Chapter 24
Lexie woke in a daze, unsure of the time or what had disturbed her. The hues of inky blue bathing the familiar walls of her bedroom told of early morning approaching, but before she had the chance to wonder about anything else, warm hands shifted her thighs apart and lifted her legs atop a set of wide shoulders. Her breath caught. Nico’s mouth covered her, hot and hungry and incredible. His tongue swept through her with skill, working her slowly at first, then faster, alternating between gentle sucking and long, luscious strokes until she was convulsing with need. Easing a finger inside, he put pressure on the perfect spot. Lexie arched her back, tangled her hands in his hair, and gripped tight until she felt the wave build and crash.
Explosive, that’s how she would later come to describe the orgasm he gave her that morning. When it was over, and the shudders subsided, he came to lovingly lay his head on her stomach.
“Wow,” she breathed, running her fingers up and down his arms. “And to think, none of this would have happened if it weren’t for you being such a terrible driver.”
She’d meant it as a joke, but the way his body turned from relaxed to rigid had her hand pausing mid-stroke.
“Nico?”
He lifted his head to look at her. Even with the lazy grin and bedroom eyes, she noticed a sadness in him that hadn’t been there before. All too soon, the magic spell of mind-blowing sex was broken, and the conversation that had loomed in her subconscious since last night was now right in front of them.
“What is it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Liar.”
He shuffled up the bed, turned onto his back, and stared at the ceiling. Lexie nestled into the nook of his shoulder.
After what felt like an eternity, he spoke.
“I don’t talk about the accident much.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No, no. It’s okay,” he replied, wrapping an arm around her. “You should know.”
“Know what?”
“The reason I was on the island that day.”
Lexie had always known there was more to the story, things she suspected but didn’t know for certain. Things she wasn’t sure she even wanted to know. Making peace with that, she had decided if Nico ever wanted to tell her about those things, he would. Thanks to a not-so-gentle nudge from their recent argument, it seemed that day had come.
“You were right,” he said. “It does have something to do with Sara Riley.”
Lexie slid her arm across his middle. “Tell me.”
“In Boston, I was assigned to work her case when her name was flagged as a missing person on a random drug bust. This guy—Bryan Fowler, real piece of work—got arrested for dealing, and apparently she showed up on a list of known associates. His girlfriend.” He shrugged. “Guess she didn’t see the harm in using her real name after she turned eighteen. I don’t know. So, I went to the address hoping to find her, talk to her.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t pretty. She’d been out on her own for a lot of years and didn’t look to have made many good choices in that time. She was skinny, disheveled, tracks all up her arms.”
Hearing what had become of Sara made Lexie’s stomach lurch. How? How could everything have gone so wrong? Why hadn’t she done more to stop it? Darcy had been right; they should have tried harder.
“What happened to her?”
Nico recalled what Sara had told him about her disappearance, briefly relaying the story back to Lexie. By Sara’s own account, she hadn’t been kidnapped or taken anywhere against her will after they lost her at that party, had not been forced or coerced or discouraged from returning to Mercy Cove. She simply hadn’t wanted to. In her mind, she wasn’t missing, but free.
“Anyway,” he continued. “I went to see her every day, sometimes more than once, but no matter what I said, she still refused to come with me or get help. She just wouldn’t budge.”
Lexie frowned. “You didn’t call her parents?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I should have, but she was such a flight risk, I didn’t think having them show up on her doorstep out of the blue was the way to get Sara to see reason or to get clean. They’d just lose her all over again.”
“That was a big responsibility to put on yourself.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve seen those kinds of situations go bad before,” he said. “Being a junkie didn’t make her stupid. She had no legal obligation to go home now that she wasn’t a minor anymore, and she could have skipped town at any time. I wanted her to feel in control, like it was her decision, you know?”
Lexie nodded.
“Eventually, I managed to talk her into meeting with her parents so they could see for themselves that she was alive and well—even though anyone could see she wasn’t. She agreed on one condition; that I drive her straight back to Boston afterward and never bother her again.” He gave a resigned chuckle. “It wasn’t what I had in mind, but I said I’d do it. It would have meant a closed case for me and at least some semblance of peace for the Rileys, knowing their daughter wasn’t dead in an unmarked grave somewhere. I told her to pack a bag, and that I’d pick her up first thing in the morning.”
Nico had been absently running gentle fingers over the skin of Lexie’s back as he spoke. Glad he felt safe enough to open up to her, if not a little anxious at what might come next, she put all her focus on simply being there for him, as he had been for her. In the pause that followed his last sentence, she observed the way his face hardened, sensed his unease. She knew how this story ended, and she got the feeling they were nearing the part where things took a very dark turn.
“That night, she called me in a panic,” he said. “She was crying. Terrified. Told me she needed help. There was a lot of noise in the background, banging and shouting. Turned out that Fowler had been let out on bail and came home to find her packing. He thought she was leaving him.” Nico closed his eyes. “I got in my car, and I flew to that apartment, nothing in my head except to get there. Get there before he hurt her.”
