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Chapter Seventeen
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Nova
“We have an idea who it is. Who the murderer is.” Sheriff Don speaks as soon as we come through the door. He doesn’t act like it’s odd that Nate should be carrying me around or that my cheeks are on fire because of what me and Nate just did in the conservatory.
Nate settles me in before straightening and giving his attention to Don. Even though he is looking at Don I don’t think his full attention is centered there. There’s a small flutter in the back of my mind, throughout my being, that tells me some of his attention is on me - always on me.
Don hands over the artist’s rendition of the man who pushed me. I find it odd he doesn’t hand it to Nate first, but I soon understand why he hands it to me. It would seem something other than my bad luck has followed me to Stone Island.
“Oh my God! That…that’s my boss. Justin Amos.” I reach out and automatically find Nate’s hand right there for me. “Amos…that was the first name of the man who tried to attack Deliverance, Nate. Why? Why didn’t I put that together before now?”
“To be fair, you had just taken a tumble down a flight of stairs, sweetheart. And the vision did just happen last night.”
“He…he’s the reason I’m here. He sent me to do the report.”
“My deputies found evidence he’s been here the entire time. They found camp equipment and an area where he started a campfire.” Fear courses through me as a very familiar face is put on the spirit of evil that has been chasing me all over this island.
“I…I turned him down. Told him I wouldn’t, um, sleep with him.”
Don raises his eyes to me from writing the name in his notebook, “That would explain why he’s been killing women that look like you. Maybe he became obsessed with having you. In any form he could.”
A shiver works its way through my body as my stomach lurches violently at the implications. Nate comes closer to wrap his arms around me.
“Now that we have a name and a face, I’ll hand out posters to all the shops and inns and to everyone on the island. If he’s still on the island, we’ll find him.”
“Am I the reason all those women died? Because I told him no?”
“Hell no! He’s the one responsible for that. Not you!”
“Nate’s right, Nova. You didn’t kill those women - your boss did that and were it not you that he obsessed over, it would have been another woman.”
Brian walks him out, leaving us in a heavy silence. Nate’s hand rubs my back in a show of comfort, but I still can’t get over the feeling of being responsible for the deaths of those women, who died just because they looked like me.
As if reading my mind, Nate comes to stand in front of me and tips my head up with his fingertip, “You are not responsible for the deaths of those women. You could not have known this would happen, any of it. You didn’t find those women, you didn’t provoke fear in them, and you didn’t take their lives.” Moisture gathers at the corner of my eyes. “You are a sweet, wonderful woman full of light and compassion. If anything, you are going to save others because you will stop this man and protect everyone on the island…with me.”
No pressure. Just save an entire fucking island full of people from imminent death and sorrow. All while trying to learn a new language and finding the answers written in a three hundred-plus-year-old journal that has more pages than War and Peace. I’m so going to shit the bed on this one.
“Come on, sweetheart. You need rest.”
“No…I need to go back to the journal to figure out if I can find a way to…”
He scoops me putting an end to the argument. “We didn’t get a great deal of sleep last night; Don has men watching the woods and everyone in town is looking for your boss. Right now, the best thing you can do for the cause is rest.”
He takes us back up the same stairs we came down this morning. When we come in, he uses his foot to kick the door closed behind us. "You're taking me back to your bedroom again, aren't you?"
“Yes. My bed in my room. And this…,” he lays me down on the bed, “is my woman. In my bed.”
Instead of sitting back or going to the chair like he did last night, he crawls up on the bed with me. When he comes over the top of me, I finally ask the question hanging heavy in my mind. “What about after? After all of this is over and you don’t need me to save the island any longer? After we catch Justin and we’re not in the same situation as we are now?”
He looks down at me with a furrow between his eyebrows and a frown on his lips. “You think I’m drawn to you because I need you to stop this from happening? That the only reason I want you is because of all of this?”
“I’m just asking…what’s going to happen after?”
“Nova, the men in my family only fall in love once, we only have one soulmate.”
His words do nothing to clear up or answer the things poking at my mind, “So…it’s all fated. You have no choice in the matter? No say?”
