Shattered Dreams: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (29 page)

Instead we found her stepfather gutting an elk. Blood had been splattered everywhere, on the table by the shed, across the ground, on his face and his clothes, the big knife in his hands.

All color—
all life
—drained from Cynthia’s face. Her eyes went insanely dark. And she’d just stood there, frozen, looking without seeing.

The elk had been one we’d seen before. It was young, probably not a year old. She’d taken countless photographs of it. She’d even trained it to eat from her hand. For weeks she’d worked to earn the little doe’s trust.

And her stepfather had slaughtered it.

Even in that moment, when I’d stood helplessly by her side, as sickened as she was, I knew I’d never forget the clash of confusion and horror in her eyes.

I’d never imagined to see that same look from
Chase
.

But I’d feared. I’d feared it so bad. Gran had warned me. She’d known. That’s why she’d kept me hidden from the rest of the world.

The detective kept talking. Every now and then a word broke through the buzz roaring through me, the one that screamed louder with every second Chase stared, to the point where it was all I could do not to slap my hands over my ears and start screaming for everything to stop.

I never saw Detective Jackson move. I had no idea he’d approached me until his hand closed around mine.

I looked down, saw the darkness of his flesh against the paleness of mine. My fingers were curled tight, bloodless. Even my nail beds were without color.

Slowly, his fingers uncurled mine—again I could see it happening, though I felt absolutely nothing—revealing the shiny tube concealed within.

Behind me, I heard Chase mutter something but couldn’t make out anything beyond the shiny tube of Too Faced lip gloss in the palm of my hand. “It must have been in that room…”

“That’s Jessica’s.”
This time I did make out the words—and the shock in Chase’s voice.

“It must have fallen out of her pocket,” I said, but I had no idea how it had gotten into my hand.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Jackson said. “I was here. I searched this house. There was nothing left to find.”

Through the numbness came a slow burn, as if the cool tube of the lip gloss was searing into my flesh. I jerked, watched the tube fall to the marble … saw the faint glow of red against my bloodless palm.

“I’m sorry you had to find out like this,” I heard Jackson saying to Chase. “As we told your parents, we had our suspicions, but it wasn’t until we found her earring that we had anything concrete. When the shoes showed up—”

“Shoes?”
Chase sounded like he was going to throw up.

“Yeah,” Jackson said. “I guess you wouldn’t know that, would you?”

My blood ran cold. Because I knew. Even before Jackson said a word, I knew what was coming.

“What shoes?” Chase asked.

“Jessica’s.”

With her name everything else stopped. The rain, the cold, the buzz. All stopped. Even the moment stopped. Fractured.

“They showed up yesterday, postmarked the day after Trinity trolled on the Net for info about the DuPont and Roubilet cases. That’s where the bait was.”

“Bait?”
Chase’s voice was no more than a breath.

“The shoes didn’t come in a plain brown box, like the press claimed. And they didn’t come via the U.S. Mail.”

All my life I’d had nightmares. Sometimes they were violent, insidious, images of death and blood and desecration. Sometimes they’d simply been frightening, the reality of being followed or chased, the awareness that someone tracked my every move. And I’d learned how to wake up. I’d learned how to jerk myself to at the very last moment, to spare myself. To put an end to the terror.

But standing in the damp shadows of that long-neglected house, the one left to stand in silent witness to evil and ugliness and depravity, to watch and know and remember, I couldn’t make myself wake up. Because I wasn’t asleep. This nightmare was real.

Wordlessly, eyes dark and unfocused, Chase backed away from me, breaking my heart a little more with each step he took.

By the time he slipped into the darkness, there was nothing left.

*   *   *

“Trinity.”

My aunt’s voice destroyed the drone of silence the second the door shot open. Numb, I looked up from the larimar stone in my oddly healed palm and saw her rush into the small, sterile room with only a table and two chairs. I’d been sitting there for what seemed like hours.

“Omigod,” she said, swirling in like an exotic, gale-force wind. Her hair was loose and tangled. Her face was flushed, her lips pale. Her dress was short and black, with odd smears across the front. “I’ve been so worried.”

My throat hurt. Maybe crying would have helped. But there weren’t any tears.

