Seattle, Washington
May
Sweating in the spring sunshine, her legs aching from her workout, Jules unlocked the door of her condo. She walked inside and found Diablo curled on the sofa, only deigning to lift his gray head to greet her.
“Lazybones,” she accused, rubbing him beneath his chin as she caught her breath. Her voice was still a little bit raspy, her larynx having been damaged in her struggle with Shay months earlier. But she was healing. Both inside and out.
“So what do you think about a move, eh?” she asked as she eyed the mess that was her home. Every room was littered with boxes, some packed, some empty.
Despite her mother’s trepidations, Jules knew moving in with Trent was the right thing to do. The only thing. Even if it was a major life change.
He’d bought a ranch outside of Spokane and was settling in. Jules would join him and they’d start their new life together. Trent was in the process of buying rodeo stock, horses and cattle that he would breed on nearly a hundred acres of rolling farmland. Jules had already started sending out applications and hoped to land a teaching position. “Just not one that deals with troubled teens,” she told Diablo.
Grabbing a hand towel, she dabbed at her face. Her friends Erin and Gerri applauded her move away from the city and her only regret was that she’d lost her sister. Not, she reminded herself, that they had ever been close. It had all been a mirage, nothing more.
“Guess you won’t be a ‘city cat’ anymore,” she said to Diablo, walking to the kitchen and flipping on the radio. “And it might get tough. I’ll expect you to keep the rat and mice population down in the barns. Got it?”
Diablo, uninterested, stretched and yawned, showing off his pink tongue and white teeth as pop music from the eighties filled the rooms. The first few notes of a familiar song filled the kitchen and Jules smiled as Rick Springfield began singing passionately about “Jessie’s Girl.”
Jules turned on the tap and filled a glass. She gulped down the chilled water and felt better. Her nightmares had receded, and she no longer needed handfuls of Excedrin. She’d spent the last three months, her throat healing as she’d visited a counselor, retrieving all her repressed memories and her conflicting feelings about her sister.
Rip Delaney’s murder case was reopened, and Shaylee was the prime suspect. Jules still didn’t remember the night with crystal clarity, but the images were becoming sharper. Scarier. How had she blocked out Shaylee’s guilt?
As for the horror at Blue Rock Academy, Shaylee was the only suspect in the murders of Nona Vickers, Drew Prescott, and Maeve Mancuso. The prosecution was still putting its case together and Max Stillman had ponied up for the best lawyers money could buy to defend his only daughter.
Both Kirk Spurrier and Roberto Ortega had died from their wounds, but with Zach Bernsen’s help, along with cadaver dogs and the spring thaw, the sheriff’s department had located Lauren Conway’s bones, buried in a shallow grave in the deep woods of the campus, in, of all things, a long-forgotten cemetery.
For the moment Shaylee was ensconced in a mental hospital in Oregon, awaiting trial, though whether she was competent to stand trial was still unclear, psychiatrists and psychologists on both sides of the courtroom trying to prove or disprove her sanity.
Max Stillman’s money was being spent on her treatment as well as her defense, more, Jules assumed, to save his name and reputation than his daughter’s freedom.
Not that he should.
Shay was guilty.
Jules knew it in her heart.
Was her sister psychotic? Absolutely. But calculatingly so. Shay had left her cap at Nona’s murder scene intentionally—to throw off the police by intentionally incriminating herself. No one knew why she’d staged the murders as she had. All part of her game, Jules supposed.
“Yep,” she said, glancing at the cat again, “We all need a new start.” Through the open window, she heard the familiar rumble of Trent’s truck and she couldn’t help her stupid heart from kicking into a faster beat.
Knocking once, he let himself in. From the kitchen, Jules spied Diablo scurrying to hide under the couch, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“How’re we doing?” he asked, as he found her by the sink. From behind, he wrapped his arms around her waist.
“We’re not doing anything. I’m doing fine, except that I’m sweaty and gross.”
“Just the way I love you.” To prove his point, he nibbled her neck.
She wrinkled her nose. “Ew.”
“A dirty, sweaty woman is the best.”
“Spoken like a true cowboy,” she teased, but leaned against him.
“Mmm. Just wait until after you move in and I come into the house after dealing with the livestock.”
“Let’s not even go there,” she warned, but chuckled despite herself.