She resented them for it all and felt the bitter taste of envy rise in her throat.
She heard the quickly murmured condolences as mourners hurried past, and the growl of car engines starting, the buzz of tires against pavement as they all escaped, but she couldn’t stop the horrid ache, or fill the dark void that was her heart. She caught a glimpse of Reuben Montoya and his wife, Abby, without their baby. Montoya was her father’s partner, a man north of thirty with jet black hair, trimmed goatee, and intense, deep-set eyes. His wife was nearly his age, her red hair escaping from a black scarf. Montoya sketched the sign of the cross over his chest, then grabbed his wife’s hand before striding away from the tomb.
“It’s time to go,” her father whispered into her ear a few minutes later when she and her small family were all that remained other than the men assigned to slip Jay’s coffin into the tomb and seal it, men who huddled a few steps away, past another family’s aboveground crypt. They were waiting, one smoking, avoiding her gaze.
She squeezed her eyes shut, stemming the hot tears.
“Come on, honey.” Her father’s voice was kind. Understanding.
Just leave me alone. Everyone, just leave me alone!
They couldn’t understand her pain, the physical torment of heartache, the mental anguish of knowing that she should be in the coffin, not Jay. He was lying dead. She was alive.
Left to feel the void of the future.
Left to slog forward through platitudes, prayers, and grief.
Left so very alone.
He’d died saving her from a faceless, murderous madman.
“We need to go,” Rick Bentz said, tugging at her arm, but she pulled it away and cast him a hard, meaningful glance as a new emotion crawled through her, a bright, hot rage that chased away the blackness, that battled with her self-torture.
“Leave me.”
“Honey, we can’t—”
“Dad. Just leave me,” she bit out, and dashed her tears away with the back of her hand. “I want—I need—some time alone. With my husband.”
“But—”
“Shh.” Olivia gazed straight at her husband with eyes that, Kristi knew, had seen far too much, witnessed more anguish than any mortal person should ever have borne. “Let her be.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but closed it again, finally seeming to understand. He let go of Kristi’s arm. “We’ll be in the car,” he said against his daughter’s ear, his voice husky as he planted a kiss on her cheek. “Waiting.”
Kristi didn’t respond.
Just stared down at the coffin.
Imagined that her once vital husband could hear her.
“I’ll get him,” she vowed. “I will get him. And he will pay.” She bit her lip so hard it bled, then with bloodstained lips, bent down and kissed the smooth wood of Jay McKnight’s coffin. “For you,” she swore, straightening. “And for our unborn child.”
* * *
She should have told him about the baby, Kristi thought, curled on the couch in her living room. Jay should have known that they were going to become parents by the following summer. But she’d kept the secret to herself. What had she been waiting for?
The “right” moment?
A big surprise?
How foolish she’d been. She touched her stomach, still flat as a board, the tiny bit of life within her undetectable at about eight weeks from conception. To be fair, she thought, she’d barely found out herself and then . . . oh, God. The fight. The horrible screaming match that had occurred before she’d left the house on the night of the attack.
She’d been leaving for her yoga class and what had started out as the same old argument about her working had escalated. She’d considered telling him about the baby that night, but had held her tongue because she’d known that her pregnancy would only amplify his reasons for not wanting her to work.
She wrote true-crime books.
He considered it dangerous and had warned her on various occasions that a convicted killer could be paroled or escape or have friends and Kristi was painting an ever-larger target on her back.
“These people aren’t rational,” he’d said, his eyes blazing, his lips tight with concern. “You can’t trust them, no matter how ‘good’ they’ve been while serving time,” he’d pointed out, while pouring himself a drink, a double scotch. Neat. His favorite.
“And they have friends,” he’d continued, taking a sip from his short glass and pointing at her with a long finger. “Family members. People who would like nothing more than revenge against anyone they think exploits them. You make money from their mistakes, the pain of their loved ones. They’re crazed. And they have weapons.”
“Exploits them? Killers?”
“In their eyes, you’re abusing them.”
“Oh, Jay, stop it.” That—his remark about abusing killers? Seriously? That had particularly stung and she’d longed for a drink of her own. Red wine. Her go-to when stressed, but that last night, because of her recently discovered secret, that they would be parents, she’d eyed the bottle but left it be.
“This is my job, Jay,” she said. “It’s not dangerous.”
“You don’t know that.”
“And you don’t know that it is. You’re just paranoid.”
“Am I?” He was getting angrier. Downed his drink. “What about Roy Calhoun, the author who wrote about that Chicago strangler? He ended up at the end of a rope, a noose hung from his own ceiling, dangling over a copy of his book, the pages all ripped out.”
“One case?”
“How about Anne DeVille?”
“That was an accident,” Kristi argued, really wanting that glass of wine.
“She went canoeing alone and was found drowned, her boat capsized. Her life vest missing.”
“She was careless.”
“Like you?” he’d said. “You’ve already published enough books. You don’t need to write any more. Face it, Kristi, with every book you write, you’re taunting someone in the shadows, profiting off their pain, throwing them and their families into the spotlight.”
“I thought killers loved the limelight. I thought they got off on mentally reviewing their kills, that they loved to replay the suffering of their victims, that they got their rocks off by outplaying a game with the police.”
“Some. But it’s dangerous. These people are capable of unspeakable acts.”
“I know.”
“And you make them famous. Throw them into the spotlight again.”
“I tell their stories, Jay. What are you saying?” she demanded, seeing deeper into his argument. “That I glorify them? Murderers? Rapists?”
“That they could object to you profiting from them.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” she’d flung back at him. “This isn’t just a job for me, it’s what I do. What I want to do!”
“Find something else. Something less dangerous.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. I can just imagine what you would do if I told you to find another career.”
“I’d listen,” he’d argued, and tossed back his drink.
“And then you’d do what you wanted. Well, consider yourself listened to.” She’d grabbed her backpack and mat and stormed to the door. “And now I’m going to do exactly what I want.”