One of Those Faces (101)

“Jenny?” I remembered my shattered, bloody reflection that early morning. No, it was a dream. It had only been a nightmare.

“Yes, it doesn’t matter to me what you did. I took care of everything for you. But to you, that means nothing.”

What you did.

Jenny. The blood.

The nightmare came rushing to the front of my mind. My hands on the knife, the handle scratching the skin of my palms as I plunged it into her again and again.

There could only be one of us.

A heat rose in my chest. “No, I didn’t do that. I didn’t hurt Jenny.”

There was something like pity in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Harper.”

I stared at the water below. I removed my hands from his, and his grip loosened, but the pressure behind my neck remained. After a moment, his fingers relaxed, and he kneeled beside me, reaching both hands toward my face.

I thrust my bound wrists toward him, knocking him in the chest and setting him off balance. I stumbled to my feet and kicked him as he reached for his gun.

He grabbed my ankle and twisted it before I could pull away. As he attempted to stand, I brought my foot down on his head. I dug the keys out of the powdery snow with my frigid fingers and turned to run to the car.

I continued to run, even as my ankle rolled with each step until I fell beside the car, my head hitting the closed door. The pain nearly knocked me out, but I braced against the door and gripped the mirror to pull myself up.

The sound of Wilder’s footsteps grew louder than the waves. I fumbled for the door handle and jumped into the driver’s seat. Without closing the door, I turned the key and gripped the wheel with my bound hands. I hit the gas, and the engine started grinding, but the car stayed in place. I looked at the gearshift and switched it into drive with both hands, my foot lingering on the brake pedal. I couldn’t move, my eyes trained on the rearview mirror, only the darkness reflecting back at me.

I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for until it appeared.





CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR


He had taken my phone. He’d typed out a message to Iann saying it was over and I needed time alone. I knew he had no intentions of leaving me alive that night. They found concrete blocks in the trunk of his car. I could only assume he planned on dumping me in the icy lake after drowning me. Or worse, maybe he planned to sink me to the bottom of the lake while I was still alive.

I had tried three different gas stations at the outer limits of Kenosha that night until I found one manned. My pleas to the teenage night clerk were barely out of my mouth before I collapsed on the floor. I didn’t remember much more between that and waking up in a hospital room, monitors beeping and police officers waiting outside the door. The story came out to them the same fragmented way it played through my mind.

Iann drove up to visit me at the hospital in Kenosha every night until I was released.

“What do you think about leaving?” he asked on the drive back to Chicago.

I rested my head against the window. The painkillers made me slightly dizzy. Or it might’ve been the head injury. “I’m fine,” I said. It seemed like a weird question. I’d be happy to never be in another hospital for the rest of my life, especially not as a patient. “It’ll be nice to sleep in a real bed again.”

He shook his head. “No, I mean, what do you think about getting out of Chicago? Out of Illinois?”

I glanced at him. His face had been tense and in pain each day since the incident. Whenever he knew I was looking, he’d attempt a weak smile.

“I think you could use a fresh start,” he continued.

I looked out the window, the lights growing denser as we approached Chicago. “I think so too.”





SPRING





CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE


“How are you feeling about the move?”

I glanced out the window at the small patch of gray sky between buildings. The days were still cold and drizzly but a welcome relief from the bone-deep chill of earlier months. “Good,” I said.

Her pen glided silently over the notepad in her lap. “You’re moving to Washington, right? With your boyfriend?” Dr. Linda’s smile warmed as she surveyed me.

I couldn’t help but smile a little too. “Yes, to Seattle.”

“When do you leave?”

“In a week. We’ve already mailed the bigger stuff to his parents’ place,” I said. “He finished his dissertation, so we’ll come back in a few months for his graduation.”

“I bet you’ll be happy to get a little space from here.”

My smile faded. “Yes.” The months following Wilder’s death had provided few answers. Yes, he’d taken under the table investigation jobs and bribes while at Evanston PD. Yes, he’d been obsessed and following me since my father had paid him to find me when I was sixteen. This was what we knew from what had been found in Wilder’s apartment. Based on the information I gave the police, they were able to tie him to Sarah’s murder. And despite my hunch about Holly, the police insisted Wilder had no connection to her murder. Even though Wilder had been in charge of that investigation, they felt the evidence (half-baked as it was) pointed most satisfactorily to Jeremy as the culprit.

As for Jenny, the police concluded she might have been another unfortunate victim of Wilder. But perhaps we’d never know for sure since surveillance footage outside her apartment had disappeared shortly after her death. I had come to accept my own version of the truth, despite what Wilder claimed I’d done to her.