I Was the Seventh Victim

“All right. I’m on my way.” Julian pressed him. “Detective, did you find something useful on the ring?”

Hayes paused.

“The blood belongs to your wife. The skin tissue belongs to someone else.”

“Who?” Julian’s voice rose.

I had already begun to calm down.

If the skin really belonged to Julian, Hayes would have come to arrest him at the tender. He wouldn’t have called to warn a suspect.

But if it wasn’t Julian, whose was it?

“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone,” Hayes said. “Come to the station. We’ll speak in person.”

“All right.”

Julian was clearly nervous. Without noticing, he started biting his nails again.

Gavin floored the accelerator. The car practically flew.

In the rearview mirror, he saw Julian’s pressed lips and pale face, and tried to comfort him.

“Don’t worry too much, sir. Your wife isn’t an ordinary woman. She’ll be all right.”

I gave a cold laugh.

He wasn’t worried about me.

He had a guilty conscience. He was terrified the police would discover he had killed me and taken my heart.

Twenty minutes later, we reached the station.

The car had barely stopped before Julian flung open the door and rushed out.

“Detective, what’s happened to my wife?”

He hurried straight into Hayes’s office and seized his arm.

“Whose traces were on the ring? Please, tell me.”

“Calm down. Sit first.”

Hayes guided him into a chair and poured him a cup of hot tea.

He was treating him exactly as he would any victim’s family member.

A bad feeling settled over me.

“Mr. Whitmore, the skin tissue matches a man named Victor Slade. He’s a high-priority fugitive. A serial killer. He came to Fairhaven last month after moving between other cities. He’s already raped and murdered six young women.”

A buzzing filled my head.

I remembered reading about Slade.

I had even increased security patrols around the company and strictly forbidden the women on staff from working late during that period.

But how had my body ended up in his hands?

He was a monster. After raping and killing his victims, he mutilated their bodies in all kinds of vicious ways before dismembering and disposing of them.

Had he already done that to me?

Chills passed through me. I couldn’t bear to follow the thought.

Julian shot to his feet so violently that his chair toppled behind him.

“You’re saying my wife is his seventh victim?”

His lips trembled as if the shock were more than he could bear. Then he collapsed, crying my name.

His acting was almost impressive.

If he had gone into film, he would have won an Oscar by now.

“Mr. Whitmore, please. We’ve only found her ring. That doesn’t mean we can conclude something’s happened to her.”

Julian clung to the detective, red-eyed and weeping.

“Please catch him. Please find my wife. Stella and I grew up together. I can’t lose her.”

Hayes patted his hand, visibly moved.

“We’ll do everything we can. For now, please keep this information to yourself. We don’t want to alert Slade.”

Once Julian realized the police didn’t suspect him, he relaxed completely.

His performance remained flawless.

“Of course. I’ll cooperate fully. If you hear anything about Stella, or if there’s anything I can do, please tell me immediately.”

“I will. I’ll keep you updated on the investigation.”

I almost had to admire him.

He was the murderer, and he had acted so convincingly that the police were volunteering to tell him how their investigation was progressing.

Hayes personally walked him out of the station.

I was about to follow Julian into the car when something in the corner of the parking lot caught my eye.

A familiar black Maybach.