Particles of Obsession (A Shadow of Death Romantic Suspense Book 2) (4 page)

I unwrap myself from him and kiss him. He’s right—emotions are high and I can’t tell if this is just my way of dealing with the grief of Andre’s death. But right now, I need this more than anything. I need him more than anything.

I
hope
you’re still paying attention because I know how my actions may seem to other people, but there’s more to this story and it can all be explained.

In the Mind of an Addict: How to Cope as an Addict or as a Loved One of an Addict

Looking into the Abyss: A Form Addict’s Discovery of the Truth and His Mind’s Deceit

The Encyclopedia of Drug Addiction

Without much thought, I took each book off of the shelf. My mind was too occupied to determine which one was worth buying, but they all seemed to be a “bestseller” or “#1” in some capacity, so I figured I should get them all.

“Don’t get
In the Mind of an Addict,
” a deep voice said. “It’s full of psychobabble, hippy bullshit.”

I turned around and saw a man around my age with messy blond hair and a big sweater with the word
Tuskmirth
splayed across it. He reminded me of James Dean in
Rebel Without a Cause
except he was skinnier and had a rounder face.

“Um, do I know you?” I asked.

“No, no, sorry…I, uh, I’ve just seen you around campus and, I, uh…well, the first time I really noticed you, you were practicing with your gymnastics team and you seemed like you were really good. I don’t watch much gymnastics, but the way everyone was reacting, it seemed like you were really good and it looked really good.”

I scowled. “You’re just another guy who wants to sleep with a gymnast, so you can brag about all of the flexible things we did in bed.”

He flushed. “No…really, that’s not what I was thinking. I just…you were just…graceful and strong. I always thought gymnastics was too feminine and uninteresting, but I’ve been going to your events and tournaments and…you’re stunning. It’s like every move you make is planned, but it doesn’t look mechanical and it’s still filled with passion.”

“So, you followed me here?” I accused, but I could feel myself warming up to him. He reminded me of a puppy, desperate for my affection and willing to perform any trick to get it. I almost wanted to test how far I could push him—how far would he go to get me to like him?

“Kind of, yeah,” he said, and his cheeks looked a little pink. “I mean, I’m sure I could find something I like here. Do they sell comic books?”

“You read comic books?”

“Nah,” he said. “But I figure those are cheaper than books and it could make me look less like a stalker.”

I held up
In the Mind of an Addict.
“How do you know about addiction literature?”

“My older brother was a cokehead,” he said. “Or maybe he still is. I don’t know. My parents kicked him out when I was fourteen. I saw him a few times, but around the time I turned sixteen, he stopped showing up. I’m not sure what happened to him.”

“You never wanted to figure out?”

“He is his own man,” he said, shrugging. “He can do what he likes and suffer the consequences for his actions. That’s how life works. We don’t need to make it any easier for people because it will just make it harder for them later.”

“It sounds like you’re reciting something from these books.”

“That’s more along the lines of my parent’s speeches,” he says. “But…now that I’ve divulged part of my life, I’m wondering why you’re interested in these books.”

“I’m writing a paper on drug addiction,” I said.

“Bullshit,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow. He had been trying to charm me before and this was in the complete opposite direction.

He continued, “If you were writing a paper, you would be getting more legitimate sources than these self-help books. You’re either an addict or you’re close to someone who is.”

“My father might have an issue with pain killers,” I said.

“Ah. Parents. The bane of us all. Well, since you’re close to your father—or at least, you’ve known him for a long time—I would say that he absolutely has an issue if you’re noticing it. Usually, people close to an addict don’t realize there’s a problem until they’re too far down the rabbit hole.”

He reached past me, his arm brushing against mine, and grabbed a big brown book. He put it on top of my pile. In big gold letters, it said
The Neurology of Drug Abuse
.

“This is the one you want,” he said. “It shouldn’t even be in the self-help section, but they put it there because there’s a few chapters where the author gives advice.”

“You’ve read it?” I asked.

“My mother wrote it,” he said. “I’m from a family of chemists. I don’t think it should be that shocking my brother became an addict. He did have a knack for mixing chemicals early in life.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Are you an addict?”

He looked me up and down, a slow smile spreading on his face. “Not to drugs.”

His name was Alex Shirokov, a name with so many sharp edges that when my tongue pronounced it, I could feel it get sliced. I liked the taste of the blood.

J
ohn left
for another class an hour ago, but he said he’d return as soon as it was over.

This wouldn’t make me so anxious if I hadn’t seen two police cars pass by his house. I pace in front of the wall with the sticky notes and index cards. One of the index cards says,
kill your darlings.
I wonder if the killer has been in this house and saw that index card or if John had said it once during a class.

Of course, if the killer has been to this house, it means I’m not as safe as I had thought I was.

