by Jayme Morse
Mary hesitated. “I think he was very angry at her, and I don’t think he was all there mentally, if you know what I mean. I told the cops all about the argument I’d overheard, but they just chalked it up to hearsay. It was like they didn’t even want to listen to me at all, and they most certainly didn’t want to investigate him. In fact, I mentioned his name to them, but they told me no one with that name lived in Briar Creek.”
“That’s very odd,” Lexi murmured, even though when she really thought about it, it wasn’t that strange. Chances were, the police were just trying to cover up for whoever had done it.
“It is odd,” Mary agreed. “You would think that with the high death rate in and near Briar Creek, they would have taken this a little more seriously, but I suppose they must think that random killings done by strangers are more significant.” She shook her head. “How could they think one person’s life is more important than another’s? Rosie was someone’s daughter, too, you know? The whole thing still blows my mind to this day.”
Lexi nodded. “I understand.” She shifted in her heels uncomfortably. “If you don’t mind me asking, what was the name of the guy Rosie was seeing at the time?”
“His name was Kevin,” Mary replied. “Kevin Marshall.”
A lump formed in the back of Lexi’s throat, and she felt like she was going to puke. The police were right. It was true that no one named Kevin Marshall existed in Briar Creek.
Gabe was the one who had killed Rosie.
Lexi realized that she had made a big mistake. She never should have told Caroline that she should move in with Gabe. Now her life was in danger, too.
Chapter 12
Anna wiped the tears away from her eyes, as she sat on her bed in the room that she was staying in at Westbrooke. Being a donor hadn’t been what she had expected it to be, but she had gotten the answers she needed. She had an answer for Austin now.
Anna wasn’t sure if she should tell Austin her answer in person or if she should text him what she wanted to say. Even though she knew that he would rather hear it from her in person, she wanted to tell him as soon as she could. The sooner he knew her answer, the easier things would be for both of them.
She reached for her cell phone, which she had left on the nightstand, and noticed right away that she had a new text message from Lexi. It read: Hey, when are you coming home? Austin really misses you. I don’t think you’re being fair to him.
Anna sighed. Maybe she should just wait to give Austin her answer in person. Even though she wanted to get it over with now, it was a conversation that he deserved to have face to face. So, she texted Lexi back: I’ll be back at Dan’s house by tomorrow afternoon. Make sure Austin is there waiting for me, okay? I need to talk to him.
A moment later, her cell phone chimed. Lexi had written: Okay, I’ll let him know. I look forward to seeing you then. There’s so much to tell you—it has to do with Gabe. As soon as you get here, we’re leaving for NY to do damage control.
Okay, count me in, Anna replied, even though she wasn’t sure how she really felt about going with them.
Sighing, she sank back against her bed and stared up at the ceiling. Even though she had mostly come here to figure out what her feelings for Austin really meant, a part of her still thought she might have been able to get more answers about her mom . . . and about Geoff. Sure, Geoff was in Briar Creek now (or at least he had been), but . . . Anna had somehow expected to learn something about him while she was here.
Any detail about him that would help Anna figure out a way to get revenge for her mother’s death was all she needed to know, but . . . maybe that wasn’t going to happen. Maybe it would be better for her to just give up now. She had wasted the past few years of her life training to get revenge on her mom’s murderer, and what had it led her to? Nothing besides more unanswered questions and feelings of hopelessness . . .
At that moment, Anna decided that she wasn’t going to waste any more of her time trying to get revenge. She was going to just give up on this whole thing. Maybe she hadn’t found Geoff yet because she wasn’t meant to find him. Chasing dead end after dead end wasn’t helping her mental well-being at all.
Sighing, Anna rose to her feet. If she was going to get home by tomorrow afternoon, she had to make sure that she had all of her stuff packed and ready to go.
There was a knock at the door, and Anna tossed her duffle bag onto the bed. She opened the door on a crack and found a familiar face staring back at her. “Brandy?”
