I nodded. “Not a lot but I heard about it.”
“Well, there was an update, and I only heard about it because the boys—the troopers—always get coffee at the Grind. It hasn’t gone public yet. Probably will by tonight or tomorrow, but I told Miranda when she had a lunch break today. I thought you needed to hear it before it hit the news.” Jason’s brown eyes met mine, and the dread increased, unfurling in my stomach like a noxious weed. “They found her . . . her body early this morning.”
“Oh God.” I pressed my hand to my mouth.
“Right now they think it was someone she knew. I mean, that’s what it normally is,” Jason continued, but the wry glint to his eyes warned me there was more.
I stiffened as I lowered my hand to my lap. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“It’s probably just a coincidence,” Miranda said softly.
My heart tripped up. “What?”
“It’s where they found her body, Sasha. It was off of Route 11,” Jason said, and I jerked in my seat. “Back near the old water tower, where the . . . the Groom used to leave the bodies.”
Chapter 7
I’m slow to wake up. It feels like I’ve been asleep for days and it takes time to pry my eyes open. The room is dark, so dark I can’t see anything. Not even an inch in front of my face. My throat feels terrible, like sandpaper, and my head is pounding. Confusion swirls inside me. I’m cold, too cold. There’s a draft rolling over my skin, bare skin. Where am I? I start to sit up, but my arms and legs don’t move.
My heart kicks up as I try again, realizing that something is holding me down—down on a mattress. It hits me then. I remember! Walking to my car. Seeing the van. Hearing the door open—
Panic explodes inside me, clamping down on my chest and throat. I struggle against the bonds. Something metal—the bed frame—rattles. Pain spikes along my wrists and ankles, but I don’t care. I have to get out of here. I have to find a way—
“You’re awake.” A voice carries out from the darkness. “I was beginning to worry.”
I stop breathing as I stare into the nothing that surrounds me. Ears prickle as I hear soft movement. The bed shakes and dips. My eyes widen and my heart beats faster than it ever has.
A hand touches my cheek, and I shriek at the contact, pushing away, but getting nowhere. Oh no. No, no, no.
“Don’t,” he orders. “I don’t want us to fight. It’s the last thing I want.”
Fear digs in deep with its claws, taking hold of me, and only one hoarse word gasps out of me. “Please.”
The hand slides into my hair, the touch oddly gentle. Approving. “That’s my bride.”
I didn’t go back to sleep after having another nightmare. This time I didn’t even stay in bed. I went out into my living room and turned the TV on. Some late-night infomercial about a food processor that could apparently save the world was on, but I wasn’t really paying attention as I sat on the couch, wrapped in the soft throw.
I was thinking about the Groom.
He’s dead.
If he weren’t, he would be in his sixties now. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to continue doing what he did, but I imagined that as he grew older, it would be more difficult.
I never saw the Groom’s face the entire time I was with him. It was either completely dark in the room or he blindfolded me. I’d only seen what he looked like when I was recovering in the hospital and the federal agents brought in a picture of him for me to look at. I avoided all media surrounding him and me, and I only saw his face once, but his image was cemented in my memory.
So when I dreamt of my time with the Groom, he sometimes had a face even though I never saw it while I was with him.
I shivered as I tucked my knees against my chest. Deep down, I knew that this poor woman’s fate had nothing to do with the Groom, but I couldn’t stop where my thoughts were going, especially after the pretty and super skinny brunette news anchor had gone there. What had she said? The body was found in the infamous location used by the Groom to dump the bodies of his victims.
Dump the bodies.
Closing my eyes, I pressed my lips together. There were only a few phrases I hated more than that one. Like someone was out dumping trash along the road. These were innocent women—six innocent women who were sisters and daughters, friends and lovers. They weren’t something, even in death, that could simply be dumped like an empty fast-food bag.
But what happened to this woman wasn’t because of the Groom. He was dead, because I wasn’t. Knowing that also meant that it was a coincidence that this poor woman’s body was found in the same location favored by the Groom.
But that didn’t make me feel any better.
I opened my eyes and let out a shaky breath. Rising from the couch, I walked over to the window overlooking the front lawn. I pulled back the curtain and pressed my forehead against the cool window.
The run-in with Mayor Hughes replayed as I stared out over the dark grounds. Did he really think I’d talk publicly about what happened with the Groom? I couldn’t understand how anyone would even think that was a possibility—
A shadow blurred across the lawn, disappearing into the hedges. I jolted back from the window as my stomach pitched. The blanket slipped off my shoulders. Then I jerked forward, yanking the curtain back.
My heart raced as I scanned the still grounds below. What had I seen? I wasn’t sure. The shadow had appeared person-sized, but it was so fast that I couldn’t be positive. I couldn’t be certain that I’d seen a thing.
I stood at that window for several minutes, waiting to see if anything moved, but other than branches from the oak trees lining the driveway, there was nothing.
“God.” Dropping the curtain, I turned and bent down, picking up the blanket. Now I was seeing things.
Was coming back here a mistake?
“No,” I whispered to the room. Coming back here had been the right thing to do; the only thing.
Walking past the couch, I picked up the remote and turned off the TV. I went into the bedroom and flipped on the nightstand lamp. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I picked up the small rectangular card.
I’d looked at it so much that I practically knew the words and numbers by heart.
Smoothing my thumb over the card, I thought back to what Miranda had said about me coming home. She probably hadn’t thought twice about the words, but they were simple and powerful.
She’d said I came home to start living.
The photo of the woman they found started to form in my thoughts. It was the photograph used for her hospital ID. She had been young, early thirties, maybe late twenties. Light brown hair highlighted with blond streaks. She’d been pretty. Her smile was hopeful. The gleam to her eyes eager. She’d been alive until someone decided to take that away from her.