“I’m here,” I say.
His arms surround me, he pulls me to his chest. We hold onto each other.
Daybreak crests the sky, the fragile light revealing I’m not that far from shore. Men in uniform are in the fishing boat with us. I remember the sirens I heard on the dock.
“How?” I ask.
He brushes my wet hair from my face as he inspects me, not content until he’s searched every inch of my body. “You’re bleeding.”
“I was stabbed.”
“Hand me the emergency kit,” he demands. He peels my soaked clothes from my body as gently as possible. The pain is starting to resurface. “Stomach wound.”
I let him bandage my stomach and arm, and as the local police steer us toward the shore, Rhys applies pressure to my stomach. A person can suffer a gut wound for days; but I’m scared to ask how bad it is; I don’t want to shatter the hope of this moment.
“I tracked your phone to the last pinged location,” Rhys finally answers. “I’d have come here anyway if I couldn’t do a trace. Detective Dutton responded.”
I glance over. The old detective from my case is in the boat with us.
“It was you,” I say to Rhys.
“What are you talking about?” He’s looking ahead, destination in sight. He’s fighting to get me to a hospital. “Radio the EMT truck,” he orders the cop at the helm. “Have them ready.”
“You’re him,” I say, my voice strained. “You rescued me from the lake.”
Rhys looks down, into my eyes. Awareness crashes through him. He presses his lips to my forehead, a kiss so tender it aches through me.
As we dock, I hear the search, flashlights slash the dawn, as uniforms hunt for the unknown assailant who evaded arrest.
Rhys carries me to the ambulance and demands to ride with me to Silver Lake Memorial. He grasps my hand, not letting go, even as the EMT covers my mouth and nose with an oxygen mask and dresses the stab wound.
His hand pulses mine. “You rescued yourself,” he says. “But I’ll be the man of your dreams, Lakin. I can be him.”
I let the dark press of sleep claim me then. Holding on to Rhys. Holding on to the hope of us.
Epilogue
We are all connected. Through time and space, atoms and neurons. Villains and heroes. We’re all linked in a cosmic web, fighting to live. Fighting for truth.
The last words of the book. The End.
A lethargic purge, the truest crime story I’ve ever penned. The one I lived through. The story of two women and their crimes solved together. The title of the manuscript for In Her Wake proved to be a genuine representation of our story. I was in Joanna’s wake. Her murder led me to our killers.
Once I completed the book, I sent an early proof copy to Ms. Delany for approval—to make sure my story would not detract from Joanna’s, and that I had honored her daughter’s memory properly. Our book is slated to release to the world next year.
I thanked Bethany Delany in the acknowledgments for more than just her participation; her maternal instinct pointed us to Mike Rixon. Our first lead.
During his questioning, Mike admitted to local authorities that he had always harbored a fear about his half-brother, about what he was. A social media post captured him saying: “At times, I wondered if there was something wrong with him, something off. I had my suspicions, but I wasn’t sure.”
Mike saw the way Torrance looked at Joanna—that’s why Mike was protective over her at the Tiki Hive. What Bethany had noticed during her visit one evening to the restaurant before her daughter was discovered in a lake.
When Rhys and I showed up at the Tiki Hive to question Mike, he could’ve revealed his suspicions then. But he was also quoted saying: “He’s still family.”
I suppose that’s the reason why Mike didn’t correct Torrance when he pointed us toward Kohen. Mike wasn’t charged with hindering an investigation, however. Suspicion doesn’t equate to factual knowledge of a crime.
No, the evidence was there this time. Torrance, under pressure from the FBI’s investigation, made mistakes during Cam’s murder. Dr. Keller, the medical examiner, found trace DNA on the dress Cam was wearing at the time.
I recall how Torrance claimed he and Drew had “practiced” on Cam. How Torrance had held my arms behind my head, his excitement pressed hard against my back. The dark spark that was planted in him all those years ago, aroused by my murder, was what told the story of his involvement.