Chapter 28
“Periods teach you how to get blood stains out of a lot of things, which is probably why you hear more stories of men getting caught for murder.”
—It’s science
Hector
It took two weeks for Jennings to get out of the hospital due to his severe burns and smoke inhalation. Personally, I was glad he’d suffered.
I had gone to visit him, unfortunately with Andrews supervising me. I knew she likely hadn’t trusted me to be alone with him—smart on her part. As someone who had more than once in the past blurred the lines between right and wrong, this likely would have been another situation to add to that list.
I had never felt more rage in my body than I did listening to Jennings carelessly and callously discuss how this was all Iris’s fault for finding the body in the first place.
Knowing he’d planned to kill her simply because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and ruined his chances of getting away with his crimes had me contemplating how to cross a few of his medical wires to make him suffer a bit more. Andrews’s presence had prevented that.
I had also gone to visit Diden at the hospital and learned that once she heard Steve’s podcast linking the body we found to other collegiate athletes, she had become fixated on the case.
Having been a collegiate athlete herself, she’d taken this case personally, even though she hadn’t known any of the victims. She’d begun feeding Steve inside information to help him, and somewhere along the way, the two of them became involved, which blurred the lines even more.
We’d learned a lot in these past two weeks, including that our podcaster, Steve, was correct.
We’d confirmed the woman’s body we had found in Lake Echo had not been his only victim.
Jennings was a roving ranger, meaning he moved from one park to the next depending on where the need was the greatest. A summer in a national park in Montana to help with the busy season, and then when that slowed down, he did a six-month stint in Florida.
He moved roughly every six to twelve months, allowing him the perfect opportunity to learn the lay of the land, find a lake, find a victim, and then leave before most of the bodies were ever even found.
Several of the women Steve suspected Jennings of killing had their cases reopened to search nearby lakes. Andrews had filled me in this afternoon with the latest information.
“The women were indeed all collegiate athletes,” she said.
“Apparently, Jennings had a high school sweetheart who went to college on an athletic scholarship. He couldn’t get into that same university, so he traveled to see her, only to find out that when she was at a tournament, she had cheated on him. ”
Bingo, I thought. That’s what had set off his fixation on female athletes.
“After hours of interrogation, he’d finally confessed that he would meet the athletes, flirt with them, and then casually ask if they were seeing someone,” she continued.
“If they said yes, he drugged their drinks and lured them away. He usually killed them nearby and then took them to the nearest body of water.”
In the case of Lake Echo—which was more a reservoir than a traditional lake—he hadn’t taken into account that in nine months, we would receive almost no rain. That meant the lake levels dropped so low that the water was much shallower than when he had dumped the body, making it easier to find.
As for Iris, his plan was to kill her and set my cabin on fire, leaving her body in there.
When Diden and Steve had shown up, his plan was to add them to the body count as well.
He had been dragging Diden’s body back to my room, where he planned to tie them up and then set the fire.
But when he heard me come in, he made a quick escape out the window and ran to the shed.
He saw the butane tanks in there and used the rest of his fire starters on the shed so it would ignite and hopefully trap us all in the house.
“Unfortunately for him, they ignited faster than he thought,” Andrews added. “That meant he had injured himself in the process, slowing down his ability to chase after all of you.”
Especially since he hadn’t planned on us going the weird route down the mountain that Iris took us—which, God love her, not only saved us from the flames but also from Jennings.
He was also the one who had broken into Iris’s apartment. After the letter had been dropped off, Jennings had convinced himself that Iris really did take something from the crime scene, so he wanted to search her place to see if he could find it.
“The cotton ball that was found at the scene had a forensic chemical preservative solution on it,” Andrews explained.
“He wanted to look for any other evidence left on her clothes after she washed them from the lake. He used some kind of ethanol agent to slow down evaporation until he could get it home, where he had a full forensic kit ready.”
“Damn,” I responded, pissed, but also mildly impressed Jennings was this elaborate in his execution.
“Our forensic team knew what the solution was on the cotton ball very quickly, but we just didn’t know why they used it, or who,” Andrews pointed out.
He’d thought he had done a good enough job of cleaning up and leaving no trace behind, but he’d failed. Especially the part where he’d broken her lock as he kicked in the door—which apparently had happened in haste because he’d heard voices coming around the corner.
Given his medical condition, Jennings had been arraigned from the hospital with a police guard twenty-four-seven since he was deemed a flight risk.
He was also denied bail for the very same reason.
It would likely be months before his actual trial, but knowing he would be in jail the entire time was a small blessing.
I had been staying at Iris’s apartment since my cabin was condemned. She hadn’t asked me to leave. and I hadn’t wanted to. She needed a bigger bed because my body—especially with hers next to me—was too much for a queen bed.
I had ordered a king bed to be delivered today, and we’d move hers to storage if she wanted to keep it.
I had just pulled up to her apartment complex when the delivery company called to say they were ten minutes out.
