Page 24 of The Killer She Knew

Ava’s mother had sacrificed the rest of her free life to keep her daughter safe. To prove the force of a mother’s love. And yet, Leigh hadn’t really been willing to do the same, had she? Ava was right. Adopting a daughter had been terrifying and confusing, and she hadn’t known what she was doing from the beginning. Becoming a mother didn’t automatically make you one, as she’d assumed. Her own mom had made it look so easy. Natural. And when it hadn’t proven to be the case for her, she’d immersed herself in her work, in the next case to give herself something tangible to rely on. Distracted herself from what was happening in front of her. All this time, she’d convinced herself she deserved the experience of having a family of her own. That she’d more than earned it. But what had she ever really sacrificed in return?

“I’m not a case you get to solve. I’m not anything anymore. He made sure of that when he took me.” Ava faced the front of Thompson Hall. And lifted one foot in the air.

“No!” Ford’s scream lanced through her. His suit jacket penetrated her peripheral vision a split second before Leigh was moving.

She closed the last bit of distance between them, hand outstretched. The wind pounded rain into her skin, into her clothing. Stinging pain prickled along the back of her hand, but she didn’t care. About any of it. The storm. Ford. This case. All that mattered was Ava. Getting to Ava.

She fisted her hands in Ava’s T-shirt and threw everything she had into wrenching her back. They hit the graveled rooftop as one, but neither of them acknowledged the impact. Leigh wrapped both arms around the fifteen-year-old’s shaking frame, trying to absorb Ava into her very skin to keep her safe.

Ford positioned himself to keep the rain from pelting them.

“You’re mine,” she said into the crown of Ava’s head. “You’re mine.”

FIFTEEN

Durham, New Hampshire

Wednesday, October 9

7:23 p.m.

Her body didn’t feel solid anymore.

Pulled in a thousand different directions she couldn’t keep up with.

Leigh drowned the urge to fidget as she stroked Ava’s hair. It was early evening, but the atmosphere in Thompson Hall’s lobby had reached a level of surrender and stillness. There was nowhere they could go, nothing they could do, no one who could help them as long as the storm kept mounting. Students and administration alike had tired of the unspoken social rules between groups. No one wanted to be alone. Instead, staff rotated in turns checking on students, handing over jackets and emergency supplies to get through the night. What they’d assumed would be a short shelter in place order would now certainly stretch into tomorrow. Maybe longer. Acceptance and exhaustion settled over the group of thirty-six and took their lastremaining threads of energy. Everyone was tired from worry and questions and fear. Sleep was the only escape.

And Alice Dietz’s killer was possibly stuck along with them.

The few flashlights they’d collected from around the building had been distributed with instructions for use only in dire circumstances. There was no telling when they would all get out of here. Food from the vending machines down the hall was all gone, and Leigh couldn’t imagine the state of the dorms or any other building campus goers had been sequestered to. She didn’t have any way of finding out.

Leigh shifted onto her hip against the cold, hard floor, her elbow tucked underneath her head. The position wasn’t remotely comfortable and would be impossible to sustain through the long hours ahead of them, but she’d managed to convince Ava to get some sleep, pressed up against her chest. Next to Leigh’s heart. Where she belonged.

What’d happened on the roof… The panic that’d seized her had yet to dissipate. It vibrated through her. There was no way she’d be able to sleep tonight. She’d come so close to losing the one good thing to come out of all the violence of the past. Too blind to see the gift she’d been given. But she’d never make that mistake again. She didn’t know where she and Ava would go from here. Probably therapy, maybe an extended leave of absence from the BAU—whatever it took to earn Ava’s trust. They needed it. Ava had lost her father to suicide. Lost her mother to a lifelong prison sentence. Had her innocence and freedom stripped away by a man who haunted her nightmares, and her choice of where to live overlooked. And while Leigh had been in a similar situation at her age—desperate for someone to care—Ava deserved the one thing Leigh had never been granted. To feel safe.

No. That wasn’t true. Leigh had felt safe once. Protected. Loved. Right up until two Durham PD officers had shown her a photo of Teshia Elborne.

Leigh tried to get comfortable again without waking Ava. The emotional war waging between them was enough to knock Leigh out for a week if given the opportunity. But she wouldn’t let it. Not with a killer hiding in these walls. Ava moaned in her sleep, and Leigh ran her hands across the girl’s temple again. Ava was alive. That was what mattered. Alice Dietz couldn’t say the same. What were the victim’s parents going through right now? Unable to reach their daughter, not knowing the details of what’d happened to her. “Shhh. You’re safe. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Ford moved from his position at the front glass doors, keeping watch. He’d already made his rounds from the front of the building to each exit. Three times. But nothing could take the tension out of his shoulders, and the same restlessness drilled through Leigh. Rest wasn’t a word in her vocabulary. At least, it hadn’t been up until a month ago when she’d been forced to give up her uterus to cancer. Some habits died hard. She and Ford were similar in that respect. Always looking for answers. Never satisfied with where they were. Constantly looking for the next challenge, the next case, the next answer. It was probably why he’d chosen to become a US marshal. He loved the hunt. Careful not to wake those who’d finally settled in for the night, he headed for the corridor where Dean Groves had vanished.

If he’d been there at all.

Had seeing him been real? Or had coming back on campus triggered her brain to conjure the man she’d been searching for these past eighteen years? Leigh wasn’t sure she could trust her own senses, let alone her own memory at this point. She felt like she’d reached levels of exhaustion not yet discovered by sleep scientists.

An outline peeled from the wall near the stairs. Nearly as large as Ford, but there were no other men in the lobby who came close to his size. Instinct froze her to the core underneath the weight of the shadow’s attention. As if he was staring directly at her through the dark. Which was impossible. She knew that but couldn’t shake the rattling feeling of exposure.

The outline shifted. There one moment. Gone the next.

Darkness absorbed the movement at the base of the stairs. Or maybe her mind had finally broken. All the trauma, the loss, the grief, and desperation to change reality—it was just a matter of time before she lost out to a mental breakdown, right? She didn’t need to get up to prove she wasn’t crazy. She didn’t need to leave Ava to ensure the rest of the people in this room weren’t in danger. And she certainly didn’t need to be chasing any more ghosts.

Except she couldn’t stop staring at the spot where he’d stood.

Leigh pressed a kiss to Ava’s temple and smoothed her hair away from her adopted daughter’s face one last time before slipping free. Maneuvering through the piles of bodies strewn across the lobby floor, she tried to keep her movements to herself and avoid stepping on any heads or hands in her path to the stairs.

She glanced down the corridor where Ford had disappeared. He was still making his rounds. If he followed the same pattern as the last three times, he’d move on to searching each classroom, ensuring all windows were secure from the inside. Leigh pulled up short of climbing the stairs to the second level, turning instead to the ones leading downstairs.

Hadn’t Ford secured the basement door earlier?

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