Page 48 of Secret Stalker

Chapter Fifteen

“I don’t believe you,” Max said.

Bex stared at him. He was calmly sitting on the couch, proclaiming his belief in her innocence.

“I thought you’d be shocked, or angry, or...something, when I finally confessed. I didn’t expect you to refuse to believe the truth.”

“Oh, I believe that you believe you killed him. That’s something I suspected all along. It explains why you wouldn’t see me when the chief threw you in jail. It explains why you left town the first chance you could. And it also explains why you stayed away so long. But do I think you could actually murder someone? Not a chance in hell.”

Her fingers curled against the arm of the chair. “So, what, I hallucinated the whole thing? Some cop you are. The guilty party confesses and you ignore the confession.”

He let out a deep sigh. “Bex, something awful happened to you after you left me that night. I think Bobby was probably stalking you again, maybe he lured you somewhere, or forced you to his cabin. He tried to rape you, maybe he did rape you—”

She shook her head. “No.”

His jaw tightened and he nodded, a look of relief flashing across his features. “But he attacked you. And you fought back. If he died as a result of that, it was self-defense. Not murder.”

Unable to sit still, she jumped to her feet and began pacing across the room. “It’s not that simple.” She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “Yes, Bobby tricked me into going to his cabin that night. Yes, he attacked me, and I fought back. I may not have meant to kill him, but I did.” She stopped pacing. “Self-defense?” She laughed bitterly. “Of course it was. But who would have believed me?”

“I would. I do. I would have helped you, if you’d given me a chance.”

“All that would have done was destroy your dream to become a police officer. Thornton wouldn’t have overlooked that you were siding with me. Trust me—he believes I’m a murderer, and he believed it back then, too.”

“That’s because you wouldn’t talk. You refused to say anything in your defense.”

“I couldn’t. You know how things were. Bobby had been stalking me and making my life hell. But he was too clever to do it in front of others where I’d have proof. He manipulated everyone into thinking I was the crazy one making up stories about him. His father would have painted me out to have been the one to lure him to that cabin. And he would have said that I did that in order to kill him for making me look like a fool. He was rich enough, and blind enough when it came to Bobby, to make everyone believe him. I’d have gone to prison for the rest of my life. That’s why I couldn’t tell anyone. My only hope to avoid prison was to keep my mouth shut and hope that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute me.”

“Then why confess now?”

“You know why. Someone—probably Bobby’s father—is trying to bring up the past, make me face what happened. If I don’t—”

“They’ll kill me? Good grief, Bex. I’m a police officer. I know how to take care of myself. I don’t want you to be a sacrificial lamb on my behalf, especially when you’re innocent.”

She crossed her arms. “Am I innocent if I was glad he died? Because I am. That sounds terrible. And I’ve felt guilty for years over not feeling guilty about that, if that even makes sense. I know I shouldn’t be relieved that someone lost their life. But Bobby was sick, evil. And I know that he would have killed me eventually if he hadn’t died that night.”

He stood and stepped in front of her to stop her pacing. Then he put his hands on her shoulders, making her face him.

“You have nothing to feel guilty about. Looking back, with my years of experience behind me, I’ve no doubt that you’re right. He would have killed you eventually, or tried to. But I would have protected you, Bex. If you’d only let me.”

She blinked away the moisture that was suddenly in her eyes. “I told you it’s not that simple. It never was.”

He tilted her chin up. “Because you wanted to protect me. Don’t you realize it’s my job to protect you, not the other way around?”

She shook her head. Because he was wrong. Bobby’s friends had beaten up Max more than once in that terrible year when Bobby was harassing her. It was only a matter of time before something terrible happened to Max. And it was her fault, for somehow drawing the attention of someone like Bobby. She couldn’t let Max pay the price for her failures.

“Bex,” he said, his deep voice soft, but with a thread of steel underlying it that hadn’t been there when they’d been teenagers. “There’s absolutely nothing to gain at this point in bringing any of this up now. Leaving town like you did back then was like running away. It only made you look guilty in the eyes of most. And it makes claiming self-defense this many years later extremely hard to prove. Which is why you have to be quiet. No confessions.”

She shook her head. “We both know I can’t just go back to Knoxville and pretend none of this happened. As soon as I came to Destiny, I started something. And whether it’s Mr. Caldwell, or someone else behind what’s happening now, they aren’t just going to stop.”

“All right. Then there’s only one thing we can do. We have to investigate Bobby Caldwell’s death on our own and get the evidence we need to prove you’re innocent. Then, and only then, we’ll go to the chief and present our case.” He dropped his hands from her shoulders. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

He left before she could argue again and headed through an opening at the far right side of the room, near the kitchen. His boots echoed on the hardwood floor. A few moments later he returned with what appeared to be the same thick manila folder he’d brought to her house last night. He also had a legal pad and pen.

He plopped the pad and pen on the end table beside him and put the folder on the coffee table. Sitting on the edge of the couch, he flipped the folder open and sorted through the various papers and pictures. He finally found whatever he was looking for, a page with a graph of dates and times with bulleted sentences next to each time. He tapped the page.

“I’ve got the official timeline surrounding Bobby’s death right here, the record of what he did the entire day until a specific time, and then later when his body was discovered by Deacon and his father.”

A chill passed through her at the thought of the father and son finding Bobby’s body. That had to be a nightmare they’d never gotten past. And from the hate and bitterness she’d seen in the senior Caldwell at the lawyer’s office, he’d definitely never moved past his son’s death.

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