Chapter 28 The Confession
the confession [trope]
the climactic moment when the villain finally spills the beans, often under duress, guilt, or the sheer weight of their own melodrama; usually accompanied by tears, maniacal laughter, or an overly detailed recounting of their evil plan. why don’t they ever lawyer up?
“You’re a bad influence, you know that?” I ask as we enter Vanessa’s apartment. My heart hammers, the thought of being caught breaking into a police officer’s home making me question my sanity. How did I even get here?
“I’m surprised you didn’t know.”
I follow Rafael into the open space, heading toward the kitchen while he steps into the living room. He explained the drill in the car before he pulled out a series of lockpicks at her apartment: look through documents, peek into drawers—search for anything unusual, basically.
I tug open the first drawer I find, expecting utensils, and am instead met with a chaotic assortment of mismatched takeout menus, crumpled receipts, and a lone rubber duck key chain.
Shoving it shut, I move on to the cabinets, scanning rows of mismatched mugs and an alarming stockpile of protein bars.
“Rafael,” I say as I stop in front of the fridge.
“What?”
He walks over and stares at the piece of paper stuck to the fridge with a small magnet. It’s the reminder of an appointment at Vanessa’s bank. Horizon Trust.
“If there’s one, there must be more. Let’s keep looking.”
Right. Hundreds of people in town must have an account at Horizon Trust, and this means nothing. But as I truly, fully consider that Vanessa might be the killer, I no longer wish to hide from it. Quite the opposite. If she’s been playing Paige, I want to find out right now.
I walk to her bedroom, looking for her laptop. Once I locate it on her bedside table, I pull it open, but it’s password-protected. “You don’t happen to have any hacking skills, do you?” I ask Rafael as he comes to stand by the entrance.
“Afraid not. What are you looking for?”
“Paige would never give her access to the scripts without telling me. If she is reading them before they’re recorded, she must have access to Paige’s email.”
“Try the usuals. Birthdays, one-two-three, first names.”
I do so as he goes through the drawers of her dresser. “Nothing.”
Setting the computer aside, I walk out into the corridor and toward her home office.
I don’t remember ever seeing the inside of this room, actually.
Whenever we came over for a movie night or dinner—even the first time, when she showed us around her place—this door was always closed.
Work stuff, she said. With her being a cop…
I didn’t think it was weird she’d been secretive about it.
“Here,” I say as Rafael walks behind me. “Whatever we’re looking for is in this room.”
“All right.” He tries to open the door, but it’s locked.
He takes out the small set of lockpicks from his pocket, the metal tools glinting in his hand.
Kneeling down, he inserts the tension wrench into the lock and works the pick, his fingers moving with precise ease.
A faint sound as the first pin falls into place, then another, and another, until finally—click.
He twists the wrench, and the door unlocks with a quiet snap.
He stands up, tucking the tools away, and pushes the door open as if it had never been locked at all. “Holy… fucking…”
“… shit,” I conclude.
The dim room is a shrine. To me. Every inch of the walls is covered in photos of me—at the coffee shop, walking down the street, laughing with Paige.
Candid shots taken from a distance, like Vanessa had been lurking just out of sight, following my every move.
Some pictures are blurry, hastily snapped, while others are crystal-clear close-ups of my face, my expressions frozen in time.
Among them, there are photos of Rafael and me together, taken from outside my place, through the windows.
Moments I thought were private, now pinned up like a twisted scrapbook.
But it’s not just me. Theo, Celeste, Paige, Quentin—they’re all here, too.
Their faces captured in stolen moments, mixed in with newspaper clippings about the murders.
The articles scream headlines about the bodies found, the police investigations, all cut out and arranged carefully beneath the photos.
Red ink circles the names, underlines the dates. It’s all so deliberate, so obsessive.
I can feel my skin crawling, the air too thick to breathe.
Rafael throws a glance at me over his shoulder. “Do you want to wait outside?”
“I’m fine,” I say, my voice so weak it must be obvious I’m not fine.
He heads to the folders neatly placed on the side table against the wall and opens the first, the sound of pages being flipped drowned out by the white noise in my head as I notice several pictures she took when I was leaving the office. I knew I felt observed.
