Relief flooded her limbs. “The four women on Roy’s list were all women Eric cared about. They all died in various suspicious ways. Eric says he hired Roy to find out who was killing these women. He’s clearly unwell. I thought before he was taking some kind of methamphetamines and clearly they’ve done some real damage to his brain. I’m not sure if he thought he was kidnapping me to protect me from Magpie or as some kind of bait to lure Magpie out into the open.”
Joshua looked down at the crumpled man on the floor. “You do realize there might have never even been a Magpie. Magpie was just a delusion Eric created to let him kill. At least now the nightmare’s over.”
They were safe. The people who’d kidnapped her had been arrested.
But still something still didn’t feel quite right. Like there was still something, a piece still missing. Like the picture still wasn’t complete.
They heard the sirens first. Then came the lights. Then came the people in uniform, swarming in, taking over. Theresa was taken to the hospital. Eric was led away in handcuffs. Police took her statement. Paramedics checked her for injuries. And through it all, Joshua never left her side, with his hand on her shoulder, or holding her fingers, or brushing her back. Until finally, they were free to walk a few steps away from the crowd and stand on the street corner, in comfortable silence together, watching as fresh snow fell. Her head fell against his shoulder.
If only I could freeze this moment forever. This one moment, feeling safe, feeling strong.
Alex materialized through the crowd, his clothes looking like he’d just fought his way through an army, but with a twinkle in his eye that said he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. “You promised not to crash my truck.”
Joshua smiled and ran his hand over his jaw. “Had to be done. You understand.”
“I do.” He dropped a set of keys into Joshua’s hands. “Zoe’s with Theresa. They haven’t really spoken in years, but one good thing about today is that the rift’s now closed. I’m going to wait for the tow truck. You can use Zoe’s car to take Samantha to the train station. Unless you’re planning on driving Samantha all the way to Montreal to see her family.”
Alex chuckled. But for once Joshua didn’t seem ready to join in the joke.
“Thanks.” Joshua frowned slightly and patted Alex on the shoulder. “I’ll see you guys back at the house in time for dinner.”
Alex’s smile faded. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Just don’t—”
A loud buzzing sounded from her pocket. She hadn’t even remembered that she still had her phone. She pulled her phone out of her pocket. It was Yvonne. “Hang on, I’ve got to take this.”
She took a step away from the men, leaving them to continue their conversation in hushed voices, and answered the phone. “Yvonne! Hi!”
Her landlady’s tone was so cold it could’ve chipped ice. “I’m calling to let you know that I’ve called a moving company to empty your apartment and put your belongings into storage. If you want to come by and pick up the key or to send somebody else by, you can. But I run a respectable building. I just can’t have the kind of nonsense going on with one of my tenants that you’ve put me through the past twenty-four hours.”
Samantha almost laughed. Two days ago the thought of losing an apartment that sweet in the middle of downtown Toronto would’ve been enough to put her in an overthinking tailspin. But now, after everything she’d been through, the idea of one paranoid woman who wanted to run a downtown Toronto apartment building like some boarding school was, well, laughable.
“You can’t kick me out of my apartment without going through due process,” she said, her voice feeling firm in her chest. “I will come right over, supervise the removal of my stuff and sign off on the storage unit, because I want my stuff to be safe and I don’t have any reason to trust that you’re not going to get someone to pick the lock on my new door while I’m visiting my parents for Christmas. But let me make something clear, that’s still my apartment. If you want to break the lease and kick me out like this, I will take you to the landlord tenant tribunal. Not because I want to live in your building, but because you’re not going to get away with treating your tenants like wayward children.” Samantha could hear her spluttering, mustering up some new sob story. But Samantha had listened long enough. “Goodbye, Yvonne. See you in half an hour.”
Samantha hung up the phone and stuck it in her pocket. She looked up. Alex had gone. Joshua was looking at her.
