McCallum set the pen down. “Do you have reason to believe she’s involved?”
“Not really. I can’t see a motive for the women, and we have the tapes of the lobby, so she has an alibi for Campbell’s murder. Unless she went out the window.”
“What’s your concern?”
“I’m … not sure.” His stomach roiled.
“She’s not Julie.” McCallum’s voice was low but he might as well have shouted it.
“I know she—”
“I understand, Ed. Julie’s on your mind. Always will be. It’s grief. It’s trauma. It’s complicated. But it’s a mistake to assume that any suspect who looks like Julie must be innocent. You’re generalizing, maybe even seeing resemblances that aren’t there because you want them to be there. You want to save Julie and you can’t do that, so you’re trying to save someone else. But not all these women deserve your sympathy.”
“She just lost her boyfriend. She deserves something.” Petrosky wiped a hand over his forehead. It came away wet.
“Katherine Delacrois deserved your sympathy too, right? I’m sure you remember her.”
Petrosky clenched his jaw. Katherine had been just as lovely, with the same huge eyes and dark hair. She had been soft-spoken and tearful when he questioned her, and he’d felt so guilty about making her upset that he defended her to the other officers. A week later she had quietly, and just as tearfully, admitted to brutally stabbing her boyfriend thirteen times in the chest.
“This isn’t—”
“No, it’s not. But it wouldn’t hurt you to remember that this girl is not your girl either.”
“I don’t have all day to bullshit about old news.” Petrosky clenched his fists under the desk, something sharp as a fish hook tugging at his heart. “I need to figure this out before he kills someone else.”
McCallum sat back in his chair, eyes tight but not surprised. “If you insist. Back to your case.”
He tried to ignore the twitch at the corner of McCallum’s mouth, but his back tensed anyway. “I need to look at the victims more.” Maybe there were similarities he had missed, not that he’d ever give Graves’s the satisfaction of admitting that.
“Their attraction for your killer may not be as obvious as it seems.”
“The attraction to the working girls seemed pretty obvious until Campbell.”
McCallum put his hands flat on the desk. “Look deeper.”
Petrosky stood and started for the door.
“Ed?”
He turned back.
“You know what you need to do. Find the links between the victims and you’ll figure out how he’s choosing. You can’t focus on things you know aren’t leads; you can’t focus on this girl. As you said, you don’t have the time. He’s out there. And he’s hunting.”
All night I sat at the dining table, staring at the door with a kitchen knife in my hand, imagining I’d be ready the moment I heard him picking the lock. While I waited, I considered my options. One: leap into the car and run with the couple hundred bucks I had in my wallet. But I wouldn’t get far. Two: take the bus with that same money and probably get farther. But since he obviously knew that I had stayed in a shelter the first time, he’d surely look at shelters this time and find me right off. So that was out, and I had no idea how I’d find an apartment without someone like Ms. LaPorte looking out for me. I had never even used my name to open a credit card. Three: there was no three. For the life of me, I could think of nothing else to do.
The next day started on autopilot. My hands trembled as I lathered my hair, but I still washed it. My stomach lurched at the thought of food, but I still made toast. And when the hallway creaked ominously outside my door, I threw on my shoes, peered into the hallway and raced for my car like I was running from a burning building.
At least at work my heart could relax to a dull roar in my ears, white noise instead of the heavy metal drummer that had blasted away in my skull all the way to the office. I’d never been so grateful for the guarded doors, the security locks, and Jerome, somewhere in the building looking out for shady characters.
But I couldn’t stay here for the rest of my life, in this building, with the incessant clacking of fingers on keyboards to help me keep my composure. I peeked over the partitions at Noelle but the back of her head wasn’t very comforting. Nor was the way Ralph was leering at her from across the room. I collapsed back in my chair and tried to lose myself in my work, punching in information as fast as I could until my shaking fingers refused to type any longer.
Let me know if there is anything I can do. His words rang in my head until there was nothing left but his voice, and the hope trying to seed itself within me.
I shoved my chair back. File folders crashed to the floor.
Maybe he can help.
No, certainly not.
Tell him a joke! He likes those!
Not like you have anything to lose.
I threw open the office door too hard, caught it, and closed it gently, glancing over my shoulder through the glass wall at Ralph and Toni and Noelle. No one looked up. I ran to the staircase and ascended, my shoes on the metal steps almost as fast as my heartbeat.
The top floor was another world—leather armchairs and cherry wood furniture, and abstract art. Doubt seeped into my chest like a river of burning oil. Desperation burned hotter.
What’s the worst that can happen?
He’ll think you’re crazy.
So what?
He’ll fire you.
Joke’s on him—I quit!
The secretary had steel gray hair and black-rimmed glasses like an old-fashioned schoolmarm. Her bony fingers kept typing away on her keyboard even as she stared me down.
I smoothed my hair. “I need to speak to Mr. Harwick, please.”
“Name and appointment time?”
“Hannah Montgomery. I don’t actually have an—”
She smiled, but her gaze was one you’d give a naughty child. “Then I am afraid he cannot see you.”
