“Put the blame on yourself.”
“I’m—”
“Yeah, you are. You’re thinking that you missed something and if you had figured it out, you would’ve been able to warn the agents. There was nothing you could’ve done, Sasha. And you don’t even really know if there were two men.” He curled his hand around my neck and forced my gaze to him. “Don’t put that kind of guilt on yourself.”
Biting my lip, I nodded the best I could with his hand on my neck.
“I’m serious, babe. I know what that kind of guilt does. Fucking eats you alive,” he said in a low voice. “You have no idea how many times I lay awake at night asking myself what if I’d just walked you to the car—”
“No. We talked about that.” I placed my hands on his chest. “There was nothing you . . .” Trailing off, I sighed heavily. “I see what you did there. You can’t blame yourself. I can’t blame myself.”
His eyes softened. “No, you can’t.”
“Neither can you,” I whispered.
He brought his forehead to mine. “That will always be a work in progress no matter what.”
I closed my eyes. “I hate hearing that.”
“I hate knowing that you’ve got to go through this shit again.”
Sliding my hand to his shoulder, I tugged on him. He came, wrapping an arm around me and gathering me close. “It’s just not me who’s going through this again.”
“You’re all that matters,” he replied, his lips brushing my cheek.
I turned my head, unable to shake the questions Striker had raised. “If Striker is right, you know what that means.”
Cole didn’t respond, but his arm tightened around me.
“He’s probably been around this whole time. Living here. Interacting with people and . . .” Something occurred to me. “But there haven’t been any murders, have there?” I pulled back. “Before the woman in Frederick disappeared?”
“There’ve been murders, but nothing like this. Nothing unsolved.”
I rose, picking up my wine glass. “Here’s the thing. If this is a copycat or someone who was working with the Groom before, they either haven’t been abducting women for ten years or they’ve done a damn good job at hiding it until now.”
“Until you came back,” he said, scooting back to the edge of the couch. “So this person knew you were coming back or the Frederick abduction is a coincidence.”
“Either way, I doubt someone just up and decides to copycat a serial killer, right?”
“I don’t think there’s really a playbook on that, but I can check the NCIC—it’s a database that tracks crimes,” he explained. “See if there’s been any suspicious murders or kidnappings that have been reported in the tristate area.”
Placing my wine glass on the counter, I stood there, running my palms over the edge of the counter. Being told I shouldn’t feel guilty was totally different than actually feeling that way. Truth was, my return had tripped something. Either ignited a murderous rampage or exposed it.
“I want to run something by you,” Cole said, and when I looked over, he was standing by the coffee table. “How about you stay with me for a couple of days.”
I faced him. “Cole—”
“I know it’s hard with the inn, but I would just feel better if you were at my place. There aren’t a hundred different points of entry, the possibility that someone could sneak in there during the day and wait until everyone is asleep. I don’t have to worry about someone losing a key and this fucker picking it up and getting in here,” he said, and I shivered. “Nor do I have to worry about some asshole showing up and scaring you, like Currie and Striker. You’ll be safer at my place.”
God, going to Cole’s house and hiding out sounded amazing. “I can’t do that. My mom—”
“She can come too.”
My heart tripled in size as I walked up to him. “That is so sweet of you, but we have guests who have somehow not realized what has been happening. We can’t ask them to leave. It’s not like we’re making a ton of money, and we can’t risk bad reviews. Bed-and-breakfast places live and die by word of mouth.”
He did not look happy with my answer. “How far are you booked up?”
I rested my hands on his sides. “We don’t have a break anytime soon. I’m sorry. I appreciate what you’re offering. I think you’re wonderful for it, but I can’t.”
His shoulders rose with a heavy sigh. “Didn’t think you were going to go for it. But I’m going to be honest with you, if something else happens, I’m going to throw you over my shoulder and cart your ass out of here.”
Despite everything, I smiled. “I just pictured that, and there is something oddly hot about it.”
“Well, the image did involve me, so . . .”
I laughed. “You definitely don’t have any modesty issues, do you?”
“Nah.”
Our eyes met and held. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“Yeah,” he murmured. Cole folded his arms around me, and I turned, pressing against him. He was all warm strength, and in his arms, it was easy to believe that everything would be okay.
It was easy to pretend.
Things were sort of normal on Wednesday. Miranda called me in the morning, and she was only slightly hungover from a wine headache. Cole was at work, but my mind was not far from him.
