Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
Durham, New Hampshire
Sunday, September 10, 2006
9:06 p.m.
She couldn’t move.
Leigh pressed herself closer to the man next to her, her back to his front. Her muscles ached in the best way possible. Her lungs had caught fire. She could feel Dean’s heartbeat pounding into her spine. Rhythmic and soothing. This. This is what she’d been craving for so long. The warmth of another person. The… acceptance he offered. In this moment, in this bed, trauma and anger and loss and suspicion couldn’t reach them. She wanted to stay forever. Right here. With him. This was where she belonged. “That was ? —”
Dean grasped her chin, turning her mouth into his. His lips slanted over hers in a claiming and punishing tide. As though he could somehow climb inside her and never leave. She could live with that. Dark eyes met hers as he secured one hand around her waist, drawing her closer. “Yeah.”
They had a lot of moments like this. Where they didn’t have to use their words. There was an understanding, bone deep and soul baring. Like they’d been together for years rather than a few weeks. How had they gone from strangers to… this in the blink of an eye? Dean had consumed her thoughts since the moment she’d met him in the stairwell. Then more so since he’d asked her out. Since she’d offered him her virginity. Since she’d exposed her family’s history. All of it had led to this moment. To… what was this? Lust? Infatuation?
Love?
Leigh set her head back into the hollow of his shoulder. Her chest tightened. She registered the moment he noticed the change.
“What’s wrong?” Dean pressed a kiss into her temple, securing both arms around her. As though she was something precious. Worth holding on to. Protecting.
“Professor Morrow asked me to look into the case of that murdered student. Teshia Elborne.” Now it was his turn to tense. Leigh dug her fingertips into the backs of his hands. Trying to keep him here as long as possible, but it was only a matter of time, wasn’t it? Everyone she cared about was taken sooner or later. Why did she think Dean would be any different? But she had to know. She had to know the truth. “The police showed up here a few days ago. Looking to question you about her murder. You knew her, didn’t you?”
His exhale fluttered across her bare shoulder. And the bubble they’d created to block out everything but these four walls popped. Dean extracted his hold from around her ribcage. He rolled from the too-small twin bed, taking the top sheet with him. Leaving her cold. Empty. Confused. “If you read the file, then you know I gave a statement. And that I ended everything between me and Teshia before I met you.”
Leigh’s insides soured as she dragged the comforter smelling of him to cover herself. “You claimed she cheated on you with her high school boyfriend. Another student said she heard you argue with Teshia a few weeks before her death. The police… They think you had something to do with what happened.”
Stillness unlike anything she’d seen before flooded through him limb by limb. In that moment, she wasn’t sure she knew him as well as she thought she did. If she’d been wrong all this time. “Are you asking me if I killed my ex-girlfriend, Leigh?”
“Did you?” she asked.
Dean melted then. He threaded both legs into a pair of sweatpants and arched a T-shirt over his head. Inch by inch, he closed the distance between them. He framed one side of her face with a calloused palm. The warmth was back in his eyes. Focused solely on her, and she couldn’t help but want to stay in it. To be the center of his entire world again. “You’re going to make an excellent criminologist one day, little rabbit.”
His dorm room door shuddered under three hard pounds. The assault from the outside world electrified her nerves. “Dean Groves, we have a warrant for your arrest in connection to the murder of Teshia Elborne. Open up!”
No. They were supposed to have more time. Leigh latched on to his wrist with both hands. Wanting him to stay. Memories of watching her father cuffed in the middle of the living room while her mother shouted and cried charged into the present.
“They can’t do this. They don’t have any physical evidence.” She wanted those words to be more than a panicked wish, but experience had taught her well these past couple of years. Leigh shot off the bed and grabbed for her clothes as Dean faced the door. Her heart threatened to beat straight out of her chest. “Don’t say anything. I know a defense lawyer. I can fix this.”
He waited until she’d dressed. Then locked those depthless eyes on her. “This isn’t for you to fix, Leigh.”
She froze. Taken aback by the crush of emotion stuck in her throat.
Dean opened the door, turning to face her as two Durham PD officers wrenched his hands into handcuffs.
Durham, New Hampshire
Thursday, October 10
11:51 a.m.
She was going to die.
Black webs spidered at the edges of her vision. The pressure around her throat increased. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The body overhead swayed with every kick she attempted to get free. But it was no use.
Leigh threaded her fingers underneath the vise circled around her throat. Soft fabric prevented her fingertips from getting a grip. She shook her head as though that would rewind time. As though it would help her disassociate from suffocating in the next few seconds.
Throwing her head back, she failed to connect with her attacker’s nose. There was nothing she could do. Her movements were already slowing. Getting harder to control. The darkness was closing in, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Her elbow knocked against the nearest shelf hanging on to preservation supplies. One of the mason jars—full of green slime that would kill anyone who dared get close—knocked over onto its side and rolled closer.
She didn’t have time to think. Leigh shot one hand out while clawing for release with the other. Her fingertips slipped off the curved glass and forced it farther away. It rolled back in the next second. She tried again and secured her hand around the heavy jar.
Her attacker’s grip threatened to crush her airway.
The black edges across her vision transformed into a thick wave that overwhelmed her senses. But she hung on. She wasn’t going to die today. Not like this. And sure as hell not in this room like Alice Dietz. Leigh brought the slime jar into her ribcage, then slammed it against the edge of the shelf.
The thud barely registered in her ears. Or was that one of the last thuds of her heart in her ears? She couldn’t tell the difference. Her pulse weakened in her throat, barely bulging against the hands crushing her. She dragged the increasingly heavy jar back to her chest. Then hit it against the shelf.