“Trin?” she said, and then she was down on her knees in front of the metal chair, taking my hands in hers for the briefest of seconds before her eyes filled and she pulled me into her arms. “Omigod,” she said again, and again. “I got here as fast as I could.”

I felt the breath leave me. I felt my shoulders fall, and my head bow toward her.

“What have they done to you? What happened? Aaron said he’d told DeMarcus to wait until I—”

I pulled back. Looked into her eyes. And started to shake. “They think I did it.”

“No.” Her face got all hard, furious. “No, they do not.”

“Jackson said they have proof—”

“No,” she said again. “He was trying to break you, that’s all. They’re desperate, reaching for straws.”

“Her shoes—”

“Aaron told me, but that doesn’t mean anything. Any sicko could have sent those shoes—her parents aren’t even sure they
are
hers, and they sure don’t mean
you’re
involved.”

“But her purse,” I said. “I told them where to find it…”

“Because you
found
it for them, in your dream.”

The cold pale walls of the century-old building pushed closer, even as my aunt was doing her best to push them back. “My earring—”

“—fell out at the house Saturday night,” she insisted. “That’s all.”

She
believed me. No matter how bad it looked, my aunt believed me. “I was just trying to help…”

“I know you,
cher,
” she muttered, and then she was pulling me into her arms and holding me, just holding me, and like a child I sank against her, craving the warmth.

It was all I wanted, to be held.

Chase.

“There was a woman,” I told her, closing my eyes but unable to escape the memory. “Mrs. Aberdeen. She was some kind of attorney. Detective Jackson kept saying all these horrible things—” Like he’d said earlier, in front of Chase. “And she kept telling me not to say anything.”

Aunt Sara held me so tight I could feel her heart slamming against my chest. “I’m sorry, sweetie … so sorry…”

“He told me that accidents happen, that they understand that, if I’d tell them where the body was, they’d work with me. That I’m still a juvenile—”

“No.” Aunt Sara jerked back again, her fingers digging into my biceps. “You are not going to confess.”

I shook my head slowly, feeling my stringy hair slip against the sides of my face. “But some of it’s true,” I whispered. “I
was
mad at Jessica. And I did pull up those news stories…”

Aunt Sara frowned.

“But I didn’t make those Facebook postings,” I said. “And I never went to that field. I swear to God, I didn’t—”

“I know you didn’t.”

The absolute unwavering faith in her eyes, her voice, fed some place deep inside of me. No matter how hard I’d pushed earlier, how hateful I’d been, Aunt Sara was standing by me.
“I want to go home.”

“And I’m going to take you there,” she promised. “Aaron’s taking care of it. They have nothing to hold you on.”

I blinked. “W-what?”

“You didn’t break,” she said through a sad, proud smile. “They have nothing to warrant an arrest.”

I sat back, tried to bring everything into focus.

“Oh,
cher,
I’m so sorry,” she said again. “None of this should have happened. DeMarcus went too far. If Aaron had been here…” She pursed her lips. “You’re going to be okay, you understand me? You’re going to be okay.”

Maybe it was the way she looked at me, the love and promise in her eyes. Or maybe it was the way she was touching me, and wouldn’t let go. All I knew was that finally, finally my eyes filled. “He walked away.”

Aunt Sara blinked, absently shoving a tangle of dark hair from her mouth. “Who walked away?”

“Chase,” I whispered, and the tears fell. “Chase walked away.”

She rocked back, sliding her hands to take mine. There was warmth there. Strength.

“He was with you?”

“At the house,” I said, seeing him all over again, letting go. Backing away. “I trusted him,” I said. Like a fool. “I—God, I was so wrong!” I’d known all along. I’d known better than to let down my guard. But somehow I’d forgotten all that. I’d started to believe.

“I told him,” I whispered, and the regret practically tore me in half. “I told him everything.”

Aunt Sara’s beautiful face fell. “About your dreams?”

“And Mom.”

She let out another rough breath, flicking her tongue against her front teeth.

“I—He—We … I thought I could trust him,” I muttered. “He said he wanted to help. I tried to keep him away, but he kept after me, telling me he was going to find out the truth whether I wanted him to or not.”

