Page 53 of Secret Stalker

“All I know is that it was in my pocket when I got there. But not later. I assume Bobby took it.”

He set his pen and notepad on the end table and turned to face her. “Tell me everything, Bex. Exactly as you remember it.”

“As soon as I got there and went into the outbuilding, I knew I’d been tricked. You weren’t there waiting for me. Since your house is so close by, there’s no way I’d have gotten there before you. I turned around, and Bobby had just come inside. He was grinning like an idiot as he closed the door. But I was the idiot.” She clenched her hands into fists.

“What did he do?”

She closed her eyes, wishing she could block out the memory of Bobby just as easily. “He threw me to the floor and...and lay on top of me. He held my face still and kissed me. When I tried to bite him, he squeezed my jaw until I cried out. I didn’t try to bite him again. It was awful. He ripped my shirt, sending buttons flying all over the cabin. He had a knife. He cut my bra off. And then, then he...” She shook her head. She couldn’t tell Max all the horrible things that Bobby had done to her, how he’d held the knife to her and put his mouth where Max’s had so recently been. It was like he’d destroyed every beautiful touch she and Max had shared before he’d asked her to marry him, and then turned it into something ugly.

“Earlier, at your house when I first questioned you, you said he didn’t rape you. Was that true?” His voice broke on the last word, and she realized this was just as hard for him as it was for her.

“No. No, he didn’t...penetrate me. After he tore off my clothes and did his worst, he was about to...and I knew I couldn’t live with myself if he did. I couldn’t get my knees up to kick him, so I...” She shuddered. “I grabbed him...there...and squeezed as hard as I could. He screamed and fell off me. I scrambled to my feet and he was calling me ugly names and I’d just reached the door when he grabbed my hair. He yanked me back and I remember I flailed my hands out for something, anything to stop him. And I grabbed something off one of the shelves. Later, I realized it was an empty wine bottle. Probably from the last kids who’d snuck onto the farm and used that cabin. I swung it around in an arc. There was a horrible, sickening thud. And then he fell down on the floor. Dead.”

Tears were flowing down her face now. “I gathered up my clothes, searched for the buttons, but I couldn’t find the last one. I couldn’t stay another minute, knowing he was dead. So I ran, got in the car. Drove home. And that’s why my mama wouldn’t let me talk to the police. She knew what I’d done the moment I got home in my torn clothes. She burned them in the fireplace. She vacuumed the car, scrubbed it down, just in case I’d brought any evidence back with me. And she burned the vacuum bag, the paper towels she used, everything. And she made me swear never, ever to say anything at all to the police.”

She was crying hard now, and hated that she was crying. And suddenly Max was in front of her, kneeling on the floor. He’d scooted the table out of the way and was pulling her hands down from her face, looking up at her with some kind of emotion she couldn’t even fathom.

“Are you absolutely sure you told me everything from that night? You didn’t leave out any details?”

“The only details I left out were the vile things he did to my body before he tried to rape me. No, Max. There’s nothing else to tell. I killed him. I didn’t mean to, but I did. And Mama and I were both too afraid to say anything because I’d made so many complaints about Bobby. And his father always made the complaints go away. And everyone knew I hated him. There was no way they’d believe me over Bobby’s father.”

She drew a shaky breath. “I’m not a complete idiot. When I was in jail, after the chief locked me up, I had plenty of time to sit and think about what had happened. And I knew that Mama and I had made some really bad decisions. Maybe if we’d called the police right away and didn’t burn my clothes, the clothes might have helped build my case of self-defense. It’s possible, I suppose. But by then, we’d already destroyed evidence. Even at eighteen I knew that was wrong, illegal and only made me look guilty. I couldn’t tell the chief what really happened at that point. He could have arrested my mom for helping me cover up what happened.”

She could tell from the intensity of his gaze and the way he was looking at her with laser like focus that she wasn’t going to like his next question.

“Bex, you said you wouldn’t let me see you in jail, to protect me. Because you were worried that it could hurt my future career aspirations. While I might not agree with your decision, I can sort of understand it. At that age, as young as we both were, I get how things could look different. But when the chief didn’t have enough evidence to press charges, you left town. And you stayed gone for ten years. Why, in all that time, did you never once call me?”

And there it was. The question she’d both expected and dreaded ever since she’d come back to Destiny. It was one of the primary reasons she’d hoped to avoid him. She twisted her hands in her lap, and said the only thing she could think of.

“You didn’t call me, either.”

His brows raised. “You made it painfully clear through Chief Thornton that you never wanted to see me again. I respected your wishes, even if I didn’t understand them.”

She looked away.

“Bex. Why?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, swallowing hard against the tightness in her throat before looking at him again. “Everything just sort of built on everything else. After what happened with Bobby that night, I knew that if I let you back into my life you would do everything you could to protect me. If I spoke to you, I knew I’d tell you exactly what I did, what my mom did to help me cover it up. That would make you complicit in destroying evidence and would ruin your future career. Whether you agree with my reasons or not, all I can say is that my life became a snowball that kept rolling downhill and getting bigger and bigger. I left town to let things die down, hoping Mr. Caldwell would quit lobbying for me to be arrested. Mama kept me updated on what was happening with the case and I knew it only got worse after I left. For a long, long time Mr. Caldwell pushed and pushed the chief to find and arrest me.”

Max slowly nodded. “You’re right. He was like a crazy man for the better part of a year before he stopped visiting the station every day, demanding your head on a silver platter.”

“I know. And by then, I was building a life in Knoxville. I had the antique business going. And from there, it was easier if I didn’t think of Destiny and what I’d run from.”

“Including me?”

Her lip wobbled when she answered. “Yes. Including you. It hurt just to think about you. You were the reminder of everything that I’d lost. It was easier to push you to the back of my mind. To try to never think of you again.”

He winced and looked toward the back wall of windows at the ever-darkening stormy-looking sky. What had he expected her to say? That she loved him then, loved him still? She did, with her whole heart. But she’d lost everything the night Bobby Caldwell died, including Max. And the only way she could survive that loss was to start over.

A long time passed in silence. When Max finally turned back toward her, he was Detective Max again. All business and professional. With none of the earlier warmth he’d shown. He asked her more questions, and every time she heard his cold voice, her heart broke a little bit more.

Finally, after answering another one of his questions, she said, “This is such a nightmare.”

His jaw tightened, and she knew he was probably thinking the same thing. Except that his nightmare was that he had agreed to help her. And that he was most likely regretting that decision now.

“Just tell me one more thing,” he said. “Do you remember if Bobby wore his ring that night?”

“The chunky one with diamonds all over it, the one his father gave him as some kind of heirloom? That he lorded over all of us at school? That ring?”

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