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With a roll of her eyes, Mara places the glass down on the coffee table in front of her, and then she’s leaning back on the couch. “So, if you won’t tell me about his, um, package, how about you tell me about the sex?”
“Pass.”
She lifts her eyebrow in challenge. She knows me and all my hard truths, so she lays down the gauntlet. “Did you have ‘The’ conversation?”
“Better question. I can answer that. We did talk. Well, kind of.”
“What the hell does that mean? You actually talked to him about the fact you hate your parents and don’t talk to any other people?”
“Yes. I did.”
“My God, you are going to marry him,” she chides playfully.
“Hardly.”
“It took me years for you to tell me you’re estranged from your family. You’ve known this man for one month.”
I shrug.
“You love him.”
“No.”
“But you’re falling for him.”
This is a tricky question to answer. I can see myself falling for him, and by the way I felt this past week, maybe I already am.
Who am I kidding?
The moment his lips touched mine, I fell. Love? No. But serious obsession, yep.
I’m lifting my wine to my mouth when I see a picture of a familiar woman. The wine in my mouth spits out.
“What’s wrong?”
“Shh. Make that louder.”
Mara moves quickly to grab the remote and raise the volume.
“The body discovered in the woods this week has been identified as Cynthia Richards. Investigators are tight-lipped, but our sources indicate details of this case are similar . . . ”
I don’t hear the rest of what the anchor says as it sounds like I am drowning. Like there is water in my ears. I can only catch certain words.
My hands are shaking.
“Killed some time in the last twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”
It’s her.
Chills run up my spine, and my heart ricochets in my chest as the newscaster keeps talking.
Eerily similar to a cold case.
Could be a copycat.
What the hell?
They start to talk about The Compass Killer’s MO and all the cases years ago.
Young, beautiful woman. Early twenties. The slice across the neck. The only problem that doesn’t make sense is this victim is older, in her mid-thirties.
I remember the cases. I ran across them again as I started researching my other article.
They happened seventeen years ago. But I remembered the original news stories from when I was a kid. I remember watching the story as it unfolded.
Even though I was young, it became one of the stories that made me want to look at journalism as a career.
But that’s not what has a pit forming in my stomach. It’s the fact that I have seen her.
Not once. Not twice. Three times she appeared.
The woman with the camera.
The woman from The Elysian house tour.
The woman we saw at the park.
Her name is Cynthia Richards. And now she is dead.
I can’t deny that a whole host of questions are popping up, and the only person I need to ask is Cain.
“What’s wrong?”
A part of me wants to tell her, but I can’t. It’s probably nothing. She could have just been a woman buying a property.
Maybe everything was a coincidence. Or maybe . . . it’s not.
No, stop that line of thought.
I’m sure nothing was going on between them. But as I push away the thoughts of this, I can’t help the nagging feeling that this is the story I should be investigating.
28
Cain
I’m here in NYC, sitting in an upscale bar facing Layla’s building.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be, but it’s too fucking late. The damage is done, and now I sit, wait, and observe.
Watching everyone enter the front door, hoping none of the men coming and going are there for her. Staring at the window in her apartment, the light is on, and I can see shadows walking back and forth.
I don’t think she’s alone.
Is she with another man? Probably. Considering I’m the asshole who just walked away from her without explanation, I’d deserve it.
Unfortunately, old business had to be settled.
My gaze scans the upscale bar. Small, private rooms are off to the side. Banquet tables along the back. It’s a welcoming space. They are certainly perks to this bullshit; the only problem is I hate this pretentious kind of lifestyle.
Then when my perusal lands on a group of women on the other side of the waiting room, I stifle a groan. These are the kind of women I could live without. None of them are my type. Face it, none of them hold a candle to Layla.
Already halfway through a bottle of tequila, their loud and boisterous voices ring through the air. Practically screaming as they toast a girls’ night out that has just begun.
As I lean back in my chair, I notice them taking shot after shot, and then one of them notices I’m staring. One of the women must mistake my annoyance for interest because now, she’s smiling at me.
