The atmosphere of the room was now filled with anger, tension, unanswered questions, and defiance. The shouting of questions and demanding of answers from Hunter had gotten him nowhere. Hunter paced the living room, stopping every few minutes to stare out the window, fists clenched in tight balls. Chloe got dressed and found some coffee hidden in the back of her cupboard. She set one cup on the coffee table for Hunter, the other one she held onto as she curled up in the corner of the couch. She would worry about the fact that she had lost Hunter’s love as fast as he gave it later. She was too busy berating herself for not seeing this coming. If her guard hadn’t been down, she would have.
Hunter tried to avoid looking at her while he paced, but she caught him looking out of the corner of his eye a few times. He stood silently for a few moments, unclenching his fists and relaxing his breathing. “For years I have been working on these murders. I know every word, every name, every date, and every detail. I have talked to experts, professors, doctors, and profilers. Months can go by without another file coming across my desk, but eventually I do get another one and it starts all over again. I’ve never been able to find the clue. And now, all of a sudden, I have a real, live, walking, breathing, talking clue sitting in the same room as me who I’m in love with! I have seven, soon to be eight, possibly nine, files on my desk. Every single one of those files belongs to a woman who has the exact same tattoo as you.”
She sat like a stone, unmoving and seemingly uncaring, while inwardly she felt like she was being repeatedly stabbed. The guilt of being the person responsible for those deaths took its time eating her alive. She had to assume that number nine was Charlotte, although, if what Alice told her was correct, that would be impossible unless the mortician gave a deathbed confession. The only other possible conclusion would be that someone else was dead because of her and it hadn’t been made public yet.
Hunter sat next to her on the couch, almost reaching out for her hand, but he stopped himself. “These murders are getting worse by the count and I don’t think they’re ever going to stop. I need answers. Chloe, I need closure.”
She slowly turned her head to look at him, captured by the last words he spoke. “Why do you need closure?”
When he looked at her, her heart instantly cracked down the middle. He had the look of a lost and defeated man as he spoke with a slight tremble in his voice. “This case is personal to me, Chloe. My wife had that tattoo.”
Her jaw slacked open and her muscles went weak as the sudden realization of his confession hit her. The coffee cup shook between her hands. He said his wife’s name was Amy. The names of her former employees raced through her mind and she came up blank. Chloe quickly did the math in her head. She had been gone eight years. Amy died four years ago. They had been married for two and dated for a short time before getting married. The only thing Chloe could determine was that Amy arrived after she had left and then departed shortly thereafter. Hunter went to the bedroom and returned, digging in his wallet. He produced a small, worn snapshot that had been looked at often, always resting next to him.
The blood rushed from her face as she sucked in a shaky breath. A beautiful young woman in her wedding gown, standing under an oak tree banked on the edge of a bayou holding a bouquet of pink roses in front of her and a smile that said nothing but rampant happiness. Her eyes—her arresting hazel eyes with flecks of gold sparking in the sun—said she had finally found her Prince Charming and her happily ever after.
Chloe was going to hyperventilate if she didn’t calm herself down. Her hands trembled as she handed the picture back to Hunter, who had been watching her reaction and trying his best to patiently wait for whatever Chloe had to say. One thing he knew for sure was that she definitely knew his wife.
“You knew Amy?”
She slowly nodded her head. “I did know her, but I didn’t know her as Amy. Her name was Saffron.”
***
“The mob?” Hunter asked with skepticism.
She had no idea why, but Chloe decided to tell Hunter as much truth about her past as she could. If she told her story carefully and convincingly, there was the possibility she could help him get what he needed to have closure.
“I know it sounds fantastical, but try to be patient with me. I’ve never told anybody what I’m going to tell you. I met Saff—I mean, Amy—when I was fourteen years old. I spent a lot of time with her; she was one of my best friends and a bridesmaid at my wedding.” She saw the look on his face and responded with, “I’ll tell you that part later.”
