Page 87 of Secrets Along the Shore (Beach Read Thrillers #1)

CHAPTER

THIRTY

When I come to, I have no idea where I am.

I’m so dazed, for a moment, I’m in that oblivious state when you wake and don’t remember the awful thing that happened the night before. Then reality slams into me with the force of an eighteen-wheeler, and I remember everything.

I blink, slowly opening my eyes to take in the plank floor I’m lying on.

My head is pounding and, despite realizing I am very much in danger, all I want to do is go back to sleep.

I probably have a concussion, and when my hand rakes over my scalp and there’s blood on it, I know I’ve likely got a nasty wound back there too. My hand flies to my holster.

My Sig is gone.

When I inhale a deep breath, a knife of pain slices through my head. The sensation takes a few seconds to recede, but when it does, I push myself into a sitting position, wobble, and grab onto a nearby chair I don’t recognize for support.

“You’re up.”

Despair swallows me. Unlike the chair, the voice is one I know well.

I swivel to focus on the man seated at a wooden dining table across the room. A man I’ve come to love over the last year.

“Matthew,” I say, my voice as somber as my heart. I take in my fiancé’s brother and best friend. A person I’ve grown to cherish as I would my blood sibling. A person I was eager to call family.

As it turns out, there is a simple explanation for the video footage of James in the parking lot of The Backroom. One that exonerates him completely.

It wasn’t James at all.

It was Matthew—thirteen months older and practically James’s twin, at least from the back. Same stature, same haircut, same stride.

I pray there’s also a benign explanation for how James’s fingerprints ended up on the tarp. Though, even if there is, it won’t help my future brother-in-law, who is holding my pistol on me.

I roll my neck, trying to lift the haze clouding my consciousness, and examine my surroundings.

I’m in a rustic house—much like a log cabin—sparsely, though nicely, furnished.

Heavy curtains blocking out all sunlight are drawn across the windows.

Fishing gear and other fishing-themed paraphernalia comprise what little decoration exists.

Two orange life jackets hang on a peg rack on the wall by the door.

My guess is I’m in a house somewhere along the river. As far as I know, the Calders don’t have a place like this, but that doesn’t mean they don’t.

I manage to stand, quickly lowering myself into the chair when my stomach tumbles. I wonder if he’ll let me stay here.

He does.

“What’s going on, Matty?” I say, and find it hurts to talk. There’s a stab of pain at the base of my skull, and I wince as I appraise the state of him. He looks rough. Weary.

Resigned.

A limp smile pulls at one corner of his mouth. “Always liked it when you called me that.”

I offer the warmest smile I can, ignoring the thudding in my brain. “We can work this out.” I nod at the pistol. “You don’t need that thing.”

“If only, Soph. If only.”

I shake my head negatively in response, and immediately wish I didn’t, because it only made the pain flare. “This is not the way to deal with it, Matty. They know. They’ve connected James to that tarp, and it won’t be long before they connect you.”

“James didn’t do anything.” Matty eyes well up. “I took the tarp from his garage months earlier, for some painting I never got to. It was still sitting there in my trunk.” His gaze shifts, absorbed in something I can’t see. “I can’t go to prison, Soph. I’ll die in there.”

“You’re not going to die. I told you, we’ll figure this out.”

“No, we won’t.”

“You need to put the gun down, Matty. You need to let me go.”

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” he says, ignoring me. “It was an accident.”

“Okay…” A pulsing throb keeps time behind my eyes as I work to speak. “So…let’s tell them that. That’s something they can understand.”

“She wouldn’t listen.” Matthew presses on with his story like he doesn’t hear me.

“I met her at a club in Birmingham—I don’t even remember which one now.

It’s out on the fringes, where no one would recognize me.

One night she was there and offered me some stuff.

It made all the stress, all the disappointment of my going-nowhere life disappear for a few hours.

It’s not easy following James’s act, Soph. ”

Matthew paces the floor, nervous energy emanating from him like seismic waves. “I’ve never measured up. James gets the praise, the political office, our father’s support…the girl. The stuff she gave me made it go away—or at least made me not care.”

“You’re talking about Kamden?”