Brandy’s lips tilted into a small smile. “Hey, Anna. Do you mind if I come in? I need to ask you for a huge favor.”
Anna held the door open wider so Brandy could come inside. “What do you need?” she asked, wondering what Brandy could need her help with, considering they had only just met.
“It’s a long story, but . . . Jansen and I are planning to leave this place a little earlier than what we signed on for,” Brandy explained, keeping her voice at a lowered, secretive level. “We have until next month before we’re actually allowed to go, and I could make up excuses for why we feel like we need to leave early, but honestly? We’re both getting really sick of this place. We’re not even allowed to sleep in the same room as each other, because it goes against the rules. They think Jansen might lose control if he’s put in a situation where he and I could be ‘intimate’ with each other,” she said, making air quotes with her fingers and rolling her eyes. “It’s just ridiculous.”
“I understand why you want to leave,” Anna replied quietly. “But what do you want my help with?”
“We’re not going to tell anyone that we’re leaving. Aside from you, I mean. We’re going to sneak out of here, but I know we’re going to have a hard time getting past Darius. It always seems like he’s everywhere, watching and waiting for someone to break the rules.” Brandy met Anna’s eyes. “I need you to distract Darius for us. Go to him and tell him you’re having some sort of problem or ask him questions or something—anything that will make him less concerned with us and more concerned with you for long enough for us to get away.”
Anna hesitated. On the one hand, she didn’t want to do anything to betray Darius’ trust. Her mother had loved Darius, and he was one of the few people who knew her in a different way than Anna had known her. He was the one link to her mother’s hidden past.
On the other hand, helping Brandy would at least make Ana’s visit worthwhile for someone, since it felt like it had been a total waste to her. Anna had gotten the answers she needed about Austin, but if she had thought things through on her own, she would have been able to come up with the same answer eventually, anyway.
Turning to Brandy, Anna nodded. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
“Perfect. Thank you so much! You’re a life saver. Seriously, you have no idea how much this means to us,” Brandy said, beaming a smile that lit up the room. “You know where to find Darius’ office, right? That’s where he is right now.”
“Yeah, I know where to find him. I’ll go there now,” Anna said. She opened the door to her room and stepped out into the quiet hallway.
“Thanks again,” Brandy said with an appreciative smile.
“It’s no problem,” Anna replied, as she headed down the hallway until she reached Darius’ office. She knocked on the door, which had been left open on a slight crack. When there was no answer, she peeked inside and realized that there was no one in the office. It was empty.
Anna was about to turn away and tell Brandy that Darius wasn’t in his office, so they would need to wait to leave, when her eyes fell on a filing cabinet in the corner of the room.
What if there was something about her mother in the filing cabinet? Anna didn’t know what she could find in there about her mother that she didn’t already know, but it made her curious to know that there might be something—anything—in there that might help her learn more about her mother’s time at Westbrooke.
Anna quickly shut the door and tiptoed across the tiled floor, hoping that Darius wouldn’t
walk in the office and catch her snooping through his files. Even though she knew that getting caught was a risk, it was one that she was willing to take.
Once she approached the filing cabinet, she breathed a sigh of relief to find that the key had been left inside the lock. She turned it and pulled the drawer open.
There were hundreds of files, which Anna flipped through quickly, searching them for her mother’s name. Christina Lager . . . Alicia Landon . . . Benjamin Lankford.
There wasn’t a file for Annemarie Lancefield—or, if there was, it wasn’t in alphabetical order with the rest of the files.
As Anna continued to sift through the files, her eyes fell on a name that she knew all too well. Geoff Lawson.
With trembling hands, Anna pulled the file out of the drawer and flipped through its pages. There was some general information about Geoff listed: his date of birth, location, and the blood type he’d had when he was a human, along with some of his other health-related information.
When she flipped to the next page in the folder, Anna’s heart froze inside her chest when she saw the headshot tucked inside.
