21. 20
I can’t sleep. Half the night has gone by, and I can’t sleep. The idea of everything that’s going down tomorrow freaks me out, which is keeping me wide awake. After dinner we watched TV and we talked. Then Remy and Chester went to Chester’s room for the night. I gave Beckett a blanket so he could crash on the couch and went to my own bed. I figured I need all my energy for tomorrow so I should sleep well, only that isn’t working out the way I planned it. At all.
It feels like everything’s going to change. Not all is bad. Hopefully we’ll find something to pin on Wayne and this whole serial killer business will be over. But that will also mean that Beckett is leaving, and it’s becoming more and more clear that I don’t want that.
Frustrated, I kick the blankets off my bed. Which is a dumb move, because it’s fall and it’s freaking cold without any blankets. I huff, and realize that the whole reason I went to bed has become moot. I’m never going to be well rested tomorrow. Might as well just accept it.
I get up out of bed, cursing silently when my feet land on the cold floor and quickly make my way to the door. As quiet as I can be, I make my way downstairs and look into the living room. I can’t see Beckett because the back of the couch is blocking my view.
What if he’s deep asleep and he doesn’t want me to wake him up?
The cold crawls from the floor up over my bare legs, making my nipples peak behind the thin tank top I’m wearing. Fuck this shit, I don’t have any time to overthink this. I walk to the front of the couch.
“Beckett,” I half whisper. “It’s me.” Only at the last moment I think about what a bad plan it could be to wake a sleeping agent without giving notice. If he’s just as aggressive as I am when he startles, I’m in for a bunch of trouble.
He’s lying on his back and grunts while he pries one of his eyes open. Before either one of us can figure out what’s going on, I pull the blanket back and lie down next to him on the couch. Part of it is because I’m looking for warmth, but I have to admit it’s only an afterthought.
“Is it morning?” he asks with a raspy voice when I lay my head on his chest and pull the blanket back over me. He’s only wearing boxer briefs and the feeling of his naked legs against mine is sinful.
“No, I couldn’t sleep,” I say. My heart is hammering in my chest and I try to wet my suddenly dry lips.
“You need some form of energy for tomorrow,” he says, wrapping an arm around me while he strokes my back. There are goosebumps all over my body, and they don’t have anything to do with the cold.
“I know.” Silence settles over the room and my thoughts go a mile a minute. “I’m nervous,” I admit.
“Hmm,” Beckett answers. I can hear his heart beating in his chest and it’s oddly comforting. The room lights up when lightning strikes outside. There aren’t any curtains in the living room to cover the windows, so we have front row seats to the thunderstorm. It takes about twenty seconds before I hear the thunder rumbling a deep growl in the distance. Rain taps against the window when big drops start falling down.
“So you thought you’d come to wake me up and settle your nerves?” Beckett asks.
“I guess.”
“Why not wake Chester and Remy?”
I bite my lip. “Because I wanted to wake you.”
He turns from his back so that he’s lying on his side, facing me. Another lightning flash lights up his face, showing me he’s smirking at me. “Good enough for me,” he says.
I think we both move forward, our mouths finding each other. A deep grunt leaves Beckett, only to be echoed by the thunder outside. His lips feel warm against mine when we kiss and I wrap my arms around his neck. He pulls me against him and I can feel the outline of his erection against my stomach. Licking his lips, he opens up for me and we deepen the kiss with a passion so hot we’re bound to get ourselves burned.
It’s a languid kiss. Both of us exploring the other’s mouth. I’m out of breath, arching my back to get as much physical contact with him as I can. He holds me closer, our legs one big knot of limbs. And I feel like I’ll never get enough of him. A moan escapes my mouth, changing the mood, making both of us more needy. He turns me on my back and lies down on top of me. I can feel all his hard muscles and his long body weighing me down, and I don’t think there’s a comfier weighted blanket in the world.
