Particles of Obsession (A Shadow of Death Romantic Suspense Book 2) (3 page)

* * *

"
I
need
to ask you to do something for me," I say as I walk into John's house. For a second, I think he's not here until I find him at his desk in his living room. He raises an eyebrow at me, tossing the pad of paper he was writing on onto the coffee table.

"What do you need?" he asks.

"I need you to question the fraternity brothers," I say.

"Last time I wanted to question the frat boys, you didn't want me to be involved."

"Last time, I wasn't being hunted by the police and the police weren't hanging around the fraternity house," I say. "Times have changed. As a professor, you should know how time changes things. You get to meet new eighteen year olds every year and say goodbye to twenty-two year olds.”

"Actually, I see more of how things stay the same." He chews on the tip of his pen. "Fine. It's probably best if I wait until tomorrow at least. I'm sure the police are still lingering there now and if I go there--"

"--it could remind the police that you've been associated with me," I finish.

"Associated? Is that what the kids call it nowadays?" he teases. His smile disappears. "I've found more information about the case through different news networks and the rumor mill within the school, so I think I deserve to know at least one thing."

"What's that?"

"Why was your ex-boyfriend at Alex's apartment?"

"He was investigating for me," I say. "Or...he was investigating despite the fact that I told him to not do anything without telling me. He wasn't supposed to be there. I don't think Alex planned on killing him. That would be a really stupid thing to do--killing someone in your own secret apartment and leaving him...leaving his body there."

I take a deep breath, trying to regain any semblance of stability. John sets down his pen. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He shakes his head like he doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t press the issue, either.

"It does seem strange," he says. "Maybe it was Alex’s accomplice that killed your ex."

"With poison?" I ask. "That seemed to be Alex's area."

"Yes, Alex seemed very smart though," he says. "We never suspected him. He acted like the womanizing, stupid frat boy and we believed it. We never thought he was the killer because he knew how we expected him to act and he acted that way. And clearly, most students in chemistry are rather intelligent. So...why would he make such a big mistake?"

"Why would someone else kill Andre?" I ask. "Alex could have figured out about Andre's connection to me, but no one else would really know about it."

"He could have just said something that alerted the accomplice to his motives for being there," he says. "I don't know. I can ask the people who live in Alex's apartment building if anyone else went into his apartment."

I nod. "That's a good plan. I mean, I doubt anyone did notice because I don't really notice anyone in my building, but I'll go for any plan right now."

"Good," he says. "I don't want you to go to prison."

I stare at him. He's still mostly a stranger to me, but he's the only person I could rely on. For some reason, this isn’t as terrifying of a thought as I would expect it to be.

"I guess...since I came here...you know that I'm not really close to anybody," I say, sitting down on his couch. "I...I suppose you want to add that to your story.
Redheaded pain in the ass does not have any friends
."

He smirks. "I got the impression that you were close to your family. You just can't go to them right now because the police will be watching them. I understand. Besides, you know the same thing about me now. I've only had one real relationship in my adult life and...it was never real. It's more like we were both lonely, so we decided to travel in this life together for short bursts of time. There was never any sense or feeling that it was true love."

"You think that's real?" I ask. "Do you think there's true love?"

"I saw true love in your expression when you were talking about Andre and your happiest memory," he says. "So...yes. I've seen it in other people's faces as well. Hell, maybe I've even felt it and the other person just didn't feel the same way. You can love someone completely and maybe they just don't feel the same thing. It's okay. It hurts, but it's okay."

I remember his expression after I told him about Andre. He was hurt, but I can't imagine I'm the one he would fall far.

Then again, why else would he protect me from the police?

* * *

E
ight days left
until all of the students leave for winter break. They have a little over a month off. As soon as they’re gone, the killer could be gone too.

And the police aren’t even looking for the killer, because they assume Alex killed everyone and I killed Alex.

“And I can’t do anything because you fuckers are trying to track me down,” I say aloud, though nobody is in the house. I’m going stir crazy. I have to find something to do.

I walk over to John’s desk in his living room. I sit down and pull open the center drawer. At least a dozen sheets of paper and scraps of paper have been stuffed into it. Some of them are covered with printed text, and some of them have his handwriting scribbled over them. I pull out a handful.

P
ossible jobs
: dog walker/groomer/breeder or guitar manufacturer?

M
ain conflict
? Pressure from parents, pressure from fiancé, impending deadline of two scholarships

S
etting
: Maine, New Jersey, along border of Mexico, Tennessee?

I
have acted
like a good person, but immorality seems to be a genetic factor in my biological family. My father was a gambling addict, who had a fondness for prostitutes. He was arrested for beating up one of those prostitutes he was so fond of when I was six years old. I’ve told a couple of people about how he was arrested and they’re always surprised that I know why he was arrested—they think someone would have invented some lie for me to believe, but that wouldn’t have worked because I was with him when he assaulted this woman. The judge refused to give my mother custody because my mother was rambling about how the government was trying to frame my father during the sentencing. This essentially defines my parents: one was morally corrupt and reckless, and the other was crazy and willing to believe anything my father told her. I was never close to any of my relatives—likely because they avoided my parents—so I landed in the fucked-up arms of the foster care system.

