Particles of Obsession (A Shadow of Death Romantic Suspense Book 2)

* * *

C
opyright
© 2016 by Charlotte Raine

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

T
he bullet hole
is slightly to the right of Alex’s forehead. A trail of blood flows down the right side of his nose, but stops at the curve of his nostrils. The weapon must have been a small caliber gun.

I check his wrist for a pulse—just to be certain—but his skin is already cooling, so I know he’s dead. It’s not that warm in his room, so I would estimate that he’s been dead for at least a couple hours.

Dead bodies in movies and books are always portrayed as limp, lifeless piles of flesh. But his body seems stiff except the bullet wound. The wound doesn’t seem to be bleeding anymore, but the red is vibrant and there’s brain matter on the blanket and sheets underneath him. It’s life, pouring out into view.

The sirens are getting louder. I can only assume one of the fraternity brothers found Alex here and called 9-1-1. The door is closed, so if my past experience with dead bodies is right, that means one or more of the fraternity brothers were repulsed by the sight of his body. They ran out of the room, and they might not even know if he’s dead. That will mean the whole cavalry would have been called—and with the cavalry comes the commanders, also known as the police.

If I stay, they’ll use that against me. I had motive, means, and opportunity.

I jump back out the window and onto the patio roof. From there, I scramble down the oak tree. As my feet touch the grass, a car’s tires spin against the gravel. It’s not the ambulance, and I have no desire to figure out if it’s Detective Stolz or Detective Macmillan.

I run without any destination in mind, just putting as much space between myself and Alex’s dead body as possible. It’s cold enough that there’s a mixture of snow and rain precipitation coming down around me. It occurs to me that I left Alex’s bedroom window open—someone will find that suspicious, especially when it’s winter. My fingerprints will be all over the window frame. I don’t remember seeing my gun, but Alex had it, so it could have been used against him. Detective Stolz knows I wanted to kill him—that I even brought that gun to Freewren Park to scare him.

There will be no reason for them to look for any other suspect because all the signs point to me.

The first place they’ll search for me is my apartment. The second place is where I work. The third place is the hospital where my parents are with Liam. Then, maybe their magic shop. I know their drill. They know the same thing I did when I was tracking down Alex—we are creatures of habit and we’ll always return to places of familiarity.

My legs begin to feel like anchors. I slow as I recognize a large willow tree in somebody’s front yard. As I continue to jog, I see a mailbox shaped like a pick-up truck and a short, wrought iron fence that I also recognize in front of other houses.

I stop in front of the house without anything distinctive about it. It’s painted white with navy blue shutters and there’s a small porch.

I’ve made a mistake.

It has to be past five o’clock by now. I stare at John’s driveway, where his car is missing. Why wouldn’t he be here?

A date, a meeting, a poetry reading, a dinner out with friends. There are a thousand reasons he wouldn’t be here to save someone who is nearly a stranger to him and who will soon be accused of murder.

And once I’m accused of murder, they won’t be looking for the real murderer.

I flinch as I hear a car pass by. I need to get out of sight instead of waiting around for the police to drive by and find me.

I praise the gods that this isn’t a busy neighborhood, and I grab a small rock from an amateur stone wall around an overgrown garden. I travel around the house until I see the egress window that leads to the basement. I kneel down and slam the rock into the window. The shattering sound is louder than I expect. I look around. I don’t see anybody peering out of their window. I look back into the basement. It’s darker than death. I can see about a foot down and there’s nothing to rest my feet on. I’ll have to risk breaking my ankle.

I slide my legs through first. They dangle as I continue to slide my body in. My feet still aren’t touching anything. I grip the sides of the window—broken glass piercing my hand—as I lower myself. I’ve stretched as far as I can go and my feet still aren’t touching anything.

Well, here goes. I drop myself into the darkness.

My feet slam into something hard, pain pulsing in my ankles. I kneel down, touching the cold metal beneath me. I reach forward, feeling a few round dials.

I’m standing on a washing machine.

I half clamber, half fall down, pain shooting up from my ankles again. My eyes begin to adjust to the darkness. There’s not much here, but I don’t know what else I would expect from a bachelor’s house. John doesn’t seem like the type to own a foosball table or any of those man cave items.

Once I can see more clearly, I find the stairs and walk up. John’s house is a mess. There are stacks of books and papers leaning in towers on the floor leading from the hallway to the living room. Once I’m in the living room, I find a wall that has at least fifty pieces of paper, index cards, and sticky notes taped and pinned to it.

G
reen sticky note
:

Parents on a month long vacation?

Parents died?

Estranged?

W
hite index card
:

Late twenties

Red hair

Pays attention to small details

A bit of a pain in the ass

Suffering from profound loss

“
I
’m not suffering
,” I mutter, tearing the index card down. He’s writing about me. I should have known—I did know. There’s another note beside the last one.

B
lue sticky note
:

Deceased loved one:

Favorite aunt/uncle

Childhood best friend

Sibling or young cousin that’s like a sibling

I
tear
down that note too.

“What the hell?” a male voice asks.

I spin around. John is standing in the door frame of the living room. His blond hair—longer on top and shaved on the sides—looks much messier than I’ve ever seen it and he looks tired, but as he gazes at me, he seems more alert than ever. He also looks handsomer than ever. I shove the sticky note and index card into my jeans pocket. “Um.”

“What are you doing here? How did you get in here?”

“Your car isn’t here,” I say. “Why are you here?”

“My car’s in the shop,” he says. “I prefer using the bus, anyway. I only use my car if I need to travel to the city. The more pertinent question is still what
you’re
doing here. Did you break into my house?”

