Chapter 29 Abi
ABI
Ilock every door in my house and double-check them. Then I triple-check them. I check each window, making sure it’s sealed shut. Even the ones upstairs.
And when all of that is done, I go into the spare bedroom and pull open the closet door. Uncle Vic had a hunting rifle that he kept in a carrying case. He didn’t actually like hunting, he told me once, but a rifle like that was a standard gift for a Texas boy of his generation.
After he died, I put it in this closet.
I don’t know how to use a gun, but I take the case out anyway and set it on the bed.
I don’t know what to do next.
Or rather, what I want to do is the one thing I can’t do. I can’t call Nameless. I don’t know who he is. He slips in and out of my life like a demon. He comes to me. I don’t go to him.
So I’m alone, at least until nightfall.
I leave the gun on the bed and go back downstairs, my body tight with worry. I tell myself I just need to get through the day. Once night falls, Nameless will be here, and I can show him the pictures and the messages. He won’t let anything happen to me.
I don’t know why, but I’m sure of it.
The line to the funeral parlor rings, filling the foyer with the shrill jangling of the downstairs phone. I shriek and nearly leap out of my skin.
It’s him, I think, staring at the phone in the foyer like it’s a venomous snake. It’s been there for years, and I always thought of it as a decoration. But it’s hooked to the same line that goes to my office.
I could let it go to voicemail. I should let it go to voicemail, just like I should have called the police as soon as I got those pictures. But how the hell was I going to explain the part about the guard dog? Or about getting away the first time?
No, I made that decision weeks ago, when Nameless killed my attacker, and I just let him go. When I fucked him instead of turning him in.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I snatch up the phone and press the receiver to my ear. The line buzzes.
“Hello?” I whisper.
“Abilene? Is that you?”
It’s a normal voice. Not modulated or distorted. Male, crisp, professional.
“Yes.” I straighten my spine and try to calm my breathing. “Yes, it’s me.”
“Sorry, the line sounded weird for a second there. This is Rick Contreras, by the way.”
The detective from Olivia’s case. I hold my breath, waiting for him to say it.
“I’m afraid we had another murder.”
Blood pounds in my ears. I don’t know how to act normally about this. How to act like I didn’t know it already happened. I swallow.
“Is it—” My voice wobbles. “Is it like Olivia Pearce?”
“Yes,” Rick says gently. “Abilene, I need you to listen to me. He went after Heather Staunton. We found her this morning. Set up on Pier Fourteen.”
I close my eyes, my heart hammering up in my throat. Fuck. The same place Nameless left Julian Bernet. Another fucking message, as clear as the faxes I received this morning.
Nausea swirls around in my stomach, and I know Rick is waiting for my reaction.
“No,” I whisper, hoping to god I sound convincing. “No, that can’t be—”
“I’m afraid it is.” Rick clears his throat. “Abilene, one murder is a tragedy. Two, like this, is a pattern. And I’m worried about your safety.”
I stare at the empty foyer, imagining the dark lump of my attacker’s body on the floor. How Nameless pulled off his stocking, and it was no one. A stranger.
I thought I was safe.
I was so, so stupid.
“Yes, I can’t disagree,” I say carefully.
“That being said,” Rick continues, “you know this is a joint investigation. With the Magnolia department. And the Rosado Sheriff’s Department.”
I close my eyes.
“Kaplan wants me to bring you in. Just to talk.”
I laugh, sharp and shrill. “Why? Does he think I fucking did this?”
“He’s an asshole,” Rick says. “That’s why. As far as I’m concerned, your statement is a formality. If you don’t want to come in, and I don’t really blame you, I’ll send someone over there to you. You need a security detail anyway.”
“That’s not necessary,” I spit out—too quickly. The last thing I want is some bumbling police officer sitting outside my house when Nameless comes around tonight. He’s my security detail.
Rick sighs. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I say. “I’m happy to have someone come take my statement, but I don’t need security.”
At least not for tonight. I can tell Rick I changed my mind tomorrow.
“Very well.” Rick pauses. “I also wanted to let you know I’m sending the body to Magnolia for the autopsy. You don’t need to do that for us again.”
“Thank you,” I whisper. “I appreciate that.”
“Abilene, you really need to be careful,” Rick says. “It’s ugly, what he’s doing to them. Cruel. We’re doing what we can, but we don’t have any leads right now.”
