Page 139 of Ruthless Intent

He doesn’t answer for a minute or two, then he sighs.

“You were the only witness.” His voice is oddly gentle. “The prosecution played on your age and obvious devastation over the loss of your brother. Not to mention the trauma you must have suffered by seeing what you did. Like I said, I wasn’t involved in the original case, but I can only imagine the impact your testimony and age would have had on the jury.”

He’s confirming that it’s my fault. It’s all my fault.

And it hits differently coming from him. He’s so matter of fact. There’s no accusation in his tone. He approaches it in a completely different way to Zain. A way that leaves no room for me to deny it, or argue.

“Were there ever any other suspects?”

He shakes his head. “They never looked for one. They had the perfect suspect in custody. Why waste more police time and resources?” He stands and comes around the desk to crouch in front of me. “Look, Ashley, I’m not going to lie. Without your testimony, they barely had a case. The murder weapon was missing, but they had you. A witness who was there, and had no reason to lie about what she saw.”

“The knife was missing? But … I thought it was part of the evidence.”

“It was. It was at the scene. They cataloged it, so there were photographs of it which they used for the trial. It never came to light until later that the actual knife itself went missing sometime after the arrest, but before the trial.”

“But they must have tested it for fingerprints?”

“They did. None were found.”

“So, it was me saying I saw him with it …” I close my eyes.

“They built their whole case around the fact that you walked in and saw Zain there, covered in blood, and holding the knife, yes.”

I cover my face.

Is it any wonder Zain hates me? That he wants to ruin my life?

If he hates you that much, why did he do what he did last night?

My mind shies away from thinking about that.

“For what it’s worth, right now Zain is still very much in a survival at all costs state of mind. It’s going to take time for him to get out of that. If you can ride that out, there’s a chance he’ll eventually see that he doesn’t need to do whatever he’s doing to you.”

I think back to finding him on the bathroom floor.

He claimed it was because I had his bed … but there were other rooms in the house. He could have even slept on the couch. Why the bathroom floor?

A little voice inside my head whispers that it’s because the room is small. Almost cell sized.

That can’t be it.

The man I know is calculated, focused.

Does he really need something like that to help him acclimate to being out of prison?

Is he really as acclimated to life outside of prison as he appears?

“How did you get the verdict overturned?” I force myself to focus on the here and now.

“It was a number of things. The knife was one of them. The way the police stopped investigating once they had Zain in custody, which was as soon as they were called to the scene. The lack of actual evidence showing he did it. With the amount of blood splatter, Zain should have had more on him than he did. There were no signs of a fight on him either. No scratches or marks of any kind. I also managed to find security footage of him driving through town at the time the attacks took place. There was no way he was there when it happened. He arrived shortly after. Jason was still alive when Zain got there.”

Bile rises up my throat. “Did … did Zain disturb the real killer?”

“I think so, but obviously I have nothing to prove that.”

“Could they have still been in the house?” I whisper.

“Maybe. Or maybe they left when they saw his car pull onto the drive.”

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