“Well…just the basement.” This isn’t how I foresaw this conversation going. The last thing I need before I explain that I’m not a murderer despite what everyone’s thinking and what evidence suggests, is having to explain that I’m also not breaking into people’s houses—except for the fact that I just did.

“Why are you breaking into my house?”

“Because I thought you weren’t here,” I say. “I needed to get off the street.”

“Don’t you have an apartment in the city?” he asks.

“I…”

I try to form the words, to tell him what happened, but the look on his face doesn’t have any malice or distrust in it and I don’t want him to look at me the way I’ve looked at him.

I take two quick steps toward him, wrap my arms around his neck, and kiss him. It feels fake and it is fake, but I need something to distract me or my mind is going to explode. Everything has gone to shit within a matter of hours and there’s no way it can be fixed.

He kisses me back, his hands moving up to my jawline and into my crimson hair. He cups my face as I reach under his shirt. As my fingers—still cold from being outside—touch his toned stomach, he flinches and steps back from me.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur. “You know, winter, skin gets cold…but I’m sure you could warm them up.”

“It’s not that.” He rubs a hand over his face, as if trying to clear his mind. “You’re acting weird. Is everything okay?”

I try to repress a scowl, but it comes out anyway. I grab the sticky note and index card out of my pocket and unfurl my hand to show them to him. He takes them out of my palm and reads them.

“You’re writing about me?” I demand. “After I told you how bad I thought it was that you were writing about your students?”

He shrugs. “I was just coming up with ideas.”

“You said I was a pain in the ass.”

“I said a
bit
of a pain in the ass,” he says. “And I’m not seeing anything that disproves my characterization. Besides…how are you so sure this is about you? I’m surrounded by twenty-somethings in the classroom and some of them do have red hair.”

“Really?” I ask. “Okay. Tell me that this character you’re inventing isn’t based on me.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” he says. “I’m just saying it’s presumptuous to think it is.”

I cross my arms over my chest. I can’t argue with him right now. He’s my last hope.

“Can I stay here for a couple hours?” I ask.

He tilts his head. “What? You criticize me for basing a character off you and now you want to stay here?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what just happened,” I say. He sighs, shaking his head. “Sure. Fine. Great. On one condition: you tell me why you need to stay here.”

“Maybe it’s because I really like your couch,” I say, gesturing to his dark blue loveseat.

“I have a guest room,” he says. “You can stay there. Come on, I’ll show you.”

He leads me up the stairs and I follow him into the first room. It's a pale green color with a small twin-sized bed, covered in a red and white quilt.

"It's nice," I say. "Thank you."

He keeps his eyes on me--trying to read me or write me. It has to be one of the two.

“You never answered my question,” he says. “About why you’re staying here.”

“I said I liked your couch,” I say. “I do. It’s a very nice couch. My couch has lost some of its bounce. I like yours better.”

“Are you seriously skipping my one requirement for you to stay here?” he asks.

I walk over and sit on the bed. John takes a step toward me, but mostly lingers by the door. “Ask me a different question. Any question you want. There’s nothing too personal you could ask right now.”

"What's your happiest memory?"

"Excuse me?"

"I'm just curious," he says, leaning against the door frame. "What is your happiest memory? When you think 'happy', what do you think about from your own life?"

"Endless chicken wings."

He smirks. "I'm serious. Come on. The only time I've seen you happy is when you're drunk, but I know you have to have happy memories without alcohol. There’s still hope in your eyes, so you can’t have been miserable your whole life.”

I take a deep breath. I want to tell him to fuck off, but there is a memory bubbling to the surface that I need to tell someone or the emotions ricocheting inside of me might tear me apart.

“For our first date, my ex-boyfriend, Andre, snuck me into the zoo after it was closed,” I say. “Most of the animals were hidden away, but some of them were still visible. He had brought some picnic food, we ate, and there was this spot behind the bird enclosures where it was dark enough that we could see so many stars in the sky...I think about that night a lot. I think it was the happiest night of my life."

He nods, though his bottom lip is slightly protruding like he's disappointed in my response.

"So...why didn’t you stay with Andre?" he asks.

I twirl my hair around my fist. "I didn't think I could trust him," I confess. "He had betrayed me in a terrible way and though he did everything he could to make up for it, I just didn't think I could ever trust him again. And honestly...I was scared. I knew if I continued my life with him, everything would change, and I wasn't ready for that."

He nods. "That makes sense. You should trust whoever you’re with and you should be confident in whatever changes happen in your life.”

“You sound like a fortune cookie,” I say.

“Maybe that used to be my dream job,” he jokes. He runs his hand through his hair, the strands slowly falling back into place. “You look tired. You should go to sleep."

I fall onto my back, staring up at the white ceiling in the room. “I broke your basement window."

He exhales. "Of course you did. I'll take care of that later.”

“I can do it,” I say, sitting up. “We don’t want too much cold air blowing in.”

He takes several steps forward, placing his hand on my shoulder and pushing me onto my back. It should be paternal and controlling, but the gesture is gentle enough that it doesn’t feel that way.

“I’ll take care of it,” he says. “Seriously. How would you ever fix a window?”

“A lot of duct tape?”

“Just go to sleep,” he says. “Maybe in the morning you’ll be willing to tell me what’s going on.”

“Maybe,” I concede, but I don’t believe it. He walks back toward the door. "John?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to try to trust you.”

"Thank you." He flicks the light switch off. I crawl under the sheets, my body feeling like I'm moving through water. My head nestles into the pillow and, for the first time today, I almost forget that my life is in ruins.