Page 51 of Threat of Danger
He sat on the arm of the couch until they were an inch from touching. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Muller bristled, shifting in his chair as if he was about to stand. He might still be just the deputy, but he played that role to the hilt. “I could take her in.”
“Not unless you’re arresting her for something.” Derek’s tone hardened another notch, into Navy SEAL steel.
“I never said I was arresting her.” The deputy’s eyes flashed with undisguised frustration. Yet he backed down, settling back into his seat. He didn’t seem keen to test whether or not he could make Derek leave.
“I need full cooperation. From the both of you.” He gave his official glare. “This might very well be a murder case.”
Those last two words slammed into Jess’s chest like twin punches.
Murder case.
Whether Jess was comfortable or not, whether the questions brought back difficult memories or not, didn’t matter. She wanted to help. She sat up straighter. “I have no problem with answering questions.”
Muller nodded, some more of his huff and puff fading. “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”
She hated starting at the beginning. Why couldn’t they just cut to the wood-chipper threats? But Muller was leaning forward already, his gaze fast on her face.
“Minute by minute,” he instructed before he shot Derek aYou don’t say a wordglance.
“Derek and I were at the movies,” Jess began.Just say it and get it over with.“He brought me home. Nobody was here. Dad took Mom and Zelda to the new fabric store in Burlington. I asked Derek if he wanted to come in. He asked me if I wanted to go out to the old cabin with him instead.”
“To have sex,” Muller clarified.
Derek’s posture stiffened. Jess put a hand on his knee to keep him from starting a fight with the deputy.
She’d already confessed everything ten years ago, no reason why she should be embarrassed now, but she still felt heat creep onto her face. “Yes.”
“And you did engage in intercourse.” He wasn’t asking.
How in hell did he still remember? All that had happened ten years ago. Had he memorized her file?
Derek shifted his weight. Before he could bark something at Muller, or lunge at him, Jess quickly said yes again.
That day with Derek at the cabin had been her first time. She couldn’t tell if it’d been good or bad. In her mind, the memory of the two of them together had been inseparably jumbled up with the stark terror of what had happened immediately after. Even now, nausea was rising in her stomach. She let go of Derek to pull a throw pillow over and hug it against her middle.
“When was the first time you realized you two weren’t alone in the woods?” Muller’s voice held a tinge too much interest.
“When he kicked the door in.”
“And you were both naked?”
“Yes.” A small detail, but, again, he remembered. “He had a rifle,” Jess said. “He let Derek dress, but he didn’t let me. Then he made us go with him to the camper.”
She remembered freezing, and the memory made her shiver.
“I need to know everything he said. Word for word.”
Jess steeled herself and told him. And when her hands began to tremble, she hugged the pillow tighter.
Derek stayed silent, stayed where he was. She couldn’t have handled it if he tried to put his arms around her to offer comfort. She couldn’t handle any contact at the moment, and he seemed to sense that.
She went on with the story while Muller stopped her with stupid questions like, “Were you scared?”
The deputy hadn’t been kidding. He wanted every detail, including what she’d been thinking during every minute of the torture.
After Jess and Derek had escaped, they’d become the focus of true crime enthusiasts who wouldn’t leave them alone. They wrote, they called, they reached out to her online. In hindsight, Jess wondered whether Muller was like those people. Maybe he’d become a police officer in the first place because he got off on this kind of thing.
