Page 33 of The Perfect Betrayal

“Yeah,” she agreed, clearly happy that someone sympathized with her plight. “Looking back, I’m still amazed that I got anything. My lawyer’s threats to go to the bank probably helped, but I think the real reason that Taye eventually caved was that I might not have been the only one.”

“What does that mean?” Riddell asked.

Samantha shrugged, then stopped herself. Apparently, the movement was too uncomfortable with her chest injury.

“Just the way he talked,” she said. “It sounded like he’d done some of the same things with other girls: the rough stuff, the pressure to be with his buddies—all that. I think he didn’t want his dirty laundry aired.”

Things began to click into place for Jessie. Jamil had mentioned that Boyce had agreed to at least two other settlements in the last half decade. Even though those agreements were sealed, one could make a few assumptions about the nature of them.

She looked over at Riddell and could tell that he was thinking the same thing she was: if Samantha Collins’s claims were correct, then it seemed that Boyce and his friends had a history of treating women badly. And by extension, they’d likely have made a lot of female enemies. Maybe one of them was pushed too far.

Of course, that 'one' could still be Samantha. Jessie could hear the ambulance siren in the distance and decided that they couldn't put this last part off anymore.

"We need to ask you, Samantha—where were you the last two nights?"

The woman’s face fell. She’d clearly begun to assume that someone was finally on her side. Now she realized that she wasn’t out of the woods yet.

“You think I killed him?” she said, sounding almost hurt.

“We need to eliminate you as a suspect,” Jessie acknowledged. “You can see why you might be on the list. But if you can give us your whereabouts the last two evenings, then there shouldn’t be a problem.”

Samantha nodded, flinching slightly at the pain even that movement caused.

“I get it,” she said. “But why the last two nights?”

“Because Boyce wasn’t the only one killed,” Riddell allowed.

“Who else?” Samantha demanded, seemingly stunned at the revelation.

“A man named Daran Peterson,” Jessie answered.

“I know who he is. He was a real jerk too,” Samantha conceded, not seeming to grasp that the admission made her a more likely suspect.

“All the more reason to give us an alibi that proves you didn’t kill either of them,” Jessie noted.

“Fine,” she said, squinting as she tried to recall. “Last night I was working. I even closed up. I don’t know when these guys were killed, but I was at the restaurant from 2:30 until 11. On Tuesday, I worked the day shift. I got home a little after 4 P.M. and stayed in. I binged a show I like.”

“Alone?” Riddell asked.

“Yes.”

The sirens were getting louder. Jessie’s earlier hope that they had the killer in custody had started to fade the second she first started talking to Samantha Collins. Now it was almost completely gone. They’d have to check with her co-workers andaccess her streaming data to be sure, but she was confident that the woman in front of them was a victim, not a perpetrator.

The expression on Riddell’s face as he uncuffed Collins from the chair suggested that he thought they’d wasted their time here. But Jessie felt differently.

It seemed clear that Taye Boyce, Daran Peterson, and the rest of their yacht boy friends had a proclivity for sexual aggression at the least and perhaps worse. If she could find a common thread in their actions, maybe it would lead to another suspect.

Jessie had a sense of who she was looking for now: someone who had chosen not to count on a shark of a lawyer to get retribution. Someone who decided to get it herself.

CHAPTER TWENTY

She was dressed as a brunette now.

As difficult as this undertaking had been so far, she found that switching wig colors each time allowed her to embrace her responsibilities more easily. Each new hair color afforded her the chance to change personas as well.

Of course this time the light brown wig wasn’t so much for show as it was for security. With increased awareness of her recent ‘activities,’ she feared that Robert Chandler, the next man on her list, would be hyper-cautious and not allow some random chick onto his yacht. The chances that he’d believe a cover story with her as a hapless gal drifting on the water or as a seductress who really wanted to hook up with him were minimal at this point.

But that was okay. She had no intention of trying to trick Chandler. Rather, this time around, she planned to use a more straightforward approach. She would board his boat under the cover of darkness.

---