Chapter Four
“She’s in shock, Jim. Give the poor kid a minute.”
Dani pulled an emergency blanket around her shoulders as she sat in the back of an ambulance later that night.
A dozen police cars had arrived on the scene, and nearly as many journalists too.
Her head was spinning from the attack, her heartbeat still elevated as she struggled to answer the police officer’s questions.
Even though it was warm out and she was wearing Tommy’s hoodie, she was still chilled to the bone.
“Are my mom and dad coming?” She asked, her voice just above a whisper.
Officer Janet Owens, an athletic woman with kind eyes and a no-nonsense attitude, nodded. “We called them. They’re on their way.”
“So, you knew this Vickers guy then?” Officer Jim Marshall sighed and scratched the temple of his receding hairline with the end of an ink pen, his notepad poised and ready.
Officer Marshall seemed to have little patience for Dani’s current emotional state, and Officer Owens pulled a face that showed she had even less patience for him.
“Sort of. We went to school together. He comes into the video store to check out tapes sometimes.”
“Ms. Kincaid, are you sure this Vickers fella is the guy that killed your co-worker and your boyfriend?” Officer Marshall glanced up from his notepad, his lips pursed into a frown.
“I saw him stab Kyle. I didn’t actually see him kill Tommy, but he admitted it to me.”
Fresh tears welled up in her eyes at the mention of her boyfriend’s name. She stared at the boardwalk as grief deadened her limbs. She wanted to cry, to scream, to pound her fists into Matt Vickers’ ugly face, but she couldn’t conjure up any emotion. At that moment, she only felt numb.
“So he chased you down here, and then what?” Officer Marshall asked.
“I saw a man fishing, so I ran toward him for help.”
“Where is that man now?” Officer Owens passed her a tissue.
“He jumped into the water to get away.” Dani swallowed. “Then after that, Matt lunged at me, but I ducked before he could grab me. He went over the rails and ended up diving into the water too.”
“Well, don’t you worry,” Officer Marshall said, suddenly taking a more sympathetic tone. He waved toward the shoreline. “We’ve got our best men combing the area. He’ll either have to swim all the way to Mexico or take his chances with the sharks.”
“We got one!” An officer that had been searching the shoreline pointed a flashlight toward the ambulance.
Her pulse ratcheted up again as all of the police officers, with the exception of Officer Owens, rushed to the beach. Part of her couldn’t handle seeing yet another dead body that day, but an even bigger part of her wished that the body washing up on shore belonged to her attacker.
Dani’s face heated, but her body still felt cold as a corpse. Her voice betrayed her, cracking as she struggled to speak. “What’s going to happen if they don’t find him?”
“Oh, we’ll find him. Maybe not tonight, but eventually. We’ll make sure you’re safe until then.” Officer Owens gave her shoulder a reassuring pat.
“I tried to tell my boss about him.” Dani sniffed. “I couldn’t get anyone to take me seriously. Now Tommy and Kyle are dead. Because of me.”
“Listen to me,” Officer Owens said, squeezing her shoulder harder. “None of this is your fault. But you gotta be brave, understand? You gotta be tough now. You’ve got a long, hard road ahead of you, and the world isn’t going to make it easy.”
Dani nodded and turned her attention toward the shoreline. All of the hope she had been holding onto fizzled as they dragged a waterlogged body from the ocean. Even from her faraway position, she could tell that it wasn’t Matt Vickers, but the much smaller fisherman.
“Is that your fisherman?” Officer Owens said, nodding toward the beach.
“I think so.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.
Matt Vickers’ body count was climbing by the minute.
Three men had died that night because of her.
Three innocent people were gone, all because they got in between her and Matt.
She could still smell his scent in her nose, taste its bitter, appalling flavor on her tongue.
“Dani! Get out of the way, that’s my daughter!”
Dani let out a relieved sigh as her mother, Brenda, pushed past a police officer. Her father, Dom, followed right behind. Her heart broke a little as she registered the pale, stricken expression on their faces as they approached.
“Mom!”
Dani’s stony expression broke as her parents wrapped her up in their arms. She sobbed, her chest heaving as hot, fresh tears disappeared into her mother’s hair.
They held her as she cried in the back of the ambulance.
They held her when they brought her home from the hospital.
Her parents held her and held her because that’s all that they could do.
Calls and visits from friends flooded in as Dani attempted to resume some semblance of life.
