The Girl and the Black Christmas (Emma Griffin FBI Mystery Book 11) Page 5

  He didn’t know if it was because he was going undetected and could continue his easy walk through his day-to-day life, or if it was because he was enjoying watching the reaction and wondering if it would change if he did it again.

  Would another dip down that well alter what people were thinking? Will it build up on him until it became so obvious no one would look past him anymore?

  It was only weeks later he found himself moving down that spiral again.

  As it had before, it started with a look.

  This time, it wasn’t in sunlight.

  A chill wind whipped up, sending red and gold leaves across the dark expanse of the sky. The air carried the smell of a distant bonfire. He breathed in the particles of ash and firelight, imagining them settling into an ember in the base of his belly.

  Then she turned the corner in front of him. Just like that, the ember glowed.

  Hers was a new face. He couldn’t remember ever having seen it. The cold bite of the wind brought a tinge of red to her cheeks. A scarf around her neck, caught up in the whip of the air. She reached for it, but the fabric slipped from her fingers and she rushed after it.

  He stepped from the sidewalk into the road to catch the scarf. Just touching it made his skin tingle. He could feel her in it. Her warmth and its promise. She smiled at him as she jogged to where he stood and stopped just steps away. Her eyelashes fluttered as she accepted the scarf from him and looped it around her graceful neck.

  Maybe his thoughts should have been somewhere else. Maybe another face should have come into his mind. But it didn’t. It was only her.

  Later when he wrapped the scarf around her neck again, letting his fingertips trace down the soft skin on either side and along the slope of her collar bones, that face flickered across his thoughts. But only for a moment. He didn’t want to waste any of what he had right in front of him.

  The fringe at the ends of her scarf lay against the bare skin of her chest, pooling between her breasts and drizzling down her belly like rain. The chill of the night was in her skin. It had little chance to warm. Not with the night raging on.

  She wasn’t going back out into the wind that night. He left her with a touch of his fingertips to her lips and a blanket tucked close over her. He walked out into the starlight and lifted his collar, covering the scarf knotted tight to shield his skin.

  Thirteen years ago …

  * * *

  “Thank you for joining us, Miss Meyer.”

  She sighed as she moved toward her seat at the back of the room. She thought she could sneak in without being noticed. It was why she chose that seat at the beginning of the semester. Perched at the towering top of the lecture hall, it was like a nose-bleed seat in a sports stadium. Far from the action on the floor below.

  Only, the people sitting on those seats usually wanted to be closer to the game. They wanted to see the players better than as the multi-colored flecks vaguely visible from the distance. She didn’t want to be any closer to her professor. She wanted to be close to the door at the very back of the classroom.

  If she stayed close to the door, that meant she could slip out more easily if she needed to. She hoped it would let her ease into the room after class already started without being noticed. There were three hundred other students in the class. Some sitting within just a couple of feet of the professor.

  And yet, she noticed her.

  “I’m sorry, Professor,” she said.

  “For being late, or for disrupting my class?” Professor Murillo asked.

  The prickling heat of embarrassment flooded Julia’s cheeks and crept up her neck. She was thankful for the low lights that made it easier to see the projection screen. At least they kept the six hundred eyes staring at her from witnessing the flush and seeing the discomfort.

  There was no way to answer the professor’s searing question. At least she could have had the decency to sound angry. It wouldn’t have been so bad if there was the same acidity or judgment in her voice that was in the expression in her eyes every time Julia saw her outside the lecture hall.

  Instead, she maintained a steady, almost unaffected tone. It was as if she couldn’t even be bothered to be angry. As if Julia should just be ashamed. It took every bit of the negativity or blame from the confrontation away from Professor Murillo and kept it lodged firmly in Julia’s throat.

  She didn’t bother to try to come up with anything to say. Walking to her seat, she took off her coat and draped it over the back of the seat, sat down, and took out her notebook. Everybody was still staring at her. She could feel it all around her, but she fought looking at anybody. The tension built up more and more the longer she sat there, her eyes fixed defiantly on the front of the classroom, refusing to acknowledge anyone else in the room.

  She pretended she was alone. There wasn’t anyone else in the room with her, and she didn’t have to think about what anyone else was thinking.

  It wasn’t so unusual for her. There were plenty of moments in her daily life when she tried to melt away everything around her and pretend it didn’t exist. It was easier that way. If she didn’t acknowledge that anyone else was around, she wouldn’t have to think about the way they were looking at her, or what they might be thinking.

  She didn’t have to feel anxious, waiting for one of them to ask the wrong question.

  Four years ago, she never would have felt like this. She never would have thought this would be where she would be sitting.

  This November should have been about preparing for her last semester and looking ahead to life after graduation. She should have chosen a graduate school or a study-abroad program. It should be her life she was looking ahead to, not another year of undergraduate studies.

  But she wouldn’t let herself sink any deeper than that. The choices that were made were hers. Maybe not completely. She made the choice set in front of her, because she felt as if it was the only one she could make. It was what she had to do. For herself. For everyone.

