Page 2 of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

It was so damned infuriating.

Sure, I’d been stalked and tortured by a serial killer nearly six months ago. But I was over it. Done. I was sick to death of people gawking at me as they walked by, nudging the person next to them so they would notice me too. I knew what they said as soon as I was out of earshot (or, in some cases, before).There’s Magnolia Steele, the disgraced Broadway star who was tortured by a serial killer twice and somehow lived to tell the tale. What do you think he did to her exactly?

Lucky for them, they didn’t have to look too hard to find out.

The press had gone wild with the story, and a few podcasts had put out several episodes on it. Then a couple of radio hosts, Molly and Mo, had seen fit to launchThe C-Mark Serial Killer Podcast.(Seriously?They couldn’t come up with a better name thanthat?) They’d set out to do what should have been impossible—to put a humorous spin on the events while offering up all the gory details people craved.

How did you make what happened to me and those other women funny?

Molly and Mo had talked at length about Tripp Tucker, of course, and what my father, the notorious Brian Steele, had done to drive him to murder. But they hadn’t stopped at that. They’d discussed, also at length, my involvement in the whole situation. They were practically gleeful over the fact that I was the one who’d pulled the trigger on my father in that awful final showdown.

There was nothing more mortifying than knowing people were casually listening to the details of your tortures. Yes, plural. How many times I’d been slashed by a butcher knife. The C’s he’d carved into my legs to literally brand me. The way he’d hung me up like a Christmas ham from the very same rafter he’d used to string up the woman he’d tortured and killed ten years before. These listeners gasped and clutched their pearls, entertained by my torment as they drove to work or worked out or watched their kid’s Little League game, hiding their earbuds under ballcaps.

But what was worse was that the people close to me knew how it was affecting me and felt powerless to stop it. They treated me like I was about to fall apart before their eyes.

Truth was, maybe they weren’t so far off.

Two hours later, we were at the Hawkins Financial corporate fundraiser, serving Nashville hot chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, coleslaw, and rolls buffet-style.

Tilly had a clipboard with assignments, and she read them off like a drill sergeant. If anyone was channeling my mother, it was her.

“Rita, Colt, Devin, and I are manning the buffet line. Maggie stays in the back.”

“There’s nothing to do in the back,” I countered. “Absolutely nothing.” Shoot, half the time we didn’t even have anyone stationed in the back when we served buffet-style.

“I think we need someone watching the food,” she said, refusing to meet my gaze. “Can’t be too safe.”

But I knew it wasn’t the food she was keeping safe.

I started to protest, then stopped. I was only arguing for the sake of it. Truth be told, I didn’t want to be here at all, but even if I did suck at this job, it was my only source of income.

I wasn’t much good at cooking, and the only reason I worked for Southern Belles Catering at all was because my momma had left part of her share of the business to me.

Okay, not entirely true. I’d started working there before her death. When I’d come home from New York City, Momma had forced me to earn my keep. Part of me had wanted to work there, to be close to her. But now I felt stuck.

Outside of catering, I was good at waitressing and acting, and the only acting gigs coming my way at the moment were off-off-off-Broadway shows (like a production ofLittle Womenin Scranton, Ohio), and the only reason they were interested in hiring me was because they figured people would show up to see the woman who’d been tortured. Sure, I was getting offers to pose nude or seminude so people could see my scars, but I’d rather live on food stamps than become even more of a circus sideshow.

A month after my attack, I’d tried to go back to my job at the boutique I’d worked at part-time, but people had kept coming in to gawk at me. It had made me anxious, to say theleast. The owner of the Rebellious Rose had been thrilled at the extra business, not to mention featuring the center of the buzz of gossip, but one day a shopper had dropped a vase behind me, and the sound of it shattering had given me a major panic attack. I’d quit on the spot.

Tilly, on the other hand, wanted to keep me hidden, but it wasn’t because of my scars. My father had stolen money from several people in the Nashville area in the name of “financial planning.” I suspected he’d tricked more than a few people at this event into investing in one of his schemes, and they wouldn’t be the first to hold my father’s sins against me. He had to be fresh on their minds given everything that had happened. Of course, everyone likely knew my mother had been half owner of Southern Belles, but Tilly was probably hoping they wouldn’t dwell on it if they didn’t have a Steele scooping their mashed potatoes.

But I was tired of hiding. Tired of being forced to feel guilty for what other people had done.

Weren’t the scars from the sixteen long gashes and the two C’s Tripp Tucker had carved into my skin and muscle punishment enough? Or the lingering paranoia that someone was going to snatch me at any moment of the day? At least I’d gotten a little better. For the first three months after the incident, I couldn’t be alone without having a panic attack. Even now, I was terrified Tripp Tucker was hiding around the corner of the kitchen. Didn’t matter that I’d watched him die. Colt had shot him to save me, and now he was stuck dealing with my recurrent nightmares as well as my fear of the dark.

After five months of intense therapy sessions with my psychologist, I was still a hot mess. I’d gotten better—at first—but then that damned podcast had come out. Each episode that aired led to a big lunge backward in my recovery process.

The podcast had renewed the public’s interest in me and the killer, and I’d gotten interview requests from just about every media outlet possible. The most insistent were Molly and Mo themselves, who’d left me countless emails and voicemails requesting an interview, and so far, they had refused to accept no as my final answer.

Hell would freeze over before I talked to those two jackasses and let them laugh in my face about the worst two nights of my life.

Now, as everyone else bustled around, I stood as if my feet were cemented in place. I could feel Colt watching me closely. Looking for the cracks in my pretense of being fine. He’d become quite adept at spotting them.

“How about we call Belinda?” he said softly. “You two can have a girls’ night.”

Tears stung my eyes. “You think I can’t handle being alone in the back?”

He opened his mouth to speak, then promptly closed it.

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