Page 15 of Catching Fire

“Come in.” She swung her arm motioning him toward the living room. She was not being the gracious hostess her mother would have wanted her to be, but none of this had been on her mother’s etiquette lists.

Kalan nodded, strangely silent until he was standing in her living room. She felt like she should sit or offer him tea but that seemed inappropriate for a man who'd had her pushed up against her house the other night and unscrewed the light bulb so the neighbors couldn’t see.

As she turned around to face him, she saw him visibly take a deep breath to steady himself. “Seline, I just wanted to say how sorry I am about the way I acted the other night.”

Her eyebrows popped up.Oh, good,she thought,at least he was addressing it. “Thank you.”

“I can promise you it won't happen again.”

Her initial response was to be snarky and say it damn well wouldn’t if she never kissed him again. But that wasn’t an outcome she actually wanted. If there was some good reason for his behavior … well, she wanted there to be one, so she asked, “Why did you go three days without communication?”

He nodded slowly, as though the words were hard to find.

They shouldn’t be.

Despite his opening apology he didn’t seem prepared to explain and the conversation was still stilted. “You could have messaged me.”

Even as he said it, she felt her face react. Her arms crossed and one eyebrow popped up as if to say“oh, really?”Managing to just barely check herself, she spoke as calmly as she could. “I'm not the one who walked away without a word.”

“That's fair.” He paused, and if he’d had a hat, he would have been worrying the brim between his hands. He looked like a repentant orphan, but Seline had dealt with men who were sorry before. Without a good explanation all they were was sorry.

“Like I said,” he continued, “none of it will happen again.”

She smiled and nodded. She was going to ask what he meant bynone of it, when he began blurting out, “I heard the FBI was here. That the Blue River Killer contacted you … Did you see him?”

“No,” she replied just as quickly as he’d changed the topic. But when she thought about it, “Well, yes, but—”

“Are you okay?” Even as he interrupted, he reached out and took her hands in his. Warm and solid, the touch countered her racing heart and helped her breathe easier.

Seline told him everything … About the jogger she almost bumped into on the street. The altered picture the FBI agents showed her. She babbled on about the note and how she’d found it.

“I must have seen him!” she almost wailed, finally admitting to herself what had her so upset. “He got that note to me, so I must have passed him, taken a paper from him, I don’t know!”

“It’s okay,” he used his soft firefighter-on-the-scene voice. She knew it, probably the one he used on old people having heart attacks, or the kid he’d told her about who’d gotten bitten by a rattlesnake in a cornfield.

But she didn’t fully relax. Instead, she stepped away and paced, the movement making her feel as if she was accomplishing something. She grabbed her phone, pulled up the pictures Watson had sent her and shoved it at him. “Here.”

This was all probably proprietary information. But Seline didn't care.

“Look at the torso!” she told him, showing him the picture of the carved up body with no warning. Then she snatched the phone back and pulled up the picture of her note. “Now look at this!” She shoved it back toward him again.

“Look. They are the same!” Her french accent was coming out again. She was scared shitless.

“That does look the same …” He let the words trail off as though he wasn’t fully convinced, though.

Seline grabbed the phone again and flipped through more pictures, this time pointing to the mockup of the older man with white hair. “This is the jogger I saw. And honestly—”even she was starting to doubt. But the doubt made her heart race just as much as the certainty did. “He looked a lot like this but not perfectly. And this one,” she tapped to another one, “I mean, they all look like people I know or people I see around!”

“But the people you know aren’t the Blue River Killer …” he was looking at her sideways now, not following. “That doesn’t work. They know the killer is William Treat Sanders.”

“Right!” that’s what she’d been saying. Clearly, she’d been saying it poorly.

Kalan nodded along at her logic. His agreement at least made her feel better. “Well then, it just means he looks like this, but isn’t one of the people you already know.”

She nodded, finally breathing a little easier. But whether or not she recognized him didn’t really make a difference, because she’d been sitting on her couch, worrying her fingerprints down to nothing for a reason.

“Here's the problem, Kalan …”

He looked like he was about to say everything was okay, but Seline wasn’t having it. She headed to the small scalloped-edge table just inside the door, where she set her mail each time when she brought it in.

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