Chapter Twenty-Three
She couldn’t stop shaking.
The food Rome had ordered had tasted like nothing but ash on her tongue.
Dry and tasteless and hard to swallow. Not even the half-melted milkshakes—both of them because why the hell not?
—did nothing but prime her for a sugar crash in a couple hours.
But the logical part of her brain that wasn’t hung up on what’d happened understood she’d had to get calories into her body.
Her hair frizzed around her face, exhaustion tugging at her muscles as she tore through the clothes she’d packed.
Where was it? She’d been searching for ten minutes.
Tossing another shirt behind her, she went through the small inventory of personal belongings for the fifth time.
It was right here. Rome wouldn’t have taken it, Right?
He knew how much she loved that jersey. Knew that she couldn’t go to sleep without it.
Then again, how well did she really know him?
Her heart threatened to sink to the bottom of her chest cavity at the thought.
He’d killed someone. Taken his uncle’s life without hesitation when he’d only been thirteen.
He’d gone to juvenile detention. In all the time they’d been together, he’d never mentioned that.
Had kept it from her. What was she supposed to do with that information?
What had been his plan? That she would appreciate the brutal honesty and fall into bed with him to save their marriage?
Hell, she felt so stupid. The natural way he’d held that rifle all these years, the way he never doubted himself with a target at the end of the barrel.
It’d been easy for him to pull that trigger.
Trained. Lettie’s search slowed as nausea charged up her throat.
Sinking onto the bed, she tried to breathe through the tremors still racking her lacerated and bruised hands, doing everything in her power not to collapse into a whining ball of misery.
It wouldn’t do any good. It wouldn’t change the facts.
Her husband was a killer.
A stalker had been watching her for months.
Four people were dead in connection to her.
Rome might be involved.
The black bear in which her entire career depended on was still a target.
And she’d lost her favorite jersey.
The forensics team was still in the process of going through her van. According to Randy, they would process every inch, which could take a few more hours, but they hadn’t found a hockey jersey. The temptation to sink into the mattress and never surface dug its claws into her.
Larsons didn’t stay down. But she wanted to.
More so than after finding those divorce papers.
She’d thought she and Rome could try again, that they could make their marriage work this time.
She’d been willing to uproot her entire life here in Southern Utah just for that chance.
She’d let herself feed that little drop of hope she carried into every date—every new start—until it’d finally started to grow in size these past few days. Because of Rome.
But they’d never had a chance.
He didn’t trust her.
“Why do the men I like end up being killers or dying at the hands of one?” It wasn’t funny, but she couldn’t stop herself from laughing at the ridiculousness of her life right now.
If she didn’t, she might never stop sobbing.
Lettie flung an arm over her eyes. Ugh. Her heart hurt.
Those men hadn’t deserved to die for coming into her orbit. The laugh died.
Rome wasn’t involved in these deaths.
He might’ve kept her from learning the truth about his childhood and the depraved, brutal hatred he’d endured all those years, but he would never use those experiences against another person.
He’d never inflict the kind of torture he’d survived at his uncle’s hands.
He’d had the opportunity to dominate, manipulate and control her from the moment they were married.
But there hadn’t been a single moment in their relationship she’d feared him.
Not like she’d feared that man in the woods.
Oh, hell. The killer was still out there. Still saw Rome as a threat.
Lettie vaulted upright, grabbing for the headboard to steady herself on her injured ankle.
The swelling had gone down, but she wouldn’t be entering any marathons soon.
Not that she ran for fun anyway. Only when trying to escape a serial killer.
Who may have attacked Shawn. Who could still be targeting Rome.
Hobbling across the hotel room, she ignored the dragging sensation urging her to pass out from exhaustion.
She’d meant what she’d said to Rome earlier.
She didn’t want anything to with this investigation.
She didn’t want to go back into the park.
And she certainly wasn’t ready to give their marriage a second chance, but he’d come for her when she’d needed him the most in those woods.
She couldn’t leave him out there to fight this alone.
Grabbing her purse, Lettie extracted her phone.
And prayed Rome hadn’t changed his number.
She tapped his contact information and let the phone do the rest as she headed for the door.
The line rang once. Twice. Then went to voicemail.
She tried again. With the same result. The automated message for his voicemail beeped.
“Rome, I know you don’t want to hear from me, but call me when you get this. I need to know you’re okay.”
Pain flared through her palm as she grabbed for the hotel room door and wrenched the thick panel open.
To find a wall of muscle on the other side.
“Shawn.” She could do nothing but blink and hope her brain wasn’t playing tricks on her as exhaustion from the past few days held tight.
This had to a cruel dream, but she wasn’t imagining the bruises and cuts all over her intern’s face.
“What happened to you? Where have you been? The police have been to your apartment. Everything is destroyed.”
“Dr. Larson, thank goodness I found you.” He shoved through the doorway with more force than she’d expected, bypassing her altogether.
Shawn paced from one end of the room and back as she closed the door.
