“No!” Paul repeated. His ears were ringing. The weight was back, pressing on his chest. He could almost feel Mancuso’s breath against his cheek as he flashed back to the bomber threatening him, threatening the teen girl he was trying so hard to protect.
“Dr. Jeffrey is wrong,” he said firmly. God, he had to be wrong. Please, let him be wrong.
“He’s not,” Abby said. “Paul, I am so sorry. I know this is incredibly hard. It’s a whole new loss. But—”
Paul jerked his hand away from her, standing up swiftly. “Abigail,” he said sharply, and she startled, her eyes growing wide at his harsh tone. “Cass could not have been pregnant. Not with my baby, at least.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Cass and I never had sex,” Paul said, and he felt it clawing inside him, the truth that he didn’t want to face and now had to. “I wasn’t a virgin when we got together, but she was. She wanted to wait until she was at least engaged. I respected that. If she was pregnant . . .”
“The baby wasn’t yours,” Abby finished.
Chapter 21
For the second time that day, Abby felt like she’d been punched. Her mind was going in all sorts of directions, spinning all the possibilities.
Had Cass been raped? She didn’t want to voice this question to Paul, even though she knew his thoughts must be going there as well.
Or had Cass cheated on Paul? God, she hoped it was the latter.
Had that been why she was so insecure about his and Abby’s friendship? Because she had been unfaithful herself? But with who?
“God, this is a fucking mess,” Paul said, and he slumped down in his seat, his eyes sad and hopeless.
“I’m so sorry, Paul,” Abby said, trying to tamp down the guilt rising inside her. Once again, she’d tangled them all together. Once again, she was making choices that were hurting the people she loved most.
“She . . . she never gave you any clue that she was pregnant? Or that maybe she’d been assaulted?” Paul asked.
Abby shook her head. She knew, like her, he was frantically tracing back every interaction with Cass during that time period, examining the memories of each conversation with new eyes.
“That doesn’t mean an assault isn’t what happened,” she said. “Every survivor reacts to sexual assault differently. Dr. Jeffrey did say she was at least three months along, so it meant she got pregnant before she left for her grandmother’s.”
“So there were at least three months where she was . . .” Paul trailed off, his fists clenching. “I hope to God she was cheating on me,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I hope she was just being a reckless teenager, and no one hurt her even more. If they did . . .” He raised a shaky hand to his mouth.
Abby went to him, unable to stop herself. Without another word, she crossed the space between them on the porch and slid into his arms, hugging him tight.
“You are a good man,” she whispered into his neck, unable to pull back enough to meet his eyes. His hands were warm, resting high on her hip, and it made her want to shiver, but she steeled herself instead, the denial running too deep for her to fight it. She forced herself to step away, sitting back on the porch swing.
“Cass wasn’t perfect,” she said. “She might have made some mistakes. But she loved you.”
“I know,” Paul said. “And I loved her. I will always love the memory of her. But being in love with her? It’s a memory too. I’m not hurt if she was cheating on me, Abby. It was a long time ago. We were babies. We had no concept of what forever really meant. I’m a completely different person now—and a realist. We would’ve likely made it to college and then broken up midfreshman year like most couples who try to do it long distance in college do. But this?” His eyes glittered. “A pregnancy changes things. It changes the case. It changes the profile of our unsub.”
Abby hadn’t even thought of that. She’d been so focused, first, on breaking the news to Paul, that she hadn’t even considered how it would affect the case.
“How so?” she asked.
“One of the times a woman is most in danger from an abusive partner is when she’s pregnant,” Paul said. “I know it’s messed up,” he said, obviously seeing the horrified look on her face. “But it introduces a motive here that we hadn’t considered.”
“You’re saying you think whoever got Cass pregnant is her killer,” Abby said.
“It’s very likely,” Paul said.
“That means she had to be sexually assaulted,” Abby said. “I don’t think she would’ve been with someone much older. And there’s no way Dr. X’s student was another teenager.”
“Not necessarily,” said a voice.
Abby, on edge from everything, nearly jumped a foot in the air. Zooey had obviously pulled up the back way and she hadn’t heard her come up from the back porch.
“Sorry,” Zooey said, taking in her startled breathing. “I just got back from talking to Dr. Jeffrey again. The good news is he did remember some detail . . . but the bad news is I don’t think any of it is going to help us pin this guy down.” She sat down next to Abby on the porch swing, looking defeated.
“He doesn’t have the original pages of the report?” Paul asked.
Abby shook her head. “Apparently Sheriff Baker had them. Who knows where they are? Mrs. Baker sold the house and moved to Florida last year, so I can’t even ask her if I can go dig through his old files.”
“Shit,” Paul said.
“You know what this means,” Zooey said, looking meaningfully at Paul.
Abby watched in confusion as the blood drained out of Paul’s face. That was not a good sign.
“Okay, someone clue the non-FBI crime-solver person in here,” she said. “What does this mean?”
Zooey pressed her lips together, her big eyes staring at the porch floorboards like they were the most interesting thing ever.
“Why do both of you look like you want to eat your own tongues?” Abby demanded, a horrible prickle spreading up her spine.
“The next step here is to get more forensic evidence,” Paul explained. “That’s the only way to move forward at this point, since we don’t have any leads.”
“Okay,” Abby said slowly, still not understanding. “But there isn’t a crime scene anymore.”
“This isn’t about collecting forensic evidence from the crime scene,” Paul said. “This is about collecting forensic evidence from Cass.”
Abby felt her entire body go to ice and she realized what Paul was saying.
“You . . . you want to dig her up?” She was up off the porch swing, looming over him, her hands balled into fists and her eyes shooting fire. “Are you . . . how . . . oh, my God, no. Absolutely not. What would we say to Mrs. Martin? No. There has to be another way.”
“Abby—” Zooey started to say.
“No.” Abby held her hand out, staring daggers at the younger woman. “No,” she said again, and her voice shook and her eyes burned, her throat thick with tears that were about to spill. She turned her attention to Paul, her voice lowering to a deadly serious promise as she said, “You even go near her grave with a shovel and you’ll be looking down the barrel of my Winchester and your mama’s and every damn woman around here I can round up!”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Paul said, getting up and grabbing her arm. “We’re going to talk in private.” But she shook him off angrily.
“No fucking way,” she snarled, before stalking into her house, slamming the door shut behind her.
He didn’t follow.
He knew better.
She got upstairs to her bedroom, where Roscoe was fast asleep on her duvet cover, before sinking down to the ground in tears. Oh, God, Cass. Everything that she’d been tamping down—for years now, as she investigated this—started flooding through her body. Her heart began to race, and she wanted so badly to fall apart. She wanted to stay in her room and never come out and just forget about all of this.
But it wasn’t who she was. She was her father’s stubborn girl. And she would see this through to the very end.
Roscoe whined, having been woken by her tears, and jumped off the bed, meandering over to her and nudging her face with his nose.
“It’s okay, boy,” she whispered, even though it was so far from okay, she didn’t even know how they’d gotten here.