I bite back a surge of bile. “When do you think the officer will come by?” I ask.
“Within the next few hours. And I want you to promise me that you’ll keep an eye out, okay? We don’t know how this guy operates. Don’t know how he’s taking them or how long he’s keeping them.”
“I understand,” I say. “Thank you, Rick.”
“Stay safe.”
I drop the phone in the cradle and take a stumbling step backward. Light pours in through the front door, freshly repaired from the night when I thought this nightmare was over.
“Nameless,” I whisper, like I’m praying to him. “I wish I knew how to find you.”
I’m a wreck the rest of the day. A nervous, pacing wreck. A Rosado police officer shows up around mid-morning, an impossibly young new recruit who smiles thinly at me from the doorway.
“Ms. Snow,” he says, sounding almost apologetic. “Detective Contreras asked me to stop by. We just have a few questions.”
It goes as smoothly as I might expect. We talk in the kitchen because I don’t want to take him upstairs to my living room.
The sun is bright and hot and reveals every trace of dust floating through the air.
The entire time we’re talking, I think that if the officer went into the viewing room, this glaring sunlight would show how I let a killer seduce me instead of doing the right thing.
Somehow, though, I manage to answer the questions with a calm, clear voice. They’re basic things: Have I seen anything unusual. Have I gotten any threatening messages. Have I had any uncomfortable encounters in the last few days.
It should be yes to all of those questions, shouldn’t it? There are the terrible pictures down in my office. There’s Nameless stepping out of the shadows in his rubber mask. There’s my naked body draped over a corpse while Nameless rams himself inside me and tells me I’m beautiful.
“No,” I say to every question. “No, I haven’t seen anything.”
The whole interview takes maybe half an hour. When the officer leaves, I lock the door behind him and lean up against it and let out long, deep breaths as adrenaline ricochets through my body.
More than anything, I wish I could call Nameless. In the impossibly bright foyer, he feels like some figment of my fucked up imagination. Some trauma response I conjured up out of the hot summer night.
I try to work. Nothing gets done. I stare down at my phone, scrolling through my contacts. At one point, I stop on Rowan’s name, my chest tight. It was nice meeting up with him after Olivia died. But I can’t bring myself to message him.
He deserves someone normal, not someone who’s fucked a killer.
Eventually, though, I do message the group chat. I don’t want to put the burden of my honesty on them, but it’s better than nothing.
Y’all around? I need to talk to someone.
I set my phone down and stare up at the map of Rosado on the wall. All those red pins marking murders-that-aren’t-murders. With the most recent one, the pattern seems even more clear. A message. A conversation.
What other conversations might be happening in this town?
In a burst, I grab two white pins and stick them in place. One at the gazebo on the town square, and one at Pier Fourteen.
I frown, staring at the map. I already know why the killer left Heather at the pier. But why the gazebo? Simply because it was a prominent place?
I study the twelve other white pins. Compared to the red ones, they’ve always seemed random to me.
And they still do, if I’m looking at the design they make on the map.
But two of them suddenly stand out, because they’re both at town landmarks: one at the historic marker on the beach, where there’s an ugly statue of some town founder.
The other at the First Rosado Methodist Church, one of the oldest churches in Texas.
I grab my notebook from my desk and flip through it until I find the details of each case. The one by the statue was ruled a suicide—a gunshot. The other was ruled an accident, although there’s very little information about the death. Laceration to the neck that severed the carotid artery.
How the hell is that an accident?
My phone chimes, and I startle, dropping the files across the desk.
Penelope
What’s up, girlie?
I stare down at the message, my fingers hovering over the keypad. It’s a relief to hear from her, even though I don’t know what to say. She’s my best friend, but I can’t tell her anything that’s happening to me. It would make her an accomplice—
Like I’m an accomplice
And I can’t do that to her. I can’t. But god, I also don’t want to be alone right now.
I need a video chat like rn
I got you. Usual link?
I send back a heart as an affirmative, then slide behind my desk and flip open my work laptop. I know I ought to do this on my personal laptop, but I feel safer down here. The office and the exam room are closed tight, like a cocoon.
This is also the first place I ever encountered Nameless. The first place he—
“Abi! What’s up?”
