. “What do you write to the girl you love, who you know you’ll never see again?”

  Quinten had no idea how long he sat crying with the paper blurred in his vision. He just knew he had to write something because he couldn’t leave this life without her knowing how much he still loved her.

  * * *

  8:30am

  * * *

  Saige didn’t know whether or not she could trust Alex. One minute, he seemed like Quinten’s caring older brother, and the next he glared at her as hate emanated from him. The only way she’d understand Alex more was to read the statement.

  The statement that she’d given so many years before sat on her lap while she gazed out of the window. Saige knew she had to pick it up and read the words she supposedly said, but the thought of reading what happened to her made her belly quiver with nerves.

  Alex told her that the statement didn’t go into detail, but if she wanted more details they would be in the hospital report that her doctor had written for the court. She opted to ignore the latter for now.

  Draining the bottle of water that she’d been nursing, she placed it on the table and started to read.

  He held me down...

  There was so much hate inside him...

  He kept talking about money...

  His voice was distorted...like a machine...

  He was so strong...

  I don’t remember him raping me...

  Did he?

  I just wanted to leave...

  I promised him I wouldn’t tell...

  A short time later, Saige had reached the end of the report, and realized that tears ran down her face. So much so that she couldn’t even see the signature at the bottom of the page.

  “Do you remember?” Alex offered another tissue while he stood to the side.

  She shook her head. “My head is full of the report, but I didn’t see any mention of your brother.”

  “Then you obviously didn’t read the last paragraph.” Alex pointed to the bit that she missed because her tears had prevented her from reading it.

  Wiping her eyes, and blowing her nose, she took a drink from another bottle of water that Alex passed her, and started to read the last paragraph.

  I, Saige Lockwood, state that the photograph selected, whilst in the hospital, from a lineup of ten photographs given to me by the District Attorney’s office, and Detective Coulter Robinson, is of my abductor, Quinten James Peterson.

  She gasped, and managed to look at the signature before her tears started again, not that they’d ever stopped.

  “That’s mine...oh, God.”

  For five days she’d thought that maybe Quinten Peterson was innocent, but her statement obviously said otherwise.

  “Saige.” Alex crouched beside her, and demanded, “Please stop crying and dry your eyes. I need you to take another look at the signature. Look at it. Don’t glance.”

  She slowly quieted as she dried her eyes. She stared at the signature but she still couldn’t see it clearly. She jumped up. “Let me grab a notepad and a pen. I’ll sign my name and we’ll compare.” Grabbing the items from the end of the coffee table, she sat back down and put her signature to the paper.

  “Okay. My signature.” Saige laid the paper out beside that of the statement.

  “It looks the same,” she commented after a minute of looking between the two signatures.

  “I have to agree.” Alex sighed.

  Saige felt tired as she sat back and watched Alex trace the curves of her signature. She was disappointed because she hadn’t wanted to believe that Quinten was guilty after what she felt when she saw him. Even now, she wondered if she could have signed without actually giving the statement herself, but that wouldn’t have happened because someone in law enforcement would have taken the statement.

  Feeling heavy of heart, Saige picked up the pack of photographs, wanting to see images of a time when Quinten had been free to enjoy life. She curled up in her favorite brown, leather chair and took the photographs out.

  Her fingers shook with nerves as she slowly started going through them.

  Some of the images were of Quinten with his brother, and others were of him alone. A few he mustn’t have had any idea that they were being taken because he looked deep in thought, or his gaze had been fixed on something off camera. Or someone.

  She looked closer at one picture that was a close up of his handsome face. His dark eyes had pure joy in them and as her finger traced along his lips, a memory teased her mind.

  She rounded the corner to the entrance of the boathouse and Quinten was there, waiting for her. Her heart felt so full of love at just the sight of him, and when he turned, his face lit up with pure joy.

  Gasping, she sat up straighter in the chair, the photographs falling from her lap to the floor.

  “What is it?” Alex quickly moved to crouch beside her.

  “This picture.” She held up the image that had caught her attention. “I saw this and when I traced his smile with the tip of my finger, I remembered him smiling like this…for me, outside of the boathouse.” Saige met Alex’s gaze. “Did that happen? Did he smile like that for me?”

  Alex stayed silent.

  “Please tell me. You’ve hinted that Quinten and I were more than friends, so please tell me if what I remember was real?”

