Page 82 of The Woman I’ve Become

“Because—” Julia begins.

“Because,” I cut her off, “she never stopped seeing him until I came for her.”

Her gaze jerks to me, surprise and maybe just a little fear glittering in her eyes.

But then, that isn’t the only bad, bad thing I learned about the seemingly good girl Julia Anderson after my escape from hell. Alicia has no idea what a monster Julia is herself.

“You’re a liar,” she shouts, spittle flying from her lips.

“Don’t listen to her,” I argue. “It’s him.” Time to come clean with another of my secrets I’ve been saving for just the right moment. This certainly appears to be it. “Casey Duval is the Judge, and I can prove it.”

Julia is holding up her hands for me to stop again, fury rolling off her in waves. “If that’s true, then why wait all this time? Why hasn’t he come for one or both of us. He knew where I was for almost ten years after that last day we were all together, and he’s known where you were the past decade. Why wait all this time to protect himself if what you say is true?”

Ah, the perennial question.

Before I can answer, she rushes on, “Because you’re lying.” She shakes her head. “As for the business with the Times, I can’t see him making a move like that. It’s not his style.”

“How do you know what his style is?” I contend, “People change. If it has really been two decades since you saw him, you can’t possibly know anything about him.”

Julia only glares at me, her lips twisted in fury. She’s lying and she understands I know.

Alicia waves her arms like a referee who can’t seem to get control of the situation. “If you’re telling the truth,” she says to me, “and this Casey guy was in touch with Julia all that time, then why didn’t he reach out to you after you took her place? He would have realized right away that you weren’t the real Julia.”

“Because,” I admit, “I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore. We were over. I needed to move on.”

Julia laughs long and loud. “Like he would ever have believed you.”

“Since he never contacted me again,” I argue, “he must have.”

Alicia’s gaze narrows. “Seems to me if you dumped him, he would have gotten pissed off. So why didn’t he kill you then? That way he didn’t have to worry about what you knew.” Her mouth forms an O as if something big has occurred to her. “The better question is why didn’t you kill him? You said he’s a serial killer. Didn’t he deserve to die as much as those other assholes?”

“Exactly,” Julia agrees, her expression gleeful as if her side just won the round.

Casey Duval was no simple serial killer—not to say serial killers are simple. But he was a different kind of animal. Julia must have recognized the kind of predator he was. But maybe she was blinded by love. The FBI was damn sure blinded by something.

“I guess he loved you too much to kill you, and as far as he knew, I was you,” I offer. “Everyone else sure thought I was. And if you didn’t out him back in the beginning, why would you ten years later?” I decide to push further, make her scramble for a reasonable explanation. “For that matter, what did you really know about him? I’m the one who saw his dark side when he left me with that old bastard. For money, obviously.”

“I told you about the girls he would goad me into talking to,” Julia reminds me unnecessarily. “I knew at least two of them went missing. But I couldn’t bring myself to believe he was responsible. I just couldn’t.”

I roll my eyes at the ridiculous excuse. “He was counting on that. Like I said, he wasn’t worried about you—or me, as it were.”

The truth is, in my opinion, Julia is just as twisted as her former lover. I only need her to show her real self to her minion, who seems to have some weird sense of right and wrong when she feels slighted or lied to in any way.

Alicia waves her hands back and forth to shut us up. “I don’t give a shit who loves who or what anyone said or didn’t say, I just want to know why he’s back now.”

“How would I know?” I shift the attention to Julia. “Have you been in contact with him?”

“No.” Julia’s features are set in grim lines. But there is something more than the frustration. Something she doesn’t want anyone to see.

I was right. She does still have some sort of feelings for him. How stupid and sick can you be? No need to ask, I know exactly how sick she is.

Rather than dwell on the idea, I say, “He must suspect something is going on,” I insist. “If he was the leak—and he must have been if it wasn’t either of you—then he has a plan, and he wants us to know it.” I rub at my forehead. The drug hangover is not fading nearly fast enough. I shift my attention to Alicia. “Is there anything you or Brian did that could have gotten his attention?”

“We had a carefully constructed plan,” Julia argues. “The goal was to quietly confront you and decide how to handle me getting my life back and you paying for what you did. Nothing we’ve done had anything to do with Casey.”

“Our plan was not like this at all,” Alicia confirms. “We were very careful and . . .” That look—the one that captures your face when you realize what you just said might be wrong—seizes her. “I did a lot of surfing on the net for stuff about the Judge. But Brian is the one who did the real research. He’s big into online stuff, especially true crime chat groups and all that shit. He probably asked questions and . . .” She closes her eyes. “Jesus Christ.”

“So he may have accidentally warned Casey.” Not possible but if she believes it, that’s all that matters. Her boyfriend’s proficiency online no doubt explains those damned emails I received. Hundreds of them with the photo marked “liar” filling my inbox pings over and over in my brain. I struggle to exile the memory.