The Prettiest One: A Thriller (15 page)

She reached a clearing among the shelves, an open space. She couldn’t see beyond a dim circle around her. The footsteps were almost upon her. She whirled to face the Bogeyman and, as she did, felt a weight in her hand. She looked down and saw that she was holding a handgun. As the monster thundered toward her, arms outstretched, she raised the gun and fired, and the Bogeyman dropped to the cement floor.

For a long moment, Caitlin watched him lying on his back, waited for him to stir. When he didn’t, she stepped closer, and closer still, then looked down at him. To her horror, she hadn’t killed the Bogeyman. This man was young and fair-haired and completely average-looking—but for the bullet hole in his cheek, even though Caitlin thought she’d fired at his stomach. She dropped the gun.

The Bogeyman’s voice came from right behind her. “You think I’m a monster?” It sounded to Caitlin as though he had emphasized the word
I’m
, implying that
she
was the true monster here. The Bogeyman spun her around and lifted her up into a strong embrace. They were chest-to-chest, face-to-face, Caitlin crushed against him, him staring into her eyes. He smiled and opened his mouth and something squirmed inside it and—

Caitlin opened her eyes and barely managed to stifle a scream. She was still in bed, on her side, facing Josh from just inches away. He was on his side, too. His eyes were closed and his mouth was slightly open, allowing a gentle snore to slip from his lips. One of his arms was draped across her hip. She slid gently from beneath it, rolled onto her back, and took a few calming breaths. She was relieved that she’d been able to keep from screaming herself awake. This wouldn’t have been the first time she’d thrashed herself out of a nightmare, startling Josh from his own pleasant, Bogeyman-free slumber, but this had been the most detailed, most terrifying dream yet.

She stared at the ceiling, not bothering to close her eyes. There wasn’t much chance of her falling back to sleep anytime soon, and she wasn’t even certain she wanted to.

Bix stared at the dark ceiling of his room. Even though Katie—that is, Caitlin—wasn’t beside him, he stayed on his own side of the bed, leaving her side, the one she’d occupied for seven months of his life, empty. Over the past couple of hours, as he tried to fall asleep, he’d find that his arm had reached out to her side on its own, seeking contact with her. Every time, it was disappointed, as was he.

Everything had changed in a matter of hours. For the second time in a year, his life turned upside down. Earlier this year, he was a man who had never had a serious relationship in his thirty-two years of life. He hadn’t been avoiding that; the right woman had just never come along. And he hadn’t expected her to. He was fine with that. Then seven months ago, Katie walked into a pub as if her name were on the deed to the place, even though she’d never set foot in there, and Bix’s days of waiting for someone he hadn’t realized he was waiting for were over.

And though it took him a few days to admit to himself where things were going, once he realized it, he jumped onboard and hung on tight. He didn’t care that she was hiding something. He didn’t care that she might have had a past that left her holding some heavy baggage. He was willing to let her reinvent herself, to tell him as much or as little as she wanted to share, because he knew she wasn’t holding back her feelings for him. He’d let her lie about everything else if she wanted, but he could tell she wasn’t lying when she said she loved him. She wasn’t faking the smiles, the laughter, the intimacy. Whatever else was false about her, their feelings for each other were genuine, and that was enough for him.

Until this morning, when she showed up at the door with her husband and no memory of Bix or their life together. Now he had to just lie there and think about the fact that his fiancée was in the room across the hall with her husband, and about how, as soon as Bix helped Caitlin with whatever she needed—and he had to help her, he knew that—she would be gone from his life forever.

Getting back to sleep at the moment seemed unlikely, so he rolled out of bed, slipped into a pair of sweatpants so that neither of his housemates would see him strolling to the kitchen naked if they decided to take a leak in the next few minutes, and opened the door to his room. As he reached the kitchen, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned quickly and saw a silhouette sitting on the sofa in the dark living room.

“Katie?” he said softly.

“It’s me,” she whispered.

He took a few steps toward her. “You all right?”

“Just a nightmare,” she said. “I’m okay.”

He walked over and sat at the far end of the sofa so that she wouldn’t mistake his intentions. “The Bogeyman again?”

Her face was in shadow, but he could tell she was looking at him.

“You know about him?” she asked.

“You woke up from more than a few of those in our bed.”

She nodded. “I guess it really is true, then. I lived here. With you. All that time.”

“You didn’t believe me?”

“No, I did. It’s just . . . strange, you know? All of that happened and I don’t remember any of it.”

There it was again. The sting Bix felt from another reminder of that fact. Another dagger in the heart. “You really don’t remember
anything
, Katie?” he asked. “Not a single thing?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

It was so hard to believe. It was the stuff of fiction, of soap operas and movies. Maybe you came across a story about it now and then and you thought,
Wow, that really happens?
But if it did happen, it never happened to you or anyone you knew. Until it did.

“I see the pictures,” she said, “of us together. We look . . . happy.”

“We are,” Bix said. “I mean, we were.”

“We look . . . in love.”

“We . . . were. Totally.”

“How does someone forget that?”

Bix was wondering the same thing.

“Can I ask you a favor?” he said. “It’s a big one and I’ll completely understand if you say no.”

After a slight hesitation, she said, “Sure.”

“Can I kiss you?” She said nothing, so he added, “I’m not trying to make a move on you. I swear to God. I know you wouldn’t be interested. And I know your husband’s right in the next room. I just . . . I’m wondering if maybe you’ll remember something if we kiss. Probably not, but . . .”

“Like in a fairy tale?” Caitlin asked.

“Hold on a sec. Wouldn’t one of us be a frog or something in that fairy tale?”

“That would be you.”