He breaks the kiss, moving his mouth over my jaw to my ear, peppering me with kisses all over. I grab his hard shoulders, digging my fingers in them and marveling in the feel of them. It makes me want to lick all the ridges of his muscles and explore him with my tongue.
He nips and kisses my ear, works his way over my neck and bites down on my pressure point, making me gasp. With a flat tongue he licks his way down to the hollow of my throat, and I find that I’m lifting my pelvis up in order to find any kind of friction.
And then a thought hits me, making me hate myself with as much passion as our kiss from mere moments ago.
“”Stop. We’ve got to take this slow,” I whisper.
Beckett grunts, obviously not thrilled about my announcement, but he lifts himself off me.
“Slower than chasing each other for months? Denying any kind of spark that was there from day one?”
He looks me in the eye and from what I can see his face is very serious. The white of his eyes the only thing I can really see in the dark room.
“We can’t take this any further,” I say, even if it pains me to do so.
He swallows. “Why?”
“Because I need there to be something for you to come back for when this case is over,” I say with the tiniest voice. But it’s the truth. I need him to stop so I’ll know he’ll come back. I need him to stop before he leaves and takes my heart along with him.
He presses a kiss to the side of my mouth. “There’ll always be something to come back for.”
I fall silent.
“I’ll always come back for you.”
He kisses the top of my nose, leaving me to ponder about his unexpected promise of something deeper. Of love.
“But we’re going to take it slow if that’s what you need right now.”
He moves off me and lies down on his side beside me.
“Thank you,” I say, nestling myself against him again. The idea that I’ll have more time with him, more of him, eases my mind, if only for a little.
He sighs. “Get some sleep, Abby. I’ll be here. Me and my blue balls will be here.”
I chuckle.
“For as long as you’ll have me.”
It’s a couple of hours later when I’m looking for some bravery in Robin’s office. After sleeping a little, Beckett went back to his motel to get changed. Chester took one look at me and urged me to ask for an emergency meeting with Robin before going to the precinct and meeting Wayne in interrogation.
I wanted to act like he was wrong, but really? He wasn’t.
So now I’m sitting on the uncomfortable couch in Robin’s office while she observes me and waits for me to start talking. Again.
“Fuck this,” I mumble, gliding down the couch and sitting on the floor. She has a nice fluffy rug on the ground that’s nicer to sit on than the couch.
Robin cocks her head.
“I like to sit on the ground,” I shrug. Then I inhale deeply, make eye contact and gather all my bravery. “I’m going into an interrogation with the man we presume is the serial killer in about an hour.”
Robin nods and scribbles something down on her notepad before she looks at me expectantly again. Yeah, I guess that statement isn’t enough to go on.
“I’m not dealing with it very well. Not sleeping well. And I kind of don’t want to see him. Interact with him.”
“What would happen if you didn’t go into that room?” she asks me.
I think about that for a second. “Then there might be a chance he walks away.”
“And what would happen in that case?”
“More women get murdered. The women that already are murdered won’t be avenged.”
“That’s not an option,” Robin states. It’s not even a question. She knows me that well after all these years.
“No, that’s not an option,” I agree, wincing. The idea that he gets away with this is making me nauseous. It’s not even a guarantee that we’ll get him when I do go into that room, but at least there’ll be some chance.
“So you feel cornered,” Robin concludes.
Do I? I taste the word for a moment. Am I cornered? I guess.
“Maybe,” I say, looking at my nails with a sudden interest.
“You feel irritated, can’t sleep. You feel as if you have no other option than talking to him, even if you’d rather not. You push your own feelings aside for the greater good. That doesn’t mean those feelings aren’t there to start with. You have some obsessive personality traits. That in itself isn’t all bad. It makes you a little controlling, which actually helps you in your day to day life. But you have absolutely no control over this situation. You feel cornered, you have no control and it makes you irritable.”
Look at her, summing up all my issues as if they don’t matter.