Lexie felt her blood run cold. She kept perfectly still. Nico’s mouth had started trembling, tears welling behind his closed lids. Her heart broke.
Connecting the dots herself, she whispered, “You didn’t make it there in time. Did you?”
He gave a small shake of his head. “She fought him off, tried to run but . . . That son of a bitch tied her to a kitchen chair and he . . . he—”
“I know.” Lexie touched her fingers to his lips. “You don’t have to say it.”
She knew there was nothing she could do to ease the pain he felt. The anger, the guilt, the grief that weighed so heavily on his shoulders was too much. What had happened to him, and the things that had happened because of him, could not be undone. So, Lexie did the only thing she could do; she held him.
“I wanted to be the one to notify her parents,” he said. “I owed them that much.”
Lexie’s eyes widened. Like the last piece of a puzzle sliding into place, suddenly it all made sense. “That’s what you were doing here that day.”
“And I failed that too,” he said resentfully. “I drove five hours up the coast, caught the afternoon ferry, but with the storm, the sleet . . . I didn’t know where I was going, couldn’t see shit. I took my eyes off the road for a second to check the GPS. Just one second.” He turned his face away. “They heard about their little girl’s death on the evening news while I was bleeding out in a fucking ditch.”
Lexie’s breathing ceased as she traveled back in time. On the screen of her mind, she saw Nico. Broken. Bloodied. Half-dead. She grimaced at the memory, snuggling closer into his side.
“I’m sorry,” he said, minutes later. “That was too much to put on you. I shouldn’t have—”
“Stop,” she said. “I’m glad you told me. But Nico . . .”
He looked down at her, brushed a thumb over her lower lip, an intimate gesture he seemed to be growing partial to. “What?”
“What happened to Sara, it wasn’t your fault. Surely you can see that?”
Working his jaw, he dropped his eyes. “Then why can’t I stop feeling like it is?”
Lexie laid her palm on his cheek, forced him to face her. “Because you’re a good man. That’s what good men do, they torture themselves over their failures, take things personally when they have no right to.”
He shook his head. “I could have stopped it. If I’d gotten there sooner, I could have done something. Maybe she’d still be alive.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. You don’t know what would have happened.”
“I should never have left her there to begin with,” he growled, the sheer hatred for himself seeping out of every word. “Missing for nine years and I had her. I should have at least stashed her somewhere safe.”
“You had no idea that man was going to be released. You didn’t know she was in danger.”
“But I should have.”
Lexie let his words hang in the air while she got up, reached for her robe and tied it around her waist. “Look, if you want to play the blame game for what happened to Sara,” she said, coming back to sit on the edge of the bed. “Well, welcome to the club, because you’re looking at one of the original players.”
Nico sat up to rest his weight on his elbows.
“You heard everything I said in my statement. Darcy, Isabelle and I—we’re the ones who led her astray in the first place. She wouldn’t have even been there for you to find if it weren’t for us. Who’s to say we aren’t as much to blame as you are? Even more so?”
“You were kids,” he reasoned.
“We were reckless,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “And na?ve to think that we could control the monster we’d created in her.”
Lexie stood, blinking back moisture as she folded her arms and paced. It wasn’t easy to admit being ashamed of one’s past, especially to someone with a moral compass as strong as Nico’s. Though after hearing his story, it seemed he was battling some nasty demons of his own in that department.
“I’m not proud of who I was back then, Nico, even if it was just harmless teenage fun. I was old enough to know better than to expose Sara to the crowds we were hanging out with, but I went along with it anyway. Maybe things would have gone differently if we’d never made space for her in our circle. Maybe she would have graduated school, married some local guy, had a bunch of kids and lived happily ever after. Or maybe she would have ended up right where she did, just on a different timeline. I don’t know. But she made choices too. She chose to run away, she chose never to come back, and she chose to be in a relationship with a criminal.” Lexie rubbed her forehead and sighed, thankful to have the speech Annie gave her to lean on. Her best friend hadn’t been wrong when she’d opened her eyes to the truth, which was that people, however young, didn’t get a free pass from taking responsibility for their own lives just because they didn’t like where they came from. If nothing else, Nico’s account had only hardened Lexie’s resolve to shed this burdenous guilt once and for all.
“The truth is,” she said. “We’re all responsible for her death in some way. You, me, Darcy, Isabelle, even her parents who she clearly wanted to escape from. But none of us were the ones who killed her. Bryan Fowler did that. Now, the way I see it, we could keep torturing ourselves over things we should or shouldn’t have done, keep going around in circles hoping to find some way to forgive ourselves for past mistakes, or”—she paused to make sure he heard her—“we could move on.”
Nico stared at her for long, meaningful seconds. “I know that what you’re saying makes sense.” He pointed to his temple. “Up here.”
She sat back down, reaching over to place a hand on his warm chest. “I think it’s only natural for it to take some time to feel it here,” she said. “I’m still working on that, myself.”
