Chapter 14
“You want to tell me what upset you when you were with my mother?” Eli asked when they were back in his Jeep headed to Shelby. “We have some time now to talk. Alone. No distractions.”
“Yeah. Okay, but I want to know from you what this trip was about, too. You were very mysterious concerning what your father could contribute to the investigation.”
“Sorry,” he said, “I wasn’t trying to be mysterious. I just didn’t want to say anything until I was sure about my suspicion.”
“And now you are sure?” she asked.
Eli cut a glance from the road to Noelle and nodded. “I am. I’m just not sure what to do with it.”
“So spill. What did you learn?”
Eli drew a fortifying breath. “In college, did I ever tell you I had an aunt who was murdered when I was five years old?”
He heard her low gasp. “What!” Then a beat later, she said, “Wait. I think you did, just in passing. You didn’t want to talk about it, so I let it drop. I mean, I had my touchy subjects that were taboo, so…” Noelle shifted on her seat. “What about your aunt?”
“The details of the murder scene, how she was killed, how she was dressed and posed, even the engagement ring her killer put on her hand and made sure we saw are almost identical to the Fiancée Killer. My aunt’s killer left her in my grandparents’ living room, not out in the wilderness, and he killed himself beside her.
But there are too many similarities to disregard. ”
Noelle said nothing for a moment, and when he glanced her way, her expression said she was deep in thought, digesting this new information in light of what they knew.
“Maybe it’s just a coincidence?” she said, though her tone said she didn’t believe that theory any more than he did.
“I’ve told you my belief about coincidence, especially in police work.”
“But if Scott is behind all this, like we think, and he’s recreating the scene of your aunt’s murder—”
“Which I was the first to come across when it happened.”
Noelle inhaled sharply. “Eli! You never told me that! At five, you saw your murdered aunt?”
He confirmed this with a bob of his head. “And here I am investigating the new murders.”
“How can you sound so casual about this? He set a bomb to try to kill you when you sniffed out his guilt!” Noelle raised both hands to her face and groaned.
“Eli, has this all been about some grudge Scott has against you? I mean, we determined earlier that the victims all have dark hair and blue eyes like the Coltons, like you! But when he started killing women, how could Scott have known you’d get the case instead of some other ABI agent?
And what in the world did you do to set him off like this? ”
Eli scrubbed a hand over his chin. “Hell if I know. Scott’s never really registered on my radar before now.
He was just this geeky guy from forensics I saw around the office from time to time.
I may have teased him at some point, but nothing vicious.
Just the kind of good-natured ribbing all men do with each other. ”
“So, what does this mean? If this has something to do with a vendetta against you, where does it go now that Scott knows you’re onto him and his first attempt to kill you failed?”
“Well, for one thing, I want you out.”
“What? No!”
“Noelle, I want you far away from this case for your own safety. And we have to make sure anyone who knows you were working on the case with me says nothing about it. I don’t want him coming after you to get to me.”
She touched his arm, drawing his attention away from the road. Her face was grim. “He already knows.”
“Huh? How?”
“That morning I came by ABI headquarters to get your files on the case, he stopped by. You told him you were including me on the investigation as a consultant.”
Eli’s gut swooped. “I did?”
“You did.”
When the day in question replayed in his brain, Eli slapped the steering wheel and muttered a bad word.
“What’s more, someone has already come after me. Someone cut my brake line, remember?”
The heat of anger rose in his blood and climbed to his cheeks.
His temples pounded as he mulled the truth from a new perspective.
Someone had targeted Noelle. Scott knew of her involvement helping with the case.
Fresh resolve hardened inside him. “Well, then, here’s the new plan.
I want you to stay close to me until we figure out where he is and what he’s planning.
I know that puts you in the line of fire, so to speak, but I can protect you better if I’m with you than if I’m not. ”
“You really think I—”
“Or…” Eli squeezed the steering wheel as another option occurred to him. “Maybe you should go back to Seattle now. Handle your sister’s funeral from there. I can see that your directions for her remains are handled the way you want.”
“Go home?” Her voice was soft and flat. “Is that really what you want?”
“No. But I want you safe, and you’ll be safer far away from Shelby.”