“But,” she continues with a soft smile, “you are in control. Nobody can force you to walk into that room. You’re doing that yourself, because of the woman you are. Because you’ll never let those murdered women down. And by walking into that room, you empower yourself. That isn’t that killer winning. That’s you winning. So you keep your head held high, kick ass, and allow yourself to feel whatever is going on inside of you. Pushing it away will only make it worse. And after today? It’ll all be over and done with.”
I groan and close my eyes.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t want it to be over and done, because once it is, Beckett will leave town and I’m not ready to lose him. And that makes me a horrible person, not wanting this serial killer stuff to be done just so I can spend some extra time with another boy.”
“Beckett?”
“Third man to complete my little harem, the FBI agent,” I remark, letting my head fall back on the couch.
“Hmm,” she says before everything goes quiet for a while. I keep my eyes closed, because hiding in my self-created darkness is preferable over facing the real world.
“This actually kind of fits everything I just told you. You like to be in control. And this is something you have no control over whatsoever. So what do you do? You hold back everything you’re feeling, because if you just deny it hard enough it can’t be there, right?”
“Right,” I reluctantly admit.
“Well, start having some faith in it, lose control, and see where everything takes you. Take a chance on love. Might turn out better than you ever thought.”
“You sound like a bad romance novel,” I say, opening my eyes again. But the corners of my mouth pull up, and I know she’s right.
“Ah,” she answers with sparkling eyes, “but what if it turns out to be a glorious story instead?”
And that’s something I can’t even fight her on.
It’s an hour later that we step into the adjoining room to the interrogation rooms. Beckett and Winny are already waiting for me. Chester picked me up at Robin’s and now we’re here. Going into the lion’s den. And I still really don’t want to.
“Hey,” Beckett says, smiling a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. He seems just as nervous about today as I am. Funny how I can read the man now like it’s nothing while he seemed such a closed book when I met him first.
“You ready?” Winny asks me while she walks over and hugs me.
“Not really. But I guess that doesn’t change anything.”
She sighs. “We’re desperate, Abby. I know it’s him. We just need to find a way in to prove it.”
“How do you know it’s him?” Chester asks, his head slightly tilted when he watches her. It’s a look I recognize - he does the same thing when he finds something interesting online.
“Little things that give him away. The way he responds to certain questions. He shouldn’t say specific things or know stuff. He should be outraged by all the little things I tell him. Well, any decent human being should be outraged by it. But he’s not. He responds when I refer to things that have to do with Isaac and Janine. He knows. He just knows. But that won’t hold up in court and I can’t get a warrant based on all the nonverbal information he gives me.”
I sigh, nodding. I get it. We all know it’s him. Which makes this all the more frustrating. Looking through the two-way mirror I see him sitting in the interrogation room. He’s resting his head on his crossed arms on the table. Once again he makes the hair on the back of my arms stand up. I’m just glad I can’t see his eyes from here, because if I did I’d probably change my mind and walk away. His lawyer is sleeping in his chair after being inside the interrogation room for so long, his head lolling. He’s going to have a sore neck when he wakes up.
I take a deep breath and look at Beckett. “Let’s go.”
Chester squeezes my forearm when I pass him, and I try to give him a reassuring smile but it feels like I fail miserably. I’m not fooling anyone. In the hallway, I take another deep breath and firmly put my tough woman mask in place. It’ll all be over soon. In worst case scenario, I leave the interrogation room - no harm done.
Beckett opens the door and steps inside, holding the door open for me. Once I step inside, I can feel my insides churn.
Wayne raises his head, staring at me with wide eyes. I believe he’s truly shocked. Then, when he slowly sits upright, a smile covers his face, sending a shiver down my spine. I want to smack it off of his face.
“Who’s this?” Wayne’s lawyer asks, rubbing his neck and blinking rapidly while he reaches for his notepad. “Is she FBI? I’d like a name please.”
“This is Abby Wilder. She’ll be sitting in on the questioning today,” Beckett answers, pulling back a chair for me before sitting down himself.
