Chapter 7 Abi
ABI
But I don’t.
I stop in front of the window and jerk the curtain back, peering out at my front yard, with its flower patch and neatly manicured grass, and then to the cemetery itself, everything illuminated in patches by the street lamps. No movement.
He’s not going to come back.
I drop the curtain and stumble backward, my arms wrapped around my chest. I hate that the thought almost makes me feel disappointed.
I stifle it before it can get any further. That was a killer who pinned me to the desk and ran his leather-gloved hands up my bare arm like I was something precious. A killer who pressed his lips to mine and then asked if he could touch me.
Why did you want to say yes what the HELL is wrong with you—
I fling myself out of the living room and back into my bedroom for what has to be the third or fourth time tonight.
After it happened, after the masked man—the masked killer—left me trembling and terrified in my office, I could barely move.
Eventually, I managed to drag myself over to the back entrance, which he had left hanging open.
I shut it. Activated the lock. Every second, I expected him to leap out of the shadows and wrap his hand around my mouth again.
It never happened.
I scoured the house, both the funeral parlor downstairs and my living space upstairs. Nothing. I picked up my phone a dozen times, but I could never bring myself to call the police.
I still can’t.
Every time I look at my phone, I think about the last time I dialed 911, when I was 16 and Blake Fletcher was lying crooked and broken at the bottom of the stairs of his house. I had shoved him.
He had touched me, too. But he hadn’t been gentle about it, like the killer. He had grabbed me and thrown me against the wall and ripped my shorts over my hips, hissing that an ugly nerd like me should be thrilled to give it up to a guy like him.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to block out the memory. When I think about it, I also think about everything that came after. The interrogation. The grand jury. All the newspaper stories and the harassment and the death threats.
It always felt like everything started because I called the police instead of running away.
I throw myself onto my crumpled bed, roll onto my back, and stare up at my ceiling fan.
My sheets feel sticky and uncomfortable, and I squirm around to get them off of me.
Somehow, I hike my nightgown up in the process.
It bunches around my hips the way it did when the killer pressed his knee between my thighs and whispered in his soft, whiskey-rough voice.
I want to touch you.
Why?
Because you’re beautiful.
I suck down deep lungfuls of air. I wish I knew what’s wrong with me. It was him. He told me who he was. He confirmed my suspicion that all those deaths weren’t accidents.
But I don’t have real proof. Only my word. And I know how much stock Rosado law enforcement puts in that, coroner appointment or not.
I dig the heels of my palms into my eyes, but it’s not enough to block out the memory of what happened. The killer’s soft, chaste kiss. His hand splayed across my belly, asking permission to touch me.
That’s the thought that sends heat down between my legs. He asked permission.
“No,” I whisper, my voice thunderously loud in the silence of my room. This is the reason I keep stalking back and forth between my bed and the rest of the house. Because every time I lie down, I feel his silky touch on my skin, and I wish—
I wish I hadn’t shoved him away.
A sick, heavy guilt squeezes my chest. He’s murdered at least seven people. He broke into my home, presumably to murder me.
Although he didn’t.
He kissed me instead.
The house creaks, settling into its foundations. I jerk up on my elbows, but there’s no one in my bedroom with me. He’s not here.
What if he was?
I slump back, hating myself for following the threads of my fantasy. What if he came back? What if he crawled in through my window, looking like a wisp of shadow? What if he slid into bed and ran his leather gloves up my legs until he pried them apart, and then ran his thumb along my slit until—
I hardly realize I’m touching myself. But I am, circling my clit over my thin cotton panties.
And I’m still imagining him, the killer I’ve been tracking since Uncle Vic left me alone in this stifling town. Imagining him sliding up the bottom of his mask like he did before, then kissing me in earnest. On the mouth. On the neck. On the cunt.
I moan softly, shuddering with fear and shame and lust, and slide my panties aside so I can stroke my quickly-dampening pussy.
May I touch you? The growl of his words echoes in my head.
“Yes,” I whisper raggedly to the empty room. “Yes. Touch me.”
I hate myself for imagining what would have happened if he had. Hate myself for imagining him bending me over the table and sliding my panties over my thighs and pressing his fingers into my slit. I don’t know what a leather glove would feel like against my pussy, but god, I fucking want to.