“Bank statements. Looks like we found who sent those donations.”
Approaching the wall plastered with newspaper clippings, I read the large text she’s printed and hung above. “Must save the podcast.”
“And I guess we have a motive.”
He holds up another folder. “Transcripts of your episodes.” Turning around, he checks my expression. “How are you holding up?”
I’m not sure, really. Part of me feels violated.
But most of it is… anger. How could she do this?
How could she trick all of us and, most importantly, Paige?
I’ll have to tell her. I’ll have to look my best friend in the entire world in the face and tell her that the last year of her life has been a lie.
That romance has failed her once again. That her girlfriend is…
obsessed with me. That she’s a murderer. “I’m not scared.”
“Didn’t say you were.” His arm brushes mine. “But if you wanted a hug or something—”
With no hesitation, I land against his chest, hiding my face in his T-shirt. I guess I am a little scared. Unsettled, maybe. How far has she gone? Has she broken into my house? I trusted her for a whole year, and now we know she’s capable of murder.
His arms wrap around me, deliciously heavy, his hand stroking the spot below my shoulder. “I’m taking you home now. I’m putting on a nice movie for you, tucking you under a blanket, and then I’m taking care of this.”
“No, I—”
“I’m taking care of this. And I’m looking after you. Always.”
My heart stutters. Always is such a big promise. Such a long time. And look at this. Paige and Vanessa are looking for a place together—I know at some point, Vanessa promised her forever. Always. My parents weren’t “forever,” and my friendship with Vanessa ended up not being “always.”
I really want Rafael to be always.
I pull back and open my eyes to find him looking at me, his gaze filled with the usual mix of tenderness and fierce protectiveness.
Then I notice something blinking in the corner of the ceiling.
A camera.
“Rafael?”
He turns, his shoulders dropping once he sees where I’m looking. “Goddamn it. I don’t know what it says about me, but I want to hit that woman with my car.”
“You have to take pictures of this, and—” I gasp. “Her laptop,” I say, rushing out of the creepy lair. I enter the bedroom, then open the laptop and stare at the password field. With a wave of nausea rising up my throat, I type 0306, and after a second of buffering, I’m in.
“What was it?” Rafael asks. I hadn’t even noticed he’d followed me, but he’s watching over my shoulder, his hand stretched forward and holding out a USB stick.
“My birthday.” If she saw us through the camera, she might be on her way here—or getting ready to run away. She might try to delete the contents of her laptop remotely.
“Look.” I point at the screen, where Paige’s inbox is open. “That’s how she has early access to the episodes.”
He makes an unimpressed noise. “You’d be surprised how often people fuck up their whole lives by sharing a password.”
Making a mental note to change all my passwords as soon as possible, I insert the USB stick into the laptop.
“We need to copy this,” I say, my heart racing as I navigate through the folders, copying everything that looks even remotely suspicious—photos, emails from the bank, the episodes, hidden files I almost miss.
“Come on, come on…” I watch the progress bar slowly inch its way across the screen until Rafael leans over my shoulder.
“I want you out of here, Freckles. Let’s go.”
“One second.” I take my phone and snap a picture of the inbox, just in case, then scroll through the emails on the hunt for incriminating messages. “This has to be enough,” I say, pulling out the USB stick as soon as the files finish copying.
“Out, come on.”
My phone rings, and seeing Paige’s name flash on the screen, I answer. “Hello?”
Rafael takes my hand in his, then pulls me out of the room and through the corridor.
“Scarlett?”
The blood freezes in my veins as my feet stick to the floor. “Vanessa?”
Rafael whips around.
“Hey. I think we need to talk.”
“Where’s Paige?” I ask, my hand shaking around the phone. Rafael mouths “Speakerphone,” so I tap on the button until her voice blasts in the entrance.
“I just drove her home. I knew you wouldn’t answer if I called from my phone, so I took hers. An alarm gets triggered when the door to my home office is opened.”
Home office? How about creepy stalker lair? “Okay, well, I’m here.”
“Scarlett, I need you to know I’d never hurt anyone. Especially Paige, or you. I love you both, okay?”
I bet the families of the people she killed would disagree with that statement, but I know there’s no point in trying to reason with her. “Okay.”
