Final Vow, page 19
I slump back against the cushions. He’s right. That house isn’t big enough for someone to come and go unnoticed. And with everyone crashing in close quarters, sleeping light—someone likely would have heard him leave.
“So, maybe we’re looking at different killers,” I say slowly. “Benji killed Samantha and Trish, but someone else is targeting the other brides.”
Hanks makes a noncommittal sound. “Maybe.”
I stare at the ceiling, turning it over in my mind. Three dead brides. Two different MOs—strangulation versus gunshots. One killer, or two?
And underneath it all, the constant pressure thrumming in my chest. Agent Carver’s words echoing: “I won’t wait for you.”
I need to be there when they raid the compound. I need to see my father’s empire crumble, need to find Daniel and bring him home. But I also need to stop whoever’s killing these women before another bride dies.
I take a breath and refocus. One thing at a time.
My phone buzzes with a text from Ramirez.
Got access to Chrissy Smithe’s Bride Boards account. She private messaged a now-deleted user and agreed to meet up to buy table settings. Killed at agreed-upon location. My bet is it was BlushingBrideBeauty. No details yet on that account, but I’m still digging. Will keep you posted.
I glance up at Hanks, who’s frowning down at his own screen. “You see Ramirez’s text?”
He gives a little shake of his head. “Yep.”
BlushingBrideBeauty. The account that likely lured Melody and Chrissy to their deaths.
I pull up my notes and scroll through the timeline we’ve built. Samantha was killed at her wedding on Saturday. Then Melody Mathers on Sunday night and Chrissy Smithe on Monday night were shot in parking lots after being contacted through Bride Boards.
Something snags in my mind.
I sit up straighter, disturbing Shadow, who grumbles and resettles.
“Hanks.”
He looks up again.
“The BlushingBrideBeauty account,” I say. “It wasn’t created until after Samantha was killed.”
He frowns. “So?”
“So, Samantha’s death doesn’t match the MO of the other two. She was strangled at her wedding venue. Melody and Chrissy were shot in parking lots after being lured there through the forum.” I lean forward, the pieces clicking together. “What if it’s like I thought before? What if we’re not looking at different killers but rather the same killer with different motives?”
Hanks’s eyes narrow. “Keep going.”
“What if Benji killed his fiancées for whatever reason—some twisted thing we don’t understand yet. He strangles Samantha, then thinks he’s likely our top suspect. It’s always the husband, right?” I’m talking faster now, the theory building momentum. “So to take the heat off himself, he kills two random brides, making it look like there’s a serial killer targeting women. Melody and Chrissy weren’t personal. They were misdirection.”
Hanks leans back in his chair. “He knew Samantha was on Bride Boards.”
“Exactly. He uses that to find other local brides. Messages them, lures them out, kills them.” I hold his gaze. “What if BlushingBrideBeauty is Benji?”
The silence stretches. Shadow lifts his head, sensing the shift in energy.
“Not a bad theory,” Hanks says finally. “How do we prove it?”
I’ve already been thinking about that. “We get his cell data. It’s not impossible that he snuck out, even with so many people in the house. They all said they turned in early, right? We see where Benji was the nights Melody and Chrissy were killed. If his phone pinged near those parking lots…”
Hanks nods slowly. “We also check with Maryanne’s neighbors. See if any of them have security cameras that face the street. We look for footage of Benji driving the route we think he’d take to meet up with those women.”
I’m sitting on the edge of the couch now, energy humming through me. “And we should verify if he has a gun registered to him. Or his mother.”
The memory surfaces—standing in Maryanne’s pristine living room, asking if she owned a firearm. The way she’d said no, and the way Benji had shot her a sharp look.
“Lot of work ahead of us,” Hanks says, crumpling up his sandwich paper and tossing it into the trash can. “Let’s get on it.”
I open a new document, fingers tapping at the keyboard. “I’ll start on the warrant for his phone data.”
