Bright sunlight filtered through the front blinds, illuminating what looked like a mangled body. I quickly slipped inside and slammed the door shut, turning the lock. I rested my hands against the frame, trying to calm myself and hoping no one walking by had seen in here.
My phone started to ring. I knew it was him. The timing was too perfect. Hitting the side button to silence his call, I slowly turned around and crept towards the chair, eyeing the back of the woman’s head.
“Oh my god.” I clamped a hand over my mouth, looking down at Lauren’s mom.
There was an infinity symbol carved into her torso—like the one he’d branded on my inner thigh. A single black rose was laid across her lap.
How the fuck did he get her here? When had he done this?
I could see rigor mortis beginning to set on her jaw and neck. He had to have killed her at least six hours ago, which meant he had been the one that sent the text from her phone. When my cell began to ring again, I flinched and fumbled to get it out of my back pocket. With shaking hands, I accepted the call.
“Why?” I demanded to know.
“Well, good morning to you too, Rosie. You really need to work on your social skills.” He clucked his tongue at me.
“Why did you do this?”
“You know how bad I want it to be you instead of them? I keep asking myself why you’re so special and have yet to come up with an answer.”
“I left you for dead,” I pointed out, trying to figure out my next course of action.
I needed to get the hell out of the salon and away from the body before calling it in. If I called it in.
“I deserved it. I broke my promise to you. Do you really believe I didn’t know you were going to run?”
“If you knew then, why did you let me go? None of this had to happen,” I snarled into the phone, jogging through the back parking lot to my car.
“I knew you were going to leave me. I just hoped you wouldn’t.”
“Con,” I swallowed, trying to get myself together. I wasn’t good at handling this shit, which was painfully clear. I felt exhausted—not from lack of sleep, but from life. “You almost killed me. You left me black and blue, and I thought that was love.”
“You don’t love me anymore?” Hearing the distress in his voice should have made me jump for joy, yet it only made me hurt more.
“Loving you is terrible for me. We’re not good for each other. Two sick people can’t get better together.”
The fact that I was more worried about hurting him than the dead woman who’d given me a job said so much about who I really was. I lacked all empathy when it came to strangers. I picked and chose who was valuable and who wasn’t, based on how much they mattered to me.
“Two sick people are much better for each other than someone who would judge them for who they are. What’s it going to take for you to come back to me? How do I fix it?” His voice took on a determined edge.
I was trying to give him freedom, and he wouldn’t fucking take it. I was running out of options.
“Constantine.” I paused to clear my throat. “I’m never coming back. If you don’t leave town by tonight and disappear…I’m going to the police.”
I pulled my car out of the parking lot when the coast was clear and started back towards my house.
“You’re going to the police?” he laughed. “You mean, you’re going to the man you’ve been letting fuck you in the ass?”
I gritted my teeth, paying no attention to the tears rolling down my face. I wasn’t going to bother responding to that.
“I gave you an ultimatum.” I spoke clearly, letting him know I was serious. And I was. This had to stop. I couldn’t live like this anymore. If I had to go down too, then so be it. I would sing like a goddamn canary—until my lungs turned blue. I’d go in handcuffs or a straitjacket. But if I had to go down, then he was going down with me.
The sins from my past were permanent stains on my dirty soul. These secrets would be the death of me. If Con would simply leave Black Pine, I would take them to the grave with me, like I’d always planned to do.
Suddenly, I was reminded of someone.
“Where the fuck is Lauren?” I almost slammed on the brakes when what her mother had said dawned on me.
“Oh, she’s close,” he yawned in my ear.
“Con—”
“I’m going to keep killing all the girls in this town until you come back to me,” he cut me off.
“Don’t hurt her. She doesn’t have anything to do with this.” I forced the pleading tone out of my voice; begging only made him excited.
“I’ll leave you a love note on her tombstone,” he proclaimed before hanging up on me.
“Motherfucker!” I launched my cell across the car, making it bounce off the passenger window and land on the floor.
I was stupid to think he’d leave. He wasn’t ever going to let me go. I had to stop this, but to do that I needed help.
I jerked my steering wheel to the right, pulling to the side of the road abruptly, giving the finger to the car behind me that honked as it zipped past.
Shoving the gear to park, I reached over and searched the floor for my cell.
Chapter Eighteen
Present
He left Lauren’s butterfly necklace hanging on my front door.
He’d gone from being nowhere to being everywhere. I couldn’t think clearly when it felt like he was watching my every move. I paced back and forth in my kitchen, eyeing the liquor bottle on the table. He left it there on purpose, wanting me to break and consume every drop of it.
Molly wasn’t answering her phone, Max wasn’t answering his door or my calls, Darcy had no idea about the problems in my life, and I’d left Sheriff Reynolds four voicemails and sent six urgent texts. No one was responding to me, and time was not on my side.
Making one last attempt to get in touch with Max, I pulled the browser up on my phone and searched for the local Sheriff’s office number. A woman answered the phone on the fourth ring, sounding every bit as southern as Max did.
“Black Pine Sherriff’s office?”
“Hi, is there a Detective Harrison in by chance?”
“Just a second.” She told me to hold and transferred me to his direct line. I pulled the phone away from my ear when another call started coming in. Seeing Max’s name on the screen, I hovered my thumb over the answer button.
“Sheriff Harrison.”
I furrowed my brows and stared at the phone. Who was this? The voice was unrecognizable.
“Hello?”
“Uh…hello, I was looking for a Detective Maxwell Harrison,” I explained.
“I’m Michael Harrison.”
“Is there a Maxwell in then? It’s just, he told me to call him at the station if I needed anything.”
“Uh, no. There’s no Maxwell here. Are you sure you got the right name? There’s another station a few miles outside of town. He could be with them.”
“You’re right, I dialed the wrong one. Sorry about that,” I enthused, ending the call.
I clutched my cellphone so tightly the plastic casing protested. What the fuck was up with my attraction to toxic men? I thought back to all my interactions with ‘Max’ thus far, a seed of suspicion now in full bloom. There’d been times he seemed too much like Constantine. I chose to ignore it or brush it off, chalking it up to me being fucked-up and delusional.