“I’m offended. But I promise not to hold it against you if you kiss me.”

“Bix . . .”

“One kiss. Maybe it will spark something . . . a memory, I mean,” he added quickly.

It was true. He thought there was at least a chance she’d remember something, that an act of physical intimacy might do what mere words hadn’t been able to. And he had promised to help her, after all. If she remembered everything, she would presumably find closure. Of course, once she did remember everything, she’d go back to her old life, with her old husband, and she’d be gone forever—assuming she wasn’t imprisoned for murder. But maybe, just
maybe
, once her memory returned completely, she’d remember how good things were with Bix and she’d consider sticking around and giving life with him a try. It was a long shot, he knew, but you can’t win if you don’t play. Also, he had to admit, if Caitlin did leave with Josh forever, then Bix wanted one more kiss.

“It doesn’t have to be an epic kiss, Katie, something out of a romantic movie or anything like that. Just a little kiss. Who knows? It might help. And if it doesn’t . . . well, what can it hurt?”

“I’m married.”

“I know. You’re also engaged. You and I had been . . . with each other for seven months. Would one kiss make that big a difference? Up until this morning, I was your fiancé. Don’t I deserve at least a kiss good-bye?”

Bix couldn’t see her face, couldn’t tell if he had gotten through to her. Then she moved closer to him on the couch. He met her halfway and reached up and touched her hair. She put her hand on his face. It was warm and soft on his cheek. He leaned forward and she did, too, and their lips touched softly. As deeply as they had been in love—and there wasn’t a shred of doubt in him that they
had
been in love—this kiss was the most tender they had ever shared. Her lips were soft and welcoming and he didn’t want this to end. Too soon, she sat back, though she kept her hand on his cheek for a few moments longer. Her head had turned a little, or the moon had moved in the sky, and he could see her eyes now in its dim light. They looked a little sad. His probably did, too.

He didn’t bother to ask if she remembered anything. He figured he’d have been able to tell by her kiss whether she did. She stood, touched his shoulder gently, and said, “I’m sorry.”

She walked back to her room. Bix sat in the darkness for a while longer.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHARLOTTE HUNNSAKER TOOK A SIP of coffee, already her second cup of the morning and it wasn’t yet nine a.m. Then she lifted a sheet of paper from the table and taped it to the whiteboard, right next to the photo of Vic Warehouse with his dead, vacant eyes and the bullet hole in his face.

“There’s our victim, looking less dead,” she said, indicating the second sheet of paper. On it was a richly detailed, computer-generated rendering of Vic’s face the way it no doubt would have looked before it had acquired a bullet hole. The image had been created by someone in the department—a technician far more skilled at such things than Hunnsaker—using FaceFirst, the latest and greatest facial-composite computer software available to law-enforcement personnel. The program’s database contained nearly five thousand facial features and, when employed by someone skilled in its use, could create incredibly accurate portraits of people of either gender and any race.

Hunnsaker’s sketch of a still-living Vic—even though it had been created on a computer rather than drawn by hand, she couldn’t help but think of the image as a “sketch”—had captured his face as it had almost certainly looked when he was still breathing. The bullet hole was gone, of course, and his eyes were full of life. The computer artist had given him an expression that might have been saying any number of things, but which mostly said,
I’m not dead. I look very much alive. So if you recognize me, please tell the cops who I am
. Hunnsaker planned to have the news media get this photo out and see what the police got in return.

“That’s a great job,” Padilla said. “Looks so lifelike, like he might open up his mouth and start talking.”

Hunnsaker said, “That would be really helpful. If he does, ask him his name. And who shot him.”

She picked up another sheet of paper and taped it next to the sketch of the victim. It was a second computer-generated sketch by the same technician, though far less detailed than the first. That was to be expected. For the sketch of Vic, the tech had been able to work from photographs. For this one, he’d had to rely on the drunken recollection of a homeless man.

“That’s her, huh?” Padilla said.

Hunnsaker nodded. Dominick Bruno had tried his best to describe the girl or woman he’d seen hurrying past his closet two nights ago, but he was admittedly very drunk when he saw her. According to Bruno, he’d been drinking heavily—but
not
masturbating—that night. He might even have passed out at some point. Either way, he was drifting in and out much of the night, and it was hard to keep track of things. It was all sort of jumbled for him, he said. All he knew was that he heard voices and something loud that could have been a gunshot, but he didn’t know which had come first or how many voices he heard or even how many gunshots there were. He knew he should have gotten the hell out of there, but he was “piss-ass drunk” and didn’t think he’d be able to stand up, much less walk. So he’d pulled the blanket up above his nose and tried to keep his eyes open. And that was when he saw her. She was only a shadow at first in the dark warehouse, moving quickly toward him, feeling along the wall as though searching for an exit. When she came to the door near the closet, she opened it, and when the thin moonlight spilled in from outside, Bruno got a quick look at her. Average height, cute, with short red hair. Then she was gone, and Bruno covered his head and tried to look like a pile of blankets until he could sleep this off. When he awakened early the next morning, he left. He said he didn’t search the warehouse or see the body. He just got out of there as soon as he could, leaving by the same door the woman had used the night before.

“Not a bad sketch,” Padilla said. “A little more detail would be helpful, but it’s good.”

“Bruno said it looks a lot like her, only—and these are his words, not mine—you can’t see her rack in the drawing, which is too bad because he thought it was nice. Not too big, but just right, in his opinion.”

“You sure he wasn’t describing a girl from one of his skin magazines?”

“I know you’re joking, but I actually looked at those magazines he left behind to see if any of the women in them matched his description of the girl he saw, just in case he got confused.”