Jaden (Jaded #3)(71)

Then I felt a hand on my other side and looked over. Corrigan had heard. A deep sorrow was in his eyes, but he didn’t say a word. He only touched me to show he was there. I nodded, thankful, then continued to hold Bryce.

The female defective murmured, breaking the silence, “Maria Ramirez killed her. She’s the one we think killed Grace as well.”

“What?” Bryce pulled back, his voice gruff, there was so much emotion being suppressed there. “Maria?”

Sheila stepped closer to the table now. “Yes, Maria. We brought in your old counselor, Miss Connors, if you’d like more explanation, but we believe Maria was Guadalupe’s stalker.”

“Stalker? I’m not following.”

Sheila nudged the male detective on the shoulder and gestured for him to stand. As he did, she slid into his seat and was across from us now. Leaning forward, she placed her hands on the table. They were open, her palms pointing toward us.

I don’t know why that movement was important, but it was. She wasn’t closed off to us. She was there. She was present with us. She was open to us. She was trying to help us.

She said further, and Bryce pulled away to sit back up, “Maria was obsessed with Guadalupe. You know this. Everyone does. It was very well documented the lengths she would go for her and like the text messages that you found on her phone, she’s the one who killed Grace Barton. We now have further proof. They were at the hospital. They overheard that Grace was confessing about being the one who had shoved Sheldon into the glass table. That gave them information and also a motive. They decided together to frame Sheldon, and they did it, because they thought she would go away, and you, Bryce, would return to Guadalupe. That’s her motive for the first death.”

I flinched at that term. ‘First death.’ It was said so coldly and . . . like a cop would say. Detached. But I knew that wasn’t true. Sheila was bracing him for the rest of it. Grace was dead. We all knew that, now onto the next death and the next blow.

“The night you guys went to Guadalupe’s hotel room, she called the police to her room. She pressed charges against Maria. She wanted a restraining order against her.”

“Why?”

That one word from him sounded so bleak.

“She said they fought after Sheldon’s press conference. And there was a red mark on her cheek, so we arrested Maria, and a restraining order was set into place. However, we don’t think that was the real reason she wanted charges brought up against her assistant. We think it was her first step in distancing herself from Maria. We think Guadalupe knew there was going to be blowback toward her. Sheldon’s press conference worked like magic. People were becoming more sympathetic to her, but people were going to analyze us more and she knew that eventually we’d start asking more questions. We would get to them, eventually. That’s what we think happened; why she called, but all we know for certain is that there had been a fight. The hotel staff confirmed that. They were called with complaints about yelling and what sounded like a physical altercation.”

“Shit,” Corrigan breathed out. He shook his head. “This is unreal, being told this.” He glanced to me.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was holding onto Bryce’s hand, but I was clinging to my chair with the other. Was it actually real? Was it really done?

I was scared to hope.

“We think when Maria realized the object of her obsession was turning on her, she felt rejected, and this sent her into a tailspin of panic and rage. Like I said, Miss Connors is here. She can explain it so much better, but like a lot of stalkers do with their objects of obsession, Maria turned on Guadalupe. If she couldn’t have her, no one could. Many stalkers end up killing, or attempting to kill, the person they were obsessed with. We found her body this morning in a warehouse.”

Another warehouse. The irony wasn’t lost on us, considering what we’d been doing hours earlier.

Bryce lowered his head. Again, like this whole time, he didn’t say anything, but he was taking shallow breaths, and I knew he was trying to calm himself. Either that or he was just trying to breathe.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Keep repeating and maybe something would make sense at the end? Sometimes that happened. Once I calmed down, I understood things, but that wasn’t going to happen here.

Guadalupe was dead, and he couldn’t tune out, then come back in and hope it was a nightmare. She was gone.

I pressed my hand to his arm again. This wasn’t a nightmare. It was real life.

Everyone was waiting for us to say something, Bryce or myself. Corrigan was waiting, too. As we locked eyes, a look passed between us. I had to be with Bryce that night. He was grieving, and in a weird way, so was I. They had found Grace’s murderer.

I needed Bryce that night, and I tried to send Corrigan an apology, but he shook his head. He understood. I got the message he sent me back, and the corner of my mouth lifted up, but I couldn’t smile. Like Bryce, I was defeated, too.

I wanted it all to end.

Then Corrigan asked, “Where is Maria? Do you have her in custody?”

They didn’t reply.

I looked at Sheila, alarm filtering inside me.

This was the ‘worse’ part. None of the cops looked at each other. There was no question. This was what they were bracing themselves for and, feeling my stiffening, Bryce looked up, too.

“Do you?” he asked, his voice hoarse.