Chapter 39
Jacob
Three Months Ago
What is more incredible, having Reagan in my arms all night after all the years of pretending what I feel for her isn’t real or the more vile things she has to say about Blake?
She tells me about the notes. The stalker notes that arrived every time she and Blake had a fight.
Every time she needed a reason to stay afraid and dependent.
“I thought it was real at first, but then I saw the pattern. I couldn’t prove it until the hotel in Savannah.
I saw him in the hallway with my own eyes, crouching at the door, sliding the note under it. ”
How sick is Blake, my partner for fifteen years? How could I not see it all this time? “But the hotel must have security cameras. You would have known.”
“He called in a favor to have the hotel footage wiped. It’s what he’s good at, making evidence disappear. He used to do that when he was on the force.”
“I know. That’s how he got your ex-husband convicted of murder.”
“Here’s the thing. He didn’t know about the hidden camera I installed myself above the hotel room door.”
“You have him on camera? That’s enough to—”
“That’s not all I saw that night.”
“Now? What else?”
“After Blake put the note, he looked like he heard something, someone. He was startled and left quickly. But I saw it on the feed. There was someone else in the hallway.”
“Who?”
Her hands fold together in her lap. “A young man. He was just standing there, watching from the shadows. When Blake left, he walked to my room and looked at the door, at the note.”
“Do you recognize him?”
She nods pensively. “Zacarías Cáceres. He was one of my students, years ago, in Miami. He looks much different from before, but I know it’s him. I never forget a face, especially my students’.”
“What was he doing there?”
“Reid,” the fear in her eyes sends my protective instincts haywire, “no one knows what I’m about to tell you, and you have to promise it’ll stay between us.”
“I promise.”
“You’re one of the few people who knows about the Aaron West scandal.”
“I never believed a word of it. You’d never do that. Obviously, he was a disturbed bastard. Thank God he died.”
“Well, I don’t think he OD’d,” she says carefully. “I think he was murdered.”
“What are you talking about? Why do you think that?”
“The night Aaron died, I’d arranged to meet him.
I know it was stupid, but I was desperate.
My intention was to trick him into confessing that he’d been harassing me.
I had a plan, and Blake was in on it. He set me up with a wire and everything.
But when I got to the parking lot… Someone was already in the car with Aaron. ”
“Who?”
“Cáceres.”
“What? Were they friends or something?”
“Cáceres didn’t have any friends. He was a sad, lonely boy, and very, very creepy.”
“You think he killed West?”
“I think he gave Aaron the drugs that killed him.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t know at the time. I didn’t even know Aaron was going to die.
That night, I hid and watched from a distance, saw Zacarías give Aaron something, realized it was drugs when Aaron snorted it, and then Zacarías left.
I didn’t want to go on with the plan. Being in the same place alone with Aaron when he was high…
But then Aaron started seizing, and then foaming at the mouth…
I didn’t know what to do, so I ran.” She trembles.
“I ran because I was terrified, and then the dead man’s switch triggered and my life came apart.
“I was twenty-six, had barely survived a brutal beating and a divorce, watched a boy die, lost my job without a chance of ever getting it back while living in a city that labeled me a predator. And Blake was there with a solution and a ring and a way out of Miami, and I took it because I had no other options.”
I wrap my arms around her and pull her closer to stop her shaking. “It’s okay. Calm down. It’s gonna be okay.”
“Zacarías killed Aaron on purpose, RJ. I know that now.”
“As a favor to you.” I don’t need her to explain. The pattern is clear. My work in SVB has taught me how favors like that look. Clean hits disguised as justice. Obsession dressed up as protection. “Because Cáceres is your stalker. Your real stalker.”
“He’s different from Aaron. Aaron wasn’t stalking me because he was obsessed.
It was a method of intimidation, of showing power.
I was weak prey he was playing with until captured.
I was a piece of meat he wanted to tap first. But Zacarías…
He’s cut out of one of my books. The kind of obsession that would do anything to get the girl.
At first, I thought I was going crazy. In the past three years, I’ve seen him everywhere, all my events.
He never made himself known to me, never approached me, but I saw him. ”
“You never forget a face.”
“Yes. And then, after the hotel, it’s become more than just events. I saw him on the Vineyard.”
“He moved to where you live?”
“It’s more than that, RJ.” She draws from my embrace, opens her purse and takes out a piece of paper in a plastic bag, tucked in like evidence. “He broke into my house two days ago and left this.”
A wave of disgust hits me as I read the note and inspect the sticky liquid marks on it. “Jesus. Reagan, this is very dangerous. You can’t go back in that house. You have to report this.”
“You think I haven’t tried? They don’t believe me, RJ, because of Blake.
Can’t you see? It’s his way back into my house after I kicked him out, to control me again, to access my money.
He’s telling the police he’s taking care of it, so I’d feel like I don’t have a choice but his protection, and they don’t give a shit.
” She does that thing with her fingers over her lips when she’s angry.
“After the text Blake sent you, I believe he thinks the stalker isn’t real either.
