by Cynthia Eden
“I think Wesley Kaiser was a man driven to the brink of his sanity by grief. He’d lost his sister. He knew that she was dead, that she’d been murdered, but no one would believe him.”
Amelia’s hands fisted before her. “I shot him.” Her voice was weak. “He was in my room, and I—I shot him.”
“I know.” Six of her bullets had hit him. He’d died on the scene.
Amelia’s shoulders sagged. “He never talked to me about his sister. I wish...oh, God, I wish things had ended differently. If he’d told me the truth, I could have helped him! It didn’t have to end this way.”
“No,” Macey agreed with her completely. “It didn’t.”
A tear leaked from Amelia’s right eye. “What happens now? Will I go to jail?” Before Macey could continue, Amelia said, “It was self-defense, I swear! He was running at me—coming for me. He didn’t have a gun, not that I could see, but I was so scared.” A sob burst from her. “I knew what he’d done. And I didn’t want him to k-kill me.”
Macey reached across the table. A tissue box had been placed there. She offered Amelia a tissue. Amelia swiped it over her streaming eyes. Macey waited for the other woman to compose herself.
After a few moments, Amelia seemed to get her control back. “I’m sorry. It’s been a really rough twenty-four hours, you know?”
I know. Macey offered her a smile. “I know you would have helped Wesley.”
Some of the tension left Amelia’s face.
“Actually,” Macey remarked, “I think you did help him.”
“I—I don’t understand—”
“Jonah Loxley told me that someone else helped him. He knew that hikers were disappearing here in Gatlinburg, but he had no idea where their bodies were being hidden. He didn’t know that part of the puzzle, you see. The program that he’d created to find potential serials just showed him a victim pattern in the area. It didn’t show him where those victims were buried. It didn’t show him who his killer was.”
A faint line appeared between Amelia’s brows. “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t, either, not at first, but then I remembered... You are really, really good at finding bodies.”
Amelia’s lips parted, but she didn’t speak.
Macey gave her another smile. “Let me tell you what I think happened...”
“I—I didn’t—”
“I think Wesley came to you. He came to you not as Carlisle, but as himself. He’d figured out that his sister was dead. He’d figured out that Peter Carter had murdered her, but he had no proof. So he went to someone who knew how to find bodies. He went to you.”
Amelia shook her head. “I—I—No. That never happened.”
Macey squared her shoulders and rolled up her sleeves. She caught a glimpse of her scars and, for the first time, they made her feel stronger. “Peter Carter—in his very warped and twisted way—loved Susannah. So maybe you used that as a starting point. Maybe you went to him and appealed to the emotions he’d had for her. But while you were at the museum, you happen to notice the new exhibit, didn’t you? The hate nails...and the skull.”
Amelia was staring at her with wide, shocked eyes.
“Did a little digging on you,” Macey said, inclining her head. “You’re a forensic geophysicist now, but when you were an undergrad, you were focused on forensic anthropology.”
“Y-yes...”
“That means you know your way around bones. I’m betting with just one glance, you knew you weren’t looking at some two-hundred-year-old skull. You were staring at a recent victim. You were staring at Susannah.”
Amelia’s breath came faster. She was almost panting.
“But then the problem became...where was her body? You realized that Peter was still obsessed with her, and maybe...maybe during that visit he mentioned the spot that Susannah liked to visit. Her favorite place. Her safe place. You headed out there with Wesley, because, of course, he remembered that his sister had loved that spot when they were kids, and you took your equipment with you. You found the cabin and you started searching.”
“This is crazy,” Amelia whispered. She stared at Macey in horror. “You’re crazy.”
Macey glanced down at her scars, and she smiled. “You found a lot that day. Not just Susannah...but so many more bodies. I bet you nearly went wild when you found all of those readings.”
Amelia was shaking her head—
“Did you wonder if Peter was the one who’d killed them all? Bet you did, so you went to Wesley’s contact at the FBI. You met Jonah. You shared what you knew, he shared what he knew...and you realized that you’d found the burial grounds for a serial killer.” She shrugged. “At that point, well, I’m betting Jonah just staked out the cabin, huh? Probably put up some recording devices because he sure seemed to love those.” She knew now that Jonah had been the one to put the devices in her cabin. They’d found the receivers for those devices—in the cabin he shared with Tucker. He was right under our noses the whole time. “Jonah liked to watch. He liked to find sins. So he waited and he watched and he found Curtis Zale.”
Amelia shot to her feet. “This is ridiculous! You were at that cabin! None of those bodies had been dug up! There was no way for me to know that Susannah was there—no way for me to know about—”
“You detected the bodies with your equipment. Most of them were in a nice, neat little line behind the cabin. Those were the work of Curtis Zale. Susannah was all alone, underneath her favorite tree. Her brother would have known that tree was her favorite, right?”
Amelia didn’t speak.