Penelope grins at me through the laptop screen. Her background has changed from the blank wall of her sister’s apartment; she’s outside somewhere, a wall of alpine trees behind her.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“Colorado.” She leans forward. “I’m here to protest that new pipeline RTI is putting in.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about; I haven’t exactly been paying attention to environmental injustices the last few days. But I still nod, trying to act normal. “That’s cool.”
“I mean, it’s gonna be intense. No cell service, much less Internet.” Penelope frowns. “I told y’all about it? How my car broke down in Nebraska?”
Heat burns in my cheeks. She did, actually—there had been a flurry of messages over the last few days, the two of them talking to each other. “Yeah, sorry, I’ve been distracted.”
Penelope’s frown deepens. “What’s wrong?”
Everything, including me. I wonder what Penelope would say to me fucking a killer, not that I can tell her over Zoom. She’s about as non-judgmental as you can get, but I don’t think she’d understand that. Neither of them would.
Still, I have to tell her something. It’s a relief, hearing her voice, not feeling so alone.
“There was another murder,” I say. “Um, my lawyer from when I was a teenager—”
“Jesus Christ,” Penelope says. “She was the one killed?”
“Yeah.” I feel sick to my stomach, my fear twisting around tight in my guts. “Yeah, in the same way as Olivia Pearce.”
“Oh my fucking god.” I hear clacking through the speakers; Penelope’s already diving into Google. “I found a story, but it’s not really saying anything—”
“Yeah, it just happened last night.”
Penelope’s eyes scan across the screen. Reading the story, I guess. “Forget the protest,” she says. “I’m coming down to Rosado. You can’t be alone.”
I stiffen. “No, that’s not necessary,” I say, a little too quickly. It’s not that I don’t want her here, her or Chloe. But I already have someone watching over me, and I don’t want to put either of them in danger. “The cops are giving me a guard.”
Penelope scoffs at that. Rolls her eyes. “Why the fuck would you trust the cops?”
“They have guns,” I say weakly.
“Yeah, and we know who they usually shoot with those guns. The second they see this asshole is a white guy, those guns are staying right in their holsters.”
“There’s also Rowan,” I say quickly, even though shame flushes in my chest. “We’ve been hanging out. I can ask him to stay with me until—until this all blows over.”
Penelope leans back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest. The trees behind her sway back and forth. “I’m glad you’re getting some dick, but I’d rather you not depend on some random dude.”
I think of Nameless, big and strong and towering over my first attacker.
“He’s not some random dude,” I finally say, although I’m not talking about Rowan.
“Yeah, well, you’ve known us longer.” Penelope pauses, wrapping a lock of her brown hair around one finger. “What if you go stay with Chloe for a while? Get out of Texas. She just inherited that big lake house from her grandparents, so she has the room.”
That idea feels even worse. Then I’d have no protector, and I’d put Chloe in danger, too.
“And if the killer follows me?” I say. “I really think it’s better for me to stay here.”
“Abi.” Penelope says my name with the air of a mom losing her patience. “I love you, but you’re being stupid.” She points at her screen. “I mean, these fucking deaths—it’s obviously about you. What happened when you were sixteen.”
“I’ll be fine,” I mutter.
Penelope slumps back, staring at me through the screen. “You’re not telling me something,” she says flatly. “Aren’t you? There’s something else.”
A million alarm bells go off in my head. A million images flash through my thoughts.
“I just can’t leave,” I say, my voice shaky. “I can’t risk putting either of you in danger.”
“So you’re just going to hang out in that big-ass house by yourself?” Penelope squawks. “And hope the police will protect you?”
“Not the police.” I say it without thinking, but as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know I fucked up.
“What?” Penelope says. “You just told me they were giving you a guard. Who else would it be? Rowan?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Some guy who runs a hotel?”
Worse than that. A million times worse. But I nod. “I’ll be fine, Penny. Really.”
Penelope stares at me through the screen. “I want you to call me,” she says darkly. “Every fucking night. Me and Chloe. Do you understand?”
“I thought you weren’t going to have Internet access.”
“Then call fucking Chloe.”
I take a deep breath and look past my computer and out at the examination room. The lights have switched off, but I can still make out the gleam of metal.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll call y’all every night.”
“And don’t trust the police.” Penelope’s eyes gleam. “Seriously, Abi. You’re better off trusting this Rowan guy.”
Hearing Rowan’s name sours in my thoughts. God, I wish I could be honest with her.
But I know I can’t.