The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(108)

She’ll be waiting for me.

She’ll be coming to find me, any second now . . .



“And you’re sure your husband wouldn’t have picked this up somewhere else—” The homicide detective studies the plastic-wrapped guitar pick. “—maybe not from the sidewalk that morning, but the day before? Maybe he bought it, or someone gave it to him, or—”

“No.” Sheri shakes her head firmly. “That’s impossible.”

“Impossible is a strong word, Mrs.—”

“But it is impossible. Trust me.” She’d already told him about Roger’s germaphobia; how he would never in a million years pick up a filthy guitar pick from the sidewalk.

Now she explains, “He would have taken those jeans, clean, out of his drawer that morning. He never wore something two days in a row. That’s just how he was. Everything went into the hamper at night when he took it off.”

Sitting back in his chair, the detective—in his quintessential rumpled shirt—nods thoughtfully.

“I do all the laundry,” she goes on, “and I always check the pockets, so it wasn’t there when I washed the jeans. It got there that morning. Someone else put it there. Not Richard.”

“Okay.” The detective leans forward, looking again at the guitar pick. “I don’t know what this means, but for starters, we’re going to look for prints, and I’m going to see if I can use it to link any other recent murders here in Indianapolis.”

Stumbling along the waterfront path as it winds past the outbuildings of the Grand Hotel property, Elena spots a long wooden fishing pier ahead. Two men are there despite the thunderstorm, standing side by side along the railing holding bamboo rods above the water.

Elena stops running, clutching her side, panting hard.

“Help!” she calls. “Please, please . . . someone is trying to kill me . . .”

They don’t turn their heads toward her, can’t hear her voice above the hard summer rain.

She looks over her shoulder, still expecting to see . . .

Landry, Jenna . . . whoever slaughtered Kay in the picture-perfect teenage girl’s bedroom decorated in seaside colors.

She tries to catch her breath, shouts again, “Help! My friend . . .”

My friend is dead.

I went to tell her that I thought we should get out of that house before something terrible happened, and . . .

And it already had.

I found her, and . . .

And I panicked, and . . .

And I didn’t stop to help; I didn’t even stop to grab my cell phone to call for help.

I just ran. Ran away, ran for my life.

Again she looks over her shoulder.

No one is chasing her.

But I know what I saw. I had her blood on my hands. Dear God . . .

Kay. Poor Kay.

Blinded by the glare of flashbulbs, Jenna is transported back to that day at the courthouse, the day the verdict was read.

“We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty . . .”

Not guilty.

Stunned, she turned to her legal team, certain she must have heard wrong. She hadn’t. Her attorneys had never let on to her that they anticipated any other outcome, but relief was evident in their faces and posture. As for her . . .

Not guilty?

She clearly remembers what happened that night at her mansion in the Hollywood Hills.

Olivia, the daughter she’d given up for adoption, had found her way back into her life— Just as Steven once had, about seven, maybe eight years after she left Minnesota and transformed herself into Hollywood royalty. Of course, she saw him for what he really was, and had been all along: a dirt bag nobody. The irony: he didn’t even want her back. He wanted money. He’d gotten himself into trouble. Loan sharks, drug dealers . . . something like that.

She didn’t give it to him.

Later, Jenna heard, he’d disappeared.

She didn’t care.

Olivia did.

Olivia had maneuvered her way into her life as a personal assistant, never letting on who she really was.

It wasn’t until later—when Olivia was dead and she was sitting in a jail cell—that Jenna uncovered the whole sad story about what had happened to her daughter back in Minnesota. Olivia had been adopted as an infant by parents who abused her, then bounced from foster home to foster home, fantasizing about her birth parents coming to the rescue. They never did.

She eventually found Steven, not long after Jenna refused to bail him out of trouble. He blamed her for that. And when her newfound father figure vanished, Olivia, too—neglected, mentally ill, delusional Olivia—blamed her. Fantasy festered.

One night, she snapped.

Crept into Jenna’s bedroom with a butcher knife.

It was my life, or hers. I did what I had to do . . . Or did I?

Was there a part of her that knew all along who Olivia really was, and what was coming, and did nothing to deter it? A part of her—a spurned, furious part of her—that wanted to punish Olivia for the sins of her father?

No one will ever know the whole truth.

No one but me. And I’ll never tell.

It doesn’t matter now anyway.

Wesley Baumann touches Jenna’s hand, resting on the podium.

She looks up at him.

He gives a little nod.

She can hear Cory’s voice in her head. You can do this.