“You saw them, and, no, you didn’t dig them up. Because you had a...well, a team of sorts, I guess. And you all had a plan. That plan involved killing Curtis Zale.”
Amelia was still standing and her body was completely stiff. “Agent Murphy is the one who killed that man! I wasn’t even there! I didn’t arrive until after—”
“After you had Agent Murphy do your dirty work. After you and your team had staged the scene. You liked the nails, huh? Took that from Peter, didn’t you? A nice little ‘fuck you’ every time you used it.”
“I’m—I don’t want to talk to you any longer. You’re lying! Making up lies!”
Macey just stared at her.
“You have no proof about any of this!” Amelia nearly yelled. “Nothing! You’re just making up stories!”
Macey tilted back her head. “Wesley didn’t like what you were doing. He’d started all this—only because he wanted justice for his sister. But somewhere along the line, that got lost. He didn’t realize until too late that the FBI agent he’d turned to for help? That guy was the last person he should have trusted. Jonah Loxley was a monster—”
Amelia’s nostrils flared.
“And Wesley, he was looking for a white knight. Unfortunately for him, he wound up with two monsters.” She rose to her feet and flattened her hands on the table. “He was in your motel room today, without any weapon at all, and you shot him six times. You did that to stop him from talking about what you did.”
“You,” Amelia argued back, her voice strangled. “You shot Jonah, and I heard he didn’t even have bullets in his gun.” Then, before Macey could speak, she made a rough, chopping motion with her hand. “Doesn’t matter. We were both scared. Don’t you see that, Agent Night? You and I are the same. We had to fight back to save our lives.”
They were nothing alike. “Wesley left a full, written confession beneath his sister’s birch tree. He told us everything, including how you helped to give him a false identity. He implicated you completely.”
“No.” Amelia backed up a step and absolute horror flashed on her face. “No!” Then she cried, “That fucking bastard!” Fury blasted in her words. “I did everything for him! No one else was helping that little prick! Me, I did it! Jonah and I were the ones who found the killers. We were the ones who were going to
make sure that Peter paid—we were making sure they all paid! We were finally giving those killers the payback they deserved!” She shoved her hair back. “Do you know how many bodies I’ve found? Kids, men, women? Thrown away like garbage? It was time someone stood up for them! Time someone fought back!”
“With torture...and by using innocent people as bait?” An image of Gale Collins flashed before her eyes. “How does what you did make you any better than the monsters you paid back?”
Amelia’s frantic gaze flew around the interrogation room. “I want a deal! I want—”
“There is no deal for you. You murdered Wesley Kaiser in cold blood. You saw him, and you feared he’d tell us about your involvement. So you killed him.”
Amelia’s lips trembled. “My whole life was on the l-line. What was I supposed to do?”
Macey didn’t move.
“I didn’t know he’d written a confession.” Amelia’s eyes squeezed shut. “Oh, God, I didn’t know!”
Macey watched her for a moment. Amelia’s body was swaying, tears sparking on her lashes. “He didn’t.” Her voice was so quiet.
But Amelia heard those soft words. Her eyes immediately flew open.
“He didn’t leave a confession, but you just made one.”
Amelia’s mouth dropped. “You...you lied?”
“And you killed.” Macey turned her back on the other woman. “But you won’t be doing that anymore. You won’t be doing anything but spending the rest of your life behind bars.”
“No!” Amelia screamed.
Macey didn’t look back. She’d gotten what she needed. She opened the door. A uniformed cop waited on the threshold. “Take her back to holding,” Macey told him. “And be sure you read Dr. Lang her rights.”
* * *
MACEY PULLED IN a deep, bracing breath as she stood in the hospital corridor. She’d already checked on Dr. McKinley—he was healing nicely. And Zack Douglas was going to pull through, too, thank goodness. Samantha and Tucker had found him just in time.
There were no more killers for her to hunt right then. No more victims to discover. The case was over.
Three killers—Jonah, Amelia and Wesley. A twisted team that had hunted dark predators but had themselves become lost in the darkness.
Sometimes Macey had worried that she was letting her own darkness consume her. The pain from her past, the need for vengeance...
She opened the hospital room door.
Bowen was sitting up in bed. He smiled when he saw her.
She didn’t worry about getting lost in the darkness anymore. She’d come out of that cage, and she’d gone into the light.
Bowen had shown her the way.
“We got her,” she told him.
Bowen lifted his hand toward her. She hurried to him and her hand extended. Her sleeves were still up. She could see her scars. She didn’t want to hide anymore. Not the good or the bad. Not her fears. Not her hopes. She wanted to take life, to hold it tight. To savor every single moment.
Her fingers curled with his.
And Macey knew her nightmares didn’t matter anymore. The future—that mattered. Her life with Bowen mattered.
What would come next...
That mattered.
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781489254528
TITLE: INTO THE NIGHT
First Australian Publication 2017
Copyright © 2017 Cindy Roussos
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Pty Ltd, Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, N.S.W., Australia 2000.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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