Page 61 of Some Saviors Can Break You

“You're right, I'm sorry. Of course I don’t really think you're making excuses for him. It just terrifies me that there is a smart killer out there who is fixated on you.” He’d already lost most of his family, there was no way he was losing Florence too.

Her face softened, and she reached out to cup his cheek in her hand. “Okay, I guess I can understand that, it freaks my brother out too. I'm careful, and if he comes after me again he won't be getting away. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Too late, princess. When you care about someone you worry about them, so I'm going to worry about you. Always.” Turning his face to the side, he touched his lips to the inside of her wrist, making her shiver.

“I guess that’s kind of sweet.”

“That’s me,” he grinned, argument averted, he was going to have to get a handle on the fact that Florence had a dangerous job. “If I make us French toast for breakfast, we’ll have time to take a shower together before we have to leave for work.”

“Shower first, breakfast can wait.” Florence slid off his lap and grabbed his hand, leading him into the bathroom.

Watching her perky little behind and her long toned legs, he could go with that plan.

8:12 A.M.

“I might have something.”

Florence glanced over at her partner. “Something on which case?”

“Yours.”

“Mine? You mean the break-in?” She was ready to put that behind her. She didn't think that the Coffin Killer was a threat to her, and if he was stalking her, then maybe she could get him off the streets.

Nineteen years.

For nineteen long years she had wanted that man off the streets.

Even as an eight-year-old child, she had wanted to do whatever she could to put him behind bars, but what she could do had been limited. She’d known that the man who had tried to kill her was her mother’s boyfriend, although she’d seen him only a handful of times, but neither she nor her mother had been able to tell the cops anything that had helped them find the guy.

Over time, she’d had to get used to the idea that he would never be caught.

That the little girls who had lost their lives would never get justice.

Florence had always felt worse for those girls than she had for herself. She’d gotten off lightly, she had lived, they hadn't. That was what she had told herself when she couldn’t fall asleep for fear of nightmares, that was what she had told herself when she was terrified to be alone but had no one there to comfort and reassure her. That was what she had told herself every day for almost two years before she’d finally felt like her life was returning to normal.

Slowly, her lifehadreturned to normal, or as normal as her and her brother’s lives had been. She’d been focused on school and getting good grades so she could get out and build a better life, but she’d never forgotten the man, couldn’t even if she’d tried because he wouldn’t let her. Nearly four years had passed when she got the first letter, she and Fletcher had taken it to the Sheriff who had handed it on to the FBI who were working the Coffin Killer case, but nothing had ever come of it, and over time she had stopped passing the notes along.

But she’d kept every one of them, determined that sooner or later she’d get him.

Had her chance finally come?

They didn't even know the man’s real name. He’d been Jerry Kramer when he’d been dating her mother, but Jerry Kramer hadn't existed.

“Hey.”

She looked back up, realized she had zoned out, and refocused her mind. “So, what did you find out?”

“There was a fingerprint on the window, and it doesn’t match yours,” Jake informed her.

“A fingerprint on the window? Why would he have touched the window?”

“Were your blinds open or closed?”

“Open, I never close the living room blinds only the bedroom ones.”

“We know he’d been watching you, what if he had seen you with Eli. He has you in the living room up against the wall as he tells you that Michael is the one who tried to run you down, then he sees Eli coming. He panics, looks out to confirm it’s your boyfriend because you haven't been with him long and he probably wanted to make sure. Once he confirms that it is Eli he sees coming, he hightails it out of there.”

“Could he have made it out that quickly? I mean, Eli saw him coming out as he was about to enter the building, would he have had time to make it down?”

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