A man’s face peered out, tired and confused. A growth of thin beard outlined his face and his brown hair was in shambles. Chloe assumed he had just woken up.

  “Who’re you?” he asked.

  “You’re Jason Morton, correct?” Chloe asked.

  “I am. Now, as I already asked, who are you?”

  They pulled their IDs simultaneously, like some well-timed mechanism. “Agents Fine and Rhodes, with the FBI. We’d like to speak to you about Lauren Hilyard.”

  “Lauren Hilyard?” he asked, as if the name surprised him. “What the hell for?”

  “We’d like to know what you two were talking about at the high school reunion last week.”

  Jason’s eyes widened. He looked like someone had just read his mind or predicted his future. He’d clearly not expected them to know that he had spoken with Lauren at the reunion.

  “Could we please come in, Mr. Morton?” Rhodes asked.

  “No, I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “I understand that,” Chloe said. “But please know that I had a fellow in Barnes Point that refused to allow us into his home. He ended up in an interrogation room and we got what we needed anyway. So again…could we please enter your home?”

  “Sure, I guess,” he said. He stepped aside slowly, very uncomfortable as they passed by him. “I just woke up, though. And the place is a mess.”

  “I’ve seen far worse,” Chloe said as they entered his house. The front door led them directly into a living room that smelled like burned bacon. The adjoining kitchen was in need of a thorough scrubbing but the place wasn’t as bad as the exterior had led Chloe to believe.

  “Mr. Morton, I’ll save you the trouble,” Chloe said. “We know you spoke to Mrs. Hilyard at least twice at the reunion. We know one of those discussions took place at the bar, right before you left very quickly. We also know that Mrs. Hilyard started a rumor about you in high school. So please be honest with us when you answer: what was said during those two conversations?”

  Jason slowly sat down on his couch, frowning like a child forced to remember some particularly bad memory. “I’m not proud of it, but the first time, it started as just me saying hello and asking if we could put the past in the past. But it got sort of flirty pretty quickly. And I just asked her if she wanted to get out of there. But then she showed her true form…called me a name from high school that stuck because of her.”

  “Was the name a result of the rumor she spread about you?” Chloe asked.

  “Yeah. They called me Limpy. Cute, huh?”

  “Mr. Morton, was she ever overly cruel to you in high school?”

  “Yeah, she was. She went above and beyond to insult me. Limpy…that stupid name still follows me around. If you know about the conversations at the reunion, I’m sure you know she shoved me. She called me Limpy then and everyone busted out laughing. Twenty years later and these people still haven’t grown the hell up.”

  “Did you—”

  Chloe’s next question was interrupted by the ringing of Jason’s phone—an actual landline. “Sorry,” he said. “That’s my supervisor. He’s supposed to call me to let me know when I need to come in today. You mind?”

  “That’s perfectly fine,” Chloe said.

  Jason stepped away into the kitchen and answered the phone. He positioned himself around the corner of the kitchen that led into a hallway, the cord of the phone growing tight. Chloe listened in enough to make sure he was indeed speaking to his supervisor.

  “Chloe,” Rhodes said quietly.

  Chloe looked to Rhodes and saw that she was nodding toward the small scarred coffee table in front of the couch. On the table, there were a few magazines—one the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition—as well as the Barnes Point newspaper. Only a portion of it was showing, but halfway down the first page, Chloe saw enough of a smaller headline to gather what it said. She pulled the paper out and saw the headline, not the big story, but halfway down the first page.

  Lauren Hilyard Murder Remains Unsolved, FBI on the Case.

  Chloe didn’t have time to truly look at the headline, though. When she pulled the paper out from under the magazines, she had loosened something else as well. It was a glossy Polaroid picture, featuring a young blonde woman—surely no older than eighteen, though that was a stretch. The girl was naked, lying on her back, her legs raised and parted while she did some self-exploration.

  Chloe pushed the newspaper aside and found two similar pictures. The same girl was featured in each one. One of the pictures was focused on her naked breasts, the other on her exposed backside.

  The girl was blonde and her face looked incredibly familiar.

  The girl in the pictures was Lauren Hilyard…only much younger.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jason asked, now off of the phone and frozen in the kitchen.

  Chloe drew her weapon and pointed it at Jason. She felt that it might be a little over the top and assumptive, but she was acting on pure instinct. It all seemed to add up, slowly but surely, toward a final answer.

  “Mr. Morton, I need you to place your hands behind your head. You’re under arrest for suspicion in the murder of Lauren Hilyard.”

  “Are you kidding me?” he said, his voice trembling. “Are you fu—”

  “Now, Mr. Morton,” Chloe said.

  Jason Morton did as asked, his eyes darting back and forth as if looking for some way out of this. Rhodes hurried over to him and applied her handcuffs. He said nothing as Chloe holstered her sidearm and he was escorted out of his house by the two agents.

  As Chloe and Rhodes led him down his front porch steps, they exchanged a look behind his back. It was a look of celebration, a look of holy shit, that was kind of out of nowhere. But Chloe was fine with that. She’d take a victory any way she could.