My body felt suddenly heavy, like I was wrapped in a wet blanket of hopelessness. Of course he can’t see me. I was an idiot. “Can I make an appointment to see him today?”
The woman punched a few buttons on the keyboard and squinted at her screen, eyes flat and disinterested. “How about three weeks from tomorrow?”
I put my hands on the desk to steady myself. I couldn’t breathe.
I’ll be gone by then.
Or gutted like a fish.
“Please, I just … please—” My voice rang shrill, foreign, hysterical. Back spots floated around the edges of my vision. My lungs were on fire.
“Ma’am, you’re going to have to—” The secretary’s voice grew distant. My fingers, splayed on the cherry wood, slid toward me in slow motion as I gasped nonexistent air and fought the haze at the edges of my vision. Everything went black.
He held me, cradling me like a child as he walked me to my bedroom.
Shhh, it’s ok, baby …
I opened my eyes with a start. I was half lying, half sitting in a leather armchair, knees over the arm. Near my feet, a sculpture made of colored glass reached toward the ceiling with intertwined bands of red and yellow.
“You’re awake.” Mr. Harwick rose behind an enormous desk of glass and stone.
I tried to pull myself up, but my sweaty hands slipped on the leather.
“Just relax for a moment.”
I stopped struggling and wilted in the chair.
“Are you hurt?”
I shifted in the seat. My legs were asleep, but I only felt pins and needles, not pain. My elbow stung with what was probably rug burn. My lungs were working again. Nothing felt too sore or wrong, though I did seem to have a mass of creepy crawly things teeming in my stomach.
Then everything came back to me.
I need help. My father killed my boyfriend and it’s all my fault.
Shit! Don’t say that!
He perched on the arm of the other chair, concern et
ched across his features.
I swung my feet to the floor.
Tell him.
I don’t know what to say.
“I … need help.” It came out a whisper.
“What can I do for you?”
His cologne was biting, earthy, masculine. “Uh …” In all the hoping I’d done I had not thought to plan out what to ask of him. I wanted to punch myself in the head.
You can’t tell him.
You have to tell him. You can always deny it later if he tells anyone.
“I … my um … father …” I looked down. “He wasn’t very nice when I was growing up. I ran away.” Why are you still protecting him?
I took a deep breath. “I … I’m afraid he may be trying to find me. I am … I don’t know what to do, but I can’t … I think he’s been following me.”
“Did you call the police?”
My heart caught in my throat. They’ll arrest me for not telling them who killed Jake.
“No. I mean, I think I might be in trouble too. I … uh … took some things from the house when I left.” Yeah, like your clothes. Look at you, super thief! First your clothes, then an old cafeteria table, and tomorrow a bank so you can actually manage to avoid homelessness wherever you end up.
His forehead wrinkled. “I see.”
“Maybe … maybe I can take out a loan against my next paycheck? Or I can just borrow a little bit so I can get started in another state? I’ll pay you back, every cent. I’ll work two, three jobs if I have to. I just need enough to get away and set up somewhere else.”
Here it is. Now he’ll tell me to get out and I can go pack my apartment.
“I can help you.”
You can … what? I blinked at him.
“You don’t have to leave, Hannah. If he found you here, he’ll find you there. Then in another year you’ll be back in the same position. Let’s give it a week or so to assess the situation.”
“But—”
“Did he come to your home?”
Not yet. “He will.”
“I can help you get an apartment in another name.”
“He’s been following me. He knows my car.” Oh, God. He probably knew where I ate dinner, where I shopped for groceries.
“I’ll drive you, or I will have a car sent.”
I did a double take, heart twitching. “What?”
“Or you can stay with me for a few days. I’ve got an alarm and a big dog.”
You can’t help me, no one can help me. You’ll die just like Jake did. “Mr. Harwick, I—”
“Dominic.”
“Dominic. We don’t even … I mean, we don’t know each other all that well.”
“I know you’re scared, but I can help you. And if in a week you still want to run, I will give you some cash and a new license plate.”
Something was obviously wrong with my ears. He doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation. If he did—
“Are you sure you don’t want to call the police? We can do it from here.” He reached for the phone.
“No! I mean … I don’t know.”
They’ll lock me up too, just for knowing about Jake. They’ll blame me.
Would Dominic?
I had nothing to lose anymore. My eyes filled with tears. “I just feel so … broken. Like I don’t even know what to do to be normal anymore.”
His eyes were far away. “My dad always used to say, ‘Pretending to be normal is the best way to make people think you are.’”
I wrung my hands, every nerve in my body twitching. Pretending, I could do. It was what came after the pretending that worried me.
“You’re strong. You’ll get past this.” He touched my arm softly. “Everything will be okay.”
Everything will be okay. Was that true? Everything encompassed so very much and it felt like it was all flowing through me in that moment—the unrelenting stress of the past few months, the pain of my childhood, the guilt and the grief and the panic—until I feared I would burst or lose my mind completely. Everything. I needed everything to be okay, if only for a moment.