All Hunter wanted to hear was information pertaining to his wife, and she would tell him what she could and what he needed to hear. She decided to be as forthcoming as she could without crossing her own comfort zone. When she told her story, she would have no embarrassment or apologies in her voice, only truth for what she chose to tell him.
“Saff was such a good person and a very close friend. We all lived on the top floor of a hotel so we saw each other every day. We spent a lot of time together at meals or just talking. The man we worked for…” She paused, thinking of a way to make it not sound as bad as she knew Hunter would interpret it. “The man we worked for is a very wealthy, very powerful, and very influential man. The thing is, choosing to work for him is voluntary, and once anybody agreed to work for him, they couldn’t leave without his express consent. Once she said yes, she got her tattoo and belonged to him.”
“She belonged to him? What did y’all do for this man?” Hunter asked warily, as if he really didn’t want to know the answer to his question.
“Client entertainment.”
He snapped his head up. “What was client entertainment?”
“His clients were prominent people who required extreme discretion. She—”
“She was a prostitute?” he shouted.
“No!” Chloe exclaimed, then in a quiet voice said, “She wasn’t a prostitute.”
“What was client entertainment?”
“It wasn’t dirty and random. Our clients were people of standing in the community, in many different communities. If they wanted dinner, they got dinner. If they just wanted someone to talk to, she would do that. If they wanted to sleep with her, she did.”
Hunter looked at her like she was four years old. “She had sex for money, the definition of prostitute.”
She knew on some level he believed her, but desperately didn’t want it to be true. “She was a good person, Hunter, but she knew exactly what her job description was and she chose to do it. Jesus, she almost died and still came back to work after she healed.”
Chloe told him the story of what had happened with Mr. Crescent and watched him mentally lock the name away. She told him about Dr. Michaelson and everything he had done for Saffron to keep her alive.
“How old were you at the time?”
“Sixteen.”
Complete disbelief washed over him. “Were you a client entertainer too?”
“By definition, I was the boss.”
She explained what her role in the Family was as Hunter looked out the window and absorbed everything he had heard so far. She knew he felt like the wind had been knocked out of him, not knowing what to think or what to believe. The Amy he knew, the one he fell in love with and promised forever to, would never have done any of the things he was hearing. He needed more information, but didn’t want to necessarily hear the answers.
“Who is this man? The man you worked for.”
Chloe knew that no matter what she told Hunter about her father, he would have a difficult time making any substantial charges against him. She selfishly thought that maybe if she helped Hunter, he wouldn’t hate her as much as he probably did right now. At the same time, he had been trying to solve these cases for years and deserved whatever help she would be able to give him. But it felt good to tell her story, and she wasn’t as nervous as she was a few minutes ago. Her tone was very straightforward with no fear, only absolute certainty that she wanted to tell him.
“His name is Matthew Parnell.”
“Where is he?”
“Massachusetts,” she said, and quickly added, “but you can’t stop him, Hunter. You would never be able to prove that he’s responsible. He doesn’t do any of the dirty work himself. He orders, his soldiers obey. Unless you can get solid, rock-hard, undeniable testimony from someone, or irrefutable evidence, it will be more difficult than you think.”
“Would you testify?”
The question caught her off guard. She hadn’t considered it and knew that Matthew had friends in high places, an extremely good attorney, and testifying against him would be the same as signing her own death warrant.
Hunter saw the expression on her face. “You’re terrified of him.”
She didn’t quite know how to make Hunter understand what kind of man he would be dealing with if he was able to convict her father. “Hunter, he is the most powerful underboss in a very large, very dominant crime organization. He is tremendously protective about his position and loves the power he has over people. If he feels threatened, disrespected, or betrayed, he doesn’t hesitate to give an order. He sometimes kills just to cause pain and watch someone suffer.”
“How did you come to be in his employment?”
“My mother married into the Family.”
“Do you know why Amy died?”