“Oh, sweetie…”

“And I trusted him,” I said again, because really, it all kept coming back to that.
“I trusted him.”

Aunt Sara squeezed my hands.

“You should have seen the way he looked at me.” I sniffed past the tears, shutting them away—
ordering
them away. I was not going to let myself cry another lame tear over anything.

Aunt Sara’s smile was sad, but full of strength and promise and what I’d always imagined maternal love would look like. “Give him time,” she said in a strangely quiet voice. “He’ll figure it out. He’ll be back.”

I looked down, back toward my mother’s oceanlike stone. “It won’t matter.” Because no matter what Chase figured out, it would never erase what had already happened.
“He walked away.”

Nothing could change that.

*   *   *

Aunt Sara pushed open a door. Beyond sprawled the brightly lit reception area of the 8th District police station in the heart of the French Quarter. Once a beautiful old bank, the historic building with its high ceilings and boxy rooms seemed far too majestic for its current purpose.

“What time is it?” Normally I would have checked my phone, but I had no idea where it was.

“A little after eight,” Aunt Sara said, following me through the door. Her gold pumps echoed against the hard tile.

I’d gone to the house on Prytania shortly after lunch. At the most, Detective Jackson had shown up late afternoon. Two or three hours, I realized. I’d been in that claustrophobic little windowless room for two or three hours.

I looked around. My heart beat erratically. My breath was a little choppy. There were chairs. Most of them were full. There was a sign-in desk with a line of six people, four guys and two women. A guy that looked somewhere in his twenties was complaining to anyone who would listen about his pickpocketed wallet. One of the women had blood on the side of her face.

“Hey, hang on—”

The rough voice came from behind me. My heart stopped as I swung around—but it was not Chase who called to us. It was Detective LaSalle. Dressed in a sports coat and khakis, he pushed through the door, his face a collection of hard, worried lines—and something so real and sincere it made everything inside of me twist.

“You okay?” he asked, putting a hand to my aunt’s wrist.

She looked up at him. “We will be.”

Then he glanced at me. “I heard DeMarcus was pretty rough in there,” he said, and for a fleeting moment, I had to wonder if this was some kind of good cop/bad cop routine.

My eyes met his. I refused to blink. “I had nothing to do with what happened to Jessica Morgenthal.”

LaSalle’s mouth flattened. “Then you have nothing to worry about.” We stood that way a long moment before he returned his attention to my aunt. “Got a sec?” he asked.

She glanced back at me.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I can wait.”

She didn’t look thrilled, but let him lead her back to the door we’d just used. “I’ll be right back,” she said, then slipped away, leaving me alone in the crazy rush of nighttime in a police station.

And I lost it.

I’ll never know what made me turn. I’ll never know what made me head for the door, the darkness. What made me walk outside. Run.

But I did. I did all of that. Without stopping to think. Without stopping to care. I knew that I needed to get out of there. To get away.

To breathe.

Beyond the big white door that separated those who watched from those who did not, I hurried past the massive columns that had once welcomed patrons to a grand old bank, down the few stairs, through the iron gate, to the rain-cooled night beyond.

And just ran.

*   *   *

No one knew. No one cared. I’m not sure anyone even noticed. People filled the streets and sidewalks. Walking. Lingering. Laughing. Dancing. Drinking. Some were old, some were young. Some looked like they belonged. Others looked like they’d fallen down the rabbit hole.

Bourbon Street had that effect on people.

Several blocks from the police station, I slipped into the throng of partygoers, and vanished.

I don’t know how long I walked, how many blocks I passed. I just knew that I never wanted it to stop. I wanted to be anonymous forever, to walk without being seen, look without seeing. To close my eyes without … remembering.

I moved with the crowd, let it guide me, direct me. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to consider. I only wanted …

To go back.

That’s what I wanted, I realized. To go back. To before. Not the night before, when Chase had looked into my eyes and promised to help me forget.

No, before that, before I’d even imagined or considered. I wanted to erase all that. Forget all that. Forget Chase, New Orleans. All that I’d learned about my mother and my birthright.
Myself.
I wanted to go back to Colorado, before my grandmother died. I wanted to stay home that day, to keep her from getting those ridiculous sweet potatoes. I wanted to go back and—