“And what is she here for?” the lawyer demands.
“Observation,” Beckett says, giving the lawyer an icy look.
“I request that she’s removed. My client doesn’t need any more prying eyes on top of yourself, the agents behind those mirrors and the cameras.”
“Leave,” Wayne says, his eyes glued to his lawyer.
“Excuse me?”
“I need you to leave now.” His voice is devoid of emotion and the tension in the room can be cut with a knife.
“What do you mean, Wayne?”
“I need you to leave now, Patrick. It’s not like you’re doing anything that I can’t do myself. Stop wasting my time and go home. I’ll still write you a nice paycheck.”
The man’s mouth drops open. “But…”
“Do you really need me to fire you before you’ll go?”
I try to shoot Beckett a look to figure out what is going on, but he keeps his eyes on Wayne. The lawyer, Patrick, abruptly pushes his chair back, packs his suitcase and makes his way to the door. All the while his eyebrows almost disappear from his hairline. I guess nobody understands what’s going on here exactly.
Once the door closes behind Patrick, Wayne turns to face us, me more specifically.
“So we meet again,” he says. His voice is so sweet it makes me want to vomit.
“You know Miss Wilder?” Beckett asks, sitting back in his chair and acting like there isn’t a cloud in the sky.
“I ran into her at a shooting range a while back. And then she was there when you came to take me in for questioning. Why is that? Why is she here now?” His eyes gleam, and it takes everything I’ve got to not break eye contact.
“As I said, she’s observing,” Beckett says.
A little muscle beneath Wayne’s eye twitches. His nostrils flare when he takes a deep breath and sits back in his chair.
“Why don’t you tell me why you took a bunch of psychology and criminology classes?”
He tilts his head, never taking his eyes off me. He makes me feel dirty. Is this the last thing Elaine saw before she died? Was he the last person to ever lay eyes on her? Was he the last thing all the victims saw? Heard? It makes me sick.
“I was trying to figure out what I wanted to pursue as a career. Was considering maybe becoming a cop, or a fed, but I realized it wasn’t for me.”
Beckett huffs, and that seems to make Wayne a little mad. I realize he doesn’t like to be disrespected. He thinks highly of himself and he expects others to do the same. I figure it’s a way to make him come out of his shell.
“Do you feel at home in the woods?” I ask him, forcing myself to keep my voice even.
“Sure, why?” he asks me, scrunching his face.
“I was just wondering why someone like you, with all the resources in the world, would choose not to have a job but just teach a bunch of self-defense classes in the woods.”
I don’t ask a question, let him fill in the silence himself.
“Well, I’d say that is noble work, helping women to defend themselves,” he says, his voice restrained and his eyes squinted.
“Or is it an easy way to get defenseless women in your darling woods? Just like you took out your neighbor all those years back. Is that where your fascination with killing started?”
Something is happening behind his eyes. I can’t pinpoint it. I’m not a mind reader, but his whole demeanor changes.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, finally taking his eyes off me and staring at the table in front of him instead. Somehow, it feels like a victory.
Before I can push him on it, Beckett’s phone rings. He pulls it out of his pocket and answers it with a short ‘yes’. He starts listening to something someone on the other side of the phone says. I feel like the timing of this phone call couldn’t be worse. I was getting somewhere with Wayne, crawling beneath his skin somehow. But now he’s just staring at my neck, which makes my skin crawl. I avert my eyes, staring at Beckett as he listens to what the person on the other side has to say. His face pales, he rubs his hand over his face, ending by pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Thanks for the update, Andy.”
Something is wrong. Something is terribly, terribly wrong. It’s like the static in the air changes, and when I look at Wayne, he gives me such a triumphant evil glare that I know this has something to do with him.
Beckett suddenly gets up, the legs of his chair back scraping over the floor, filling the room with a shrieking sound. Out of nowhere, he throws his mobile phone to the other side of the room, smashing it against one of the walls.