Greg Lawrence’s face stared back at her.
Chapter 13
“So, what do you want to do tonight?” Caroline asked Kevin once they had unfinished packing all of their belongings. Kevin hadn’t had much to unpack. Since he’d taken over Gabe’s life, he had left everything that he had owned behind. Caroline, though, had tons of clothes and shoes and other types of accessories that girls wasted their money on.
Of course, Kevin should have expected that Caroline would be one of those girls. She was obviously a rich girl, and rich girls usually wasted their money on those sorts of things.
Kevin hated rich girls. He hated how materialistic they were. In fact, now that he knew how materialistic Caroline was, he was beginning to see her in a different light. He wondered if she was even a shopaholic like some of the girls he dated in the past. The type who bought a new pair of shoes every time a boy broke her heart. That, in his opinion, was pathetic.
“Well?” Caroline pressed.
“I don’t know,” Kevin replied, turning to her. “We can do whatever you want.” He wasn’t about to tell her that what he wanted to do, more than anything else, was go back to Pennsylvania so he could drink Lexi Hunter’s blood. He knew that telling Caroline that would make her jealous. Caroline seemed like she was the crazy jealous type—the type of girl that Kevin always tried to stay away from, the type of girl he despised. If he wanted to drink another girl’s blood, Caroline was going to just have to get over it.
Well, she wouldn’t have to get over it. Kevin just wasn’t going to tell her the truth.
“Well, maybe I could play the piano for you, Gabe,” Caroline said quietly, a red blush blooming on her cheeks.
Kevin wrinkled his nose. “Do you really have to? That thing seriously gives me a headache.”
Caroline narrowed her eyes at him, her brows knitting together. “But I thought you love when I play the piano,” she protested. “At least, you seemed like you loved it when we first met.” She paused before adding, “Please tell me you weren’t just trying to get in my pants by acting like you were genuinely interested in my music.”
Kevin rolled his eyes at her, annoyed at her insecurity. “Trust me . . . I wasn’t just trying to get in your pants. And maybe I really did like when you played for me when we first met. I don’t know. I don’t enjoy it now, though. In fact, I was thinking that maybe we could come up with some sort of agreement where you only play your piano when I’m out of the house.”
Caroline started to say something in protest when her phone blared from inside her pocket. “I need to take this,” she mumbled, as she headed into the second bedroom, which they had turned into an office, and closed the door behind her quietly.
Kevin stared around at the books on the book shelf. There were titles from William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Ernest Hemingway. None of them were books that even Kevin would want to read, and he was way older than Caroline was, which confirmed what he already knew.
Caroline Nichols was a really boring person.
“What do you mean Gabe is bad?” Kevin heard Caroline say from inside the office, and he slowly crept over to the door and pressed his ear against the wood to listen in on her conversation. He hoped that Lexi and Dan hadn’t somehow figured out that he wasn’t Gabe at all—or that he was the one who had stolen Rhonda’s body.
“Well, no, I’m not positive I made the right decision by asking him to come here. He’s actually been acting a lot different the past few days. It’s almost like he’s not the same person anymore,” Caroline whispered into the phone. “But I’m sure he didn’t kill this Rosie girl like you say he did, Danny. He might be acting weird, but he’s not a killer.”
Shit. Kevin wasn’t sure how Dan had found out about Rosie, but somehow, he knew. For some reason, though, Dan must have thought that Gabe was the one who had killed Rosie, when it actually had been Kevin who had done it.
Kevin wasn’t sure why anyone would give his brother credit for Rosie’s murder. In fact, it made him feel sort of angry that they could think that Gabe had the balls to kill anyone. With the exception of Kevin—and possibly Lexi’s ex-boyfriend—Gabe had never hurt a fly. And even Kevin had to admit that he really did deserve for his brother to kill him.