He thinks I’m on to him, and I faked that note to escalate that sick game in a way that will end him. ”
I put the pieces together. She has a very valid theory, and the evidence backs it up. “I’ll go with you to the Vineyard, and I’ll talk to the police myself. I’ll pull every string, and we’ll stop them, both of them.”
“Thank you, RJ. Thank you for believing me and for being willing to help me, but with all due respect, I don’t think the police are the answer. I have a better plan that will end this once and for all.”
“What plan?”
“Zacarías changed his name to Tristan Morra. He’s been in the military, which explains the timeline gap before I started noticing his following me.
He was discharged three or four years ago, which again makes sense with the timing.
He’s been a security detail ever since and now owns his own security firm in Boston. ”
“Boston, a couple of hours away from Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Exactly. What’s the most reasonable move a woman who has an obsessive fan would make if the police don’t intervene?”
“Hire a bodyguard.”
“And that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’ll hire his company, put him in front of me as a bodyguard, show him everything Blake has done to me, every bruise, every photograph.”
“Are you crazy? You wanna let him into your house?”
“It’s the only way, RJ.”
“The only way for what?”
She swallows and looks away. “To let him do what a man like that does when someone has hurt the woman he’s decided belongs to him.”
“Oh my God.” I read the sick note again. “That’s why you want me to transfer. You want him to kill Blake.”
“Then you’d capture him, and he’d go away for life.”
I stand up. I need to move. “Are you listening to yourself? Do you have any idea what you’re asking me?”
“To do your job. Put a killer behind bars.”
“You’re asking me to let one man kill another and do nothing to stop it. You’re asking me to enable it, to be complicit.”
“No, RJ. I’m simply asking you to help me survive. I have two dangerous men in my life hovering like vultures, and if I don’t do something about it, I end up dead.”
My mind spins. I’ve already applied to transfer without knowing how grave the situation is, but I’ve done it to protect her, not to kill two men. “Let’s say, for argument’s sake, I agree to doing this. What happens if I don’t have enough evidence to lock him up?”
“Considering how resourceful and patient a man like Cáceres is, it is very likely you won’t be able to pin it on him. That means his next move will be trying to claim me, and when that doesn’t work…kidnapping me.”
She says it so casually it drives me insane. “And what am I supposed to do then?”
“Save me.”
“How? Insert a tracking chip in the back of your neck to know where you are when he abducts you?” I mock.
“That’s not a bad idea. It’s a very good one.
Actually… I looked into covert body trackers and found the perfect way.
We can hide it in a birth control implant.
He won’t figure it out. The implant casing reads as a standard contraceptive on any scan.
” She explains with the conviction of someone who has spent months researching it, and I stand in my living room listening to her and feeling something move through me that is equal parts awe and terror and the specific helpless fury of loving someone who is always three steps ahead of everyone including you.
“Reagan…” I throw my hands in the air in exasperation.
“You said he was ex-military, and he has an upscale security company. That means he’s wealthy.
A man like this, military background, surveillance training, he will have equipment you can’t anticipate.
He could have tech and high-grade blockers even we don’t have.
There are jammers that block cell service and tracking devices and—”
“I know.”
“Then the whole plan falls apart the second he—”
“I know.” She gets up and moves toward me. Her palm touches my cheek gently. “It’s a risk I’m prepared to take.”
“I’m not.” The words come out before I’ve decided to say them, and they come out with more in them than I intend, more volume, more rawness.
“I can’t. I’m not gonna stand somewhere on an island waiting for a tracker that might not work while a killer with military training and eight years of obsession does whatever he wants to you. ”
“You think I don’t know what he’d do to me?
Believe me, I do, but whatever it is, I’ve seen worse.
Way worse. But I’ve survived.” Her voice is quiet and absolute.
“I’ve survived things that would have ended most people, and I am still standing, right here in your living room, writing my own story with the ending I need to survive again because that’s what I do.
“I need Blake gone. The stalker wants to be my hero. I’ll give him the opportunity,” she says unapologetically.
“I just need you to be on Martha’s Vineyard, on the force there.
Because when it escalates, and it will, I need someone on the inside who can move the investigation the way it’s needed.
Give him room to operate. He’ll kill Blake, and then you can take him legally. Two birds.
“As for the kidnapping part, if the signal is blocked, you can follow him. He’ll lead you to me. Like I said, men like Blake, like Zacarías, are very predictable. How do you think I write them so easily?”
Before I say anything, she goes to her purse again and gives me a thumb drive. “I’ve run all possible scenarios, written every plotline I can think of. Every move the stalker makes, I’ve countered it but only with your help.”
“Reagan, please, I want to help you, but what you’re proposing isn’t a solution.”
“Do you have a better one?”
“Yes. Stay. Stay here with me. Let me protect you. Let me build a case against Blake through proper—”
“There are no proper channels for men like Blake.” Something darkens her expression, something older and harder than anger and pain and betrayal.
She picks up her purse. Her shoes are already on.
“They both need to die,” she says as a matter of fact.
“Blake and Zacarías. It is the only ending where I get to live. You know it and I know it, and the only question is whether you’re going to help me or not. ”