Pain spliced across her palm. Keeping her alive. She focused on that pain, on the feel of shattered glass in her hand. Leigh clutched it tighter. Cutting herself deeper as a heavy weight dragged her into a watery grave.
She brought the shard to her neck. And sliced down.
A filtered groan reached her ears. The grip around her throat disappeared. A rush of pressure expanded in her chest, but she couldn’t let herself inhale. Bits of light bled into her vision. This was her chance. Leigh didn’t bother aiming for the flashlight rolling back and forth across the floor and kicked for the door.
Her arms protested every swipe, as though she were swimming through mud.
Out. She needed out.
A dark shape blocked her escape through the door. Two… of them? No. She wasn’t going to stop. Couldn’t stop. Leigh braced for impact as the second attacker extended a hand. For her.
Strong hands latched on to her arms and dragged her close. Finishing what the first had started. Except Leigh was still moving. Being shoved through the door into the hallway. The second shape released its hold, his features blurred in her vision. Propelling her out of the kill room.
Waves mocked her from overhead. Promising an air pocket. She clawed for the water’s surface with all the grace of a T-rex. One hand broke the surface. Then her head.
Her gasp echoed off the walls. Leigh gulped a burning lungful of air as she clung to an exposed pipe in the dark. Ford. Where was Ford? A sob pressurized in her chest, but she wouldn’t let it out. Not here. Not yet.
A flashlight beam cut through the water around her feet. Her throat barely managed to produce a sound. “Ford!”
The marshal’s head broke free of the inky depths. He stretched to grab on to a pipe next to hers with bare hands, worse for wear around his mouth and eyes. Blood mixed with water at his temple. “Shit. Are you okay?”
Fury burned through her veins. Leigh shoved at his chest. “You were supposed to wait for me.” She hit him again. “You were supposed to go back if I didn’t make it.”
“I just saved your life! Not sure if you know this, but someone tried to kill you.” Ford swiped a mixture of water and blood from his face. “I think that deserves a thank you.”
“Where is he?” She struggled to catch her breath, shaken straight to her core. She’d come close to dying multiple times over her career, but this… This had felt personal. Or maybe she just had more to lose now. “Where did he go? What happened?”
“The son of a bitch clocked me with one of those mason jars.” Ford tested the contusion beside his left eye, coming away with watery blood. “Must’ve gotten away while I was trying to figure out which way was up. You didn’t see him escape?”
“No.” Leigh couldn’t help but search the depths underneath them. Tried to pick out the shape of her attacker beneath the surface but was met with only darkness.
He was right before. Of course he was right. But the idea of losing yet another person she cared about had taken hold. Her brother, her father, her mother, Dean, Elyse. They’d all left her to fight alone. And now she’d almost lost Ford. Leigh tried to control the tremors coursing through her body. From adrenaline, nearly dying, or another round of hypothermia, she didn’t know. Her teeth chattered. “Thank you.”
“You’re bleeding.” He pointed the flashlight at her exposed forearm, rivulets of blood snaking along her skin. The cut across her palm could get infected if she wasn’t treated soon. The marshal grabbed for her elbow, guiding her back the way they’d come. “Come on. We gotta get you out of here.”
“We can’t leave.” Leigh tightened her hold on the exposed pipe overhead, shaking her head as if that would make a convincing argument. “Not without the body. It’s… it’s floating around the ceiling. We can’t leave without it.”
Her strength was waning. She couldn’t stop shaking. The past few minutes blurred into fragments. Why couldn’t she feel her palm? Shock. This was shock.
“Some asshole just tried to kill you, and you want to go back in there for a dead guy who might not have anything to do with this case?” Ford tightened his grip on her. Almost painful. “We’ll send someone else. You’re not going to make it.”
“I’m fine.” Now if she could stop shaking to make that a little more convincing. Leigh tried to take a full breath, but she suddenly forgot how to breathe. She had to snap out of… whatever this was. They needed that body. Shifting her grip, she moved to descend back into the depths. “I can do it.”
“Damn it. No, you can’t.” Ford pulled her against the hard muscle of his chest, keeping her head above water. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ll do it. To be clear, is this really what homicide investigators have to go through to solve a case?”
“Remind me… to tell you about the time I had to walk through a wall of spiderwebs to get to a crime scene,” she said.
Ford pointed a strong index finger at her. “Stay here. If you move, you’ll be the next body I drag out of here. Got it?”
Leigh nodded. Because that was all she could do.
In seconds, the marshal was gone. His flashlight beam wavered before extinguishing completely as he entered the room. One minute. Two.
Was the water churning faster or was that her brain trying to stay awake? Her grip slipped from the pipe above, and her head dipped beneath the surface. Weightless and a little tired. Okay, a lot tired. Her heartbeat sounded… off. Far away and slow. Like it couldn’t keep up with the rest of her.
But then Ford was there. Pulling her up. Leading her down the corridor. She used him to get her balance, and right then, he felt so much… bigger than she remembered. Strong hands kept her upright. She only had a second to wonder how he was dragging a body behind them and simultaneously keeping her on her feet. Her head rolled back on her shoulders.
“Stay with me,” he said.
A rectangular white light assaulted her vision, blurring his features. Growing bigger. Leigh stumbled against the stairs leading into Thompson Hall’s lobby, her face pressed against the cement.
“Leigh?” A flurry of sound and motion added extra strain on her brain, but Ava’s voice reached over it all. “Leigh!”
The black spiderwebs were back. Pulling her under.