Gabe didn’t even know about half of the things Kevin had done. Gabe had tried to kill him because he thought that Kevin would kill Lexi if he had the opportunity to drink from her, but what did that matter? Lexi’s death would only be one more death to add to the growing list of Kevin’s victims. The last time Kevin had counted, he’d killed ninety-eight women in the past four years alone. Rosie had just happened to be one of them.
Of the ninety-eight girls and women Kevin had killed, Rosie was the one he had liked the most. In fact, when Kevin had first met Rosie, he thought that he might be able to love her. She was middle-aged, which made her an unusual choice for him. Kevin usually embraced his immortal youth and chose to date teenage girls and young women. But there was just something about Rosie which had drawn him to her from the start.
Quickly, though, the lust that he felt towards her began to turn into something more. Kevin became obsessed with everything she did, and he constantly found himself worrying that she might be sharing her blood with another vampire. The idea had driven him nuts. A jealous vampire was something that no woman should ever cross.
So, Kevin did the only thing he could think of doing. If he wasn’t the only one who could have her blood, no one else was going to have it, either. He killed her, one night while she had been home alone in the bathtub. He had made her believe that he was just going to drink from her like he always did, but instead, he’d ended up draining her of all the blood in her body.
Kevin never thought there was any way he could ever be linked to Rosie’s murder—the same way he never left behind a trail of evidence with the other girls and women he dated and later ended up killing when he was positive that they were sharing their blood with other vampires.
At that moment, the door swung open. Kevin quickly took a step back, hoping that Caroline wouldn’t be suspicious about the fact that he had been listening in on her conversation the whole time.
When Caroline saw him, a softened look crossed her face. “Gabe, I think we need to talk.”
“Okay,” Kevin agreed. He sat down on the living room couch, and she sat down next to him. “What is it you want to talk about?”
“I want to talk about us,” Caroline said, glancing over at him with her sky blue eyes. “I need to know where you want this to go . . . assuming you want it to go anywhere at all, that is.”
Kevin hated questions like this. He hated it even more because it was Caroline, and the truth was just too hard for him to break to her. Kevin couldn’t just tell her that he did want to be with her, but only so that he could go back to her family’s house so he could get his hands on Lexi Hunter.
What he needed to do was make Caroline trust him more than she did right now, so instead of answering her question, Kevin turned to her and pressed his lips against hers. “There’s somewhere I want this to go right now,” Kevin whispered to her, his lips drifting to her ear lobe.
“Y-you want to drink from me?” Caroline whispered, her body tensing up as his lips continued their way down her neck.
Kevin pulled back for a moment and stared into her eyes, thinking about how hungry he was. “If that’s okay with you.”
Caroline stared at him before biting her lower lip nervously and then nodding. “I . . . I want you to.”
“Good,” Kevin said. As he sank his teeth into her neck, he found himself wondering if she had been sharing her blood with any other vampires lately.
*
“I still think Caroline’s being too trusting,” Dan mumbled.
“Yes, she is,” Lexi replied quietly. She stared down at her hands. She couldn’t help but feel guilty about the whole thing. If only she hadn’t told Caroline that she should move in with Gabe. If Lexi had told her to stay away from him, Caroline wouldn’t be in danger.
“We don’t know he’s going to hurt her, guys,” Austin said from his place in the backseat. “Maybe he won’t hurt her since he knows we’ll put two and two together.”
“Let’s hope,” Dan said. “I wish we could leave tonight to go to her.”
“We need to wait for Anna,” Austin protested. “She’ll be coming home tomorrow afternoon, and knowing that Geoff is somewhere nearby makes me nervous. I don’t want her to be alone.”
“I know,” Dan said with a sigh. “That’s why I know we need to wait for her to get here before we leave to save Caroline.”
Dan pulled his car into the driveway at Lexi’s father’s house, and she climbed out of the car and ran up the front steps. She hadn’t been over to see Erica and Connor in a long time and she knew they would be excited about it.