I stare at his other notes. What if I could put my whole life story up like this? Just write every important event of my life onto an index card and put it in order? Would my life be boring? Would the only interesting parts be tragedies? Would my love life look like a roller coaster of swelling hope and discarded trust?

I shouldn’t be dwelling on these kinds of things. I should be thinking about what I’m going to do to earn money if I don’t end up in prison. Earning a living writing isn’t likely, but I don’t have any other options right now except for working for my parents at their magic shop.

Too bad it’s not as easy to disappear as magicians make it look.

John’s front door opens. It slams shut and John rushes into the room, breathless.

“The school is locking down,” John breathes. It looks like he ran the whole way home.

“Locking down? What does that mean?”

“I’m not supposed to go in to work, and the students have been told to stay in their dorms.”

“Why? What else has happened?” Because the way things have been going, it’s obvious something else has happened.

“Mira…it’s Kiona.”

“Kiona?” I ask. “Victoria’s roommate?”

“Yes,” he says. “She’s gone missing, and a threatening email from her was sent to the school yesterday. It’s just been reported that a gun she owned that was secured in her parent’s house is now missing. She must have gotten spooked by the police or us, and she’s on the run now.”

“You think she’s the killer?”

“Think about it,” he says. “She knew Victoria—they were roommates. Because she knew Victoria, she also could have known Alex through her. As for her motive…I don’t know. Maybe she was jealous of Victoria and decided to go after more people to throw us off. Maybe Alex brainwashed her into doing things. I really don’t know, but she’s run away with a weapon and she was angry at the school.”

I tilt my head. It makes more sense than anything we’ve come up with.

“Why was she angry at the school?”

“She was going to flunk out,” he says. “She has a 1.3 GPA and she hadn’t even taken her finals yet. Maybe the stress got to her.”

“These murders don’t seem stressed induced,” I say. “They seemed well-planned.”

He sits down beside me. “Come on, Mira. Why else would she run?”

“Did you know her at all?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I’ve never had a class with her. I only vaguely knew about her from Victoria. Victoria always spoke so highly of her…but maybe Kiona was obsessed with her, and that obsession turned deadly.”

“You sound like a movie preview now,” I say. “Well, should we go to the police with this information?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to catch Kiona before we act. I need to ensure that she’s guilty before I walk straight into a police station and, possibly, prison,” I say. “I have a feeling that the police are closing in, but I’m not going to seem like the crazy person who is trying to pin murders on someone without any real evidence. We should wait. She doesn’t just disappear with a gun without any intent to use it. If she’s the killer, she’ll try to reach out to you again.”

“I…Mira, I don’t know if you have that long before the police figure out that you’re here,” he says.

“It’s a risk,” I admit. “But it’s our only option.”

* * *

R
.A
. Justin Brewer’s door is wide open as he vacuums his room. His hips swing as he listens to his MP3 player and the vacuum creates lines in the thick blue carpet in front of his bed.

“I don’t know many undergraduates that enjoy vacuuming,” I call out to him.

He jerks, dropping the handle of the vacuum. It falls to the floor with a loud bang. He fumbles to pick it back up again, pulling out his ear buds at the same time.

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

“It’s fine,” he says, smoothing his beard. He pulls his MP3 player out of his pocket and sets it on his bed. “I just…uh…well, I’m stuck here with the lockdown, and everyone else is studying or partying. Vacuuming relaxes me.”

“You were a strange child, weren’t you?”

“You have no idea.”

“Is it all right if I ask you some questions about Kiona?”

He nods. “Of course. I guess I should have expected someone to come around at some point. Come, sit down.”

He gestures to his computer chair. When I sit down in it, he drags a beanie bag chair in front of it and sits down. It forces him to look up at me in order to make eye contact.

“So…what do you think about the whole situation with her?” I ask.

“It’s scary,” he says. “Pretty much anyone that lives within a couple hours of here has gone home. I live in Maine, so it’s not worth going up there if they could find her at any minute.”

“You think they will?” I ask. “Find her?”

He shrugs. “She doesn’t seem violent to me. I don’t know what she was thinking when she disappeared with her gun, but…I can’t see her ever committing a mass shooting or anything. She’s a good person. Maybe she’s just confused right now.”

“Do you know anything about her relationship with Victoria?”

His forehead scrunches up. “Like their roommate relationship?”

“Sure,” I say. “Anything. When you saw them interact, what did you see?”

“They were friends,” he says. “Good friends. I mean, as good as friends can be as roommates. I think they both hung out with their own circles, but they enjoyed each other’s company a lot.”

“So…you never saw them fighting?”

“It’s normal for roommates to fight,” he huffs. “It was nothing serious. Just the normal argument: Victoria was messy and Kiona wanted everything neat.”

If Kiona were a neat freak, it would make her good at killing people without leaving a trace.