“Change of plans. Yvonne is trying to push me out of my apartment. She says she’s called a moving company. I’m going over there to sort it out. Then I’ll head to the station and hopefully still catch a later train. If not, there are plenty of buses.”
Joshua nodded. They headed for Zoe’s car. But it wasn’t until he’d pulled out of the small main street and back onto the main highway that she realized she hadn’t heard him speak more than a few words confirming directions. His hands gripped the steering wheel at two and ten. His eyes stared straight ahead through the windshield at the gray road.
“Look, I could tell that lame joke Alex made about driving me to Montreal hit you the wrong way,” she said. “But don’t worry. You’ve done more than enough. I’ll be perfectly safe on a crowded train and my parents will meet me at the other end.”
“It’s okay.” He still wasn’t looking at her. “Although, I guess you’re not needing a bodyguard anymore, now that the guys who kidnapped you have been arrested and Eric turned out to be Magpie—”
“Eric didn’t turn out to be Magpie,” she said quickly. “You just guessed that he was. And you might be right. But you might not.”
Joshua’s eyebrows rose. “I can’t believe you’re still defending him, after what he did to you.”
“I’m not defending him! I’m just...” Her voice trailed off. She leaned her head back against the seat. “I’m just looking at this like a fact-checker. Eric hired Roy to figure out who was behind the disappearance of Holly, Jessica, Monique and Isobel aka Bella. Why would he do that if he killed them? Why would he keep coming back to the building looking for Isobel if he’d killed her? Why would he know that Jessica and Monique were dead, but didn’t know for sure that Holly and Bella were?”
Joshua rolled his eyes. “Because he probably had some kind of psychotic break when he killed his first victim, didn’t want to face what he’d done, so imagined this fictional character named Magpie who solved all his problems.”
“Okay,” she said, “I’m willing to believe he’s emotionally unstable and I wouldn’t be surprised if he has some kind of substance-abuse problem. But it takes brains to invent a fictional serial killer to pin your crimes on. Magpie is a show-off. Magpie wanted to be noticed. Eric and Magpie want different things. Why would Magpie kill each of his victims in a different way? Why would Eric invite me for coffee and drop off a Christmas gift at my house the same morning he knew he’d hired two people to kill me? And how did he hire them anyway? How did he coerce them into killing people? And why do they call him Magpie?” She could see words and questions floating in her mind like jigsaw puzzles. There were still too many things that didn’t click, too many things that didn’t make sense.
“Evil people do evil things,” Joshua said. He pulled off the highway and into the narrow roads leading to her apartment. “Our job is to stop them without asking questions. Not to try to find all the pieces and figure out why.”
“Is that something else your grandfather used to say? That your job as a soldier was to follow orders, stop evil people and not think?” she said. “Because that doesn’t sound like the Joshua I’ve met. The Joshua I know who used his brains and wits to protect me and save my life. Even if you do want to say your job isn’t to question—mine is. My job is to look at the facts, figure out which ones are missing and flag those ones that don’t make sense.”
Joshua was silent for a long moment. Then he pulled to a stop on the street in front of her apartment. She scanned the road. No moving vans. Maybe
Yvonne had relented.
“Look, some things don’t make sense.” He put the car into Park. His jaw set. “And they never will.”
“I don’t even know what you mean by that,” she said. But there was something in his tone that stung like a rebuke. “I’m sorry if it was presumptuous of me to ask you to drive me back to my apartment. I know you only agreed to keep an eye on me as a favor to Daniel and Olivia. There’s no reason for you to keep escorting me around now.”
She unbuckled her seat belt and pulled her bag over her shoulder.
“Look, we really do need to talk.” He looked up at her building. “How about we go in, get your stuff sorted and then grab a coffee at the train station?”
