Page 65 of Crash and Burn

Chapter Fifty-One

Maggie was frustrated. Sebastian didn't like her plan and she didn't like her alternatives.

It had been three more days and nothing had happened, but there wasn't much she could do. She’d already told people about the paper behind the brick. Her hope was that word would get around town, somehow Merrit Geller would hear about it, and come back.

She wasn't sleeping well either. If she’d thought that every creak and moan of the old house disturbed her sleep when she first moved in, now it was ten times worse. Now, sheknewsomeone had come into her home and that person was a serial predator of the worst kind.

She'd been messaging Marina daily, but aside from confirming that the fingerprints they’d found in her house all matched prints found at the scene of La Vista Rapist cases and none matched the Blue River Killer evidence, there was no new evidence.

Once again, she'd had only one client this morning. She needed to average almost three per day for a healthy schedule.

Sebastian’s arguments didn’t sway her. The La Vista Rapist was going to come back to her home. She could either try to control the situation or let it surprise her. But she also understood that she couldn't just argue her way through a relationship, and she didn’t want to lose Sebastian.

Last night over dinner, he’d asked her casually, “Can you sell the house?”

She’d thought of this already.“CanI? Like, can I get a real estate agent and list it? Yes, I already considered it. But who would buy it?”

“It would make a great BnB.” He had that answer at the ready, she noticed. But that wasn’t what she’d meant.

“Well, the town already has one. I don't think Redemption can support two. Once word gets out that there's a serial predator swinging by occasionally, no one's going to come.”

He nodded.

She could sell the house, but she thought about it and she'd never be able to live with herself if anything happened. She wasn't sure how someone would list something like this anyway. Spacious interior, hardwood floors, serial rapist has a key.

And this was Abbie’s legacy. Maggie hadn’t felt it was truly hers until she had to defend it. But now? She had to defend Aunt Abbie’s memory and her own sanity.

“Move in with me for a while.”

That one she'd considered more carefully. He was already staying over, in her bed, each night, though he actually managed to get some sleep. He was used to waking up for an alarm and being ready to go, so he was practiced at catching his sleep where he could. She was not.

“This is my office,” she said. “If we leave, we give him free range. He could come back, steal whatever he wants. If there's any more evidence here, he can get it, take it, and no one will ever know.”

“I need you safe,” he said as though finally arriving at the crux of the argument.

That part she understood. Reaching out, she laced her fingers through his. “I'm going to be as safe as I can. And I need you to be safe, too. I can’t have anything happen to you, either. But I can't sit here and hide while he's out in the world. You're right, he struck almost six months ago. So, I would expect him to strike again anytime now, or maybe he already has. How can I hide when I may have the means to stop him? The upside is he's not a killer.”

She'd watched as Sebastian's eyes bounced from the ceiling to the floor, to the other side of that comment as he desperately tried to process what she was proposing. He took a harsh breath. “He leaves his victims alive, yes, but he's destroyed their lives, Maggie. You don’t want to be one of his victims. It’s … awful.”

“I know, and that's why I can't do nothing. I'm not better than any of those other women.” She felt for them, for all his past victims and all his future ones. For Aunt Abbie. “They deserve safety too, and all the other women he's going to target? I can’t sit here and let him do that.”

Sebastian at least agreed with that, but he had his own contingencies. “I’m not leaving you alone until he's caught.”

She nodded. “I can cut the cable bill, shave expenses here and there. If I can keep getting some clients, we can keep eating.”

Here she was making plans into the extended future with a man that she hadn't quite agreed to live with.

“If I teach you how to shoot, can you do it?” There was only a dead serious gaze in his eyes. “Can you pull the trigger on a human?”

“I know how to shoot,” Maggie said, and watched as he grinned almost as though he'd expected her to say that. “But the practice wouldn't hurt. It's been a while. And the answer isyes,I can kill him.The good news is, I know Merrit Geller's face, and I don't think I'll have any trouble pulling the trigger. You?”

He nodded. It felt good to finally have Sebastian on her side on this. But the good feeling was short lived.

Her phone rang. Seeing that it was Marina Balero finally reaching out to her for once, Maggie snatched it up. “Hello?”

There were no pleasantries, just the words, “I have bad news.”

Chapter Fifty-Two

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