AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His voice sounded thick, as if he’d been crying. That fact didn’t offer me any comfort.
I swallowed hard, my mouth dry. “What are you doing?” My eyes shot to the gas can and then back up to his face.
His eyes fluttered closed as he let out a sigh. “I didn’t want to do this,” he murmured. When he opened his eyes again, they had an edge of resolve. “You left me no choice.”
My heart raced as he lifted the gas can, pouring it right out onto the carpet.
“Xander!” I yelped, losing my grip on any semblance of forced calm. “Stop it!”
“I can’t,” Xander cried, shaking his head as he poured out the gas, stepping backward like he was working to cover the entire floor in gasoline.
I pulled at my bindings, wincing as the plastic cut into my skin. “Then let me go. This is hurting me, Xander.”
That made him pause, but only for a moment as he glanced at me. A flicker of shame flashed in his eyes. “I’m sorry, but there’s no other way. I have to take care of you now.”
“Take care of me?”
He started to splash out the gas again. “You’re starting to remember, and I can’t have you telling people it was me.”
I opened my mouth to ask him what the hell he was talking about, when it hit me. The room spun again. If I hadn’t been bound to the chair, I might’ve fallen right out of it. If he was worried about me remembering something…that could only mean one thing.
“It was you?” I said, disbelief coating my tone.
“I can’t let anyone know. They can’t know what I did.” He shook his head, staring down at the floor and the carpet he was drenching with flammable liquid.
Another pulse of pain hit my head and the blood rushed in my ears. I stared at Xander, trying to make the pieces fit, trying to remember the man I had seen in black the night my best friend was killed.
“But—” I sputtered, not able to make it compute in my brain. “You had an alibi. You couldn’t have.”
At that, Xander’s head snapped toward me. His eyes were so round, he looked crazed. “My father was the sheriff, Lark. He made sure I had an alibi.”
“Sheriff Cohen knew?” I blinked at him. I remembered the press conferences that his father had done. He had all but been the face of the investigation to the public all those years ago. Everyone had trusted him, that he was doing what was best for the community.
“My father always knew everything, whether I wanted him to or not. Of course he knew.” There was a bitterness to his voice as he clenched his jaw. “It was his idea to plant that damn mark on Thea’s body to make it look like the Shadow Stalker had something to do with it. It was information only a few people even knew about.”
My mouth fell open. I couldn’t begin to wrap my mind around what would bring someone to do something like that. It seemed impossible.
“But why?” I choked out. None of this made sense. Xander had loved Thea. I’d seen it myself. They’d spent all the time they could together.
Xander’s throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. His tongue darted out as he licked his chapped lips. “I never wanted to hurt her,” he said. “But I knew that she was going to nark on me. I couldn’t have her ruining my entire future.”
“What are you talking about? Thea loved you.”
His shoulders quaked with a shiver. “She loved me, but she knew too much. She was asking questions that she shouldn’t have been asking. It was simple questions at first, but they got more and more specific and I knew that she knew. I couldn’t risk her telling other people. I couldn’t risk it getting out.”
I frowned at him. My fingers started to go numb, and I desperately tried to loosen the zip ties, but they only dug deeper into my skin. “So, you don’t work with Shadow Stalker?”
Xander jerked back, his face pinching with disgust. “What? No, of course not.”
So much for the two killers theory. Xander was on his own in this, but it still wasn’t making any sense. “What were you trying to hide, Xander?”
His face paled. Then, he dumped the rest of the gas onto the floor and threw the can aside. The look in his expression when he stared at me had a chill skittering down my spine. His dark eyes were almost void of anything. No more emotion was there, no more panic or fear. They looked…dead.
A shock went through my system as it finally clicked into place. The memory solidified in my mind…those dark eyes looking over his shoulder before he shut the door behind him. They were the same eyes staring at me right now.
Xander had murdered Thea. He had murdered Delainey.
“I wasn’t always a very good person,” he said, his voice flat and lifeless. “I got into trouble as a kid, and that kept going through my teens and early adulthood. My father was a controlling bastard. He put on a good show for the community, but behind closed doors he needed to keep his family in line and he did it with his fists if he had to. I hated him. I always hated him, and so I did everything I could to make him look bad.” His eyes narrowed, his focus far-off like he wasn’t even seeing me, but looking right through me. “But my father became quite proficient at cleaning up my messes and sweeping them under the rug. He was good at hiding things in the dark.”
