Page 47 of The Killer She Knew

Those caramel-colored eyes raised to meet Leigh’s gaze. “It was supposed to be me.”

“What do you mean?” Sitting in front of Ava, she blocked out the rest of the world. It was just the two of them here, and nothing else mattered. The fight between her career—this case—and showing up as Ava’s guardian burned. But Leigh was beginning to see there was no middle ground. There was no choice. Not for her.

“Mom is in prison for killing the man who took me.” Ava’s voice softened. Trembled with something caged and guilty. “But it’s supposed to be me. I’m the one who killed him. I was there. He’d locked her in the storage room under his house. She’d gone there to protect me. To make sure he never touched me again. But he was going to kill her, and I couldn’t let him. So I killed him first.”

Leigh crossed her legs together. Kept herself from reaching out, from disrupting this sudden open line of communication. Not communication. Admission. Ava had admitted to killing the man who’d abducted and raped her. A murder her mother was serving a life sentence behind bars for. Tears burned in her eyes as the impact of that truth took shape between them.

“This is what you wanted to tell me earlier. Why you’ve been running away. Why you shut me out? You’ve been dealing with this alone?”

“I didn’t know what else to do.” A fresh round of sobs echoed off the cooling tile around them. Ava swiped at her face, but it didn’t erase the hollowness that’d deepened over the past few weeks. “You’re a cop. I was scared if I said anything, they’d take me away again. You’re not my mom, but you’re still the only person who gives a shit what happens to me.”

Leigh couldn’t keep the distance between them anymore. Not caring about her borrowed sweats, she scooted closer until her knees framed Ava’s.

“Look at me.” She set both hands on her adopted daughter’s face. This was the moment. The one that would make or break them, and Leigh couldn’t lose anyone else. She couldn’t give up on the family she’d worked so hard to find. Waiting until those brown eyes met hers, she held on to the hope that they would make it through to the other side. Together. “I already knew.”

Confusion warped Ava’s beautiful face. She pulled out of Leigh’s hold, trying to melt into the wall behind her. But there was no escaping this. For either of them. They were bound in a way Leigh hadn’t let herself be bound to another person in a long time. Unfiltered trust, and she wasn’t letting Ava go so easily. “What? How?”

“Your cell phone GPS. Gulf Shores police narrowed down the signals in the vicinity of the murder. There was your mother’s, the burner your abductor used to lure you to his house. And then there was yours.”

“You knew? You knew, and you didn’t say anything?” How quickly sorrow had been replaced with rage. They couldn’t ignore it or soothe it. There was no escape or avoidance from this now. Ava would have to live with what she’d done, but she didn’t have to do it alone. The veins in Ava’s neck pulsed with her erratic heart rate. She released her hold on her knees. Ready to strike. “My mom is in prison. If you knew she didn’t kill him, why didn’t you tell the judge? We could be together right now!”

“Because she wouldn’t let me, Ava. If I had told that courtroom you’d been there, that you were the one to kill him, you would be the one behind bars right now. He might’ve abducted and raped you, but the evidence at that scene told a clear story. It wasn’t self-defense. It was murder. You would’ve been arrested, and your mother couldn’t handle that. She waswilling to sacrifice herself to keep you safe.” Leigh fortified her voice. Tried not to feed the hurt she’d carried all these years. There’d been nobody there for her when her father had been sentenced for the murder of her brother. No one to fight for her. She’d had to fight for herself for so long, she wasn’t even sure she remembered what it was like to have someone else consider her needs, but she wouldn’t put Ava through that. “She wanted to protect you from this. She didn’t want you to have to handle the fallout of what happened alone, and she knew I was the best chance of helping you deal with whatever came next. And I agreed. She loved you. That’s why. That’s what parents do, and I’m so sorry.”

The fight left Ava then, but it took a few moments for her to pull herself together. The tears returned in full force, a renewed sense of hopelessness resonating in her voice. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

“Because you didn’t feel like you could trust me.” The pain leaking from Ava became Leigh’s then. Fully, without remorse or regret. She took it and made it hers as she’d wished someone would’ve done for her all those years ago as a teen. Shared it, soothed it, broken it apart until there were only tiny pieces left to carry. “I’m sorry that you thought you had to deal with this on your own. And I’m sorry I didn’t make it clear you could come to me when you needed me and that I used my work to drive a wedge between us.”