I hear a loud rumble outside that's as familiar to me as the industrial soap in the lab's bathroom or the sound of my apartment neighbor's squeaking bed as he fucks his girlfriend.

It's Detective Stolz's Ford Mustang.

I move past Justin to look out his window. It's only her. That's a good sign. If there had been one or two more officers or even if she had been with Macmillan, it could mean she knows that I'm here.

As if she can feel my gaze, she turns around and looks straight up at me.

The muscles in my body tense, preparing to run, but Stolz doesn't move to pursue me. This could be my one chance to convince her that I'm innocent without her being close enough to arrest me. I can always run the moment she heads into the building. I yank open the window, the cold winter air bursting in.

“Mira,” she calls up, saying my name so slowly that I watch her lips form each letter. “I didn’t expect to find you here. I thought you would have been at your office.”

She hasn't released my name to the media yet. I suspect it's because she doesn't want all of the attention--the endless headlines questioning if the police are giving me special treatment because I worked beside them, or about how a simple science nerd committed murder right after Detective Stolz had seen me ready to kill the victim. It must be an embarrassment for her and I'm sure she wants to redeem herself by arresting me.

But, now, she's just toying with me. Either she has another plan or she wants to get a confession out of me while there's a witness.

“Well…I just thought you might be busy,” I say. “So I thought I’d question some people for you. With Alex Shirokov's murder, it seems like somebody who didn't realize they would leave forensic evidence behind, right? If I were going to commit a murder, I can't see myself ever leaving evidence behind.”

"If you committed murder, I would think you were in an extreme mental state, so I suspect you would leave evidence behind," she says. "Alex's killer could have been in a rush. It doesn't matter. The killer left forensic evidence behind in multiple areas that they wouldn't be able to explain away."

"Maybe your suspect was at the crime scene, but after the victim died."

"That would be a very short time frame," Stolz says. "But if you have suspicions, why don't you come to the police station with me?"

“I have no need to go to the station.”

“Yeah, but it’s Macmillan’s birthday and I thought you might want to come by and celebrate with some cake.”

Macmillan’s birthday is in March.

“I’m really busy,” I tell her. “But I hope you’ll wish him a happy birthday for me."

"You don't want to tell me about your suspicions?" she asks, her question almost a taunt.

"It doesn't sound like you're ever going to believe me, so what's the point?"

"The point is that you can’t keep disappearing," she says. "I'll do what it takes to serve justice. I will keep visiting your parents and track down everyone you know if I have to.”

“You sound a little blinded by single-mindedness,” I say.

“Or maybe I just want justice. If you really want something, you get creative, and I really don’t want to let you walk free after I let you get away once.”

There’s a bang that feels like a knife in my ear drum and for a second, I’m disoriented enough to think Justin knocked over his vacuum again. But the truth sinks in and I can see the realization hit Stolz at the same time.

I watch her sprint into the building. As I move toward the door, Justin grabs my arm.

“What was that?” he asks.

“Gunshot,” I mutter before running out of the room. I should take this time to escape, but it can't be a coincidence that Kiona left with a gun and a gunshot went off in her dorm building.

I don't see anybody on the second floor, so I continue on down to the first floor. I find a crowd gathered around room 130 with Stolz pushing her way through the crowd.

I approach the room, making sure to stay as hidden as possible behind the students. I peek around everybody. It looks like a young, deceased woman with long blond hair. As Stolz crouches over the woman’s body, I turn and leave.

“Witnesses?” I hear Stolz bark. “Did anyone see the shooter?”

“The person was all in black, wore a mask.”

“I think it was Kiona!” another hysterical voice shouts.

“Dammit,” Stolz says.

I’m already running down the hall. I have to find Kiona.

* * *

E
verything is an illusion
.

My father used to tell me that, but it isn’t because he believed in solipsism. He didn’t believe that the external world and other people were just a creation of the mind. He had simply studied magic enough that he questioned everything he saw. While I’m not a fan of conspiracy theorists—creating whole concepts out of minimal evidence that could lead to a dozen theories—I have an immense amount of respect for those who question everything they hear or see. It’s the arrogance of the conspiracy theories that bothers me.

“Maybe Kiona and Victoria had some kind of issue with each other,” John says, his fingers splayed over the top of his piano fallboard. “Kiona killed her, and now she’s decided to kill my other students because she knew I was Victoria’s mentor.”

“If you stretched any further, you could grab onto the aliens that are part of your next theory,” I drawl.

“It could happen,” he insists. “She could have killed Victoria in a moment of rage and it caused her to become unhinged.”

“And what about this latest death?” I challenge. “You said she wasn’t one of your students.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I had Eliza Brandt for an introductory class, but she didn’t talk much. I barely knew her. But, clearly, the girl was shot, so this murder was meant to be different from the others. It’s like she wanted people to know she was willing to use the gun she took from her parent’s house.”