Nico put his hand over hers, then lifted it so he could nuzzle his cheek against her palm. She shivered at the feel of his rough stubble against her skin. “Sometimes I wonder what the hell I’m doing here,” he mumbled, the vague admission taking Lexie by surprise. “Everything that’s happened since I arrived feels like some kind of bad omen, like I shouldn’t be here.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked, tilting her head with curiosity.
He took a breath, let it out. “I requested a transfer because nothing felt right in Boston anymore, especially my job. I have nightmares. Anxiety. Shit that never bothered me before, but now . . .” He swallowed thickly, as if it were his pride being forced down his throat. “I thought if I could somehow make amends for what happened, it might fix whatever it is that’s broken in me.”
Lexie tried to keep her expression free of pity as she said, “Make amends with the Rileys, you mean?”
“They blame me,” he stated, pragmatic in his tone but Lexie knew the knowledge cut him to the quick. “I suppose I feel a debt is owed. I wanted to be here for them to . . . just be here.”
“Nico.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, reading her apprehension. “It was a bad idea. I see that now.”
“I’m sure your heart was in the right place.”
“Well, not all of it. There is one other reason I’m here. You.”
“Me?”
Bashful, he said, “Every day since you saved my life, I’ve seen your face in my mind, heard your voice begging me to stay awake, felt your touch.” Nico gazed at her like she was a wonder to behold. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Everything from my memory of that day kept drawing me in until I couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing you again. I had to come.”
Lexie liked that. She hoped her answering smile before she captured his mouth with hers said as much. “I thought about you too,” she whispered, then kissed her way down Nico’s chest, past his stomach until she reached the substantial prize waiting below. Licking her lips, she took him into her mouth and watched as his face quivered and distorted with pleasure. Over and back, her lips glided rhythmically along his hot, smooth skin.
When she tasted the slight hint of saltiness on her tongue, she began to move faster, spurred on by his hand gently cupping the back of her head until his fingers tightened in her hair. He was giving her the signal that he was close, graciously allowing her time to switch techniques if she wished. She did not. Lexie clawed one hand up his clenching stomach, the other gripped his thigh, and opened her throat with a moan. Nico’s muscles tensed, a guttural sound escaping as he came.
“Fuck,” he groaned, shuddering once, twice. After the third, his body relaxed.
Lexie wiped herself clean, grinning like the cat that ate the canary as she returned to his side.
He smiled. “Like I said, you’re going to ruin me.”
Nico’s phone began to vibrate. A quick check told them it was his alarm.
“I gotta go to work,” he said, shifting to lie on his side so they were facing each other. He tucked her hair behind her ear, stroked her cheek. Lexie reached up to lightly touch the jagged scar on his forehead, a constant reminder of how close she had come to losing him before she’d even known him. This—the simple act of lying in bed together, touching, tasting, loving one another—none of it would have happened if she hadn’t found him.
“I don’t want you to think that I’m not ready to move on,” he said, drawing her attention back to the here and now. “I am. It’s just hard to do that when the thing you’re trying so hard to let go of is happening in your backyard.”
As his words reminded Lexie of everything waiting for them in the land of reality, she felt the remainder of her orgasm-induced bliss leave her like a deflating balloon. “What is going on, Nico? Who’s doing this? Please, tell me you know something by now.”
“Nothing concrete,” he said heavily. “My gut’s telling me it’s all too coincidental for it not to be connected to Sara—or me—in some way, but without knowing which, it’s hard to make heads or tails of any of it. When Isabelle Moss turned up dead, my first thought was that Fowler was messing with me. Maybe he somehow heard about my transfer and wanted to hurt me. He’s got the motivation, but he’s also in prison, and it would take a lot of sway, and even more cash, to orchestrate something like this from inside.” Nico shook his head, pinching his lips together in thought. “I just can’t imagine him having the resources to pull it off. Throw a second victim into the mix—three, if you count Sara, which, we can’t with any certainty—and we’re officially dealing with a serial killer. But again, Sara’s murder makes it complicated. It’s possible that Fowler is innocent, and the real killer is still out there, finishing what he started, though I’m ninety-nine percent sure that’s not the case. Even if it were, why leave such a big gap between the first and second murders? It’s also possible that this has nothing to do with who these women were, but where they came from. They all kept bad company. For all we know, the killer is some disgruntled local holding onto a grade school grudge. We’ve got enough probable cause to look at multiple suspects, but not a shred of hard evidence to make an arrest.” Frustrated, he rubbed a hand down his face. “There’s something I’m not seeing, I know it. Something that should be obvious, but it’s just not. It’s like—” He paused, struggling to find the right words. “It’s like when you bump into someone you’ve met before. You know their face, but you can’t remember their name. It’s right there tickling the edge of your mind, but you can’t get a good enough grip on it to bring it fully into your head.”
“I usually end up thinking of it a few days later,” Lexie said. “When it’s too late to do anything about it.”
Nico cast a grave look at her. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”