  He nodded and cleared his throat. “It was real.” He looked away and then back at the photograph she held in her hand. “I used to tease him for having a sappy look on his face whenever he looked at you. So one day I spotted you in the garden and before I pointed you out, I got my cell ready and snapped that very image when he saw you. I wanted proof of the look on his face whenever he saw you.” Alex got up and relaxed back aga
inst the sofa. “I’d never seen him as happy. It was as though you gave him purpose to go on.”

  “What went wrong, Alex?” Saige whispered, knowing that something had, otherwise he wouldn’t be behind bars, facing death.

  Alex was silent for a while before he answered. “Your father.”

  Saige frowned and quickly glanced at him. “My father? What does he have to do with Quinten being in prison?”

  He ran his hand over his face. “I’ve never been able to find out for sure. Your father hated the time you spent with Quinten. He threatened to tell Jocelyn if he didn’t leave you alone. Quinten didn’t give a shit whether or not he told her, what he did give a shit about was you. He was concerned about what Jocelyn would do or say to you if she found out. So he tried to ignore you, which lasted all of two days.” Alex shook his head and smiled. “By day three, he realized how unhappy he was making you and himself. He couldn’t keep his distance any longer, regardless of the threat to you both. He needed you. So he went after you. The day before you went back to school, Jocelyn saw you both together. It didn’t help that my brother, um, dreamt. Sometimes vocally.” Alex shrugged. “But you’d gone back to school so he figured you were safe from her. She was deranged, and if he hadn’t been arrested then he’d have divorced her.”

  So her impression of safety with him had been right, but why didn’t she feel anything else? If things took a turn for the worst and he took her, tortured her, then surely she should have felt something else at seeing his image. Instead she felt nothing but warmth and safety.

  “I must have loved him, or thought I did.”

  Alex sat forward. “He loved you, Saige. He was so miserable when you’d gone back to school.” He sighed heavily. “It was me who convinced him to call you to get you home on that weekend. He didn’t need much convincing, mind you. The minute I suggested it, he called you.” Alex smiled, obviously remembering the time. “He was so nervous and I teased his ass for the rest of the night at how bad he’d been over the phone. He eventually told you that he missed you. At first, he suggested that he could visit you for the weekend. But you surprised him by telling him you were already on the road to him. Although he never admitted it, I was sure his legs gave out at that point because he dropped his ass down into a chair, grinning like an idiot.” Alex laughed. “He was so in love with you, it was amusing.”

  “How could it go so wrong, Alex? He was charged with killing those other girls, as well as my abduction and torture. My father said DNA evidence convicted him, yet if he was innocent, how? And why are you telling me about Quinten and me now when you refused to earlier?”

  Saige’s head felt like it would explode with everything running through her mind, and yet, apart from that small piece of her memory, nothing else had returned.

  “I’ve only really confirmed what you already thought about Quinten and you, anything else you’ll have to remember yourself. As for DNA, he’d needed twenty-two stitches, but at the time he bled everywhere—floor, table where you were held down, the straps holding you down. One of the surgical knives had his fingerprints and blood on it, but he’d used it to cut you free. He basically got his blood all over the whole damn crime scene. And the so-called rag that he used to stem the flow of his blood had been a shirt that belonged to one of the dead college girls. It had her DNA on it.” Alex sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Because he hurt himself, trying to get to you, everything pointed at Quinten being the killer.”

  “No other DNA was found?” Saige asked, looking at the ground, surprised that she could still think straight.

  “The girls, yours, Quinten’s...and an unidentified one. The unidentified DNA was in one place only. With as much blood as Quinten had lost in the shack, it kind of put the other one on the back burner.” Alex sighed. “My brother doesn’t have a bad bone in his body, Saige. He’d have given his life for you.”

  “And you think I betrayed him by accusing him?” Saige had to gulp back her tears a few times before she got herself under control. “I don’t know what else to say. My statement is in black and white and it has my signature. If what you’re telling me about Quinten and me is true, then I don’t see why I would lie. I may not remember, but I do know that I’m not a liar. If I loved him, then I’d have wanted to protect him, not throw him to the wolves.”

  Shaking her head, Saige leaned forward to get out of the chair, unable to sit still anymore with everything swirling around in her head, but as she did, her eyes caught on another photograph of Quinten. It was an image of him working. He wore protective goggles, and in his hands, he held the tools of his trade while he carved into a piece of wood.

  “You have the smoothest skin.” Quinten caressed up her thighs while she watched his hands get closer to where she needed them the most.