Still, there are times that I can’t tell when something is moral or immoral. I have been basing my stories on my students for the last four or five years, and it was recently pointed out to me that this isn’t the most moral action to take. It hadn’t really crossed my mind that it was wrong—I was just fascinated by all these different personalities and stories I was told and I wanted to spin my stories around them. Usually, I would dismiss someone criticizing my writing like that—it is art, after all—but I was told this by a person I respect a lot. So now I’m stuck. I don’t want to be morally corrupt.

But, damn, do I want to write about this person now.

I shuffle that piece of paper to the back of the stack. At first I’d thought he was writing in character or something, but the part about being told he shouldn’t write about his students…that sounds like a conversation
we
had. That can’t be right, though, can it? Does he respect me? I feel like a narcissist for thinking he’d be writing about me like this. Shaking off the thoughts, I look at the next page.

“Be a man.”

“Man up.”

“Act like a man.”

I was told this multiple times—in a derogatory way when I was in foster care, but also when I had to act as a witness at my father’s trial and my father’s defense lawyer didn’t want me to cry too much because it annoyed my father. I grew up with these ideas of masculinity: aggressive, strength, never emotional, never soft.

But as she touches me, I can feel my skin and everything underneath it softening, turning into something malleable for her to change me into something better. I don’t feel less masculine—I feel like every nerve in my body has become tender, but harder than steel.

If there is such a thing as masculinity, can’t it only be strengthened when it comes into contact with femininity?

When I reach for her, I feel more than a woman in my hands. I feel a person I could entwine myself in and be engulfed by without any complaints. She has all of the soft flesh and beauty of a woman, but I can feel a raw power in her that could have belonged to either sex.

So, I dive in and let her tide overcome me.

I stuff the papers back into his desk and close the drawer. I want to deny that this last piece of paper is about me, but I remember him touching me, I remember that look in his eyes as if he had figured out everything he wanted to figure out. He had seen me as his other half, but I hadn’t wanted to divide myself to complete him.

But there’s something here, between us, and I don’t think I can ignore it anymore. I don’t think I can shove it aside until a convenient moment. It’s here, and it’s big.

His door opens. I stand up, walking over toward his couch and trying to make it look like I had just stood up after sitting all day. I stretch as he walks into the room.

“You doing okay?” he asks.

I nod, but my mind is still on the papers in his desk. That confession of…love? Something stronger?

He continues, “I would have thought someone like you would have been bored out of their mind by now.”

“Well, you know…once you lose your mind, things become a lot more interesting,” I say. “What’s going on?”

“I talked to the frat boys,” he says. “I didn’t find out anything interesting. It was Daniel who found him, the window was closed when Daniel found him, but it was open when the police came around. The door was closed between those two times, so someone must have gone through the window to get into the room—”

“That was me,” I interrupt.

He raises an eyebrow. “Okay. Well, Alex seemed to flirt a lot, but he wasn’t involved with anybody as far as the fraternity knew. They told me he wasn’t the kind to settle down. He also didn’t really hang out with anybody who wasn’t part of the fraternity, and they swear that none of them were involved with his death.”

“If one of them killed him, it wouldn’t make sense to leave his body there in the house,” I say. “I don’t think it was any of them.”

“I also swung by Alex’s apartment after finding out the address from a friend who works at a news station…his neighbors weren’t helpful. I doubt most of them could have picked Alex out of a line-up, much less anyone who visited him, and there aren’t any surveillance cameras inside or around the building. I’m sorry, Mira. I was hoping to find something to help you out, but there isn’t anything to find.”

I frown, but my mind isn’t on the case. “I have to ask you something and I want you to be honest.”

“You aren’t going to accuse me of murder again, are you?” he asks. “Because I’m not the one under suspicion this time.”

“No,” I say. “My question is about us.”

He presses his lips together for a few seconds. I can’t read his expression. “Okay.”

“How do you feel about me?” I ask. “Am I like one of your students or—”

“I told you I haven’t slept with any of my students,” he says. “I wasn’t lying. And considering I have slept with you, it would be hard for me to feel the same way about you as I do about my students.”

“Let me simplify the question then: are you in love with me?” I don’t know what answer I want to hear, but as he remains standing in front of me, not saying anything, I can feel my anxiety growing. I’m not sure I can handle either answer. For God’s sake, my last boyfriend was just murdered because of me. “Never mind. Forget I asked. Let’s focus on the case.”

“No,” he says. “I think we do need to clear the air here. We can’t work on something as dangerous as this if we don’t trust each other.”

I barely nod.

“So…I don’t know how I feel about you,” he says. “I mean, I’ve just been informed that you’re the number one suspect in a murder. We only met because these murders were being committed. It’s a very emotional time and your last boyfriend, who I can tell that you were in love with, was just killed. I don’t know if either of us could understand how we feel right now. I mean, I shouldn’t speak for you because for all I know, you hate my guts and you’re only here because everyone else thinks you’re a murderer, but…I do care about you. If I cared about you any less, I would hope I would have gone to the police by now, but I haven’t because I don’t want you to go to prison. I’m not even sure I would have turned you in if you had told me that you did kill Alex.”

“I didn’t,” I say.

He nods. “I believe you.”

I’m not sure if he’s being truthful, but they’re the words I need to hear right now. I walk over to him, wrapping my arms around his neck. I hug him and he hugs me back. It’s nice to be held—to feel like someone is helping to keep me in one piece.