The Obsession(127)

When she heard footsteps, she opened her computer, began to bring up the files.

“It’s going to take me a few minutes,” she said, very, very calmly when Xander came in.

“I got that.” He wandered, measuring the space, the look and feel of it. “Swank, but not fancy. That’s a hard note to hit.”

“You should go down. You and Mason should get to that pizza before it gets any colder.”

“Nothing wrong with cold pizza.”

“There’s nothing for you to do here, Xander.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. You need another chair in here. How else is somebody going to hang out and bug you when you’re working? Why don’t you spit out what’s circling around in your gut. I can figure some of it anyway.”

“You want me to spit it out? Start with if I hadn’t gotten it into my head I could stay here, live here, Donna would still be alive.”

“So, straight to the cliché?” He shook his head. “I thought you’d do better. That’s not even a challenge. If you’d moved on, how many others before somebody like your brother finally clued in on the pattern? And what are the chances anybody but him would’ve seen the connection with your photos?”

“I don’t know the chances. But obviously the chances of me being connected to a serial killer for the second time are really good.”

“Sucks for you.”

Shock snagged her breath. “Sucks for me?”

“Yeah, it does. It sucks for you that some lunatic’s out there obsessed with you and emulating your f*ck of a father. But you’re not the reason, you’re the excuse. The reason’s inside this sick bastard’s mind, just like your father’s reasons were in his.”

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter: excuse, reason. It doesn’t matter what’s in their minds, what drives them to kill. It matters that for the first twelve years of my life I grew up in a house with a monster, and I loved him. It matters that where I spent those years is now best known as Thomas David Bowes’s killing field. It matters that what I grew up with followed us to New York until my mother killed herself rather than live with it. It matters that it’s followed me, leaving death behind, ever since.”

She wouldn’t weep. Tears were useless. But fury, full-blown fury, felt righteous. “It matters that I tried to convince myself I could have what the majority of the human race has. A home, friends, people I care about. A damn idiot dog. All of it.”

“You have that, all of it.”

“It was—is—a fantasy. I got caught up in it, let myself believe it was real, but—”

“So what, you’ll pack up, take off, sell this place, dump the dog?”

The fact stood clear, she thought again. “Sometimes people have roots so corrupted, they shouldn’t try to plant them.”

“That’s bullshit, and it’s weak. If you want to feel sorry for yourself, I’ll give you a pass, but that’s weak. You’ve got better than that, baby.”

“You don’t know what I’ve got, baby.”

“Hell I don’t, and because I do, I know you’re not going to let some son of a bitch send you running.”

He put the palms of his hands on her desk and leaned toward her. “I know what I’ve got, and I’m damned if I’ll let you run. You’ve got what you need right here, and you’re going to stick.”

She surged to her feet. “Don’t tell me what I’m going to do.”

“I’m telling you. You’re going to stick because what you want, what you need is right here. What makes you happy is right here. You need me, and I make you happy. And I f*cking well need you, so you’ll stick.”

“It’s my life, my choice.”

“Screw that. You want to try to run, I’ll just bring you back.”

“Stop telling me what to do. Stop yelling at me.”

“You started it. Maybe you haven’t worked it through your system, pulled it free from the I’ve-got-bad-blood excuses you fall back on, but you’ve got feelings for me.”

“How can you say things like that? How can you minimize this?”

“Because you overinflate it, so it’s easy to stick a damn pin in it. Because I’ve got feelings for you. I’m in f*cking love with you, so you’re going to stick. And that’s it.”

She took one stumbling step back, went pale.

Xander rolled his eyes. “Cut that out and breathe. Yell back. You don’t panic when you’re pissed. And maybe I’d have done that with more class if I weren’t pissed right back at you.”

Or maybe not, he thought, but either way.

“Sunlight in your hair. Morning light. You’re standing there, working on a piece of plywood, sunlight all over you, and I feel like someone kicked me off a damn cliff. So you’re not going anywhere, just check that off the list.”

“It can’t work.”

“You should try to balance out that Pollyanna attitude of yours, season it with some cynicism. It has been working,” he added. “For both of us. I know what the hell works and what doesn’t. We work, Naomi.”

“That was before . . .” When his eyebrows lifted, she dragged a hand through her hair, tried to find level ground again. “Can’t you see what’s going to happen? I pray, and I’ll keep praying Mason’s right. They’ll find him, they’ll stop him. And I’ll hope with all I have they do that before he kills again. But when they do find him, it’ll all fall apart again. Me, my father, whoever this maniac is, all tied together. And the press—”