I arch my back, hooking my fingers into myself as I remember what the killer’s cock felt like when he pulled me up to him. I imagine him taking it out, sliding it into my waiting cunt.
I jolt beneath my own touch, shame shivering through me.
No. I will not give in to this darkness I’ve worked so hard to carve away from myself.
So I force my thoughts to go elsewhere, to something safer, and I settle, somewhat suddenly, on Rowan Hanover, grinning bashfully down at me in his sunny hotel office.
It’s easy, at first, to sink into the fantasy. Me bent over Rowan’s desk while he thrusts into me, his hands squeezing tight around my hips. But as my pleasure crests, the image changes. And suddenly, Rowan’s wearing black leather gloves and a black rubber mask with a twisted, leering face.
May I touch you? he rasps, his cock already buried all the way in my pussy.
“Yes!” I cry out in my bed, my cunt too tightly wound for me to change course in my fantasies.
“Fuck me!” I press my fingers deeper inside my pussy and flop over onto my belly so I can hump my bed as I fuck myself.
And because it’s easier to imagine a masked man thrusting his big cock into me from behind.
You did so good finding me, he rasps in my imagination. Are you ready for your reward, little detective?
“Reward me,” I whisper into my pillow, my breath tight and choking.
“Reward me for catching you. Please, sir.” My hand is almost numb from how frantically I’m touching myself, sloppily rubbing inside and out as my orgasm crests from somewhere deep inside my core.
It’s the same deep place where I hide all my shameful fantasies—dark, blood-soaked fantasies.
Fantasies full of bones and death and, tonight, black rubber masks.
That evil has haunted me as long as I can remember.
Usually, I lock it away. But a killer has unleashed it, and I don’t know how to put it back in.
“Reward me!” I shriek, bucking against my bed. “Please! Please! Ple—“
When my orgasm rips through me, I can’t speak. My words dissolve into a long, throaty moan, and I fingerfuck myself through each agonizing, exquisite pulse of pleasure.
And the whole time, I’m thinking of him.
My nameless killer.
My cell phone rings, jarring me awake.
For a minute, I’m too disoriented to register anything. I’m in my bed, half naked. Sunlight pours in through the window. My sheets are on the floor.
My phone beeps over to voicemail.
“What time is it?” I mutter, pushing myself up. The light in the windows feels wrong. Too bright. Coming in at the wrong angle.
My phone chirps, letting me know I have a text. I must have finally fallen asleep last night, after I—
I shove my nightgown down over my thighs, heat flooding into my face.
My phone chirps again, pinging and insistent. For a minute, my thoughts whir around: did I have an appointment today? Something I missed by oversleeping? But no. There was nothing on my calendar.
Then a new fear works its way into my chest. That Kaplan and the rest of the sheriff’s department know somehow. Know that a killer came into my home and I just—let him go.
I snatch my phone up, my heart pounding. Slide on my glasses so I can see. But the call isn’t from the police. Instead, a name flashes on the screen that I haven’t thought about in years: Heather Staunton.
My lawyer from when I killed Blake Fletcher.
An old, paralyzing dread grips me from the inside. My hands shake as I swipe open her text message, which just makes things worse:
Call me as soon as you can.
I don’t bother listening to the voicemail. Just punch my thumb against the Call button and hold the phone up to my ear, my breath shaky and trembling.
I was acquitted on all charges two years after Blake’s death. Why is Ms. Staunton calling me?
She picks up on the first ring. “Abilene,” she says, her voice breathless. “Oh, thank god.”
“What’s wrong?” I stumble out of bed, my thoughts buzzing. The sunlight is too bright. It feels sharp, like a knife.
“I was worried you—” She cuts herself off. “I’m sorry to call out of the blue like this. But you need to know.”
I freeze in the middle of my room, the wooden floorboards cold against my bare feet.
“Know what?”
I don’t like this. It feels like I’m sixteen years old again, about to be led out of my parents’ house in handcuffs.
She takes a deep breath. “Do you remember Olivia Pearce?”
I squeeze the phone, the name clanging around in my head. It’s familiar, although I can’t place it.
“She was the reporter—”
That’s all Ms. Staunton has to say, the word reporter.