  Looking back, she still thought she’d done the right thing. She wished it wasn’t. She wished there had been another way.

  “It’s good to see you are so interested in today’s lecture you can’t even come up with an answer to my question. I wouldn’t want you to miss anything. See me after class,” Professor Murillo said.

  Julia’s stomach sank. She didn’t have time for that. She barely even had time to be here in class. There were so many other things to do. Sometimes she wished she could just say no. No to all of it. To class. To graduating. To expectations. To promises. To everything.

  In those moments, she didn’t want anything over-the-top. She didn’t want anything outlandish or extreme. She just wanted her own life.

  But then she was reminded of all the reasons she kept going. She would eventually have what she wanted. She just had to keep telling herself that. It wasn’t now and it wasn’t the plan she’d originally had. But it would be there. She just had to push ahead.

  When the lecture finished, the floor nearly shook with the weight of the hundreds of students filing up the steps and out of the hall in one stream. Julia took her time packing up her notes and putting her books back in her backpack. Again, she pretended nobody else was around her. She pretended she didn’t hear the whispers or feel the people pushing past her to get out of the row of seats as quickly as possible.

  When they were finally gone, she walked down the steps toward the professor. Murillo didn’t even look up at her as she approached. She was wiping notes away from the projector she was writing on and going to great lengths to make sure every hint of the green marker she used was gone from the acetate.

  She was the only one of Julia’s professors who still actually wrote when giving notes. Everyone else used a computer that projected up onto a screen. But Murillo was stuck in her ways. She still used the same clear sheets cast up onto the screen with a bright bulb. She wrote with handwriting that required interpretation and shorthand she didn’t care to explain.

  Students
just had to figure it out. That almost seemed like part of the class. If you could decipher the professor and her notes, it gave you a chance for success. Julia wanted to think there was some sort of meaningful reason behind that. Some sort of lesson she would look back on when she was an adult and know it influenced her in some positive way.

  But she doubted it.

  Instead, it seemed more like a vindictive ploy, another way to wind the futures and the anxieties of her students around her fingers.

  Julia didn’t want to be the one to crack. Every interaction with Murillo was a standoff. One of them had to be the one who spoke first, and she never wanted it to be her. She despised handing over the power and giving the woman any more validation.

  But she couldn’t keep waiting. The seconds ticking by were piling up around her feet.

  “You wanted to see me?” Julia finally asked.

  “I wanted to see you at the beginning of class like all the other students,” the professor fired back, continuing to wipe the projector.

  “I’m sorry I was late,” Julia said.

  She didn’t want to apologize, but it was a small price to pay to get out of the room and to the next class. She was the teaching assistant and couldn’t afford to scrape even an instant off the beginning of the lecture.

  “Everyone else in the class seems to be able to get here on time.”

  “I will from now on,” Julia said.

  “See that you do. I know you don’t want your grades to suffer.”

  “I’ve had an A the entire semester.”

  “We’ll see if you can maintain that,” the professor said, finally looking away from the projector. Her eyes met Julia’s in a gesture that only seemed to emphasize the threat in her words.

  Chapter Nine

  Now

  The very first glimmers of sunlight are coming through the window when I wake up. I remember what Xavier said and hop out of bed. Without even bothering to change out of my pajamas, I sit up and stuff my feet down into boots. Before I head to the living room I dial my phone. There’s no answer, which doesn’t really surprise me.

  “What are you doing?” Sam asks. “Get back in bed. It’s cold out there. And dark. And not bed.”

  A sleepy smile crosses his face, and I smile back. Leaning down over the edge of the bed, I kiss him.

  “It’s not dark. It’s morning. Which means I have to go find Xavier,” I say.

  He rolls over. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Because if I heard it, that means I have to wonder what’s going on. And I just don’t want to.”

  “Go back to sleep,” I tell him. “I’ll be back soon.” I step out of the door. “I hope.”

  With any luck, Xavier hasn’t gotten very far into the woods. And if he has, it’s quiet enough out there that maybe I’ll be able to hear him.

  Sam’s coat is heavier than mine, so I throw that on over my pajamas, add a hat I tug down over my ears, and grab a thick pair of gloves. I’m essentially dressed as Sam during the winter, but since I missed out on the Halloween festivities of getting dressed up, I’m going to consider this my belated costume.

  The snap of frosty air when I get out onto the porch makes me burrow my head down deep into the collar of the coat, and I yank on the gloves as I walk around the side of the cabin. Reconsidering the route I chose, I turn around and head the other way.

  If I’m going to track Xavier, I have to think like him. There’s absolutely no chance of that happening, so I have to do the next best thing. Something is bothering him about the night Elliot died, and it’s too tangled in his mind for even him to reach. I’m actually a little surprised he’s not just circling around the cabin.

  I call him again as I follow around the path he did and look for any indication of where he might have gone. The phone rings several times before I end the call. I look toward the path leading into the woods. The late fall weather has it looking barer than the last time I saw it, but there are still enough evergreens and stubborn trees clinging to dead brown leaves to obscure the view after a few yards.