“Is that what you want?” She turned to face him on the seat. “Because you’ve been in an odd mood ever since you talked to Alex back at the crime scene. And this isn’t the first time. Yesterday, I thought you were spending time with me because you wanted to. You seemed like you wanted to. But then it was like you pushed me away and told me you were only there because Daniel had asked you to be my bodyguard. Then last night, when you plucked me from the storm you held me so tightly and kissed me. I thought it meant something. But then you pushed me away again.” Frustrated tears pressed against her eyelids. Her eyes rose to the ceiling. “It’s not easy for me to trust anyone, Joshua, you get that? After what happened to me back in college, trust has always been really hard for me. It’s like my heart just isn’t as good at knowing how to open up as other people’s and my brain really struggles sometimes to understand what people mean. Some moments, you’re so gentle and kind and strong, it’s like I can feel my heart wanting to trust you. Then something happens and you close up again. You can’t just open my heart up and then slam it shut. It’s not fair to me.”
Joshua turned off the car and unbuckled his seat belt. Then his hands gripped the steering wheel again. “I never met my grandmother. But I know she broke my gramps’s heart, and he probably broke hers too. His job meant that he was never there for her and then one night she went out to a Christmas party without him, and got hit by a car and died. Then my dad fell for my mom, and I don’t remember her much either. Dad says it was love at first sight and she was all kinds of beautiful, but then she didn’t much like marriage so she left soon after having me.”
“Oh, Joshua, I’m so sorry.” She reached out for him. Her hand, her fingers brushed his shoulder. But it remained firm and unrelenting under her touch.
“They weren’t perfect men, but they were good men. They believed in duty. They believed in helping others. They warned me not to let my heart lead me astray. Now here I am, trying to decide what my future should be and I feel like I’m being pulled in six different directions at once. I can make a good pension and an amazing difference if I stay in the military, but my heart’s not in it. Giving it up to throw my lot in with this new company Daniel, Alex and Zoe are setting up tugs at something inside of me. They’re my friends and my favorite people, they need me and I can do a lot of good there too. But it’s risky and I don’t know where it’s headed. The company could fail.”
He turned to face her on the seat. “But I can hardly hear my brain think anymore when I’m around you, Samantha, because I’m falling for you so hard and fast I feel like a man rushing down a Black Diamond ski slope not knowing what’s going to hit him at the bottom. I’m drawn to you, like I’ve never been drawn to anyone before. I raced through a snowstorm to save you. I threw my body on a land mine to save you. I fought three men at once and crashed a truck through a window.” He reached for her. His hand grabbed hers. His eyes focused on her face, begging her to listen. “If Gramps and Dad taught me anything about relationships it’s that sometimes when feelings hit hard like this they just don’t last. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to make you promises I can’t keep. So, I’ve got no choice but to walk away from you and take some distance. A lot of distance. Long enough to figure out if what I feel is real. I’ve got to say goodbye to you and walk away.”
FIFTEEN
She pulled her hand back. Angry tears were forming behind her eyes and for once she didn’t try to stop him from seeing them fall.
“If you want to walk out of my life because you don’t want to be in my life, then go.” She could feel him reach for her hand again, but she didn’t let him take it. “But don’t say you’re going to preemptively break my heart for my own protection. You say you can’t be in my life because you don’t want to throw yourself headlong into something reckless and foolish? What makes you think for one moment that I want that either?”
She reached for the door handle and was about to leap out. But something made her stop. She turned back.
“I can’t imagine what it was like to grow up in your home. Sounds like your grandfather and father did the best they could. But see, my parents are very happily married and have been for over thirty years. They taught me brains and hearts were supposed to work together, along with faith. They raised me to believe in love that was built slowly, with truth and respect, and proved itself to be real. Not the stupid, reckless, selfish kind some people leap into. I’m really sorry that’s not the kind of love in your family tree. In a way, it’s very noble of you to want to protect me from being hurt from rushing into something too fast and reckless, that’s not going to work and just end up hurting us both. But if you really were falling for me, like you say you are, you’d know me well enough to know I’m not that kind of woman.”