Ava launched herself forward, securing her arms around Leigh’s neck. Wracking sobs tremored through her chest and straight into Leigh’s heart. Resentment, rage, drive, grief—she’d held on to it all for so long, used it to get her from one case to the next. But none of it had really served her. Not until now. She wouldn’t utilize her experiences and pain as a weapon to keep everyone out any longer. It was worth far more. For Ava.

“I lied on my application to the FBI.” Her commitment to this precious soul poured into her admission. Leigh smoothed Ava’s hair down her back. “They asked me if I’d been involved in any criminal investigations, and I lied. I was the one who found that body underneath my house when I was seventeen, but my father insisted on leaving me out of the report. He told police it’d been him. And eighteen years ago, when a student was killed on this campus, I gave their only suspect a false alibi. I lied then, too.”

Apparently, she’d reached capacity for holding her secrets in. First with Ford. Now Ava. But this was important. Uttered promises meant nothing. So she would show Ava how far she was willing to go. “If the FBI ever found out, I’d lose my job. I’d be charged with obstruction. They could arrest me.”

Ava’s grip relaxed, but she held on. “Why are you telling me this?”

“So you know I’m here. No matter what.” She shifted Ava back to look at her face, swiping tendrils of hair behind her adopted daughter’s ears. “We’re in this together now. I have your secrets, and you have mine. To be fair, yours is a lot bigger than mine, but you get the point.”

A wisp of a laugh escaped Ava’s lips. Her eyes had swollen from crying, but there was a strength in their depths, too. “I get the point. Just don’t be expecting me to call you Mom or anything. You can turn me in for murder, and I can tell your boss you lied, but we’re still mortal enemies.”

Leigh took a chance, catching a tear from Ava’s face. This was the most honest they’d been with each other. It was uncomfortable and new, but there was also a sense of relief. Of shared hurt neither of them had to shoulder alone anymore. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Ava’s gaze shifted to the stall door. “So now what?”

“Now we raid these lockers and hope we can find some dry clothes. Then we go back out into that lobby.” Leigh needed tocheck in with the forensic techs and take a look at Professor Morrow’s office. If he’d taken on a collaborator, there could be evidence that led them straight to their killer. “I need you to stay close to the friends you made. I don’t think you will be a target, but it’s not safe for anyone to be alone while Marshal Ford and I work this case. Understand?”

“I understand.” Ava got to her feet, sopping wet. “I’m sorry. For running away all those times. For distracting you from this case. I know you’re trying to keep more people from dying.”

“You don’t ever need to be sorry for asking for your needs to be met, Ava. Not from me.” Leigh fought the added weight of her clothing and unlocked the stall door. Hitting up the first locker, she tossed something that looked like oversized basketball shorts and a T-shirt in Ava’s direction. Probably wasn’t the cleanest, but it would keep her from catching a cold in this damn storm. “And I hope you’ll keep coming to me long after this case is concluded.”

Ava dressed quickly, sans socks. “Are you close to solving this case?”

She heard the question her adopted daughter wasn’t asking. When could they go home?

“Yes. We’re close.” The killer was tying up loose ends as the end of the storm approached. Getting ready to flee. But she wasn’t going to let that happen. Leigh pulled a second set of sweats from another locker and found a T-shirt perma-caked with deodorant in the armpits. Could be worse. “There are things I can’t talk to you about when it comes to my work and my life before you, but I will always be honest with you if you’ll try to be honest with me. That means no more running away in the middle of the night. And it means talking to me when you’re upset. All right?”

Ava kept her chin high. “All right.”

“And we’ll be seeing a family therapist together when we get back to Quantico. I know you like yours, but we have to be in this together.” Leigh pried off her wet sweats, changing into a set one size too big and a T-shirt one size too small. Tossing the soaked clothes in the nearest trash, she met Ava at the exit. “One hundred percent, Ava. We need to be a team if this is going to work between us.”

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