been silent for at least a minute.
“He’s lean, but strong. Tall. Six feet, or more. He doesn’t look like...” A killer. I didn’t know how to finish that without saying the words. “He looks like a college kid. Clean clothes. Hiking boots. And he smiles a lot. Like he’s having fun.”
Olivia blinked, and something unpleasant flashed behind her eyes.
I knew what they were thinking. My description was too detailed. I’d gotten a good, long look at the monster who’d slaughtered my entire family. I hadn’t just glanced at him as I’d fled the house.
They wanted to know how I’d survived, when everyone I’d ever loved had died.
“Okay. That’s good,” Liv said, but there was nothing good about what I was telling them. “Did you notice anything else? Tattoos or birthmarks? Scars?”
I shook my head, trying to mentally detach myself. To rise above what I’d seen and heard. “His height and hair are his most distinguishing features.” My voice sounded cold. Clinical. As if I’d actually been able to divorce myself from the memories long enough to describe him. But that was another lie.
“Did you hear him speak? Did he have an accent?” Cam asked, and I realized that all discussion from the kitchen had ended. Kris stood in the doorway, quiet rage blooming in red splotches on his cheeks and forehead. Vanessa sat in a recliner, clicking away at her laptop, while Kori perched on the arm of her chair, alternately looking at me and at Van’s screen.
“No accent. He sounded normal. Educated, but not pretentious. His voice is deeper than you’d expect from such a thin build, but it’s soft. Quiet and controlled.” Even in the middle of...bad things.
I’d never spoken about him in such detail, but I’d relived that night so many times that I couldn’t forget any of it. Ever. No matter how hard I tried.
“Okay. I’ve got all that down.” Olivia met my gaze with a steady one of her own. “But, Sera, it would really help us out if you could tell us where this happened. My range is pretty good, but I still have limits, and we’ll need a starting point.”
This is it. The moment when I had to decide how much to trust them. I could give them the location, which would lead them to the crime itself and then they’d know who I’d been, before my family died. They’d see the shattered remains of my life laid out across their computer screens in illicitly gained police reports.
Then they would look at me differently. Pity would outweigh any respect I’d gained. But that wouldn’t bring them any closer to discovering the secret of my birth.
“Andersen,” I said at last. “About an hour north of the state line.”
Andersen wasn’t my hometown; it was just the latest in a series of relocations meant to keep us from being found, in spite of my mother’s insistence that my biological father had no idea I existed. We’d been in Andersen for six years, since my junior year in high school. That was the longest we’d ever lived anywhere, and my family had only stayed there because when I’d gone off to college, I took the target on my back with me.
In retrospect, the town made sense, as had all the ones before. Anderson had just over one hundred thousand residents. It was a big enough place that no one noticed or really cared when someone new moved into the neighborhood, but too small to hold any real interest for any of the major Skilled syndicates. The perfect place to hide in plain sight.
Until a random act of violence—a home invasion with no clear motive—had taken away everyone I’d ever wanted to protect.
The click of computer keys drew me back into the present, where several sets of eyes stared at me. Vanessa was still searching, and if she hadn’t found the news articles yet, she would soon. In a town the size of Andersen, the unsolved murder of almost an entire family was still big news.
“Is there anything else you think we should know?” Olivia asked, and I answered on my way up the stairs.
“Only that I want him dead. But first, I want him to suffer.”
Kris
When I stepped out of the upstairs bathroom, Van was waiting for me in the doorway to the room she and Kenley had shared. She tossed her head toward the door, silently asking me to come in. Which meant she didn’t want someone to know whatever she had to say.
I followed her