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But it’d be crazier not to try and escape the clutches of a cold-blooded Scottish mafia murderer. Especially one that makes my blood run hot for some absolutely shameful reason. There’s something that doesn’t quite add up about him. He’s hard, yes; demanding of respect, yes; takes what he wants even if it doesn’t belong to him; yes.
But there’s something else there, underlying all that. Desire to protect his family from me at all costs, yet still giving me a beautiful place to stay. Almost as if he’s torn about me.
I think of the way his face lit up, so typical of a man, when he took that first bite of pasta I’d cooked him. He didn’t give off the energy of someone who could kill a woman who loved him, someone who took care of him, cooked for him. I can’t imagine him killing a woman in his life.
I’m a woman, not a man like him born into a legacy of loyalty to family, and yet I risked it all just to protect a friend I love. A little voice in the back of my head tugs at a memory, telling me—some might consider you a murderer, Miss “Pure” Catherine. Or at least an accessory. You knew what happened and you kept your mouth shut. To protect my friend, I tell myself.
To protect yourself, I shoot back.
My mom’s face comes into my mind’s eye and I’m reliving the day before I applied for the internship.
I can smell the metallic scent of blood that’s spattered on my clothes and shoes. Sweat dampening my hair from running the five blocks it took to get home. I thought it would be faster than the Uber I typically call.
When the most terrible thing I’d ever witnessed happened, I ran to my mom for help, the one person I could trust, thinking she’d call the police and I’d have her support when I had to go through the scary process of explaining what happened to the men in uniform, their flashing lights filling the streets.
Instead, she gave me other advice.
“You’re hurting me, Mom.” Her fingernails dug into my arms as she held me tight, pulling me toward her till our noses were almost touching.
Her eyes lit into my dark ones, burning into mine. “Don’t ever tell anyone what you just told me, Kitty.” Hearing her revert back to my childhood nickname made a shiver run down my spine.
“But shouldn’t we call the police?” My voice sounded high and shrill, manic even.
“Police? After you ran home, leaving the scene of the crime?”
“But I didn’t do anything, Mom!”
Lilly had dragged me into the side yard where her boyfriend, Teddy, short for Theodore Taylor, quarterback of the team, was laid out on the grass, his eyes open, him unresponsive, Lilly at my side sobbing and dry heaving, begging me to help. Me feeling for a pulse, pumping my hands against his chest to the tune of Staying Alive by the Bee Gees, trying to keep the beat as I gave him CPR.
Lilly gone. Me not knowing what to do. Running for my mom’s house, thinking it would be faster than calling a car.
“Everything you worked for will be taken from you.” Mom shook her head. “Not to mention Lilly. She’ll be in jail for how long? Because she gave a boy drugs he asked her to buy for him? You knew he was using her. You told me so last week. Remember? How you thought he was taking advantage of her to do things he didn’t want to do himself.”
It was true. I was terrified of her getting into trouble for Teddy, but she wouldn’t listen, and it caused a fracture in our friendship, long before the night of the party. “Yes.”
“It’s already done. He’s gone. Why lose her future as well? The man had no pulse.” She looks at me like I’m crazy to even be considering the idea of talking to the cops.
My mom is my opposite, thinking with her brain whereas I follow my heart. She’s one to make a plan and stick with it, whereas I take my time, going through all the possible scenarios before making a decision.
“But shouldn’t we call them, just in case…” I grabbed at my hair, fingernails raking my scalp as I thought out loud. “I don’t know… what if I was wrong?”
Her nails dug harder into my arms. Tears sprang to my eyes. She shook me.
Her eyes were filled with fierce determination. “Was the body cold to the touch?”
“What?” My mind felt fuzzy, and I remember her voice sounding far away.
“Was. He. Cold.”
I nod. “Yes.” I remember when I first felt for a pulse, pulling back, his skin cold, then later, almost going into shock when I pressed my warm lips against his cool ones to give him the CPR breaths.
“Then it’s done. It’s over. We move on. No matter what you say, what you do, your name would be tarnished for running,” she said.
A stoic look etched in her determined face, Mom methodically burned everything I was wearing in a barrel in the backyard.
After showering the smoky smell from our hair, I made us two cups of cocoa while we gathered around her small kitchen island, my mind numb with shock, hers vibrantly concocting a plan to get me out of California.
“You had only made it to the front door of the house when Lilly came to get you. Were there cameras?” She stares at me hard, willing me to remember every detail.