“Good. I’ll get uniforms canvassing the neighborhood for security footage and put in requests for traffic cams along the routes between Maryanne’s place and the crime scenes.” He’s already dialing.
CHAPTER 31
The heat is a living thing.
It presses through the walls of this miserable house like the breath of Lucifer—thick and relentless. Anna lies in her narrow bed and sweats through the quilts she can’t bring herself to push away because even as perspiration rolls down her temples and pools in the hollows of her collarbones, she is cold. Cold in her bones, as if something inside has stopped producing warmth altogether.
No air-conditioning—the Prophet declared it an extravagance. Easy enough to decree from a brick house with ceiling fans and windows that actually open.
Her windows are painted shut. Have been for years.
She shivers and pulls the quilt higher, then kicks it down again when another wave of heat washes over her. Her body can’t seem to decide what it needs. Everything hurts—a dull, grinding ache that starts in her spine and radiates outward through her ribs, her hips, her shoulders. The cough has settled deeper in her chest these past weeks, a wet, rattling presence that wakes her in the night and leaves her gasping into a handkerchief she’s stopped checking for blood. She knows it’s there. She can taste the copper.
Around her bed, the room has collapsed into ruin.
Trash bags she’d meant to sort through weeks ago sag open on the floor, spilling clothes and fabric scraps and broken household items she’d scavenged from the communal donation pile. Dishes crusted with old food sit on the nightstand, the dresser, stacked on boxes she can’t remember the contents of. Flies circle lazily in the hot, stale air, landing on surfaces she no longer has the strength to wipe.
She used to keep a tidy home. That feels like another woman’s life.
A soft knock at the front door.
“It’s open,” Anna croaks, and the effort sends a spasm through her throat that turns into a cough. She presses the handkerchief to her lips and waits for it to pass, tasting metal.
Footsteps pick through the front room. Everyone who comes in does the same dance through the debris. She used to feel shame about it. Now she mostly feels nothing.
Janet appears in the bedroom doorway, plate in hand.
She’s a sight, as always—poofy brunette hair framing a sun-reddened face, a thick braid trailing down her back like a rope. Sweat beads at her hairline and glistens on the bridge of her nose. She’s wearing one of the standard prairie dresses despite the heat—long sleeves with puffed shoulders, buttoned to the throat, the fabric dark with perspiration under her arms. Her hands are rough and cracked. Third wife of Elder Ezekiel. Maybe fourth. Anna can never remember, and the hierarchy of another man’s household holds no interest for her anymore.
Janet’s been assigned the rotating charity of keeping Anna fed. The women take turns. Anna knows it’s pity more than duty—she’s low enough in the ranking of wives that no one would particularly notice if they stopped coming altogether. The least among them, as scripture would say. Though the Bible also says the last shall be first, and Anna has seen precious little evidence of that particular promise being honored.
“Brought you something.” Janet holds the plate out like an offering she’s already regretting.
Anna pushes herself up against the damp pillows, the effort making her head swim. She takes the plate with trembling hands.
A bologna sandwich—two slices of white bread with a single piece of meat between them, no mustard, no lettuce, dry as the desert outside. Beside it, a scoop of some beige and congealed casserole. It smells faintly of canned soup and whatever was left in the communal pantry after the higher-ranking wives took their share.
She takes a bite and finds the bread is stale, the bologna warm and slick. Her stomach lurches immediately—a violent, rolling rebellion that makes her clamp her mouth shut and breathe through her nose until the wave passes. She sets the sandwich down and pushes the plate to the edge of the nightstand.
Janet watches with an expression caught between irritation and pity. Her lips press together, but she doesn’t say anything, just smooths her skirt and inches back.
“I’ll leave that there, then.”
“Water, please?” Anna hates the sound of her own voice—thin and reedy, the voice of an old woman begging. She’s too young to sound like this.
