Page 82 of Crash and Burn

“It’s here. This is where the blood is coming from.” He held up the wound for all to see.

Chapter Sixty-Five

“It's time to go,” Sebastian said to Maggie as he stood in the doorway to her office where she was hunched over her desk, typing frantically.

“What?” She looked up, confused.

He pointed to her hand wrapped in delicate white gauze. “Time to get your stitches out.”

Her right hand now sported eighteen stitches where her glass shard knife had cut her as well as Geller. Though Decker and Watson had tried to save the man, he hadn’t lived long enough to make it to the hospital. The shard of the drinking glass that Maggie had planted in his throat had done him in.

For himself, Sebastian was more than glad the man was actually dead. Maggie wouldn’t have to testify against him or relive the experience. He couldn’t get out in ten years for good behavior or some bullshit like that. As far as Sebastian could tell, Maggie felt no conscious guilt from killing Geller, though she did wake up at night sometimes in a cold sweat, jolting out of a deep dream. Sebastian made sure he was there to hold her and help her find some peace again.

She’d reached a point in the past few days where she mostly rolled over, curled into him, and went back to sleep. Sebastian was convinced that Maggie was having more trouble dealing with the fact that her favorite aunt had an ongoing affair with the man for decades. She was still reconciling the adults she’d looked up to as a child with the realities that weren’t all good or bad.

Her father had rushed in and told her she was an idiot for baiting a killer. Though Sebastian might have argued the same side and understood it came from fear, he’d told the man he could be nice to his heroic daughter who’d rid the area of a predator that had haunted them for decades or he could get the fuck out. Mr. Willis had not expected that. Maggie had tried to start rebuilding her relationship with the man.

The FBI was still combing all the data—bank accounts and letters Sabbie had kept and more—but the relationship had become clear. The bank statements showed she hadn’t even charged Geller rent most months. The letters dripped with the gooey sentimentality of lovers and an old one with a pregnancy scare solidified that idea.

Though they hadn’t spoken of it more than once, it appeared that Sabbie had finally found out who her lover really was … and he had killed her. That was what had Maggie grieving. And maybe justified killing Geller enough to not let it bother her.

Sebastian admired the crap out of her.

Now, she stood up and headed toward the front door, where she grabbed her purse and her phone.

Today was the first day she'd worn her new suit. She'd meticulously purchased a new favorite, this one the same pale blue as the one she’d lost. He’d been surprised by her choice, thinking the color might forever remind her of being kidnapped. Maybe it did. But maybe Maggie remembered it as the day she had triumphed.

She looked at her phone and frowned at him. “It’s not time yet.”

“Yeah it is,” he told her, a grin on his face.

She raised one eyebrow at him as he reached out and took her left hand—the one that didn't have stitches in it. The one he had been holding for a week and a half now.

She was going to be fine. The bruises on her neck were mostly faded, the stitches were coming out today, and her feet had been fine for almost a week now.

He’d waited for this. “Follow me.”

Sebastian watched while she set her purse back on the small table by the front door, then pulled her down the hallway. He tugged her past the boarding rooms, past room number five—now completely cleared out—and out the back door onto the back porch.

Two freshly painted Adirondack chairs sat to the left and Sebastian gestured to them. “What do you think?”

She gasped. “They're beautiful. What a great color. Are they mine?”

He smiled. He’d had to sneak them back here yesterday when she was out running errands.

Her surprise was thanks enough, but her joyful words and her arms around his neck were even better.

But that gift wasn't everything. So he pulled her past the chairs and sat her down on the back step, which still creaked every time someone made a move on it. He would have to replace it, maybe even the whole back porch.Ifshe would let him.Ifshe wanted this.

Taking her hand in his, he laced their fingers together, and put his other hand over hers. “Sanders is long gone,” he started. “Decker called me today and said everything is cleared out from his house. No one's seen him, including the FBI who has run a massive series of stakeouts to find him.”

Maggie nodded. “He made it very clear he didn't want me. He's some kind of freaking sociopath. But I don't think he was lying, and all his victimshavebeen blonde.”

Sebastian nodded. This was the most bizarre conversation he'd ever had—to acknowledge that a serial killer was out there, that his girlfriend had come face to face with the man, and that they still managed to feel that she was relatively safe from him.

“It's time to decide if you want me to stay here or not.”

If she saidnot, he would put all kinds of security measures in place, still drive by the house in the middle of the night when he could. He wouldn’t leave her unprotected, but it was time to make some decisions.

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