Matthew nods, still pacing. “I met up with her again and she made it all disappear again. So I kept on with it. We’d hang out, party…

suddenly, life was bearable. I never knew she figured out who I was.

I used a different name, but she found my driver’s license and Googled me.

” Matthew clutches his forehead with his free hand and claws it like he’s trying to rub out the stain of that memory.

“Did she blackmail you?”

He nods. “Said if I didn’t pay, she would put the story out there—she’d go online, call the TV stations…She totally blindsided me. I really liked her, Soph. I thought she liked me. I was taking her on a tr ip. That night, we were headed to Nashville for the weekend—or at least I thought we were.”

He smacks the side of his head, and I jump an inch in my seat.

“I’m so stupid! We were fifteen minutes outside of Birmingham when she asked to stop at this club to handle some business.

I should have known something was up. She never did business when I was around.

But, you know, we were going out of town—so I thought she had some loose ends to take care of.

She gets back in the car, and we drive off, and a couple of minutes later she’s threatening to tell the world about me. ”

“There’s a video of the two of you.”

Matthew blinks and tilts his head.

“Of you with Kamden at the club.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re lying. I didn’t go inside.”

“Not inside. It’s of the two of you in the parking lot.” I don’t mention that the video only shows him from the back. The more he thinks we’ve got him locked down for this, the more likely he is to surrender.

The more likely he is to let me live.

He sniffs. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”

“I don’t, Matty. I really don’t. Tell me.”

He stares at me, but unlike Kurt Fogerty, Matt’s eyes aren’t soulless. His eyes are windows to a tormented soul.

“She wanted a million dollars.” He’s stopped moving now, sagging on his frame, as if the memory sapped his life-force.

“I told her she was making a mistake, that she shouldn’t be doing this, but she just kept on.

When I said I didn’t have access to that kind of cash, she said my family was rich and to ask my father for it. ”

A tear trickles down his cheek. “I couldn’t do that.

I’m already second best. Not as successful.

Always messing up. You have no idea…and James is the golden child.

Perfect. The idea of having to go to Dad for money for this…

to have messed up so badly, to have to beg him to cover up another mistake, to be even less in his eyes…

in James’s eyes…it sent me over the edge.

I didn’t mean to kill her. It just…happened. ”

Matt begins pacing again, swinging the muzzle of the pistol back and forth.

“So, we tell them that,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “We explain what happened. Those are mitigating circumstances, Matty. Anyone can see how that would affect a person, drive them to do something?—”

“You don’t understand,” he interrupts, twisting toward me mid-pace. “That doesn’t explain the other one.”

Horror ripples through me. “What?”

“The other one. It doesn’t explain her.”

I’m not just looking at a killer. I’m looking at a serial killer.

“Teresa Anders,” I whisper.

Matt squeezes his eyes shut, and his shoulders begin to shake.

“Oh, Matty. No…”

He sniffs. “I knew about your case against Fogerty—that you were trying to prove he killed those first two girls. I knew about the Perfect Princess thing and the writing on their arms, so I made it look like he killed Kam too. But I messed some things up. Like the tarp—I thought it would make it easier to move her. But that was different from his other ones. And I didn’t take any jewelry from her—I didn’t know about Fogerty taking jewelry from them at that point.

I didn’t find out about that until later. ”

A prickle crawls across my skin.

How did he learn about the trophies at all?

No one outside of the investigation knew about that prior to Fogerty’s trial. We held back that information on purpose. So how did Matthew know about them when he killed Teresa Anders?

“Matty, how did you know about the jewelry? How did you know to take Teresa’s earring…”

The question dies on my lips, because I realize the answer.

I told James everything about the cases.

“James?” I ask.

Matthew holds up a hand, as if trying to stop my train of thought. “He didn’t mean anything by it! It was just talk, you know? But he didn’t mention the trophy thing until after I’d already…well…”—his fram e sags—“until after Kam. So…I didn’t know I was supposed to take something.

“Plus, it dawned on me that her…location…was different from the first two. I left her more than a mile off the highway, and the other two, he left them so close to it. The night it happened, I didn’t think through all that. I just…acted. That combined with not taking any jewelry…”