“I’m not a bad person.”
Rafael’s eyes roll.
“I believe you, Vanessa. But you’re wrong about something. Paige will be hurt by this—and I am, too. You lied about… so many things.”
“I know.” She sounds distraught, her voice shaking before there’s the sound of a horn in the background. “But I tried to save the podcast. I knew if you only gave me a chance, we’d be happy together. I can be what you’re looking for, Scarlett. I swear.”
I look up at Rafael, hoping for a suggestion about what to say. All I find, however, is an annoyed tick of his jaw. Is he jealous? Seriously—right now?
“Vanessa, you’re a… great person,” I force out. “But I’m with someone else.”
She sniffles, then sobs. “These guys—none of them deserve you,” she spits out. “Quentin, that idiot, or Rafael. They don’t love you, Scarlett.”
I throw an awkward glance at Rafael, who’s staring down at the phone. I really wish she hadn’t said that—it’s way too early to drop the L-bomb.
“Vanessa, you’re dating my best friend, and she’s in love with you. Nothing can ever happen between us. You understand that, right?”
There’s a moment of silence, and then the sobbing starts quietly, a choked gasp on the other end of the line.
But then it breaks free, raw and jagged, each sob heavier than the last. It’s the sobbing of someone who’s losing control, teetering on the edge, and no amount of words can pull her back from it.
I focus on Rafael, and he must have the same thought as I do, because he takes out his phone and mouths, “Where?”
“Where are you, Vanessa?” I ask.
“I love you,” she wails. “I love you so much, and I thought… I don’t get it. I’ve done everything I can. I ruined my whole life for you, and you—” The sobbing starts again, and, heart hammering, I rub my forehead. “You still don’t love me. Why, Scarlett? Why?”
“Tell me where you are. I’ll come to you, and we’ll talk. We’ll fix this, Vanessa.”
Her voice is shrill as she shouts, “There is nothing to fix! It’s over, Scarlett.”
It sounds like the traffic noises in the background are growing louder, closer. Is it because she’s driving? Or is she walking into the street?
“Everything is over,” she says. Does she mean prison? Or…
“Vanessa, please—” The noise on the other end shifts, and I freeze. It’s faint at first but unmistakable: a low, rhythmic clank in the background, like a metal heartbeat echoing through the line. The distinct clattering of the train-crossing bell.
My blood runs cold as I realize where she is.
The train tracks. There’s only one place in town where you can hear that sound so clearly—the old crossing by the river. And the horn I heard earlier? The train must be close. Too close.
I hold a hand over the phone. “The train crossing,” I say. “Go.”
He shakes his head. “No chance I’m leaving you here. I’ll call the police. Let them deal with her.”
“The police?” I whisper-scream. We both know we won’t convince the police to do a thing, and if we do, they’ll get there too late. “Rafael. We can’t let her die.”
He hesitates, watching me, then the phone. I know he’s worried about me, but I also know he’s a much better person than people give him credit for. “Promise, no matter what happens next, you’ll go home.”
I hesitate, but seeing his expression, I know there’s no point in arguing.
“Promise. You’ll walk straight home, and you won’t move until I’m back.”
Oh God. He’s being dramatic, isn’t he? But I know he won’t agree any other way, so I say, “Fine. Go.”
He groans and then, after stealing a kiss, turns around and walks away, rushing down the stairs.
“Vanessa? Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” she whines.
“You said you love me, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you love Paige?”
“I really do, Scarlett. So much.”
“Then please, don’t hurt us any more than you already have.
Step away from the tracks, and we’ll talk.
” I hold the phone closer, as if that’s going to help.
“I know that you’re not a bad person. That this whole thing just…
” How do I justify a year of lies and stalking crowned with multiple murder? “That it just got away from you.”
“It did,” she insists.
“So we’ll deal with it together. I’m your friend, Vanessa. I care about you, and Paige does, too.”
For a long moment, there’s nothing but silence.
Maybe it’s a good sign. Maybe I’ve convinced her.
I wait, and it feels like my heart does, too, the beats slowing down as if they’re waiting for her answer. Then there’s the horn again. Louder. Closer.
“Goodbye, Scarlett.”