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Holly breathed into the phone. Laurie didn’t get it at all. “Have you evenreadany of my books? Jared’s had five years to stew over my testimony, which sent him to prison.” Laurie hadn’t seen the way Jared looked at her in the courtroom. “Trust me, he hasn’t gotten over it.”
“Okay. I hear you. I’m flying to LA tomorrow, but I can help you start looking for a place on Saturday.”
“I can’t wait that long.” Holly turned toward the window. Dusk had settled over the gray sky, which was growing dark nearly as fast as her apprehension.
“You’re welcome to stay here with Ken and the girls while I’m away.”
Holly imagined trying to write at Laurie’s kitchen table in the suburbs, Roxy Vega’s crime scene photos splayed over the table for Laurie’s four-year-old twins to see. Plus, Laurie’s name was listed in the magazine article too. Unlike Holly’s address, Laurie’swaslisted in the White Pages. But Holly didn’t want to scare her by saying so.
“That’s okay. I’ll get a hotel until we find something.” Holly looked at the computer monitor, envisioning herself lugging it to a hotel room. But what choice did she have? “Thanks though.”
“Oh, wait!” Laurie exclaimed when Holly was about to hang up. “I just remembered. Ken’s parents just moved out of their house in Tacoma. They’re downsizing to a condo and planning to rent out their house after they get rid of their extra furniture. I’m sure you could stay there. That way there wouldn’t even be a paper trail. You know…just in case.”
Holly swallowed.Just in case Jared tries to kill me.She peered out the window, checking for movement on the dock.Around the edges of the shore, houseboats and buildings glowed softly as night fell over the city.
“It’s a big house. Four bedrooms. Plenty of room to write.”
Holly looked at the magazine on the couch. “All right. Thanks, Laurie.”
“I’ll call them tonight.”
Holly hung up and returned to her seat in front of the desk. The lake had gone quiet, aside from the water lapping against the side of the houseboat and the soft jazz playing from her next-door floating neighbor. She finished the wine in her glass.
She wasn’t going to let him get to her tonight. He’d already upended her life once. She had work to do. She had neighboring houseboats within a few feet on either side.I could easily call for help if I needed to. They would hear her scream if Jared tried to break in.
But it didn’t make her feel any better. She’d lived in an apartment the night he’d tried to kill her, and sharing a wall with another unit hadn’t stopped him. Wishing she had a gun, she forced her thoughts to her interview with Roxy Vega’s mother.
Holly yawned despite being wired from the news of Jared’s release. The two cups of coffee she’d drunk before opening a bottle of wine hadn’t helped much. She forced herself topainstakingly finish the chapter before she allowed herself to check the time. It was after eleven, which meant it had taken her twice as long to write the remaining five pages as it normally did. She got up and stretched her arms over her head. Sometime in the last few hours, the neighbor’s music had turned off.
As she went to double check that the front door was locked, her gaze landed on the grim-faced Menendez brothers pictured on the cover ofPeople,the magazine still lying on the couch. A shiver ran through her thinking of their parents, murdered by their sons in their mansion in Beverly Hills, which was thought to be the safest place in the country. Holly wondered what it had been like for their parents, falling asleep on their couch watching TV, only to be awakened by their sons standing over them, the blast from the shotgun barrels stealing the parents from their slumber.
Assured her deadbolt was locked, Holly made for her upstairs bedroom, gripping the cordless phone in her hand. She started up the stairs, then stopped and retreated toward the kitchen.
If there was one thing she’d learned from writing true crime, it was that the victims who weren’t afraid to fight back, scream, or run were the ones who most often got away from a dangerous predator. Holly withdrew her sharpest knife from the butcher block on the counter and turned back for the stairs.
If Jareddidcome for her, she wasn’t going down without a fight.
Chapter 18
HOLLY
“Think this will work?” Laurie stepped back from the desk where they’d set up Holly’s computer in Laurie’s in-laws’ home office.
Holly knelt over a plastic tub and peered inside. She traced a finger around the edge of the shoebox her sister, had left behind at the group home, staring at its contents: a cheap bracelet Holly gave Meg for her tenth birthday, an AC/DC cassette tape, a movie stub fromCaddyshack, and the sealed adoption contract Meg had signed six months before her murder.
The box was a poor stand-in for the warmth of her sister’s voice and the comfort of her laugh, but it was all Holly had left. Even though her stay was temporary, leaving Meg’s things at her houseboat felt wrong, like she was abandoning her sister all over again.
Holly stood and stuck her hands in the jeans’ pockets as she gazed out at the top of the Narrows Bridge, visible through the upstairs window through the tall evergreen woods that separated the neighborhood from the Sound. As dusk deepened, the bridge shimmered to life, its lights piercing the twilight sky.
“It’ll be great.” The neighborhood was nice, more upscale than what Holly had pictured. When she’d followed Laurie to the home at the end of a cul-de-sac earlier that day with her Honda Civic packed with clothes and all she’d need to finish her true crime novel, Holly felt at ease seeing the manicured yards and large two-story homes that looked to all have been built in the last decade. She hadn’t expected to have a view of the Narrows Bridge from her office window. But Holly missed her houseboat already; it felt strange to be in such a big house compared to her small place on Lake Union.
“Need any more help?” Laurie asked, glancing at the two boxes on the floor.
Laurie had spent the last several hours helping Holly move her clothes, computer, and boxes of notes into the upstairs of the large suburban home.
“I’m good.”
Holly followed Laurie’s gaze to the boxes filled with marked-up maps of King County—each X the location of a body that had been discovered, the suspected victims of the Green River Killer. Under the maps lay piles of newspaper clippings and Holly’s ever-growing list of young women who’d gone missing in the Seattle area, along with her shorter list of suspected Bus Stop Killer victims, which included Meg. She planned to put them on the office wall out of habit since she’d never written without having them nearby. She’d always hoped that by keeping them up, something might come to her in her subconscious as she worked.