She really didn’t want to answer that question, but she would. Hunter would never understand the immense weight of blame she had put on herself that never went away, and the agony she felt every time she saw the news and how it reinforced Matthew’s threat to her that he would do anything to hurt her.
“Remember I told you we weren’t allowed to leave without his permission? Well, I did. I packed a bag and ran away in the middle of the night. I disrespected him, embarrassed him, and betrayed him. He knows that every time someone dies, I blame myself, and the guilt is eating me alive. She died—all of these women have died—because of me.”
Hunter most certainly was not prepared for that admission and it showed on his face. “What was it that drove you to sneak out in the middle of the night?”
“He murdered my fiancé on our wedding day, put a gun to my head, and told me that unless I did exactly what he said, that I would be next.”
Chloe went into the bedroom and came back with the only picture of her and Christopher that she had held on to for all these years. The picture was taken at the governor’s birthday party and just happened to be the same night Christopher asked her to marry him. “I was nineteen when that picture was taken. His name was Christopher and he is the reason that I couldn’t tell you how I feel earlier. The thought of losing you and the pain that would follow if Matthew found out would kill me if I had to go through it all a second time.”
Chloe’s body was slowly shutting down from hunger and exhaustion, as well as being emotionally drained by having to relive a part of her life that took her so long to get over.
“Why did Parnell have him killed?”
“I didn’t know it at the time, but he did it because he despised me and wanted nothing more than to simply destroy me.”
A crease appeared between Hunter’s eyes. “Why does he hate you so much? What did you do?”
She gave a small chuckle and failed at trying to stifle a yawn. “I breathe. That’s what I do.”
“What if I could get you witness protection? Would you agree to testify?”
“I paid someone to change my life for me and put myself in self-proclaimed witness protection eight years ago.” He gave her a questioning look. “Yes, obviously, not everything I told you about myself was the truth, but most of it was. If you recall, I scraped over my childhood when we were swapping stories, but I don’t blame you for hating and distrusting me. It’s understandable.”
“I’m angry, confused, tired, and have too many questions. But if you’re willing to tell me all of this, why wouldn’t you be willing to take it a step further and testify?”
“Because I would never make it to the courthouse.” Chloe gave Hunter a few examples of her father’s wrath, then told him about Alice and how fate, karma, or whatever it was, threw them together. “If she agrees to testify, would you be able to promise her and her family witness protection?”
“I promise I will see what I can do for your friend.”
“And her family,” Chloe added.
“And her family,” Hunter confirmed as he covered a yawn of his own. “I have one more question. If you think I can’t get him, then who do you think can?”
She and David were the only two people who could stop him. Obviously, since her father was still alive, David wasn’t doing anything about it. As for herself, she had made up her mind to try, but didn’t know what she was going to do yet. She hated to admit that she was still afraid of her father and it pissed her off that the task fell to her.
“Me.”
“You?”
“I’m the one he’s punishing, the one he wants to punish.” Her eyes were sagging with fatigue and she felt like she was going to collapse any second. “I’m going back to Boston to try. I’m so tired, Hunter. Tired of being afraid and tired of running. I thought I was okay being alone and moving from place to place, but then I saw Alice and the life she was able to make for herself after she left. The more time I spend with her, the more she proves to me that I deserve that chance at happiness too. And then I met you, and the more I thought about you and the short time we spent together, the more I wanted to try to find that happiness, even if only for a little while. If I can stop him from killing other women by going back, I will. He can do whatever he wants to me, but he took away so much from these girls for so long. He shouldn’t be allowed to take anymore.”
Chloe had been running from, and afraid of, Matthew Parnell for the past eight years, and was now planning on throwing herself in front of the gun, hoping not to take a bullet too soon. She knew there was too much information rattling around in Hunter’s head to process all at once. He was just as tired as she was. As they sat quietly, Chloe’s body began to relax and her eyes began to droop slowly shut until, after a few minutes, they were simply not going to open. She felt a blanket gently cover her, a soft kiss on the forehead, and then heard the front door quietly shut behind Hunter as he left.