Last night, we slept. His arms wrapped around me, a leg thrown over mine, and I stayed asleep until he woke me in the way I was growing incredibly accustomed to, his hand and then his mouth between my thighs. He got me off that way, and then I got him off in the shower.
The shower thing had been a first for me.
I’d never showered with a man before, and I sure as hell had never gotten on my knees in a shower either.
I decided I wanted every morning to go like that.
Sipping my soda, I sat at the front desk while Mom started to work on a light lunch. Not much of a cook, the moment I tried to help her, she shooed me out, so it was back to the endless updating of spreadsheets. I figured I’d be done sometime in the next five hundred years.
It was hard to sit at the desk when I knew Cole was currently combing through the database he had mentioned. I wanted to be out there, helping to figure out who was doing this, but I wasn’t a detective. I wasn’t a grown-up Nancy Drew. There was little I could do other than keep myself safe.
So my butt stayed in the chair.
I looked up at the sound of steps. The Wilkins couple was coming down the staircase. They’d checked in earlier. Both were from Upstate New York. They were road-tripping to Florida, which I was in awe of. There was no way in the world I could ever be in a car for that kind of trip.
Except maybe with Cole.
I bet we could make that interesting.
“Hi,” I said as Mrs. Wilkins approached the desk, her strawberry-blond hair falling in curls over her shoulders.
Her smile was more of a grimace. “I hate to be that guest who immediately has a complaint.”
“No. It’s okay,” I reassured her as her husband walked to the doors. “What can I help you with?”
She twisted a pink fuzzy winter cap in her hands. “There is this really weird smell in our room. We thought maybe it was just our imagination at first, but it’s not. I think it’s coming from one of the rooms next to us,” she said. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s pretty rank.”
“Oh no, I’m sorry to hear that.” I rose from the desk. “I will check on that immediately.”
“Thank you,” she said, pulling on her cap. “The inn is really lovely, by the way.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that.” I stepped around the desk. “You said it was room seven, correct?”
She nodded and then joined her husband at the door. Cold air rushed in, along with some flurries. Smiling at them, I shoved my hands into the pockets of my sweater and walked toward the kitchen. My stomach rumbled at the scent of pasta. Mom was at the counter, cutting peppers.
“Hey,??
? I said, heading toward the back room. “Room seven and five haven’t been booked, right?”
“Nope.” She paused, looking up. “Seven’s the room that had the leaky sink. The one that Cole fixed. Why?”
“Strange.” I opened the door. “The young couple who booked room six said that there was a bad smell they thought might be coming from one of the nearby rooms.”
Mom frowned. “That’s really odd.”
“I’m going to check it out. Cross your fingers that it’s not a dead mouse or something,” I told her.
“Better not be.”
Snatching up the keys to the rooms, I headed to the staff entrance. My first stop was the Wilkinses’ room. After stepping inside, I left their door open.
I inhaled deeply, and all I smelled was perfume—vanilla perfume. I walked past the bed, to the wall that bumped up to room five, and I still didn’t smell anything. Wondering if they were imagining things, I headed to the opposite side of the room, and opened their bathroom door. A faint scent of aftershave and fruity body wash clung to the small room, but as I stepped in further, I did smell something under those scents. I inhaled again, nose wrinkling.
There was definitely a scent. Not sure what it was. Sort of reminded me of something spoiled?
Why in the world didn’t she say you could smell it in the bathroom? That meant it was either coming from inside the walls—please God, no—or it was from the bathroom in the other room.
Oh no.
The sink.
What if the sink broke again and had flooded the damn room. Granted, I doubted it smelled like that. I hurried out of their room, locking it behind me. I went to room seven and unlocked the door. The moment I opened it, heat washed over me along with a stronger scent that was not . . . pleasant.
“What the hell?” I muttered, turning to the right. The heat in the room was jacked up to eighty.
A knot of unease formed in my stomach. We kept the rooms set to sixty-five if they weren’t filled for a ton of obvious reasons, so I could not understand why this was up to eighty. It hadn’t been like that when we were in the room before.
And the smell . . .
I placed my hand over my mouth as I walked farther into the room. The stench was powerful, and it was vaguely familiar. I neared the bathroom, realizing it smelled like spoiled meat.
