Where the Blame Lies(28)

“Is there anything else, Tessa?” he asked gently.

Tessa folded the tissue once and then again. “Well, I mean . . .”

“Anything,” he prompted again. “No matter how small.”

She paused but then nodded. “She might have gotten an abortion during that rough patch.” She looked down, her eyes still on the tissue as she folded it into smaller and smaller pieces. “I’m not positive, and I didn’t want her parents to know if I was wrong. They’re real religious . . .” She took a shuddery breath and dabbed at her nose. “I heard her on the phone one day when I was getting home. It sounded like she was making an appointment and from the questions she was answering, I got the idea she was pregnant. But then I asked her about it, and she brushed me off. She seemed kind of . . . I don’t know, off maybe a couple of weeks later, and that’s when she got that tattoo. I’d see her touch it sometimes and get this sad look on her face. I had this thought . . .” She shook her head.

“Tessa, whatever it was, no matter how vague, it might help.”

“Well, after I heard her scheduling that appointment, and then when she came home with the daisy tattoo, I wondered if it was in memory of that baby she didn’t keep.” Her expression filled with guilt, and she lowered her eyes again. She took a deep breath, meeting Zach’s gaze. “But then she went back to being her old self, she met Chad, and things seemed good. Just a little blip on the radar, you know? Something that was totally in the past.”

“Thank you for telling me that. It might help.”

“She was my best friend, Detective,” Tessa said, her eyes filling with tears again. “I’d never want to tell anyone things she wouldn’t want told, but if it helps you find who did this to her, I know she’d understand.”





CHAPTER THIRTEEN


Before



Despite the irregular meals, Josie’s stomach began to swell with the evidence of her pregnancy. She could see the tiny bump under her shirt, and she longed to run her hand over her skin, to feel the roundness, the subtle change in her body from the outside. It was an instinct, she supposed, a pregnant woman’s need to reach for her own child. But she couldn’t. Her hands were still bound in chains.

As fall’s blustery winds whipped past Josie’s prison window, Marshall discovered her secret, his body stilling on top of hers as his hand reached down to touch what Josie herself had not. He moved away quickly, his masked face turned toward her bared skin, staring. She saw his throat move. He looked away, up to the small patch of light on the wall. “You’ve been keeping secrets from me, Josie.”

“I don’t have any secrets.” How could she? She was laid bare in every single way. She’d known it was only a matter of time until he figured out that she carried his child.

He stood, making a scoffing sound, though there was something different in his movement. The knowledge of her pregnancy had shaken him. She pulled herself to a sitting position. “This is your baby too.” He stilled further and she swallowed, tears threatening. She felt so afraid, so alone, the emotions she’d tucked beneath the cradle of continuous sleep slipping free and wrapping around her. Would he kill her now? Her and the life within her? Sweeping away all evidence of his crime? Maybe he’d leave for good now, let her starve.

The baby she was carrying meant she had his DNA safely tucked inside her. How could he allow her to live, his child to live, if he had any hope of getting away with what he’d done?

Terror was a stone in her chest, crushing her lungs.

He left without a word. Josie hung her head and cried. Winter would soon arrive. It would be frigid in the room where she was held prisoner. It was already cold, though the mattress beneath her had served to keep her from freezing on the cement floor. Still, she shivered constantly, her teeth clicking against each other as she rubbed at her exposed skin. Temperatures were dropping and eventually, she’d die of cold or hunger or thirst. She wondered which one would take her first.

She heard Marshall outside her window, outside the building, heard him pacing, his footsteps moving back, forth, back forth. What was he doing? Pacing as he tried to figure out his new dilemma? He was up there, she thought, planning her demise.

But later, he came back, rousing Josie in the dead of night. She startled, her heart racing as he did something over her head where her hands were chained in the position she was in, lying on the mattress. One hand fell free. Her heart rate spiked further. Was he freeing her? Or had he come to kill her? Hurt her?

She heard his zipper and then he took her freed hand, using it to run down his side as he came over top of her. “Touch me,” he demanded.

“Where?” she asked, her voice emerging as a croak.

“Everywhere,” he barked. “Like you mean it.”

Her hand trembled as she ran it down his side and around his back. He moaned, his breath coming faster. A hot tear leaked from her eye, running down her cheek to pool in her ear. He reached for her hand and moved it between them. He was hard, his skin hot. She considered wrapping her fingers around him, squeezing until he screamed. But she was still chained to the wall. If she hurt him, he’d hurt her worse. He’d make her pay.

He ran his hand roughly over her breasts, sensitive from the pregnancy, and she cringed. He moved his hand down her side, pausing slightly before moving over the swell of her belly. She felt a tiny bump from within, once and then again. Her heart stuttered. The baby. She’d just felt the baby. His breath stalled, his body giving a small tremble, as he removed his hand quickly as though her skin had burned him. Had he felt it too? He ran his hand back up to her breast, his own stomach meeting hers as he lowered himself. He paused again, a strange sound emerging from beneath his mask. Frustration? Distress?