I don’t know why I keep looking him up. Nothing changes day to day, now that it’s been two months since his arrest. Right after, his name was plastered in every single newspaper. It was a big story—a mild-mannered assistant principal who killed a former girlfriend and might have been responsible for multiple murders years earlier.
Tim has had the gall to plead innocent—I almost feel like he’s doing it to torture me. A woman’s body was found in his basement. Does he really think there’s any chance he is walking out of prison after something like that? I’ve already been told that I will be testifying at his trial. I’m dreading it, but that’s what I have to do. It’s my fault he didn’t go to prison ten years earlier. He had me completely fooled.
I’m not going to waste any more time thinking about him. I delete his name from my search engine.
Instead, I bring up the local news site on my phone. I’ll browse a few stories while I’m waiting for Shane and Josh to build their snowman or for Josh to get cold and want to come back, whichever comes first. It takes forever for the news site to load up. The text pops up first, with the pictures still loading on the screen. This is probably going to drain my battery. While I’m waiting, I look at the first story:
Local Prison Guard Found Murdered
I stare at the headline, my heart sinking into my stomach. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t.
I try to click on the headline. Nothing happens. Why does the Internet have to be so bad out here? The picture next to the headline is filling in practically pixel by pixel. The beginning of a bald skull materializes on the screen.
It can’t be Marcus Hunt. It can’t.
And then the picture fills in a bit more. Just enough so that I can see his eyes.
Oh God. It’s him. It’s Hunt. He was found dead—possibly today. I tap on the article again, but the screen has completely frozen. I’m not going to get to read this story. I don’t know when this happened or how, but somehow, Marcus Hunt has been murdered.
This is breaking news. Which means they must have just found him recently. Was he killed overnight? I have no idea.
But I do know that this morning, my car keys were in a different place than I left them when I came home yesterday. And I also know that after everything that happened at Raker Penitentiary, Shane must despise Marcus Hunt with a burning passion.
My head is spinning. I jump out of the chair, pacing around the room as if it might give me some clue about what went on last night. But of course, the room is completely silent. No clues. Just a lot of dust.
I freeze when I get to the foot of the stairs. I rest my hand briefly on the banister. Like everything else, it’s dusty.
This is exactly where I was standing when Tim tried to strangle me. I had just come down the stairs, running out of Chelsea’s room because, for some crazy reason, I got it in my head that she might have stabbed Brandon and Kayla. Little did I know, she would be dead herself soon after, and my decision to leave the room cost my best friend her life.
I close my eyes, trying not to think about that night, but that only seems to make it worse. The more I try not to think about it, the more vivid it all seems. In the last few years, the memories had almost faded. But now that I’m standing in this farmhouse again, it seems like it all happened yesterday.
I ran out of Shane’s bedroom. I raced down the stairs as quickly as I could, then I tripped. And then quick as a flash, Tim was on top of me, tightening that necklace around my neck as the smell of sandalwood filled my nostrils. Then there was a crack of thunder, masking another sound I couldn’t quite make out.
I can almost feel the weight of his body crushing me. The air being cut off from my lungs. And I try to scream:
Shane, no!
My eyes fly open again. I back away from the stairwell, my heart pounding in my chest. As the years went by, I started to doubt myself. I never saw his face, so it could’ve been anyone that night. Except it wasn’t anyone. I knew who it was that night. And I know who it was now.