Nervous energy quickened every move of his hands as he rushed to fill in the blanks.
“I’ve been trying to find you for two days.
A masked man came to my apartment. He tried to abduct me, but I fought back. ”
“Oh, my gosh, Shawn. Here. Sit down.” Lettie tried to keep up.
“I didn’t know where else to go.” Shawn’s face crumpled close to a sobbing fit as he swung himself onto the edge of the bed.
She’d never seen him like this, even those first few days they’d worked together, and he hadn’t known what she expected of him in the lab.
His clothes, normally pressed and spotless, were cut through with wrinkles and a stain that looked like dried blood at the collar.
The bruising at one side of his face—from a right handed assailant, she would guess—was as dark as the coloring around her ankle.
Maybe slightly lighter, but still ghastly.
He’d obviously been through so much. All because of her.
“He said I was in his way from having you. He’s like obsessed with you.
I thought he was going to kill me. I tried to tell him we just work together, but he wouldn’t listen.
He just kept hitting me and hitting me.”
“Okay. Slow down.” Her nerves couldn’t take this very real manifestation of the chaos exploding inside from Rome’s previous admission.
Lettie put herself in Shawn’s path to keep him from carving a hole in the carpet.
“It’s okay. He can’t get to you here. All right?
The door is locked, and there are law enforcement rangers and police downstairs. All we have to do is call them up—”
“No!” Her intern shot to his feet, nearly knocking her over as he started pacing again. “Nobody can know I’m here. I can’t go back to my apartment. He knows where I live. They can’t protect me.”
Lettie threw her hands out in surrender.
She couldn’t get her head around what was happening.
Shawn had somehow managed to escape his attacker, a man overly capable of disemboweling his victims and hanging them from trees as bear fodder, but her twenty-five-year-old intern had survived.
“Okay. No police. No rangers. It’s just you and me.
All right? But I need you to slow down and tell me what happened. ”
He sucked in a series of deep breaths, seemingly trying to calm himself down and failing.
He was going to pass out if he kept breathing like that, but she didn’t think it would be the worst thing in the world to snap him out of his panic.
“I… I was sleeping. It was the middle of the night. I remember hearing something, but I live in an apartment, you know. There are all kinds of noises from next door, so when I didn’t hear it again, I didn’t think much of it.
But then something grabbed my leg and dragged me out of bed. ”
She recalled the sheets and pillows scattered through the open door leading to the bedroom in his apartment upon hers and Rome’s visit to the scene.
“I tried to scream, but he hit me in the face. I… I didn’t know what was happening.
I think I might have blacked out.” Shawn sank back onto the edge of the bed closest to the door.
“When I came around, he was standing over me. Telling me I didn’t deserve your attention, that I was just in the way.
I kicked him. He must’ve hit the table, and I tried running for the door, but I wasn’t fast enough.
He grabbed me. The only thing I had to fight back with was a sculpture I kept on my side table.
I hit him. And then I ran. I didn’t stop until I got back to the lab.
I thought you might be there. I wanted to warn you. ”
The same terror she’d tried to bury since coming out of those woods played across his face and sent a shudder straight through her. “You should’ve gone to the police.”
“I left my phone charged in my bedroom. I wasn’t thinking.” Shawn ran both hands down his face as if he hadn’t rested until he’d found her. “I just knew I didn’t want him getting anywhere near you. You’re like the only person I can stand in the lab.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment. I spend most of my time talking to a bear who only likes me for my strawberries.
” Lettie let herself slide onto the bed next to him, trying not to think too hard about what might happen to Sam after this was all over.
“I’m glad you’re okay, but the police need to hear your statement. They have a BOLO out for you.”
“I don’t want to talk to them.” He closed his eyes, tipping his head back toward the ceiling.
The edges of his jaw seemed sharper than she remembered, the coarse hair of a five-o’clock shadow peppered with prickles of gray shadowing the angles of his cheekbones.
Not many twenty-five-year-olds had gray like that.
It wasn’t impossible, but…a sick feeling swirled through Lettie’s gut.
“It was hard enough getting in here without running into them. I can’t have them take me to the station for hours of questioning. ”
“Why wouldn’t you want to talk to them?” Lettie moved to stand, halted by the strong hand on her forearm holding her in place.
Not enough to hurt but to assert control.
He hadn’t dared touch her before now, even went so far as to apologize when their gloved hands brushed in the lab, but this… This was different.
“I’m just so tired. I don’t remember the last time I slept or ate.” Her intern met her gaze, the frantic energy in his eyes cooling to a predatorial gleam. “Can I please just stay here with you for a bit?”
She tried to pull her arm back. And his grip only tightened. “Shawn, how did you know I was here?”
Shawn stood then, so much taller than her, towering over her with wide shoulders she hadn’t noted before now.
Strength capable of overwhelming her in an instant.
No longer her intern, but something else.
Something terrifying and dark as he looked down at her.
“Did you really think I was going to let you get away from me, Arlette?”