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“Why can’t I just tell your lawyer what happened and see what she can do? You told me that was why you came here in the first place.” She stood and threw her hands in the air. “Why don’t we try that first, and then we can figure out if we need to get my ninety-year-old grandma involved. For all we know, your lawyer could decide to spin this on me, and I will be the one going to prison.”
I shook my head. There was no way in hell things were going to go that way. The worst that was going to happen was that I would be spending the rest of my days behind bars, not Imogen. “We’ll talk to Pam and then figure out what to do.”
“Which won’t be till Monday since it’s Friday night.” She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed heavily. “For the next forty-eight hours, I can worry myself sick, wondering if we’re going to prison or if I need to go on the run.”
“You’re not running,” I insisted. “Neither of us is. I will fight till my dying breath to let the world know that Kent was a rapist and deserved to die.”
“But we don’t have any proof of that besides your word and my word,” she moaned.
“That’s better than just my word, Imogen. I’m just a dirty biker in the eyes of the police. You’re way higher on the ladder of life than I am, babe.”
She rolled her eyes and motioned around her apartment. “I am a mortician who lives above a funeral home, Mace. It’s not like I’m living high on the hog.”
It wasn’t about how much money she had or where she lived. It mattered that she was on the right side of the law in the eyes of the police, and I was just a dirty biker who worked at a strip club. That was all they saw.
“Just trust me, babe. Having you say the same thing I am to is going to be a good thing even if we don’t have any evidence.”
“This is crazy, Jonathon,” she whispered.
I really wished she would call me Mace. I hadn’t been called the name Jonathon in fourteen years. The second I left Sutter Creek, I left Jonathon behind.
“I kind of imagined this happening years ago. I was terrified they would somehow find out I was the one to kill Kent, but with each year that went by, the less afraid I was.” She sighed heavily and flopped onto the couch. “Fifteen years, and now they are coming for us.”
“Me, babe. They’re only coming for me.”
She glared at me and shook her head. “They wouldn’t be coming for you if I hadn’t done what I did, to begin with.”
“You were defending yourself, Imogen.”
“Yeah, and then I became a murderer.”
“Have you ever talked to anyone about this?” I asked softly. I had taken people’s lives before, and even with a black heart, I had to process it, or it would drive me insane.
She shook her head. “Well, not about Kent, but I was in therapy for a few years to deal with what he did to me.” She smiled sadly. “It’s not something I’ll ever forget, but I didn’t let it change who I became. Kent took a little piece of me that day, but I took it back when the life left his eyes.”
I ran my fingers through my hair and grabbed my water from the table. “I never should have let you run away and not talk to you.”
“I didn’t run away from you, Jonathon. I ran away from that town that never did anything good for me. My mom never wanted me, the kids were assholes to me, and Kent Bing was the final straw.”
“Then I should have gone with you. There wasn’t anything keeping me in Sutter Creek. The second I graduated high school, I was out of there and hadn’t been back since this morning when I drove through to get to Jackson.”
“Hell,” Imogen laughed. “I haven’t been back ever. I will drive around that town and go completely out of my way just to avoid it.”
“Well, for never wanting to go back there, you sure did pick a place pretty fucking close.”
“Right? I was over seven hours away in San Diego, fresh out of college with my mortician certification, and ready to get out there. I didn’t want to stay in San Diego, so I started applying for jobs around the state. I actually called this place by mistake. There are two Brooks funeral homes in the state of California. I thought I was calling the one in Victorville, but it was this one.”
“And you still decided to work here even after you figured it was so close to Sutter Creek?”
She shrugged. “Enough time had gone by at that point, and I figured no one would know who I was, and I didn’t need to ever go to Sutter Creek if I didn’t want to. It was fate working again because the second I met Dorothy, I knew this was where I was meant to be.”
“You like to think everything is fate, babe.”
“Everything is fate, depending on how you look at it.”
“Me being here is fate?”
She shrugged and leaned back. “Yup. I mean, the reason why you’re here is not good, but I guess fate is telling us that fifteen years was long enough to be on the run.”