  Besides, she knew all too well that normal-looking people were often the perfect disguise for heinous acts.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Following Jason Morton’s arrest, Sheriff Jenkins and a few of his officers visited his home. Within fifteen minutes, they found a shoebox filled with similar pictures. All of the pictures—more than thirty of them—were of Lauren Hilyard at the age of seventeen. The majority of them were either suggestive or straight-out explicit.

  When Jenkins handed them over to Chloe, he did so with a bright red face. “They were right next to his bed,” he said. “Juts right there, out in the open.”

  Chloe nodded, taking the box. She looked through it, but only briefly. She had seen enough to know what she needed. It seemed to be the bright red neon sign she had been looking for, an expression of guilt. Or maybe they had been motivation, some final push to summon up the nerve in Jason Morton to do what he had wanted to do ever since high school.

  Of course, she could speculate and assume all day and get nothing. She carried the box of Polaroids into the interrogation room. Rhodes followed behind her, her eyes glued to Jason in a vile way. It made Chloe think that if given the chance, Rhodes might very well slice this man’s testicles off.

  Chloe managed to keep her cool, though. She approached the table, sat on the other side, and very slowly, very deliberately, dumped the pictures out of the box and onto the table.

  “Sheriff Jenkins says these were right by your bed,” Chloe said. “I’ll skip the vulgarity of asking why they were there. What I want to know is how you have them. And why they’d be out in the open so soon after Lauren’s murder.”

  Jason did everything he could to not look at the pictures. He looked back and forth between Chloe and Rhodes. “It’s sick, okay? I know it. But it’s not illegal, now is it?”

  “What’s sick?” Chloe asked.

  “That name…Limpy. I got it because Lauren told everyone about a problem I had. She and I…we really did see each other for a while, but in secret. She was ashamed of me. There was some overlap when she met Jerry. We broke it off eventually, but…”

  “That still doesn’t explain all of these pictures,” Chloe said.

  “Lauren made it clear to me before we did anything physical that she wasn’t going to have sex with me. She said she’d do just about anything else, but not that. So imagine her surprise and my absolute horror when…well, when I found out I had an issue. They didn’t call it erectile dysfunction when I was young, but that’s what it is, essentially.”

  “So you never had sex with Lauren?” Rhodes asked.

  “No. And I think my problem…I think that’s why she stayed with me. She knew we could do all of this other stuff and it would never lead to sex. There were times when it almost happened…times when I was almost working like I was supposed to. But no…we never did. That’s where the pictures come in. She let me do it. I think she got off on it. There were so many more than these. There were hundreds. But she asked for them back when we broke up. I kept some for myself.”

  “Even if I believed that story,” Chloe said, “the timing does not sit well for you. We have you on camera, in a confrontation with Lauren Hilyard the night before she was killed. And then we find these in your home a week later.”

  “I swear…it’s just coincidence. I saw her at the reunion and it broke my fucking heart all over again. I pulled them out and just…”

  He stopped here and started to weep. But the tears and the choked back sobs were of anger. He balled up his fists and slammed them down on the table.

  “That bitch ruined my life,” he said. “Such a dumb thing…such a mean and immature thing. It ruined me. I wanted to hurt her…”

  “Mr. Morton,” Rhodes asked, “where were you on Sunday afternoon?”

  “At home. Nursing a hangover. Getting those pictures out.”

  “You stayed at home all day?”

  “No. I went out a bit after lunchtime.”

  “Where did you go?” Chloe asked.

  Jason almost answered but seemed to understand where this was headed. A look of alarm crossed his face. Unable to look at the picture-covered table, he looked to the far wall instead.

  “Where did you go?” Chloe asked again. “Mr. Morton…if you can provide your whereabouts and provide proof, you’d be free to go after some more questioning.”

  “Mr. Morton,” Rhodes said, coming closer to the table now, “where did you go Sunday afternoon?”

  He finally looked up at them and now the tears in his eyes were from more than just anger. He was broken. He was caught.

  “Farmington Acres,” he said.

  And with that, he crumpled. He folded his arms on the table and laid his head down among the lurid pictures of the woman he seemed to have killed.

  ***

  “He never made a confession.”

  Rhodes said this as they headed out of Barnes Point. She let the comment hang in the air, as if seeing if it sounded right.

  “And I don’t think he will,” Chloe said. “Maybe at trial. But for now, he’s still trying to hold on to high school. Trying to hold on to the dream woman that got away.”

  “Damn, that’s sad,” Rhodes said.

  “If you really feel all that bad about it, we’ll probably come back down in a few days if Morton still hasn’t confessed. They can only hold him for four days without officially charging him.”

  “Oh, I don’t feel bad for him. The whole thing just feels anti-climactic.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  But the more time that passed—the closer they got to DC, leaving Barnes Point behind—the more certain she became that Jason Morton killed Lauren Hilyard. He murdered her because he had not been able to let go of the way in which she had hurt him in high school…and because she had chosen to continue to inflict those same wounds twenty years later. She had shattered an already broken heart and the result had been twenty years of pent-up rage and aggression coming out in a brutal murder.

  Several minutes passed before either of them spoke again. It was Rhodes again and the question she asked took Chloe off guard.