The dread grew as I opened the bathroom door. It creaked as it slowly drifted to the side. The smell slammed into me, and I clamped my mouth shut to stop the gag as I reached out, smacking the light switch. I flipped it on. As if in a daze, my eyes traveled across the floor to the bathtub.
Horror seized me, reaching in deep and locking up my muscles. Something was in the tub. Something gray and pale in the dank water that filled the tub. Fingers—fingers connecting to an arm, dangled lifelessly over the side. It was her left arm and hand. There were only four fingers. Splotches of brown marred the skin. Her hair was limp and blond.
I stumbled back. “Oh my God.”
A dead woman was in the tub.
Chapter 26
“I’m so sorry,” Mom said for probably what was the hundredth time as she followed the Wilkins and their luggage to the front door. “If there—”
“You’ve done enough,” Mr. Wilkins said. “You helped us find a new hotel. You’ve done all that you can.”
I hadn’t heard Mrs. Wilkins say a word, but I’d seen her with her husband when they first appeared in the entry. Her face was leeched of all color, and I knew she was thinking that what she’d smelled in her room was a dead body in the next. That was pretty horrifying. Seeing it would be yet another image I would never erase from my mind.
That poor woman . . .
I’d seen her face.
Her eyes had been open, wide and fixed. Her face frozen in horror, gaping in a silent scream.
I closed my eyes as I leaned against the wall just inside the dining room. I could hear Mom at the desk now. The Wilkinses were gone. She was calling incoming guests and cancelling. I tried calling James to tell him he wasn’t needed for the next couple of days, but he hadn’t answered. All I could do was leave a voicemail.
There was no other choice. The inn was a crime scene. A body was still upstairs, in the bathtub, and even once everything was gone, we couldn’t allow people to stay here. Not when it was obviously unsafe.
Tyron was here, as were the FBI agents. I’d already given them my statement. Cole was on his way back from Baltimore. He’d mentioned something about taking leave, but I didn’t remember the specifics.
I heard my mom apologizing again.
Moving to one of the dining room chairs, I sat down and placed my head in my hand. I should be the one out there dealing with the fallout, because this—all of this—was because of me.
There was no denying it.
This wasn’t an “everything is about me” party. This was the reality. There was a dead woman, a woman who briefly served me dinner, upstairs in a bathtub, beaten and bloody.
“Sasha.”
I looked up at the sound of Tyron’s voice and lowered my hand to the table.
“You hanging in there?” he asked, approaching slowly. When I nodded, he stopped behind a chair, gripping the back of it. “Cole’s on his way?”
I nodded again.
“Coroners are on the way,” he said quietly. “They’re going to remove the body, but that’s the extent of what they’re going to do. Okay? I went ahead and contacted a company that specializes in biohazards for you. The earliest they can come is tomorrow morning. I’d suggest you just keep that door closed until they arrive.”
“Okay.” I sat back, folding my hands in my lap. “Do you . . . do you know if she was killed here?”
“It doesn’t appear to be that way. With the kind of wounds she suffered, there’d be more blood if she was murdered here.” Pausing, he sat down in the chair. “She was stabbed, Sasha.”
I bit down on my lip. “How long do you think she was here?”
“What’s left behind is mostly fluids from decomp. Time of death right now is going to have to wait on the autopsy. With the heat jacked up in the room and her body partially submerged, it’s going to make it hard to determine, but we think she’s been in that bathtub for at least a day or two.”
Acids in my stomach churned. She’d been in that bathtub for a day or two. Oh God, I couldn’t . . .
“I know you’re dealing with a lot right now. You’re probably feeling numb, but I need to ask you a couple of more questions, okay?”
Swallowing, I nodded for a third time. “I understand.”
He leaned forward, resting an arm on the table. “What we’re guessing is that someone moved the body in here at night. You have an alarm. Who knows the code?”
“Not many. My mom,” I said. “James Jordan—our chef. So did Angela and Daphne. But that’s it.”
“Do you think there is a chance that someone moved her in here before you set the alarm?” he asked.
“It’s . . . it’s possible. We don’t watch the entrances, but I think we’d hopefully notice someone carrying in . . . in a body through the front doors.” I reached up, tucking my hair back. “The only other way would be through the back entrance. Someone could carry someone in that way, up the back stairs, and not be seen, but we keep that door locked and the tunnel leading into the cellar is closed off.”
“Is it possible that someone could’ve gained a key to the back entrance?”
My first response was to say no but it wasn’t impossible. “Nothing is impossible.”