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“Yes. Well.” She bent over the tablet and brought up the email again. Discovered she didn’t yet have the fortitude to look at the image again. “He wanted a reaction. He’s becoming more personal. Trying to show me that he’s in control. That I have no secrets from him.” And because she didn’t want Ethan to be caught unaware as she’d been, she turned and laid her hand on his arm. “He knows aboutOlivia.”
The muscles beneath her fingers bunched as he stared at the photo on the screen for long moments. Then he swore, a long ugly string of obscenities. “Fuck thisguy.”
He shrugged off her hand and shoved away from the table, turning to stride to the window. The curtains were still open. Lights glowed in the distance below, the city adorned in gaudy sparkles. “He doesn’t know shit. How couldhe?”
She hadn’t gotten that far yet but considered the question now. There was no way the offender could have accessed her long-ago medical records. He wouldn’t know about her hospital stay or the condition that had caused the stillbirth. And since she hadn’t spoken to her family since she’d left Truro, Reisman couldn’t have revealed any detailseither.
A chill skated through her veins. Reisman may not have known facts, but that wouldn’t have stopped him from gleefully filling in the gaps of his knowledge with the ugliest speculationimaginable.
“You’re right. He had no way to learn the specifics.” She remembered what Raiker had told her on their phone call.You’re a square peg, yes. But he’s going to try to work you into the familiar round hole he has for his victims.If the UNSUB believed he’d discovered a significant transgression in her past, the next step would beblackmail.
But she suspected it’d be emotional rather monetaryextortion.
“What’s he trying to do with this? Where would he even have gotten that image? There’s no way he traveled to Ottawa.” Ethan hadn’t turned away from the window. His tone was lethal. And Alexa was reminded, with a sudden searing dart of regret, that her pain was Ethan’s pain. Her grief was hisgrief.
Her throat filled. It took a minute before she was able to answer. “The offender seeks weakness to exploit. I suspect he scrutinizes the news releases, so there’s no way he’s unfamiliar with your name. So, he’s put two and two together, understands that we have a past.” Reisman hadn’t, she recalled. He’d never shown a shred of recognition at Ethan’s name. At her urging, she and Ethan had gone to his father first, all those years ago. And although Ethan had wanted to do the right thing and go with her to tell her mother, Alexa had done it alone because she’d thought she’d known how bad it wouldbe.
She’d grossly underestimated the ugliness of the scene. Her mother’s cold condemnation. The invective Reisman had hurled at her. The eruption of violence when he’d lunged for her, hands at herthroat.
The memory never lost the ability towound.
Ethan’s father had overridden his son’s objections and gone to the house alone for her things. She’d thought her world had changed that day. But fate had far more in store for them a few monthslater.
“As for the image…” It took a moment to steady her voice. “Many cemeteries have a search function to facilitate remote access ofgravesites.”
“He isn’t going to be in a position to ‘exploit’ anything.” He faced her then, his expression implacable. But she recognized the temper he was suppressing. Like a bomb, waiting todetonate.
“He’ll try. His focus is me, and I assume that won’t change. He shook me up a little.” She managed a small smile. “I’m all right now. We’re close. I can feel it. And he doesn’t know how much we’ve learned about him. The advantage isours.”
It took long minutes for him to respond. “I know I can’t let this get to me. And it won’t be allowed to affect the investigation.” Fury seeped into his next words. “But I hate him using her like this. It defiles hermemory.”
She nodded. “I know.” Her voice was soft. “It’s as if he’s stealing a piece of Olivia away, just by thinking of her.” The next words were torn from her, accompanied by a familiar pang of loss. “I never even got to holdher.”
He was in front of her in two quick steps. Had her wrapped in an embrace in the flash of an instant. “Neither did I. I wasn’t even there. Not in time. I’ve never forgiven myself forthat.”
She shook her head against his chest. “You couldn’t help that. Neither of us could.” They’d been two scared kids trying to do their best to navigate their new responsibilities. Muddling through their quickie marriage, moving to married housing on the university campus where Ethan would play hockey. But for all their fears and ignorance of the enormity ahead of them, there had been aching sweetness, too. Out of self-preservation, Alexa rarely allowed herself to recall it. The lust that had still burned between them, hot and reckless. The first time they’d watched their baby on the ultrasound. The awed look on Ethan’s face when he’d first heard the heartbeat. The way he’d kissed her, slow and achingly tender when he’d first felt the babymove.
“I always thought I did something wrong,” she whispered. It was a shameful secret she’d never fully put aside. “Like I wasn’t careful enough. Not knowledgeableenough.”
“You read every book in the library on pregnancy. You set the alarm so you’d remember to take your prenatal vitamins.” His arms tightened around her. “But I know what you mean. I felt the same way. Like I should have been able to prevent what happened. But it wasn’t us, Lexie. There was nothing we could have done differently. Sometimes life justsucks.”
“I was no help afterward. All of the arrangements fell to you.” He’d been an eighteen-year-old grappling with the sudden stillbirth of his daughter and a critically ill wife. She hadn’t been aware of much of anything for days. There had been no chance to attend the funeral or the burial. No chance for a goodbye she wasn’t ready tosay.
“It was mostly a blur.” She felt him rub his face in her hair. “Dad was there. He walked me through everything. But when I was at the funeral home I felt like I needed to be at the hospital with you. When I was with you, I was afraid…” Ethan paused for a moment. When he continued, his voice was thick. “I thought for a while that I was going to lose you,too.”
Her breath hitched once. Because although she’d gradually gotten better, hehadlost her months later. And every time regrets had reared over that decision, she’d beaten them back with the knowledge that she’d done the rightthing.
But that certainty was becoming infused with doubt. He’d accused her once of playing God with his life. And hadn’t she, in a way? Because they couldn’t agree on the best way to move forward, she’d made a decision and forced him to live with it. And there was no way to know, even given the distance of time, whether the sacrifice had beennecessary.