It all comes back to me. Olivia Pearce was a reporter for the newspaper in my hometown.
She had covered my case from the beginning, and she was the only one who believed my story about Blake assaulting me.
She was young—well, probably the age I am now.
Mid-20s. Pretty. When she interviewed me, she told me she had been a cheerleader at my high school.
When they’re good at sports, she had said darkly, the two of us sitting in the dusty little coffee shop in downtown Magnolia, this town will let them get away with anything.
“Abilene? Abi?”
Ms. Staunton’s voice cuts through my memory. I stumble back until I’m sitting on my bed. “I’m here,” I say. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
Ms. Staunton goes quiet on the other end of the line, and I know something did. A killer broke into my house last night, and now my past is calling me this morning.
“I don’t know any way to say this nicely,” Ms. Staunton’s voice is tight and rigid. “So I’m just going to tell you. Olivia’s body was found this morning.”
Blood pounds in my ears. “And I assume it’s not…” My voice trails off. Natural causes, that’s what I want to say, but I can’t get my mouth to form the words.
“It looks like murder, yes.”
My whole body goes numb. I stare at my closet, the door hanging open a little.
Just like the door to the examination room last night.
Bile rises in my stomach, and I lean over and retch before I can stop myself. There’s nothing to throw up, just pale, foamy stomach acid.
“Abilene?” I can barely make out Ms. Staunton’s voice on the phone.
“What happened?” I say, switching the phone over to speaker. “Where was she? How do they know it’s murder?”
“They don’t know it’s murder,” Ms. Staunton says. “As I’m sure you’re perfectly aware. But it doesn’t—”
“It doesn’t look like an accident?” I stumble into the bathroom and fill my toothpaste cup with water to clean out my mouth.
All his kills look like accidents.
“No,” Ms. Staunton says. “Her body was, um, mutilated. I don’t want to frighten you, but—”
“I want to do the autopsy.” I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I look like hell. Dark circles under my eyes, my skin wan and pale. “I’m a coroner now. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” Ms. Staunton says gently. “Yes, I’ve seen your name around. That’s actually why—”
“Who do I need to call in Magnolia?” I say. “To make sure I can do it? I know they’re bigger than Rosado, but—”
“Abi, listen.” Mrs. Staunton takes on that sharp, teacherly voice she used on me when I was panicking, back when I was a teenager. But I’m not a teenager now. I’m a grown woman.
And I need to know if there’s a letter carved on Olivia Pearce’s body.
It didn’t look like an accident. He makes his victims like they were in an accident.
“—in downtown Rosado.”
I freeze, looking over at my phone. “I’m sorry, say that again?”
Ms. Staunton sighs, clearly frustrated. “This is what I’m trying to tell you, Abilene. Olivia still lives in Magnolia, but her body was found in downtown Rosado. She was—displayed, for lack of a better word, on the gazebo in the town square.”
“What?” I snatch my phone up and run back into my bedroom. “This morning?”
“Yes, a groundskeeper found her very early this morning. From what I’ve been able to get from the police, and it’s not a lot, she was likely killed there overnight.”
Could he have even done it? After he left here?
“I know you handle all the coroner cases in Rosado County, but I did not want you to have Olivia Pearce come in without warning.”
“How did you find out?” I throw my closet door open and dig through my clothes, looking for my most professional outfit.
“Olivia’s husband let me know,” Ms. Staunton says gently. “Olivia and I have done a lot of work with victims’ rights, and he was worried I might be in danger. But her being found in Rosado—“
I stop, a pale linen dress dangling from one hand. “You think I might be in danger, too.”
“I don’t know what I think,” Ms. Staunton says. “But I felt obligated to let you know.”
I throw the dress on my bed. “Thank you, Ms. Staunton.”
“You can call me Heather.”
It feels disrespectful, calling her Heather. Like we’re colleagues. Like she isn’t the reason I was able to convince a jury in Magnolia that Blake Fletcher’s death was an accident.
Well, her and Olivia, if I’m being honest. Anxiety twists around in my belly.
“I’ll let you know what I find out, okay?”
I hang up before she can argue with me. Then I strip out of my nightgown and get dressed.
I need to see that crime scene.