Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.
I heard footsteps out in the hall and froze. A quiet quick rap.
“It’s me,” came Tom’s low voice, then I heard his key in the lock.
Quickly, I grabbed the remaining items and shoved them in my pants pockets. Already, I was breathing too hard, my heart rate accelerating. At the last minute, I dropped and loosened the laces on both my heavy boots.
I was just straightening up when Tom walked in.
And that quickly, it was game time.
January 21.
Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.
I’d like to think that Detective D. D. Warren’s shocking declaration had opened the floodgates of my mind. I magically remembered my long-lost sister Abigail. I magically understood Detective O and the relevance of the twenty-first, and why my best friends had to die. I even understood why a respected sex crime detective had started shooting perverts, leaving the same disturbing note with each body, while framing me for her crimes.
I didn’t.
Abigail remained in my mind, a beaming, brown-eyed, chubby, gurgling baby. My little sister, whom I’d loved with all my heart. And lost. Died, I had believed. Except, of course, if she’d died, I should’ve absorbed her name, as I’d done with the others. Charlene Rosalind Carter Abigail Grant.
In Detective Warren’s mind, that was further proof that Abigail still lived and, in some way we didn’t yet understand, had become Boston sex crimes Detective O. Brown hair, brown eyes, just like the baby in my dream.
Except I truly only remembered an infant, maybe nine months old at best. Not a beautiful exotic creature with that hair and those curves, and a solid career as an up-and-coming sex crimes investigator. A young, astute detective who, from the very beginning, didn’t seem to like me.
Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.
Those words, I recognized. Those words, I understood on a level that chilled my spine, set my shoulders, and raised my chin.
My mother’s favorite expression. That, more than anything, proved Detective Warren’s argument. Abigail lived.
But my baby sister didn’t love me anymore.
“Raid the fridge?” Tom asked now, standing just inside the door. His features were drawn, tired. He’d been up at least eighteen hours by now. We both had. He appeared self-conscious as he took me in from across the room, then seemed to shake it off.
“Drank your OJ,” I said.
“Find any unexpired food?”
“The dill pickles were pretty good.”
“How about the gun safe?”
“Twelve months together, and I still don’t know your birthday, favorite pet, or mother’s maiden name. Totally screwed me with guessing the combo.”
“Figured as much. Calls?”
“One. Talked to Detective D. D. Warren. Good news. I think she believes me.”
Tom drew up short. He stood on one side of the counter dividing the kitchen from the living room. I stood on the other.
“She didn’t pull the warrant,” he said.
“I said she believes me. Not that she trusts me.” I had my hands down at my side, hidden behind the counter. I didn’t want him to see that they were shaking. That, in fact, I was trembling with nerves over what was about to come.
Everybody has to die sometime. Be brave.
“So, why does this other detective, O, have it in for you?”
“D.D. believes she’s my long-lost sister. Out for revenge.”
Tom’s eyes widened. “Seriously? That’s why she’s going to kill you?”
“D.D. thinks so.” I took the first sideways step toward the end of the counter, putting my right hand into my pocket, fiddling around until I found what I needed to find. “I disagree.”
“You don’t think she’s your sister?”
“No, I’m pretty sure D.D.’s right about that. But I don’t think Abigail, O, is going to kill me. I’ve been wrong all along. I’m not the third target.”
“That’s good news.”
“Quincy, the profiler, kept warning me we didn’t have enough data points. Our victim pool, so to speak, was too small. I kept seeing best friends, two out of three, making me the next logical target. But Randi and Jackie weren’t killed because they were my best friends. They were killed because I loved them.”
From the other side of the counter, Tom frowned at me. “Isn’t that a matter of semantics?”
“No, it’s a broader category. I had two best friends. But there are three people I love.”
“Aunt Nancy.”
“I think so. I’ve tried calling her hotel twice, but there’s no answer. Detective O was supposed to interview her sometime today. Of course, Detective Warren gave those orders before she knew O’s true identity.” I made another sideways move. Almost at the end of the counter, where in two steps, I could lunge around, reach him where he stood in the kitchen.
My hands, shaking harder. My throat tightening, forcing me to swallow, take deep breaths.
Everyone has to die sometime. Be brave.
All these years later, my mother was coming for me. That’s how it felt on some level. In a way I didn’t understand yet, she had won, and I had lost, and twenty years later she was still making me pay.
Except I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I wasn’t going quietly into that good night.
I had learned my lessons. I was prepared to die. But more than that, I was prepared to fight.
“You sure this Abigail is going after your aunt?” Tom was asking now. “Because you still have only two victims for analysis. And if this detective is your long-lost sister seeking revenge, still makes sense she’d go after you.”
“If all she wanted was to kill me, she could’ve done that in the beginning. Knocked on my door and told me her name. I would’ve let her inside, Tom. I would’ve stood there and willingly let my baby sister place her hands around my neck and squeeze. But she didn’t. She went after my friends. She doesn’t want me dead. She wants me to suffer. Probably, just like she has.”
“That why she framed you? Gonna kill your friends, your aunt, then get you tossed in jail?”
I shrugged, hoping it looked casual as I executed my final sideways shuffle. “I think the framing thing was just to buy time. It got me isolated and on the defensive, making it even easier for her to go after my aunt.”
“All right,” Tom said decidedly. “Where’s your aunt staying? We’re on our way.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I can call for backup. We make up an excuse. Burglary in progress, a fire, hell code the living daylights out of it, get the place crawling with uniforms. That’ll set her back on her ass.”
“I don’t think so.”
He picked up his keys, ignoring me completely, as I knew he would do.
“Got a surprise for you-” he started.
I lunged around the end of the counter. Two steps, half pivot, left hand up, eye-to-eye with my opponent. Jab, jab, jab to his nose, fingers curled tight, thumb to knuckles. Tom didn’t get his hands up. He didn’t defend himself against this surprising attack from a girl. He didn’t defend himself against me.
Final blow. Overhand right to the head. I pivoted my back leg and rolled my shoulder into it. My fist, bearing the extra weight of a tight bundle of coins, connected with the side of Tom’s head.
He went down. First collapsing at the knees, then swaying, before finally toppling back and to the side. His shoulder cracked against the hard wood of the kitchen cabinets. I winced, closing my eyes before I caught myself.
If you can attack the man who three hours before would’ve been your lover, the man who would still be your lone defender in the world, then you can damn well keep your eyes open and absorb the blow.
He crumpled on the floor. I shook out both of my hands, my knuckles and wrists already aching from impact. But that’s the point of training-it prepares you for the pain, enables you to soldier through.