She could feel his fingers slip over the back of her hand again. Slowly this time and gently. She looked down at their hands.
“But we only met yesterday. I guess it’s too much to expect that you’d actually know me.” She pulled her hand out of his. “I’m going to go into my apartment and find Yvonne. Then I’m going to call a taxi to take me to the train station. If you want to check out my apartment to make sure I’m safe or talk to the taxi company yourself to make sure they’re legit, that’s fine. You promised Daniel you’d make sure I made it to my train safely. But after that, I think you’re right. We should go our separate ways. Because if your goal is to protect my heart from falling for you, it’s too late.”
She leaped out of the car and closed the door behind her. He followed. He didn’t speak. Neither did she. They walked up the stairs in her building in silence and looked around her apartment, then they walked back onto the landing.
“I’m going to call Daniel,” Joshua said, “and ask if he, Alex or Zoe will drive you to the train station. You’ll be safer with them than a taxi. Clearly, I let my emotions get out of hand, and I’m sorry for that. But the situation we’ve been in has been extreme and it’s hard for anyone to know what they’re actually feeling. Maybe, in a few months, we can try this again, as friends, when whatever this is between us has died down.”
But what if what I feel for you never goes away? What if you’re not just the first man able to ever reach inside my heart, you’re the only one? What if what I’m beginning to feel for you, and what you’re beginning to feel for me is real and we’re both just too scared to see where it leads?
“That makes a lot of sense,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Okay, give me a moment.” Joshua walked down the stairs to the second-floor landing. She could hear him dialing. She stood on the landing and gripped the banister. So, this was what it had come to. She’d opened her heart to someone and he’d decided he didn’t want it.
At least I’m not the one running away this time.
“Samantha? Is that you?”
“Yvonne?” She glanced around. “Where are you?”
“I’m in the empty apartment.” Yvonne’s voice was weak. “I’m sorry, but I’m kind of stuck and I need your help.”
“Sure, hang on.” She crossed the landing. The apartment door was ajar. She should’ve known Yvonne would go from threatening to evict her to calling her for help. “You know, you shouldn’t be doing renovations on your own. You really should call some professional help.”
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She pushed the door open and stepped into the dark, spacious apartment. The smell of stale cigarettes filled her lungs. She paused. She’d done this the other day. She remembered it now. She’d been halfway to work, realized she was missing her gloves and so had come back for them. She’d just been trying to get back into her apartment when she’d heard Yvonne calling her. She hadn’t been able to see a thing. But she’d smelled something. The stench of cigarettes. She’d heard a voice wheezing. And another voice saying, That’s the one. Take her.
The door swung shut behind her. She still couldn’t see much of anything. Just empty boxes and rags. “Yvonne? Where are you?”
“I’m in here, dear. In the kitchen.”
She walked around the corner and she saw Yvonne. Her landlady was sitting perfectly still on a wooden chair, with her hands behind her back. A canister full of black powder sat on her lap. A young man stood behind her, with a scar that cut across his face and a stench of old cigars. With one hand he pressed a gun to her temple, with the other he held down the button of a detonator switch.
“Help me.” Yvonne’s voice quivered. Her tinted glasses lay broken on the floor. “He broke in here looking for you. He’s got me holding some kind of explosive. He told me he’d kill me if I didn’t lure you here.”
Samantha stared into the scarred face of the man who’d tied her up, who’d kidnapped her and shoved a land mine under her back. He smirked. She held her ground and didn’t look away. “What do you want?”
“It’s not me,” he said. The snarl in his voice wavered. “Magpie wants you. You come with me to see Magpie. He’ll let Yvonne live.”
“I’m so sorry, Samantha.” Long white-blond hair streamed down Yvonne’s face. Bright blue eyes looked up into Samantha’s, full of tears. “Please, do wherever he wants. Or he’ll kill me.”
And suddenly, Samantha could feel the puzzle pieces that had been floating around in her mind suddenly, irrevocably, click into place.
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