My eyes widen, because I have a really bad feeling about this.
He walks over to where Wayne is still keeping his focus on me, his eyes gleaming with delight. Obviously both men know something that I don’t, and I unknowingly start to breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four and hold for four again while I wait to see how this will unfold.
He grabs the keys to the handcuffs that are keeping Wayne tied to the table and starts to unlock them.
“Mister Ridgefield, you’re free to go. You are no longer a suspect in this investigation.”
My heart starts beating like a maniac. This isn’t happening, right? I’m certain that this is our serial killer. There isn’t a single doubt in my mind. All the evidence points in his direction. This can’t be happening.
I find it very difficult to breathe right then.
“Why?” I manage to stumble out.
Beckett just shakes his head, apparently not willing or able to tell me right then. But the shattered pieces of his phone on the floor tell me he feels the same way I’m feeling.
Wayne very slowly stands up, stretches his arms and then makes sure his button down and cufflinks are in place. When he raises his face again, there’s an evil luring in his eyes that makes me even more certain this is the guy we’re looking for. This is the killer.
“Thank you, agent, for seeing the error in your ways. Abigail, even though it was a pleasure, I’m afraid I have to go now. I think I’ll be seeing you soon though.”
A shiver runs down my spine, and I fight the urge to shoot the man who turns his back to me while he walks out of the interrogation room. When he’s reached the threshold, he turns around to glance back one last time, giving me a wink. Bile rises in my throat and I contemplate whether I can get away with really shooting him. I’m guessing my chances are slim in the middle of the precinct while cameras are shooting footage of everything that happens inside of this room.
Waiting some agonizingly long moments for the door to close shut, I feel myself turn numb.
“Why?” I whisper when it’s finally closed.
“That motherfucker has an alibi for some of the dates that the women got taken and were murdered!” Beckett shouts. It’s like the tables have turned on us. He’s shouting, while I’m quiet.
“Is it a good alibi?” I ask quietly, holding my breath to wait for an answer I probably don’t want to hear.
“He was in prison, on multiple occasions.” He grabs one of the chairs in the room and throws it to the opposite wall. I shouldn’t like it this much, but it’s exactly what I feel like doing.
Fuck. Fuck this all to hell.
We’re back at square one, and the brief reprieve in having to catch this serial killer is long forgotten by the time I release the breath I was holding.
“How did Chester miss this? I’m sure he checked for criminal records!”
Beckett seems to be fuming, the vein in his neck throbbing and his jaw square and grinding. “His records were sealed by someone high up in the FBI. I don’t know how he managed to do that, but I assume a lot of money was paid for it. I’m sure Chester could’ve hacked into it if he knew to look for it, but it isn’t that often that it’s done. There’s absolutely no reason that it should’ve been done for Wayne.”
“Goddammit!”
My stomach is churning. Every time I think we have him, we’ve got this serial killer off the street, he turns around and throws us another curve ball. Do I think it’s Alson? I’m not sure. I believe there might be a possibility there. I just know it’s Wayne. Only it can’t have been Wayne, because he was in prison. And that’s a pretty solid alibi. On not just one, but multiple occasions.
Were we wrong in thinking that it’s Wayne? I’m pretty sure that it’s not. I’m positive it’s him. He’s obsessed with Janine, his dead mother. With his victims. With me. Wayne is obsessed with me as well, that’s what he meant with we’ll be seeing each other soon.
“Fuck!” Beckett roars, standing bent over the table, his shoulders pulled up and his head falling down.
“Are you going to arrest Alson now?” I ask
“Yeah, but only for the murder of Mila I guess. I’m fairly certain he isn’t the serial killer.”
I sigh, walk over to Beckett and sit down on the edge of the table, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Which means the killer is still out there?”
“Yeah. We’re back where we started.”
Beckett sounds down and I can’t blame him. Even if I was having a hard time coming to terms with saying goodbye to Beckett, I don’t want things to go this way. I’d rather have my heart broken than a serial killer on the loose - the women in Oregon still not safe again.