  “Were you and Moulton seeing one another?” she asked.

  “Why do you ask?” Chloe asked, not seeing the point in flat out denying it.

  “Because you’re not talking about what happened. I broached the topic a few times and you shot it down each and every time. So, I was just wondering.”

  “Not officially,” Chloe answered. “But all the same, it sucked to see him go through that.”

  Rhodes only nodded, apparently feeling that she had crossed some unspoken barrier. And that was fine with Chloe. As far as he was concerned, she, unlike Jason Morton, was just going to leave that hurt in the past and move on with her career—and her life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  “You’re coming to this reunion with me and you’re going to like it.”

  Danielle was standing at the kitchen bar, setting out plates for the dinner she had made them. It was an eerie comment for Chloe to hear; she assumed Lauren Hilyard’s friends had said something similar when she had tried to get out of going to her reunion. She’d left Barnes Point the day before but it still seemed to cling to her—the case, the town, the peculiar post–high school friendships.

  “One of those things is doubtful and the other is highly doubtful,” Chloe said.

  “Consider it a celebration. You wrapped this case of yours and I’ve managed to somehow unhitch myself from an abusive man that hid his demons well. I don’t intend to just sit around your apartment and bemoan our lives over wine all weekend.”

  “Then don’t,” Chloe said. “You go. You have fun.”

  “I’m not going without you,” she said. “And you know…Jacob Koontz will probably be there. And according to Facebook, he’s single.”

  “He got married straight out of college, Danielle.”

  “Ah, but, as you well know, sometimes those right-out-of-college relationships don’t work. He’s been divorced for about a year and a half now.”

  “Since when did you start Facebook stalking the people we went to high school with?”

  “Since I started considering this high school reunion,” Danielle said. “I want to go in with some sort of ammunition.”

  Chloe considered it for a moment and sat down on the couch, facing Danielle at the bar. “I’ve only been back there once, you know?”

  “I do know. But we’re not going to go traipsing down some messed up memory lane or visit any surviving relatives. It’s just me and you, some people we went to high school with, and a whole lot of alcohol.”

  Chloe thought it over for a moment. Would it really be all that bad? What would she do if she stayed home tomorrow night? She’d probably sit alone, thinking of what she had potentially missed out on with Moulton. She’d rack her brain with reasons to doubt herself about the case, to convince herself that Jason Morton was not the killer despite the fact that all signs seemed to indicate that he was.

  “I’ll give you two hours,” she said. “If it’s an awkward snooze fest where people are doing nothing more than comparing jobs and spouses, we’re leaving.”

  “I’ll take it,” Danielle said, grinning far too wide. “I don’t get it. You were pretty cool in high school. In that quiet, unspoken way.”

  “That doesn’t mean I ever want to revisit it,” Chloe said.

  “You think there’s something wrong with me for wanting to go?” Danielle asked.

  “No. You were always a social butterfly.”

  “And you were always the caterpillar wrapped up in the cocoon, refusing to come out and see all the color.”

  “If that weren’t such a great analogy, I’d be pissed,” Chloe said. “Shut up with it already. I said I’d go. What else do you want from me?”

  Danielle smiled as she looked around the apartment and then back to Chloe. There was a weight to that stare, thick with unexpressed gratitude. “Nothing else,” she said, all seriousness now. “You’ve done more than enough already.”

  “Good. Remember that when I’m dragging you by the arm to get the hell out of there.”

  ***

  Their hometown—or, rather, the only town Chloe could clearly remember growing up in after moving in with their grandparents—was a two-and-a-half-hour drive away from DC. When they entered into Pinecrest, Maryland, everything came rushing back to Chloe. It was terrifying for her to recall just how close she had come to marrying Steven and living here.

  As she drove through town toward the high school, she passed right by the road that led to the subdivision she and Steven would have lived in. She wondered what had become of the house they had moved into. Had he sold it? Did he still own it? Even considering such things sent a chill down her spine.

  After she parked and she and Danielle stepped out of the car, she felt a strange synchronicity sweep over her. Lauren Hilyard had been walking into her twenty-year reunion two weeks ago to the day. Looking to the building that was housing her own ten-year reunion made Chloe feel almost dizzy. It was being held at the Pinecrest Country Club, a building she had never stepped foot in while living in the town.

  “You already look miserable,” Danielle said as they stepped inside.

  Chloe gave a fake smile as she opened the door to the country club and stepped inside. “No, no,” she said sarcastically. “All smiles. I promise.”

  They approached a small kiosk just inside the doors. A man and a woman sat behind the desk, which held blank name tags and several markers. As they picked up the markers and started to fill them out, the man behind the kiosk made a little gasping sound and got to his feet.

  “My God, it’s the Fine sisters!” he said.

  Somehow, Chloe had managed to push that unfortunate moniker out of her head. Once they had both started dating and word of Danielle’s promiscuity started to circulate around the school, they had been labeled The Fine Sisters. Which was fine, seeing as how that was their last name—but it was the way in which fine was implied that had stuck. Fine, as in sexy or hot. Chloe had always resented it because she knew she had never been seen as hot when in high school. Not that she was aware of, anyway.

 

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