Alone (13 page)

What he’d seen hadn’t horrified
him.
The
sight of blood hadn’t fazed him. If she remembered rightly, he
offered to help, but why? Why didn’t he call the cops? The minute
he walked in on her with the knife in her hand, he should have
picked up the phone. Instead, he offered to help.

Once more, guilt flooded her, but this
time for a different reason. Serenity hadn’t intended to involve
Sebastian. She would gladly give herself up to the police and
confess if it meant he’d never be implicated.

Now, thanks to her, he was an accessory to
murder.

There’s still time,
she told
herself,
I
can still go to the police.

When
—if—Sebastian came back, she’d make
him tell her exactly what he’d done with the body. Then she’d tell
the police she covered up her crime alone. As far as the police
were concerned, Sebastian didn’t even exist.

So where was he now? She didn’t think he’d
slept in the bed with her, but she couldn’t remember him
leaving.

Serenity chewed at her lip. She needed to
go downstairs, into the kitchen, face what she had done. The
thought made her feel sick and lightheaded all over again. She
wasn’t sure if she could handle seeing the place where the murder
happened. What if Sebastian hadn’t done as he said and left
instead? What if she went downstairs and Jackson was still lying on
the linoleum, covered in blood?

A sharp sob broke the silence
and she pressed her hands over her face.
Oh, God, how am I supposed to do
this?

In that moment, she would gladly have
Jackson alive again if it meant she didn’t have to walk down the
stairs.

Her clothes from the previous
night were nowhere to be seen.
She picked her robe off the back of her occasional
chair and, before pulling the garment on, she glanced down at
herself.

Not
a drop of blood marred her skin. All
at once, she remembered the hot water and Sebastian holding her in
the shower. She recalled the security of his arms protecting her
from the horror of what had happened. He held her against his
chest, his own clothes soaking as she clung to his neck, her face
buried against his throat. She yearned for him then, desperately
wanting his presence with every fiber of her soul.

Where was he?

Serenity’s legs trembled beneath
her as she made her way to the bathroom. She
expect
ed to
find her bloodied clothes on the floor, blood smeared across the
sink and bath, but the bathroom was spotless.

A flicker of hope ran through her. Had she
dreamed the whole thing? Maybe she’d gone crazy and none of this
happened?

Was being insane better than the
truth?

Like an old woman, she left the bathroom
and went into the hallway, clutching frailly to the banister of the
stairs. Her legs wobbled and her head swam. A couple of times she
had to stop and compose herself. Silent tears ran down her
cheeks.

She made it to the bottom, taking choking
little gasps of breath before continuing.

Using the wall for balance, she stumbled
along the hallway. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it might
explode from her chest or burst blood vessels in her
ears.

In her mind, she saw Jackson lying on the
kitchen floor, one arm bent at an awkward angle behind his head,
blood smeared glasses hanging off his face. She saw the blood,
thick as oil, covering their old fashioned green linoleum. The
vision had been burned into her brain and she would see her dead
husband’s face every time she closed her eyes.

She didn’t want to do this, but she
had to.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, she forced
herself to walk into the kitchen.

It was empty.

In disbelief and amazement, she walked in,
her bare feet treading on the floor that, only a few hours ago, had
been saturated with her husband’s blood. Like the bathroom, the
place was spotless. It looked as though nothing had
happened.

Suddenly panicked she had imagined it all,
she raced back up into the bedroom and slammed open the closet
door. Desperately, she threw out shoes and bags, searching for the
bag she had packed for herself.

The back pack was missing.

Empty out your bag,
Sebastian told
her.
Pack
some of his things. I can make it look like he’s left
you.

Still in a panic, mind
blur
red, she
yanked open Jackson’s drawers, one after the other, flinging out
shirts, pants and underwear. Some of the items were gone; not much
but enough to notice.

Clothes littered every
surface
but
Serenity wasn’t finished yet. She opened the bedside drawer where
Jackson kept his passport and discovered the document was missing.
She went into the bathroom and saw what she hadn’t before; empty
spaces on the shelf where his toothbrush and shaving kit normally
stood.

Her chest heaved from the
exertion and she took a moment to catch her breath. Only one
room remained
unchecked, the spare bedroom—the one Jackson used as an office. The
room was tiny, barely big enough for his desk and a set of shelves.
Serenity never went in there. Jackson had made it clear—if he ever
found out she’d been in his office, he would make her pay. Fear
that he’d set up some kind of trap stopped her from going in when
he went out.

Even now, with Jackson dead, the idea of
going in scared her. He’d trained her well.

With a shaking hand, she pushed open the
door. The standby light on his PC glowed, a mountain of paper
balanced beside the monitor.

His book,
she thought with a pang of
uneasy regret.
He’ll never finish it now.

She wondered if anyone else had
seen
the
manuscript, if he’d been in touch with anyone about publishing the
book. Someone might notice his sudden lack of
communication.

The uneasiness did a
summersault
in the pit of her stomach. What if someone reported him
missing? How well would she hold up if the police came asking
questions?

Serenity turned her attention back to the
office. Stacks of men’s magazines were piled on the floor and
several cups of old coffee stood congealing beside them. Crushed,
empty beer cans piled high in the trash. Wafts of stale alcohol and
feet washed over her.

This was what remained of her husband;
this disgusting little room.

