Page 81 of Stay Away from Him

I pulled away and pressed my fingers to my lips as I sawher coming up the front walk, her feet scratching to a halt on the flagstones, her face ashen.

It was Rhiannon.

She knew.

Chapter 19

“I’m going to confront him.”

“Kelli, are you nuts?”

Melissa was driving, speeding on the interstate to get to Kelli’s house as quickly as she could. The phone was on speaker.

“I can’t believe Derek lied to me all this time.” She sounded angry, offended—not as scared as Melissa thought she should be.

“Kelli, donottell Derek that you know what I just told you. Who knows what he would do when he’s cornered?”

There was a pause. “He’s at the door. I’m going to say something, Melissa. I have to.”

The call ended, and Melissa loosed a scream into the close air of the car. Kelli Walker could be such a fool. Overconfident that she could find Rose’s killer, she couldn’t let go of her moral crusader nature even when it put her in danger. She needed to get out of her meeting with Derek, not let on that she knew anything. Then, when she was safe, Melissa and Kelli could make a plan to tell what they knew to the police, to the county prosecutor—to convince them it was Derek and not Thomas who killed Rose.

It took Melissa fifteen more minutes to get into Kelli’s neighborhood. She slid off the freeway, then drove to the address Kelligave her. She pulled up in the driveway. Before she even got out of the car, she could sense that something was wrong.

The front door to Kelli’s house was wide open. It drifted on its hinges, giving the impression that someone had just come bursting out, but then Melissa realized—it was only the wind. Whoever ran out the front door and left it open was gone now.

Melissa’s heart pounded so hard she could hear it, a thrumming static roar in her ears. She paused outside her car, afraid to go in, steadying herself on the side mirror. And then she forced herself to walk forward, to take the steps up to the front stoop.

“Kelli?” Melissa called at the door. In answer, there was only silence.

Melissa walked inside, past a front entryway, skirting along a small, white-carpeted living room, and moved into the kitchen with its gleaming granite countertops and a broad center island with stools pressed up against the overhang.

It was Kelli’s feet Melissa saw first, jutting out past the island. One foot was wearing a leather house shoe, but the other had only a gray sock, the shoe missing somewhere. Then Melissa noticed the blood, a bulging pool of it, shiny and so dark red it verged into black. Melissa drew her hands toward her mouth, a guttural sound emerging from deep in her throat.

She inched further around the island to see all of Kelli, keeping close to the wall. A sob ripped from Melissa into the air when the rest of her came into view. Sprawled out on her stomach, her neck turned to the side so her cheek lay on the blood-streaked tile, her eyes glassy, dead. One hand lay daintily at her waist, palm up. The other arm bent at the elbow and reaching past the crown of her head, as though grabbing for something.

“Oh my God.”

The voice came from behind Melissa. She whirled around and saw him standing in the doorway. Derek.

“What the hell happened here?” He stepped into the kitchen. Dread swelled in Melissa’s chest, and her eyes darted to the counter, to a butcher block. She seized the biggest handle and drew out the knife, brandished it flashing in the air in front of her.

“Stay away.”

Derek’s hands came up, like Melissa was a skittish animal. “Melissa, what do you think you’re doing? Put that down.”

She backed away from him. Her heel slipped in the slick of Kelli’s blood, but she kept her balance. “Stay back!” she yelled. “Don’t come another step.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I can tell you’re scared. But Melissa, you’re not thinking clearly right now.”

Anger rose up in Melissa’s throat like bile. She was so sick of people telling her what she thought and didn’t think, what she knew and didn’t know. “That’s not true,” she spat. “I’m thinking clearly for the first time. I know exactly what happened here.Youkilled her.”

Derek’s eyes bulged in a look of shock so genuine-seeming Melissa had to remind herself how good a liar, how good a pretender, this man was. “Melissa, I just got here.”

“I know that’s not true,” Melissa said. “I was on the phone with Kelli when you knocked on the door.”

“It had to have been someone else,” Derek said.

“Who?”

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