“What did he do?” I ask.
“What?” Beckett asks me while I can practically taste his confusion.
“What did he go to prison for?”
“I didn’t ask,” Beckett answers, his blue eyes finding mine. There’s a storm raging inside them, and it perfectly matches the way I feel inside.
He opens the door to the hallway and I follow him out of the interrogation room. In a few quick steps we’re inside of the adjoining room. Winny meets us with a worried look on her face and Chester is tapping away on the keyboard of one of the computers the FBI has in the room. It seems that he confiscated the device and has sent the agent away. I smirk when I see familiar black screens with lines of code I don’t understand on his screen. He’s humming to himself, which I know means he’s lost in a digital place made of coding, a place where I can’t follow him.
My eyes feel heavy. I think it’s defeat I’m experiencing.
“It’s the third,” is the first thing that Winny says.
“It is,” Beckett answers.
They don’t have to tell me what they mean by that. There are three victims in his latest clock. Tomorrow he’ll take the fourth. And if what we believe is right, we just let the killer walk away. We just sentenced another woman to her death.
That’s on us.
“Cocaine,” Chester suddenly says.
“What?”
“He was in jail for cocaine possession. There’s a whole string of short stints in jail. But the files were sealed. By the FBI. Why the hell would they do that?”
I’m not even surprised it was drug possession. I’m no shrink, but I feel like there’s a psychopath or narcissist diagnosis in place for Wayne. Using drugs seems very fitting for him. And I silently second Chester’s thoughts: Why would someone cover that up?
“Money,” Winny says. “Money will get you very far. Certainly, when you have the right connections.”
Chester pushes his chair back, rubs his eyes and puts both hands in his hair. “Fucking money. Fucking connections. Power and all that shit. I hate it. It corrupts people.”
Beckett is nodding. Guess we all share the sentiment.
Chester seems to be fuming. His eyes are wild and his face is red. He’s spinning his thumb ring like crazy, and I get it. I feel like running - so hard and so far that my legs won’t be able to carry me anymore.
Are we really expected to sit back and let him take another victim? I don’t know if I’m able to do that. How do I look at myself in the mirror if I let that happen?
I walk back until I feel the wall against my back and without thinking about what I’m doing, I let myself slide to the ground. It doesn’t bring me the comfort it usually does.
“I felt like I had him,” I murmur, staring at my shoes.
“What do you mean?”
“When I asked him about taking girls into the woods. If it reminded him of his old neighbor. Something changed in him.”
Winny nods, sitting on one of the tables in the room. “You got through to him. That was the real Wayne coming out to play.”
“Fuck,” Beckett says, letting himself fall down on the edge of the table next to Winny. “How did he pull this off?”
“Maybe we were wrong after all,” Winny says.
“Bullshit,” Beckett argues.
“Yeah, I’m with Beckett,” Chester says when he moves back to the screen he was working on.
“He can’t have murdered those women when he was in prison. It’s physically impossible. These murders are personal. He would never have someone else help him. He just doesn’t have a partner. He takes pride in his clocks, they’re his. It has to be someone else,” Winny argues, her eyes sad and her shoulders slumped.
I can’t even say she’s wrong, no matter how badly I want to.
“Look,” Chester suddenly says, pointing at his screen. He’s got the feed from the interrogation room on it, with Wayne, Beckett and myself filling the screen. He plays the footage, and I see myself asking Wayne questions. Then Beckett answers his phone. “There,” Chester says.
“What is it?
Chester huffs irritably, blows up Wayne’s face and plays the footage again. I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at the way Beckett answered his phone. But then, right when Beckett is taking the call, Wayne lifts his eyes to the camera, cocks his head and smirks with the most evil look I’ve ever seen.
It’s him.
We all know it.
Except it can’t be him.
Fuck.
We’re so incredibly fucked. And I don’t have a clue on how to fix it.