Page 84 of Fortune's Control
“Then you remembered something.”
“No, that’s not it.” That wasn’t correct either, so I tried again. “I remembered that I remembered something. I know that doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes sense. Have you ever heard of phantom pain?”
He referenced that before. “From your leg?”
Shane’s voice lowered as a hint of vulnerability entered it. “It itches from mosquito bites, and I can feel soap on it when I shower. I can close my eyes and find my ankle. The worst pain I’ve experienced isn’t where the surgeons cut; it’sin the part they took away. I know what you mean.”
Shane was there the first time I felt someone watching me, and I described a ghost presence to explain it. He’d listened then, and later, when I confessed to witnessing a murder. It was like standing next to myself and watching it through the other me’s eyes. His immediate understanding and the trust it showed gave me the courage to keep going.
“I can’t prove anything, and the police dismissed me. But he said I was next.” Shane nodded, encouraging me to keep going. I took a calming breath, and my confidence grew. “He planned to kill me because I saw him. He left me those pictures to scare me.”
“Do you still have them?”
I snorted. “I try to forget they exist. The pictures were meant to either scare me into silence or to terrorize me. They worked because I left Atlanta right after getting them.”
“You think he planned her murder?” Shane said as his understanding grew.
“I don’t think Sandy Cooper died because she made her ex-boyfriend angry. Wilson Skane is a creep and a loser, which makes it easy to pin the blame on him, but that doesn’t mean he’s guilty. Someone else did it, and I can almost remember how I know. Almost.” Shane kept silent, but his faith in me showed in his eyes. I kept going. “It will come to me. When it does, I want to tell the detectives. It could be enough for them to believe me. Also, there’s more.”
“Is there more that you remember?”
I pulled myself from his arms and retrieved my laptop. “I check on him.”
“Him? Do you mean our suspect?” Shane opened my laptop and turned it toward me when the login screen appeared. “It wants your password.”
I gulped. “It’s my name, followed by 123. Don’t judge.”
“No judgment, but we will change that.” He shook his head in disbelief and entered the password. “It’s a website for a Tampa news station,” he said once the laptop finished logging in and a screen appeared. He swung it towards me. “What arewe looking for?”
“You asked if I had a theory. If Wilson Skane didn’t do it, someone else did. He broke the streetlights first, which means planning, as you said. Someone who plans is the sort that sees me as a loose end.”
“You think our suspect has done it before?”
Shane referred to him as our suspect twice now. “That’s why I check to see if another woman like Sandy Cooper died. If that happens, then I’m right, and maybe the police will believe me. It’s not all in my head.”
“You witnessed something traumatic, Lilah. It was never in your head. Has it happened again?”
“No, not once, but I plan to keep checking. If I’m right, he’ll do it again.”
“Why Tampa?” Shane pulled up the local crime section and scanned the headlines. “There’s nothing here.” He bobbed his head and tried again. “There’s a lot here, but nothing stands out.”
“I check everywhere. All the major cities.”
“What have you found?”
“It’s like you said—lots of horrible things, but not the right thing. Either I’m mistaken, and it was Wilson Skane, or he’s hiding. That’s why I never believed in myself. Plus, I’m not a detective.”
“Maybe he was hiding before.” Shane pulled up an Atlanta news site. “We went to Atlanta for a family vacation when I was a kid, and I remember not being impressed with the aquarium. There’s nothing here either, and no updates on Wilson Skane. A car dealership caught fire yesterday.”
“No updates.” I batted his arm as an idea hit me. “What if the update already happened? I don’t know how to search for that.”
“I might. Let me call Dean.” He grabbed his phone and scrolled through his contacts. “Hey. You’re on speakerphone.”
“I was in bed. What do you need?”
Shane took my hand, intertwining our fingers. “Can you do us a favor? Lilah is here with me.”
