“Whatever.”
He left. I followed him. “Hey, what was that? We can’t even talk anymore?”
“You chose that, not me,” he said with a sniffle. “You’re the one deciding to ruin a perfectly well-functioning family.”
“Well-functioning? Maybe it wasn’t so well-functioning for me,” I said.
“Oh, wow,” he said.
I bit my lip. I really wasn’t in the mood for this right now. He looked at me. I saw deep disdain in his eyes and that hurt.
“Did you sleep with a woman? Did you cheat on me?”
I was taken aback.
“No!” I said quickly, quietly.
He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s just really hard thinking about you with someone else.”
I exhaled. “I know. But I haven’t.”
“But you want to. And you’re going to.”
He was tearing up, and it broke my heart. My voice cracked as I spoke.
“Listen, Joe. I’m sorry for all of this. I really truly am.”
He paused and bit back his tears. “It’s not fair. I went through cancer with you, I feared you would die, I held your hand through chemo and held your hair when throwing up, while terrified I’d lose you. I saw you lose your beautiful hair and all I could think about was that you might die. And yet I lied. I told you sweet little lies about how your hair didn’t matter. That I didn’t love you because of your hair, and that I didn’t care. Of course, I cared. You losing your hair reminded me every day that you might die, that I might lose you. But you didn’t die. You survived. And now I am still losing you? It’s not fair.”
I stared at him, trying hard to breathe. I felt awful. No, it was more than that. It crushed me completely to see him like this. Breaking his heart, the way I did, was the hardest thing I ever had to do.
I hate myself for doing this.
I wanted to tell him how sorry I was, how awful I felt. I wanted to tell him that I loved him, that I hated being this selfish. But I never got around to it.
I felt like screaming and crying at the same time. This was so tough. Why did everything have to be so freaking hard?
Joe had turned around and left me to go upstairs, slamming the door behind him, when my phone vibrated in my pocket. It was Chief Doyle.
Now what?
“I need you,” he said.
TWENTY-THREEBILLIE ANN
Please let it not be another child, please don’t let it be another child. Please don’t let it be Emma.
I drove through the rain and darkness toward the apartment complex on the beach downtown. My heart was racing, and I could barely breathe, worried that another child had been killed. I couldn’t bear the thought.
Chief Doyle had been very vague on the phone and didn’t know much, only that I needed to be there. They suspected it was murder. But what exactly waited for me there, I didn’t know, and I feared the worst as I drove toward the beach and the condos there. It was one of the newer condominiums, built within the past three years, the ones that cost about a million dollars each and came with spectacular views of the Atlantic Ocean.
As I reached the apartment complex, I parked my car and made my way toward the entrance, passing the patrol cruisers in the front with their flashers on. The sound of the rain drowned out every other noise, and the gusts of wind made it difficult to walk. I shuddered, partly from the pouring rain soaking me and partly from the fear that gripped me.
I took the elevator to the third floor, where I found the door to the apartment I was looking for. I took a deep breath before approaching, my heart pounding in my chest. The door opened, and I was greeted by Officer Steele. Big Tom was already there, and he greeted me with a nod.
“You always get the lucky calls, huh?” I said to Steele. “What have you got?”
“It was a neighbor who walked by in the hallway and saw that the door to the apartment was open. As it was late, she worried that something was wrong and knocked on the door, before walking in. She heard the water running and found the door to the bathroom open, then peeked inside, while calling out for Bryan, the occupant’s name, worried that he had fallen or something. She found him in there, already dead. She recognized him as her neighbor right away. Tom has spoken to her and taken her statement.”
I nodded. “Male? Adult?”
“Yes. Dr. Phillips is in the bathroom with him. He told me you could go straight in when you got here.”
I touched Officer Steele’s arm gently. He gave me a tired look.
“Thank you.”
I went to the bathroom, where Dr. Phillips was standing bent over the body. It was a relief that it wasn’t another child, I had to admit, but still hit me hard. Any life taken too soon was unbearable.
“Detective Wilde,” Dr. Phillips said with an exhale. “We need to stop meeting like this.”
It was an old joke that he had used many times before. Still, I smiled at it politely. I stepped closer to the body. The man was young, probably in his early thirties. He was lying on the floor, naked, with his eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling. Bruises on his neck told me everything I needed to know.
They were similar to Cassandra’s and that terrified me.
“What do you know?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. I didn’t like what I was looking at one bit, that was for sure.
“We won’t know with certainty until the autopsy,” Dr. Phillips said. “But it looks familiar, right? I’d say he was strangled with a leather belt with a big buckle. His body is clean and hair still wet, so I assume he was in the shower, then was attacked when he came out. Killer came up from behind and used the belt to strangle him.”