S
ick to her stomach again, she backed out
of the office and gently shut the door behind her. She would have
to deal with his things at some point but not now.

Somehow, Sebastian had done this for her.
He’d fulfilled his promise and made Jackson disappear. Her earlier
thoughts about telling the police had been quashed. She didn’t know
how Sebastian had managed everything so perfectly but she would
never be able to fool the police into thinking she had done the
cleanup alone. Now it wasn’t just her freedom on the line, but
Sebastian’s as well.

A
spark of hope flared up again. Didn’t
doing this for her prove he cared?

W
hat now?

Still shaken and terrified, the words ran
over and over in her mind, like a foreign language she needed to
practice but didn’t quite understand.

I killed Jackson. I killed
Jackson. I killed Jackson.

The moments before she murdered
him
replayed
in her mind. She hadn’t been aware of her actions; she simply
reacted. Serenity remembered Jackson laughing at the thought of her
trying to leave. After that, everything was a blur.

She compared herself to Jackson;
how, after beating her, he would tell her he hadn’t meant it,
hadn’t known what he was doing.
‘I don’t know what came over me,’
he would
plead.
‘Why
do you push me to do these things?’

Serenity could use all of those lines now.
For the first time, she could put herself in Jackson’s shoes and
she hated it.

The thought brought her tears back, but
she forced herself to stop, worried they smacked of self-pity.
Tears were another one of Jackson’s favorite hands to play. Had she
really become like him?

What to do now? Continue as if nothing had
happened?

Half an hour ago, she thought herself
unable to eat again. Now her stomach churned, overly hungry and a
little sickly. With the sensation came an intense craving for a cup
of hot, sweet coffee.

Could she make breakfast in the room where
she’d committed murder? The idea felt as crazy as the killing, but
she found she could do it. Going back to the scene of the crime,
she filled up the kettle with water from the tap and switched it
on. She didn’t stop shaking, however, and kept glancing back at the
spot where she’d last seen her husband.

Serenity tried to pile coffee into her
cup, but her hands shook so badly the brown granules spilled over
the countertop. She lifted the kettle and boiling water followed
the granules, that too spilling over the counter. Not noticing the
amount she put into the mug, she dumped full spoons of sugar into
the murky brown liquid.

Taking her too sweet, too strong coffee
into the living room, she curled up on the couch and tucked her
bare feet beneath her. Out of habit, she reached for her necklace.
Her fingers found nothing but skin. Of course, Jackson had broken
it. The memory speared her with pain and she quickly snatched her
hand away from her throat, pushing away the recollection to
preserve her sanity.

For several hours, long after her coffee
had grown cold in her hands, Serenity stared into space, lost in
the river of thoughts and memories swelling around her, threatening
to pull her under.

Chapter Eleven

Serenity woke up on the
couch with her head
kinked at an odd angle. She moved and pain speared up through her
neck, the muscles stiff from where she’d been lying.

The light in the room had
changed. The bright glow of morning had given way to the shade and
shadows of dusk. A glance at
the clock confirmed her suspicion: quarter to six;
she had slept most of the day.

Serenity pushed
herself to sitting,
her hand rubbing at her aching neck. The house was still and silent
around her. She didn’t think Sebastian had been back while she
slept.

Sighing heavily, she
pulled the throw
down from the back of the couch; protection against the cool of the
night. The cold didn’t come from the air, but from somewhere deep
inside, chilling her to the bone. Serenity pulled her knees to her
chest, hugging herself for comfort.

What if he didn’t come back? She wouldn’t
blame him in the slightest; after all, he’d seen what she was and
she wouldn’t hold him responsible him for not wanting to get
involved further. But what she would do if he didn’t return? The
possibility filled her with terror.

If she didn’t have him, she had
nothing.

Serenity pulled the throw closer. How
quickly life turned on a dime. One moment everything was the same,
then one action changed every...

A flash of glowing yellow at the window
halted her thoughts. She froze, breath stopping in her
chest.

Eyes? Cat’s
eyes?

Serenity blinked. Only an empty window
faced her.

Did she see something in the
dark?

Shaken, she turned away from the window,
but the certainty that someone watched her remained. The sensation
unsettled her and the hairs on Serenity’s arms and the back of her
neck stood to attention.

Staring
down at her hands, she pretended to
be engrossed by her nails. The sense of being watched grew
stronger; as if she reached out, she might touch the person
standing over her.

Serenity whipped up her head.

Like catching a shadow out of the corner
of her eye, a flash of yellow winked at the window.

Sebastian?

If so, why didn’t he just come
in
? He’d
never had a problem making an entrance before. Slowly, she pushed
to her feet and crossed the room. At the window, she cupped her
hand against the glass and peered out into the night.

A shiver ran down her
spine.

She must be getting paranoid. No wonder,
considering the events of the past twenty-four hours. She was
allowed to be a bit spooked.

With a new found bravery, and partly to
put her mind to rest, Serenity pushed open the window and leaned
out into the night.

“
Hello?” she called, her
voice too loud in the stillness.

N
o one answered.

Why wasn’t he back yet?
Serenity thought
nervously, wishing she had something to busy herself. She’d created
this mess yet she sat around doing nothing to help the situation.
She needed something to keep her busy, to stop her mind conjuring
up ghosts that didn’t exist.