  It’s the easiest route into the woods, but if Xavier is right about the route Elliot walked to get onto the porch after he was shot, that path doesn’t make sense. If he came down that path, he would have been closer to the other side of the cabin. Shot and in pain, I would think he would go for the shortest way to the front door to give himself any chance of help.

  There was a possibility he headed for the light on the side of the cabin. The other side was left dark; he could have been drawn to the glow. But I already know he was familiar with the cabin. He didn’t need the light to guide his way. If he had only gone a few steps around from the end of the path, he would have been able to see the light from the porch, anyway.

  Making my way onto the path, I pay close attention to my surroundings. The sun is coming up, breaking up the trees so I can see everything around me a little better. I’ve long held the belief that the energy of crimes leaves a scar on the place where the crime happened. Space in the universe doesn’t just go untouched when something horrific happens.

  A crime goes against the natural order, against what should be happening and what should exist in that space at any moment. When something brutal or sad or horrific happens, it leaves an impression. It cuts into the energy of the place, and that space never really recovers.

  I feel that here.

  It doesn’t scare me. It’s not fear that comes over me when I walk along the path and see the same things I saw when I ran through here four years ago. I’ve come to terms with it. It’s more of an unsettling feeling that comes from walking on top of my own steps. I’m catching glimpses of the past, reminders of being here before. As Xavier said, I’m still here.

  Off to my left, I know the forked path will eventually lead me past the tree where I found a dog chain wrapped around the base. It was a detail that went past everyone investigating the disappearances and murders. Many people who live in Feathered Nest come to walk their dogs through these woods, they said. It wouldn’t be completely out of the realm of possibility to think maybe one of them had tied his dog in place here while he did something else.

  Only, it didn’t take long for me to learn the people in town never came into these woods. If they did, they would know about the house far in the distance. The sprawling mansion once so glorious that time had reduced almost to ruin: the childhood home of Jake Logan.

  The dog chain on that tree had a much more sinister purpose, one that failed the day a beautiful woman named Crystal managed to break free and run. The train stopped her. The camera mounted to the engine caught a flicker of the last moments of her desperation.

  They found parts of her strewn along the side of the tracks and thought it was just the impact that destroyed her body. But it wasn’t. She had already been mangled by the time she ran in front of that train. It was adrenaline that kept her on her feet for that last sprint through the trees. She likely wouldn’t have lived much longer, even without the train.

  In the end, she wasn’t running for her life. That was already gone. She was running to die on her own terms. A final insult to Jake that became a critical piece of his undoing. Few people ever speak her name anymore. But I’ll never forget her.

  “I am not going to get the car. It’s barely even morning.”

  I think I found Xavier.

  “Why not?” Xavier whines, his voice sounding as if he’s trailing after Dean. “It won’t take long. I’m pretty sure Emma left the key in the living room. And if she didn’t, I can hotwire it.”

  “You are not hot-wiring my car,” I call out into the trees.

  A few seconds of silence follow.

  “Emma?” Xavier says cautiously.

  I walk in the direction where I hear them and soon encounter Dean stomping toward me. He went for the same pajama approach I did but opted for a bathrobe rather than a coat.

  “Nice robe,” I note.

  He glares at me. “I didn’t know when he said step outside for
a minute, he actually meant take a sunrise hike.”

  “Why are you even awake?” I ask.

  “I opened my eyes and Xavier was hovering right over my face. There’s no going back to sleep after that,” he protests.

  “Emma, give Dean the key to the car,” Xavier says, catching up to us.

  “Good morning, Xavier,” I say.

  “Good morning, Emma. Give Dean the key to the car.”

  “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” I ask.

  “I don’t have it,” he says.

  “Did you lose it?” I ask.

  “No. I know where it is. In the cabin sleeping. Its alarm doesn’t go off for another hour.”

  This is a pick-my-battles kind of moment.

  “Why do you want Dean to get the car?” I ask.

  “He wants me to find out where Elliot drove in here so he can try different scenarios,” Dean says.

  “For what?” I ask.

  “Elliot was an ant, not an elephant,” Xavier says.

  “Elliot was a big man,” I say. “Hardly an ant.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Size is all perception. The tiniest creatures don’t know the largest exist. No more than you could perceive the universe if you weren’t told it was there. The sky looks as if it curves around the Earth and contains it. Nothing more than the toys in the gumball machine of life.”

  “I’m going to the cabin,” Dean announces.

  He stalks off and Xavier waves at him absently, staring up at the sky as if he’s envisioning the plastic top to his gumball bubble.

  “Xavier,” I say after a few seconds. “Just out of curiosity…”

  “One of those sticky men that flops down the wall if you throw it,” he says.

  “Ah,” I say, nodding.

  He glances over at me. “You?”

  “Temporary tattoo.”

  He makes an acknowledging sound, as if he’s contemplating my choice. “What of?”