Janet turns without comment and picks her way back through the front room. Anna hears the kitchen faucet groan and shudder. A clatter of dishes being shifted. A long pause that suggests Janet is searching for a clean glass and not finding one easily.
She returns with a smudged tumbler, water tinged faintly brown. Mineral-heavy, lukewarm. Anna takes it and drinks anyway, forcing the liquid down past the tightness in her throat. It tastes of rust.
“Thank you,” she manages.
Janet stands at the foot of the bed with her arms crossed, surveying the wreckage of the room with poorly concealed distaste. She shifts from foot to foot, clearly uncomfortable. “Have you heard?” she says lightly, as if making small talk. “Rumor has it we might move again.”
Anna’s hand stills on the glass. The water sloshes. “Move? Move where?”
“Don’t get yourself riled.” Janet lifts one calloused hand, palm out. “I don’t know. It’s just rumors. Nothing official.”
“Yet,” Anna says.
Janet doesn’t deny it. “The elders did call for a special assembly this evening…”
Anna sets the glass down too hard. Water splashes onto the nightstand, darkening a stack of old letters. “I can’t move. Look at me.” She gestures at herself with a skeletal hand—the nightgown hanging loose on her wasted frame, the quilts tangled around her legs, the squalor pressing in from every direction like the walls of a tomb. “I can barely get to the washroom. A move will kill me.”
She means it literally.
Janet looks at the floor. “I suppose you’ll just have to stay behind, then,” she says quietly. Not cruel, exactly. Just factual.
The words land like stones on Anna’s chest.
“Stay behind.” Her voice cracks. “You’d all just leave me here to die.”
Janet’s mouth opens, then closes. She pulls her braid over her shoulder, a nervous gesture. “I’m saying I don’t know anything for sure. And I’ve got chores waiting, Anna.”
“Janet—”
“I’ll come back tomorrow with supper.” She’s already moving toward the door, stepping over a trash bag, dodging a collapsed pile of clothing. “Try to eat something. You need your strength.”
For what? Anna wants to scream. Strength for what?
But Janet is gone. The front door clicks shut, and the house settles back into its suffocating silence. Anna stares at the ceiling. A brown water stain spreads across the plaster like a bruise.
She should pray. That’s what a righteous woman would do—fold her hands over her sunken chest and entreat the Almighty for comfort, for guidance, for the strength to endure whatever trial He sees fit to lay upon her.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.
She doesn’t feel blessed or close to anything except death.
What she feels is anger.
Jebediah. Her husband, Elder Walker, shepherd of his flock. He hasn’t visited in weeks. Hasn’t sent medicine. Hasn’t sent anyone with the skill to examine her or even the authority to acknowledge that she might be dying. He treats her with less regard than he’d show a lame animal. Anna is simply an inconvenience now—a reminder of failures, of children who defected, of the daughter who ran.
The women are no better. Oh, they bring their covered dishes and they feel righteous for it—feel like they’re storing up treasures in Heaven. But not one of them goes to the elders and says this woman needs a doctor. Not one risks her own position to demand real help. They whisper behind her back—poor Anna Walker, failed mother, outsider wife, couldn’t keep her own children in the fold.
Outsider. Thirty-four years she’s been here. She chose this life. She knew the corruption of the world and deliberately rejected it for something holier. The other women were simply born into this—it was their default, no sacrifice required. Anna had given up everything. If anything, that should have elevated her above them. She should have been honored for her devotion, not punished for it.
But she was apparently the only one who’d ever thought that way.
And her children. Her own flesh and blood. Twelve she bore for this community, twelve she labored and bled for, nursed through fevers and weaned on scripture and raised to honor their father. And how many have come to see her this week?
They have their own families now, their own cramped houses and screaming babies. She doesn’t blame them entirely—life here leaves no margin for tenderness—but the sting of it remains.
Anna’s fingers curl into the quilts, her knuckles bone-white against the faded patchwork. Worst among them all—Eden.