“What if I’m willing to take the risk in order to see this case through? To see my responsibilities to Allison through? I’m not a quitter, Eli.”
He jerked a sharp look her way and clenched his jaw. “Well, you were once.”
Her despondent sigh reached him. “Oh. That. Right.”
When he glanced at her, she was staring out the side window, her brow puckered.
“I guess it’s my turn to spill.” She angled her gaze to him again.
“I was crying at your parents because your mom was so sweet to me, so interested in me and my life, so…caring…” She sniffed, then opened her purse to pull out a tissue and wipe her eyes, her nose.
“It just drilled home to me all the more what I’d missed not having a mother who valued me. ”
Eli frowned his sympathy. “I hate that you felt unloved, Noelle. But are you sure you’re not remembering it through a dark lens?
Maybe the fact that they favored your sister means you were a little jealous and saw things in a dimmer light than reality.
I mean, they adopted you. Parents who want a child enough to adopt don’t—”
“I know what I lived, Eli.” She huffed her frustration, and he was jabbed with self-recrimination.
The Coltons had pledged to live by the credo believe, yet the first time Noelle presented him with truths about her life that he found hard to swallow, he’d doubted her.
Was that why she’d broken up with him years ago?
Had he unwittingly given her the perception he didn’t believe her?
Had he diminished her truths and discounted her reality without knowing?
Guilt kicked him at the notion he could have broken the family’s core value with the person he wanted to form his own family with.
“I’m sorry. You’re right.” He reached for her leg and gave it a quick squeeze of apology. “Only you can know what you experienced and how it shaped you. Please go on.”
She blinked at him as if his confession caught her off guard.
“Thank you for that. I—” She cleared her throat.
“The thing is, after a point, I got what I asked for. I gave them reason not to want me, not to love me. I became belligerent and acted out. I pushed the limits and rebelled after I heard—”
When she fell abruptly silent, he cut a side glance to her. “Heard what?” Eli held his breath. He didn’t want to know the awful thing she’d heard that had clearly caused a deep rift and a lasting pain.
“I heard my mother and aunt talking in the kitchen one day when I was about fourteen. After years of trying to be perfect for them and a model student and daughter, I heard my mother say it had been a mistake to adopt me. A mistake she regretted every day.”
Eli muttered a curse and reached for her knee. “Lord, Noelle, I am so sorry. What a terrible thing for her to say!”
“Yeah. Well, that was the truth I lived with. Once I knew she didn’t care about me, I saw no reason to behave or try to earn her love any more.
I was angry and hurt, and I saw no reason not to be as difficult and unlovable as they seemed to believe I was.
I couldn’t leave home soon enough. The animosity grew between us throughout high school.
After I left for college, I never went back to Anchorage.
Never really even spoke to my parents and only talked to Allison occasionally. ”
Eli pulled the car to the side of the road.
Once the Jeep was stopped, he turned on his emergency blinkers and the dome light.
Facing Noelle, he cupped her cheek and held her gaze.
She was telling him the deepest hurts of her life, and he owed her his undivided attention, his undiluted care and comfort.
“Noelle, I—I wish I could do something…”
“You can’t, though. Nothing can change the past.” She squared her shoulders, then raised her chin. “I’m all right now. I’ve learned to move forward. I have my career, friends, and I’ve built a new life without my family.”
“I hate to think of you not having the kind of family support I’ve had,” he said. “I can’t imagine how lonely you must have felt growing up. Why didn’t you tell me all this in college?”
“I told you earlier. I didn’t want your pity.
We had something special, and I didn’t want to tarnish it by dumping my miserable history on you.
When I heard how you talked about your family and how important they were to you, I just couldn’t tell you how terribly my own family didn’t measure up to yours. ”
“We did have something special, Noelle.” Eli framed her face between his palms, his gaze probing hers, his heart breaking all over again. “And having heard all this about how heartless and cold your family was toward you, I have to wonder all the more why you would give up what we had.”
“It’s hard to explain. I’m not even sure I understand all the reasons. Fear can be complicat—”
Eli’s phone rang, making Noelle start and fall abruptly quiet. “Ignore it,” he said. “Finish what you were saying. This conversation is more important to me than whatever the person on the other end of that call has to say.”