  She loved his hands and the beautiful tattoos that crept like vines along his arms to finish around the middle fingers of both hands.

  And just as quickly another memory shot into focus.

  She couldn’t move.

  Her fear of what the man would do next was strong, but she refused to show him.

  He wanted her to cry and scream, but so far she hadn’t given him that satisfaction.

  She could hear him moving around and knew that soon the pain would begin again.

  Everything was black because of the blindfold, but as she strained to see through the gap at the bottom, her eyes widened as she saw his hands move closer to her torso, holding a silver object…a knife.

  “I’m going to be sick.” She shot out of the chair and ran to the bathroom, only just making it to the toilet.

  Bent double, she retched until there was nothing left inside of her.

  Saige pulled away from the toilet slowly, her breathing labored and tears streamed down her pale cheeks.

  “Saige...God.” She heard Alex as he moved around her, but she couldn’t stop crying. “Saige, try to breathe and calm down.”

  Slowly gaining control over her breathing, she accepted the glass of water that Alex passed to her and took a long drink. She met his gaze from where she sat on the bathroom floor.

  “What happened?” Alex asked, and held a hand out to help her up from the floor.

  She shook her head and let him lead her back to the chair where she collapsed heavily. “I...I got two memories back-to-back.” More tears hovered on her lashes and slowly slipped down her face. “The photograph of Quinten working.” She pointed and Alex picked it up. She refused to even look at it again so Alex took it with him to the sofa.

  “I remembered Quinten caressing my thighs. I also remembered how much the tattoos on his arms and hands intrigued me.” She finally met Alex’s frown with one of her own, knowing that what she was about to say would change everything. “Then I remembered being in that shack. I don’t remember anything about the place because I was blindfolded, but I do remember catching a glimpse from the bottom of the cloth. I remember his hands moving toward me with something silver in them before I felt raw pain...Alex, the man wore clear gloves, and his hands were free of tattoos. I didn’t see any sign of ink.”

  Saige would have thought that Alex would be happy to hear that, but instead he looked angry.

  “Then why select my brother from a lineup? Why lie? Why sentence my brother to die?” Alex yelled, his gaze stayed unwavering on her, until she felt heat in her cheeks.

  Alex was right. Why?

  “I’m sorry…I don’t know why. I need to find out though. There are still so many questions that need answers and I think I need to go home and talk to my father.”

  “Before we go back to Port Jude, we need to talk to Detective Robinson who was the head detective on my brother’s case. I always had a feeling that he too questioned the evidence, but it was only a feeling, nothing more.”

  Alex ran his hands over his head. “I pissed him off. I knew my brother wasn’t guilty, so I wasn’t the easiest person to talk to.” Alex sat down again, dropping all of his weight at once, as though he was dr
ained of energy.

  “In which case, let me go and talk to him tomorrow. Maybe he’ll be more open with me, the only surviving victim,” she said softly, trying her best to quell the fire within him.

  She could see that he didn’t like her suggestion, but he agreed, “Okay. Call me when you’re done and I’ll pick you up. We can head to Port Jude when you’re finished.”

  Saige nodded having no idea what her father would think with her turning up on his doorstep with Alex, but he wanted and deserved answers as well, so she wasn’t about to turn him away.

  “How often do you visit your brother?” It hadn’t even entered her head to ask if he did, it was obvious with his love for the man.

  “Once a month. I’m due to visit in a couple of days.”

  “What will you tell him?”

  “The truth—as much as I can without giving him false hope. I can’t lie about everything that’s happened. I need to tell his attorney what you remembered.” He glanced at her and shook his head. “No way. That place isn’t for you. And even if I did agree to take you, they wouldn’t let you in. The red tape you have to go through to get clearance takes around a month, and even then the inmate has to agree.”

  He left unsaid that Quinten would be dead before then.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. I’m going to go home and crash for a bit. Give me a call when you’re ready to leave tomorrow.”

  He wasn’t the only one exhausted. “Okay.” She watched him leave, wondering if it really would take a month for her to get clearance to visit Quinten.

  But if he had loved her, then he’d feel nothing but betrayal toward her now, and she couldn’t remember their love, so would it make any difference if she did visit him?

  * * *

  10:15pm

  * * *

  Quinten had finally written the letters that would be given to Alex and Saige after his death. Both of which had been difficult to write because he knew that when they read them, he’d no longer be on this earth.