If her eldest daughter had just accepted her place. If she’d submitted to God’s plan, done what was expected, married the man she was betrothed to like a proper daughter of Zion, Anna’s standing would have been secured. Her daughter married to a prominent elder—that alone would have elevated Anna. Protection. A seat at the table instead of scraps from it.
Instead, Eden ran. Stole Hope right out from under their noses. She never showed a shred of remorse for the devastation she left behind.
The scandal had been immediate and total. Anna went from marginalized to untouchable. Jebediah’s wrath had been biblical in its scope—he’d stripped her of her remaining household duties, condemned her to the worst house in the compound, made it known throughout the community that she was to be regarded as an object lesson in what happens when a mother fails to raise obedient children.
And just when the whispers had finally started to fade, just when Anna had managed to claw back the smallest shred of normalcy, Eden came back. Came back into their lives like a pestilence and corrupted Daniel and Rachel too. Sweet, gentle Daniel, who’d always been good and kind. Rachel, who’d been on the very eve of her blessed nuptials to a worthy man of God. Eden poisoned them both, turned them against their father, against God, against everything Anna had sacrificed her entire life to give them.
“My daughter.” The words taste like ash in her mouth. “My disobedient, ungrateful, wicked daughter.”
Anna had tried. Lord knows she’d tried. Prayed over that girl until her knees were raw, disciplined her as the Word commanded, begged God to break that willful spirit and make her soft and obedient.
It hadn’t worked. Nothing had ever worked with Eden.
And now here Anna lies—abandoned by her husband, pitied by the sisters, neglected by her children. If they move without her, she’ll die alone in this bed.
The cough comes then—deep and racking, the taste of blood flooding her mouth, her body curling inward like a fist. She presses the handkerchief to her lips with shaking hands and waits for it to pass, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. Not from sadness. From rage.
The water stain on the ceiling stares back at her, as indifferent as the God she’s spent her whole life serving.
CHAPTER 32
Morning light streams through the big window in Hanks’s office, catching the dust motes drifting in the air. My head swims as I slump lower on the worn leather couch, and I have to stifle a yawn that makes my jaw crack.
We worked until after midnight, cross-referencing timelines, submitting warrant applications, and mapping routes between Maryanne’s beach house and the murder scenes. Hanks finally sent me home around one, grumbling that we’d be useless if we didn’t get at least a few hours of sleep. I managed maybe three, tossing and turning, my mind refusing to shut off.
Now it’s just past seven, and the coffee from the Daily Grind is the only thing keeping me upright. I take a long sip of my mocha. The caffeine unfortunately hasn’t hit yet. Shadow is curled up on the other end of the couch. He seems just as worn out and is snoring and twitching in his sleep.
Hanks looks about as rough as I feel. His tweed jacket is rumpled. and he’s already on his second cup of black coffee.
“You get any sleep?” I ask.
He groans.
Which means no.
A sharp knock on the doorframe makes us both straighten. Chief Jamison fills the doorway, his broad shoulders nearly brushing the frame. He’s already in uniform, crisp and pressed, his short-cropped gray hair neat. The man’s been running this department for seventeen years, and I’ve never once seen him look anything less than put together.
“You two look like you’ve been burning the midnight oil,” he says.
“Chief.” Hanks hides a yawn behind his coffee cup.
Jamison steps into the office with a paper in hand. “Got something for you.” He sets it on Hanks’s desk. “Warrant came through for Benjamin Grant’s phone records.”
I sit up, alert. “Already?”
“Judge Harrison owed me a favor.” Jamison’s mouth twitches. “Beat him at golf last week. Started a tab. Told him I’d collect with a quick signature.”
Hanks picks up the warrant, scanning it. “Location data, call logs, messages.”
“Everything you asked for.” Jamison’s dark eyes shift to me. “I also know you’ve got three dead women and a theory that’s running out of road. Thought you could use a win.”
My throat tightens. “Thank you, sir. Really.”
He gives a short nod. “Go get some results.”