Iris was working from home today since she had done a career day event at UNLV this morning. When I walked in, her gaze moved straight to me, and she smiled from her position on the floor as she played with Sarge.
He came to greet me as I walked in, and Iris rose from the floor to join him.
“So, I have a surprise,” I told her as she leaned up to kiss me.
“Is this one of those ‘I have a surprise for you in my pants’ kind of surprises, or more like a ‘I finally decided to take Nancy up on her offer and come play cards with you and her friends tomorrow night’ kind of surprise?” she asked, causing me to laugh.
“Neither, though I like the first idea a lot better than the second,” I told her, pulling her into me and wrapping my arms around her waist.
“Okay, I’ll bite.” She smirked. “What is it?”
“I talked to my boss, and he agreed to let me buy the property on the other side of the ridge near the Wash Wetlands, so long as if I decide to sell it later, I allow the Parks Service to make the first offer,” I told her.
We had been looking to sell off some property near the edge of the park where the old ranger outposts had been but had held back for fear a large developer would come in and put in a strip mall.
I promised O’Connor I just wanted to build my cabin near where I was before, but not in the exact same spot because I hadn’t wanted any issues with PTSD for Iris or anyone else. He agreed, and we would sign the paperwork next week.
She beamed at me, and it was too irresistible to ignore. I crushed my mouth to hers, devouring her, enjoying the soft little noises she never seemed to know she made when I kissed her like this.
Sarge barked, breaking me out of my lustful thoughts, followed by a knock at the door.
Shit. I had gotten so caught up in her that I hadn’t finished telling her the rest of the surprise.
“There’s one more part of the surprise, and I think it’s here,” I said, turning to go answer the door.
“Well, that’s not cryptic at all,” she muttered behind me.
Expecting the delivery people, I chose not to look at the peephole and just opened the door, which was why I was shocked to see Nancy on the other side.
“Unless you’ve suddenly decided I’m your dream girl instead of Iris and you’re proposing a sleepover, I think this bed was delivered to the wrong door,” she said with a lopsided smile.
Crap.
“Uh, yeah, that’s meant for Iris,” I told her.
“No worries, big guy. You can make it up to me by coming to game night tomorrow,” she said, and I realized she’d conned me right into that one. “I’m thinkin’ we might play strip poker.”
Usually, I was very good at keeping my reactions hidden, but in this case, I must not have been as fast to cover my face, because she cackled and then turned around and spoke to someone behind her.
“In here, boys. This is the unit you really want,” she said, and two men carrying a huge box walked over to the door I was standing in front of.
I moved out of the way, telling them where to put it.
“A new bed, eh?” Iris looked at me, her arms crossed, head tilted back to look up at me with a small grin tugging at her lips.
Lips that I wanted to kiss the ever-loving hell out of.
“Surprise,” I said, giving her a small smile in return.
“And what’s going to happen to my current bed?” she asked.
“If you want to keep it, we can, but these guys offered to take it to the local women’s shelter for free if you don’t want it.”
Her face softened, and she nodded. “Yeah, let’s have them donate it.”
An hour later, the new bed and mattress were all delivered and set up and the old one was on its way to the shelter. I finally had her alone again and was looking forward to trying out that new bed.
After signing the paperwork for everything, I walked back into her apartment and found her snuggled up on the couch with Sarge in her lap and a book in her hand.
Her glasses were perched on top of her nose, and her hair was up in some messy bun with a few stray curls around her face. She looked perfect.
This woman was it for me. I loved her. The words had fallen from my lips a few weeks ago after everything had happened, but I hadn’t said them again since, not sure if I was just caught up in the adrenaline of the day, or if my brain really knew what the rest of my body was feeling.
I knew we hadn’t known each other for long, but some things you just knew, and this was one of them.
I loved how brave and strong she was—how caring, loyal, and compassionate. I felt deep down like she was my other half. She was the answer I didn't know I had been searching for.
I hadn’t realized how long I had been standing there staring at her until she spoke, though her eyes were still trained on her book. “How long you gonna stand there and gawk at me?”
She looked up at me and smiled. When she smiled at me like that, I knew I would give her the world if she asked. Not being one to beat around the bush, I realized I wanted her to hear me say it this time, not just when she was asleep.
“I love you, Iris,” I said, walking over to the couch and squatting in front of her. “You’re it for me. You have been since the day I met you. I just didn’t know it yet.”
She didn’t say anything, but her face was an open book, so the emotions swirling through her were clearly visible.
“Hector,” she said, her breath hitching. “I love you, too.”
I leaned forward to kiss her, but Sarge grumbled at me for invading his comfy pillow—also known as Iris’s lap.
“Why don’t I help you christen this new bed you got us…you know…just to make sure it doesn’t suck,” she said, smiling at me while giving me a little wink.
I chose not to respond verbally. I simply picked her up, put her over my shoulder, and carried her straight to the bedroom. I did it to the sound of her laughter—a sound I would never tire of hearing.
A sound I hoped to hear for the rest of my life.