Every knock on the door or telephone ring caused her insides to flip.
Well-wishers, flower deliveries and notes of condolence were given a suspicious eye.
So long as Matt Vickers was at large, no one and nowhere felt safe.
Dani refused to see anyone during those first touch-and-go days.
She spent most of her time in bed hiding from the world and watching reruns or pouring over photos of her and Tommy in happier times.
Tommy. Kyle. The fisherman. They were all gone because of her. Because of him. The same Matt Vickers whose whereabouts were unknown.
“How are you feeling today?” Her mother peeked her head into the room and padded across the floor. Four days had passed since the attack and Dani didn’t feel any different.
“Same as yesterday.”
“Looks like there’s still two squad cars out front.” Her mother squinted and peered out onto the street through the horizontal blinds over the bed. “Must be taking extra precautions because of the funeral.”
“Any updates from Officer Owens?” Dani sat up and pushed a mop of greasy, limp hair from her eyes. She lifted her shirt away from her body, sniffed, and made a disgusted face. When was the last time she showered anyway?
“No.” Her mother sighed and sat down on the bed. “Matt’s parents aren’t talking and no one has seen or heard anything.”
“What about the fisherman?”
“Nothing. The police think he might have been a homeless person. They haven’t been able to ID him. They aren’t convinced that Matt was the one who killed him either.”
“Can you stop saying his name please? Just hearing it makes me feel sick.” Dani stared down at her hands and picked at her nails. “I don’t know if I can handle going to the funeral today.”
“It’s up to you, sweetie. I understand if it’s too much to bear. But I think going will help give you some closure.”
“I can’t look Tommy’s parents in the eye,” Dani said. “He’s gone because of me.”
“He’s gone because that, that—lunatic—was fixated on you.” Her mother rose from the bed and walked toward the window again.
“I don’t know why,” Dani said. “I didn’t lead him on. I told him to leave me alone. I’m not special.”
“You’re special to me.”
“Mom.” Dani huffed. “That’s not helpful.”
“Have you given any thought to what we talked about? You know, after your granddad died, I fell into a deep depression. Counseling really helped me …”
“No.”
“I wish you would.” Her mother said, her forehead a lined valley of worry. “Have something to eat, get a shower, and then see how you feel about going to the funeral. Sound okay?”
“Sure.”
Her mother kissed her on the cheek and threw yet another harrowed glance as she exited the bedroom.
Dani exhaled a long, slow breath as she watched dust particles skitter through the blinds in the golden morning light.
Every limb in her body felt like dead weight, but her head was light—detached as though with one good tug it would float up to the ceiling.
She wished the bed would swallow her whole.
How was she supposed to live with the pain and the guilt of being alive?
With the fear of always having to look over her shoulder?
Leaving the house knowing that he was still out there felt nearly impossible.
Still, Dani knew she had to make an effort to show her face at the funeral, for Tommy’s sake at least. She didn’t believe in ghosts or the afterlife or anything like that, but just in case she was wrong, she wanted him to know that she cared.
Whatever chill pills they had given her at the hospital weren’t actually helping with her mood.
The medication only served to make her feel tired and dizzy.
Drugs only stopped her from feeling anything.
She didn’t deserve to be comfortably numb as Tommy and Kyle and the fisherman laid in their graves.
She didn’t deserve to be happy and safe and alive as their families grieved.
Dani kicked her legs over the edge of the bed, stood up, and swayed on her feet.
She tugged the elastic waist of her pajama pants up and realized that they sat a little lower on her hips than usual.
She didn’t have much interest in eating since the attack.
Everything made her nauseous. She grabbed a towel from off the back of her vanity chair and padded toward the bathroom, knowing that even a session with her favorite Herbal Essences shampoo wouldn’t help her feel clean again.
Time was all she had now, and time was what it would take for her to come back to the world again.
As she stepped into the hot shower, Dani knew that she couldn’t sit back and hide anymore.
She needed to snap out of it. She needed to fight.
Dead or alive, Matt Vickers wasn’t going to get the best of her.
Her friends weren’t going to die in vain.
She was still above ground and breathing, whether she deserved to be or not.
She wasn’t going to waste her second chance.
She rubbed a handful of botanical shampoo into her scalp, but no matter how hard she scrubbed, or how much aromatic body wash she rubbed into her skin, Dani couldn’t feel fresh and renewed.
Matt Vickers had tainted her forever. His presence would always linger just under the surface of her skin.