Deadly Reckoning. Elle James
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in light, durable furnishings in keeping with summer vacation beach residences. The open living space had a large picture window facing the ocean.
“Call me Kayla. Ms. Davies makes me sound old.” She set the box of supplies on an end table and headed for the kitchen. One after the other, she rummaged through the cabinets, her movements brisk and efficient, but Gabe noticed the way her hands shook a little as she unearthed a teakettle.
Gabe stepped up beside her and grabbed her hands, kettle and all. “Sit.” He led her to the dinette table and pulled out a chair, forcing her into it.
For a moment, Kayla looked as if she was about to argue, but then the fight seemed to leach out of her. She stared out the window, her face blank, expression closed. “I thought it was my nightmare.”
“What?” Gabe sat across from her and continued to hold her hands in his. “What did you think was your nightmare?”
“The scream.” Her gaze shifted from the window to his face. “I thought it was part of my nightmare. I did nothing.”
His stomach did a flip-flop, the desperation in Kayla’s face making him want to pull her back into his arms and shield her from whatever ghosts haunted her. He squeezed her hands in his. “So you heard a scream?”
“Yes. I woke from a bad dream and was just going back to sleep when it happened.”
“What time?”
“Around midnight. I thought I’d drifted off. I thought the scream was me.”
“And what do you think now?”
“I wasn’t asleep. I know that now.” She dragged her hands from his and buried her face in them. “She screamed and I just lay there.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
When she looked up, he saw that her face was streaked with tears. “I could have helped.”
“Or been just another victim.”
“If I’d realized what was going on, I could have called the police.”
“Likely the man would have gotten away by the time we got there anyway.” He took one of her hands in his again. “You didn’t kill her. Someone else did.”
Her eyes widened and her free hand went to her throat. “H-h-how did she die?”
Gabe’s gaze focused on the yellow markings on her neck. “Without having an autopsy report, I can’t be certain, but she showed signs of strangulation.”
Kayla gasped. “Oh, God, no.”
“What?”
“No.” She shook her head, more tears slipping down her cheeks before she buried her face in her hands again.
“Kayla, what’s wrong?” He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder.
Her body trembled beneath his touch.
“This is my fault.”
“What? No, Kayla, I told you. You’re not responsible for what the killer has done.”
“Yes, I am. You don’t understand.” She looked up, the expression on her tear-streaked face deadly earnest. “I’m the reason it happened.”
Gabe released her shoulder to reach down and take her hand. “Does it have to do with the bruising on your neck?”
She stared up into his face, but there was a vacant look in her eyes that made him uneasy, as if she didn’t really see him there. “He followed me, he must have.”
“Who followed you?”
“I don’t know.” Her hand clenched tightly around his. “He’s come to kill me. And instead, he’s killed that girl, that poor girl….”
“Who, Kayla?” Gabe was filled with confusion. Was someone truly after Kayla? Uneasily, he realized that she did fit the same physical profile as the victim—petite frame and dark red hair. But did that really mean that someone was after her, or was her imagination running out of control? He didn’t know her well enough to say.
“Who do you think killed the girl? Who do you believe has come to kill you?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She touched the fingers of her free hand to the bruises on her neck. “I just know that he tried to before and almost succeeded.”
Some of the blankness faded away. Her green eyes were steady and focused as they stared into his, and she spoke again.
“He’s going to try again.”
A few hours later, Kayla was alone in the house again. Officer McGregor had left after he’d gotten the basic story of her attack. He’d promised to contact the Seattle Police Department for the official report in case the incident truly was related to the murder of the girl on the beach, but he had assured her that a connection was unlikely.
Cape Churn was a three-hour drive from Seattle, and by her own report, hardly anyone in Seattle knew where she had gone. The odds were very slim that her attacker would know how to find her. And yet, as Kayla stood barefoot at the window overlooking the road, she felt like a bird trapped in a gilded cage.
The scenery out the front of the cottage wasn’t quite as picturesque as out the back overlooking the ocean, but she could see when people drove up or passed by on the road.
For now, the ocean view had lost its appeal. Her easel stood beside the back window, the view as glorious as the day before, the sun high in the sky, casting brilliant light over rocky cliffs and steely gray water speckled with white-capped waves. But Kayla couldn’t find the right colors on her palette to start, an image of a body floating in the current swimming through her mind, taking away from all the glory of nature.
A woman had died pretty much outside her cottage the night before and she had heard her cry for help.
She couldn’t stop thinking about what would have happened to her if someone had not heard her cries for help back in Seattle. What if her attacker had finished her off, taking her life—and her baby’s life—the way someone had taken the life of the woman found on the beach?
“I messed up, Baby,” she murmured. “Maybe I could have helped that girl if I’d just realized …” She squeezed shut her eyes, pain twisting in her gut. “I let her down, and I’m so afraid of letting you down, too.”
She reached down to stroke her belly. “This place was supposed to be safe, a place where no one could hurt either of us, but now I’m not so sure. The worst part is that I just don’t know where that place would be.”
Her stomach rumbled, serving as a reminder to save her introspection until later and get to work on eating for two right now.
As she rattled around in the kitchen, she forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand. She couldn’t let herself dwell on her fears. It wouldn’t accomplish anything. Officer McGregor was probably right, anyway, that the attack was in no way related to hers. It was a tragedy—a horrible, senseless tragedy—but it wasn’t her fault. It had nothing to do with her at all.
So why couldn’t she believe that?
On the other side of town, Gabe McGregor pulled his police cruiser up next to the teenager walking his bicycle, slid the passenger-seat window down and leaned over so that he could see the boy’s face. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where were you?”
The teen shrugged. “Around.” He pushed his bike up one of the many hills surrounding Cape Churn.
Gabe kept pace, while tamping down his frustration. “We’ve been over this before. I don’t mind if you visit your friends, I’d just like to know when you do, where you’re going and when you’re headed home.”
“Kinda stalker-like, if you ask me.”
“Not the way I look at it.” Talking through the open