Almost as if the words are forced from my tongue, I ask, “What am I?”
She waves at a man who yells obscenities at us as we stand along the street. “A lamb who wants teeth.”
“I’m not a killer,” I tell her or maybe I tell myself. I’m not sure which of us needs to hear it more. A part of me thinks that it’s me.
“Everyone is a potential killer unless they want to be a potential victim.” Tess shrugs. "I want to live. So, I will never ever be a lamb again."
I want to ask how many bodies litter her memories. I want to know everything. In time, I will.
She speaks as if reducing the world to those who kill and those who die is a casual truth. For her, I think it is. Tess had to decide to be a killer in order to survive. That’s the key, the secret, the thing she’s willing to share now—because I hurt her when she asked me to do so.
As I stare at her, Tess walks away, leaving me standing at the edge of the street. Logic says I ought to fear her. Logic says I ought to contact the police. There is no statute of limitations on murder. I should act.
But the people she killed are long dead.
Except Lucas.
Do I care about a drunk vagrant? In public, I would say yes. In the privacy of my mind, I think that Tess did what Tess does: she protected herself. It makes me realize that he died for the very thing I could: he knew her secrets.
Is my life in danger?
Despite that niggling fear, I want to know more. I need to. I'm never going to meet anyone else like Tess.
She’s waiting, leaning against a building, smoking.
“You left because he killed people. Reid.”
Tess shakes her head. “No. I left because if I stayed he’d kill me. For a long time, I thought that if I was good enough, did everything right, he’d stop killing them and I’d be safe. Everyone would be safe.”
“Did he kill . . . many people?”
Tess looks away, staring at a group of young men laughing and talking as they prowled the street. They were the same sort of men you can see in every city, every town, young and full of confidence. These were dressed well enough to mark them as affluent, but that was the only true difference I could see.
“I was raised with more money than you might think. I know you realize that I come from money, but”—Tess lowers her voice—“you’d recognize my family name, Michael. We’ve likely been at the same galas, the same tedious events where everyone believes they are so much better than whichever unfortunate will benefit from their latest charity donations. I left that world . . . and Reid found me.”
This is the story I thought I wanted, but it’s not. I’m not sure what or why, but there is more to Tess’ past than she’s revealing, even now. “And so, you knew he was a killer after you were with him?”
“I always knew that he wasn’t a lamb.” She twines her fingers with mine and pulls me closer. “This is what you want, isn’t it? To understand?”
We walk for a while, and Tess makes no further comment. She doesn’t comment on the people we pass or ask me any further questions. She hums to herself for a while, that strange little song that seems to lack any similarity to music or actual song. I don’t know quite what to call it other than music, but it’s a discordant tumble of sounds more than anything else.
We’re standing in Times Square when she speaks again: “Sometimes it’s the way people watch you, the way their eyes follow you like they want their feet to do. That’s part of collecting a lamb. You need to see them clearly.” She lets her attention drift visibly to a young woman who is watching us. “That one has promise, but she’s the sort of girl you can’t manage quickly.”
“Manage?”
Tess smiles, a secretive little grin that frightens me a bit. “She’s looked at her phone several times while we were standing here. Either she is texting or on social media. People know where she is, possibly even know that she’s headed somewhere else. Livestock like her aren’t impossible, but they’re not as easy to cull.”
“I thought you said Reid was the killer.” The question is clear even if I don’t phrase it as such.
Tess shrugs. “There are things I learned. He watched them, all the time. The pretty things who would be dressed in red . . . Little lambs who lost their way . . .” She steps away from me then. “I tried to stop him. I tried to be good. I really did, but . . . I was never enough.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs. “I survived, Michael. What I did was survive. Until he finds me, I’m alive.”
I’m not sure why, but until that moment, I’d thought Reid was dead. I stared at her. She’d lived with a killer and left him.
“You’re hiding. He’s still out there, and you’re hiding. Why would he look for you? It’s been years, hasn’t it?” I think back over everything I know, the bits of her past, the stories I know and the things she’s admitted today.
“I’m his wife.”
“You’re . . .” My mind boggles at this revelation.
“And Michael? Teresa Morris was my name then.”
I have no words. The woman in my bed is the wife of a known serial killer.
Tess is still talking. “The missing heiress? Escaped or most likely killed by the Carolina Creeper?”
The last piece is too much. Teresa Morris, Tess, Tessa in my book . . . This woman was a victim of the Carolina Creeper. The only known survivor. There was no way I could keep all of this to myself. There was no way I could avoid talking to the police.
33
A Girl with No Past
Being with a man like Edward changed me. He saw me, the potential and the weaknesses both. I didn’t know how unmolded I was until he started to shape me.
“Why, Tess?”
“So, I understand.” I swallowed the blood in my mouth. He was always gentle with my face. It made him sad when he had to hit my face, so he always did it carefully. His palm open, more slap than punch. Rarely did he punch me now.
In our earliest months together, I was disobedient more often. Now, I am much, much better.
“You know it hurts me that you make me do these things.” He kissed me, roughly enough that he could taste my blood.
I didn’t resist.
When he pulled away, I promised, “I can do better.”
“And you will.”
“I will.” I reached out to touch him, to make up for my slip-up tonight.
He looked past me to the source of my mistake. The girl in our bathtub wasn’t awake, but that didn’t mean that I should’ve bothered him.
“What do you want me to do?” I bowed my head like he preferred. “To make you happy?”
“Be good,” he reminded me.
“I try, Edward. I do. I want to be good.”
He kicked me. “Please don’t interrupt me, Tessie.”
The thud of my body hitting the wall didn’t wake her. The girl in the tub kept her eyes closed, and I was grateful for that small mercy.
I leaned forward and put my hands on the floor to push to my feet. Simply trying to stand up hurt. I’d learned to brace myself when he’d hit my stomach or ribs.