His eyes bored into mine. “Hannah, you’re shaking. It’s all right. I’ll help you.” He was so … confident, his eyes calm, patient, understanding.
I threw myself into his arms and sobbed into his shirt as he stroked my hair.
“I … thank you.”
I’m safe here.
Then, there was more than gratitude. It began like a fire in the pit of my stomach and crept lower, heating the space between my thighs. Something’s wrong. I pressed my legs together, but the smoldering ache swelled and spread.
I tilted my face upwards and he captured my mouth with his, silencing the remnants of fear. But then the fear reemerged, burning panic mingling with something feral, clawing at me to get out.
I can’t do this.
I put a hand on his chest, prepared to pull away, but he wrapped an arm around my back and liquid warmth spread through me.
He’ll hurt me too.
But his hand in my hair was soft, gentle, kind. He did care for me. Maybe he always had. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, feel the throbbing of it between my legs, sweet and unrelenting.
He had come to the funeral. Not for Jake, not for just another employee, but for me. He’d sent me flowers. Came to see me in the office. He cared, and not because I was an employee, not even because I was pretty—I surely hadn’t been ten minutes ago with snot streaming down my face. No, he cared about … me.
I clutched his shoulders as if letting go might cause him to disappear and I would be left desperate and lonely again. I was so focused on his mouth, his scent, the hardness of him against my pelvis that I didn’t feel him moving me toward the desk, but there I was, the glass top cold under me as he laid me down and guided my arms above my head. Then my mouth was free, my lips still swollen with the taste of him, as his tongue trailed along my jaw, down the side of my neck, over to the top button of my blouse. He unbuttoned my shirt slowly and brushed his lips against each patch of newly-exposed skin. I closed my eyes.
Everything will be okay.
He put his hands on my knees and moved upward under my skirt, each stroke leaving tender, tingling flesh in its wake. A low moan escaped me, primal and hungry, a sound I didn’t even know I was capable of making. The past months—all my worries, all my mistakes—vanished. There had been nothing before this moment. Here, with him, it was safe to be born again.
Everything will be okay.
Then he was inside me, filling me, and I raised my hips to meet him. His tongue flicked against my nipple, and I could feel every gentle suckle in my loins. I wrapped my legs around him as if I could erase everything else by pulling him deeper into me. He thrust, again and again, his fingers stroking me at the apex of my thighs.
Everything will be okay.
An unfamiliar sensation took over my body, and there was no more control, no time to be shocked, only pulsing, shuddering waves crashing over me as I clung to the desk and screamed Dominic’s name. He covered my mouth with his, joining the two of us in blissful silence that spoke volumes. He cared about me. He wanted me. And I wanted him back, desperately, furiously, in that moment, and for as long as he would have me.
He will protect me.
Yeah, as long as he never knows how fucked up you really are.
Swallowing the thought, I wrapped my legs around his hips and fastened myself to him as if he were an anchor, one steady thing in a sea of hurt.
Wednesday, November 18th
Robert seethed. This is not possible.
He sat with Thomas at the deli down the road from their office. A ham and Swiss sandwich too big to fit in his mouth sat untouched on his plate. The completely oblivious bastard across from him was making short work of his own turkey and cheddar.
She betrayed me.
It was a simple thought, one that shouldn’t have surprised him, and yet it did.
Women are whores. Liars. Vile.
But not this
one. This one was supposed to save him. With every part of his being he rejected the idea that she had left him before granting him absolution.
“When did this happen?”
Thomas shrugged. “This week, I think? Apparently, Hannah just packed up and moved out of the blue. Noelle was totally shocked when she found out.”
Robert cursed himself for biding his time instead of actively pursuing her. But a sudden move did not seem like typical behavior for the demure woman he thought he knew. The girl he needed would not have given herself so easily to anyone. And it was not possible that one could change so suddenly.
He sat up straighter. What if she had been tricked? Perhaps she was merely the unwitting victim of a cunning adversary. He could save her from him, give her a gift, and in return, she would cleanse him, grateful for his selflessness.
A pastoral voice sounded in his head.
Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
Without her there was no one who could absolve him. He felt himself sliding into the grips of desperation, each breath more difficult than the last.
Thomas bit into his sandwich and chewed, the sound wet and thick and infuriating.
“Who the fuck is he?” Robert asked as soon as he could speak.
Thomas’s eyes were boring a hole into him and Robert wanted to rip them out of Thomas’s skull.
“That’s the craziest part. The boss man.”
Robert squinted. “The boss? Like, the head of Chrysler?”
Thomas laughed. “Nah, I don’t think she aimed quite that old. The owner of the contract house we work for. Harwick.”
Robert leaned back in his chair and gaped. He had worked there for years and had never even met Harwick. “I didn’t know they knew each other.”
“Yeah, I think they work in the office with him,” Thomas said, nonchalantly, clearly missing the blinding rage and despair emanating from the man across from him.
Dominic Harwick. Robert clenched his teeth together, jaw aching with the pressure of it.
She is my only hope of salvation.
I cannot fail.
Wednesday, November 18th
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