I feel sick again.
I turn from him and walk into the kitchen. I get a bottle of water from the fridge and gulp some down. I don’t bother to offer him a drink.
I’m not exactly feeling hospitable at the moment.
I look over at him. He’s still standing in the open doorway.
“You can come in.”
“Are you sure?”
“We can’t exactly have this conversation with the door open for the neighbors to hear. I’m sure they have heard enough already.”
“I just want you to feel comfortable. Safe.”
“Are you going to hurt me?”
He holds my eyes. “No.”
“Then, come in and close the door. But just so you know, I have a rape alarm and mace in my bag. And a drawer full of kitchen utensils that can serve as weapons.”
Jack leans back against the door he just closed. “Noted. You’ve also got a mean right hook, if I remember right.”
His lips lift into a small smile, but I am in no mood to take a stroll down memory lane with him right now.
“You said you had questions …” he prompts when I don’t say anything.
I do have questions, but trying to gather them up and get them in any sort of order is feeling impossible right now.
“So, you know my surname isn’t actually Hayes? That it’s Irwin.” I start with something small. I can work my way up to the big stuff.
Jack nods in response.
“And am I right in assuming that your real surname is Ripley, not Canti?”
“No. It is Canti. When I said that I only kept that Toby is my brother from you, that was the truth. Toby and I have different fathers. That’s why we have different surnames.”
I guess that’s why I don’t see a similarity between them. Not that all siblings necessarily look the same. Cole and I don’t.
“My mom and dad divorced when I was a kid,” he explains. “And Toby’s dad was an asshole. He ran off when Tobias was a few weeks old. I was eleven when he was born. I pretty much helped my mom raise him.”
“So, the small part of your past that you gave to me, that was all true. The military. The writing.”
“Yes. And you weren’t exactly forthcoming on your past either, Audrey.”
“And now, I know why you didn’t push the issue.” I laugh humorlessly. “And there I was, thinking you just weren’t a pushy guy.”
Jack says nothing. There’s just that guilt lining his eyes, which has been there since I found that damn photograph.
“Why did I not recognize you? I knew your mom from the trial. You weren’t there. I would have remembered.”
“The military wouldn’t let me leave to come home for the trial. When your brother’s on trial for murder and kidnapping, they don’t look upon that favorably to give you time off.”
“Don’t forget stalking and assault,” I add bitterly. I absentmindedly press my hand to my scars.
“It wasn’t him, Audrey,” he says the words softly.
“The evidence said otherwise.”
“Audrey—”
“The jury of twelve men and women all found him guilty.”
“And not a single drop of DNA matched his.”
“So, he was careful. A lot of killers are.”
Jack sighs and drags his hand through his hair. “My brother is not careful. He’s not clean. I spent the best part of my life getting that kid to shower. So, to say he would keep a crime scene spotless is a stretch.”
“Maybe you’re the one who’s stretching. You were away in the military. People change.”
“Toby didn’t.”
“What about the evidence found in his bedroom at your mother’s house? The trinkets he stole from the victims? The knife he used on them … me?”
“Planted.”
“By who? Why would someone frame him? Come on, Jack. You seriously want to sell to me that it wasn’t Tobias? That some other person murdered these women? Stalked me? Kidnapped me? And then framed Tobias? Then, tell me who. Give me a reason.”
He holds my eyes. “I don’t have one. I don’t know who the killer is. I just know that Toby is innocent.”
“I think you want to believe he is.”
He shakes his head. “I know it wasn’t him. He is not a killer.”
“We never really know anyone.” I give him a pointed look.
“True. But I watched my brother save a bird from the neighbor’s cat a year before the murders started. He nursed it back to health. Jesus, when he was five, I sat with him while he cried himself to sleep after he accidentally killed a butterfly.”
I pause at his words.
“A man who does that would not kill animals and leave them on your doorstep, and he most definitely would not kill another human being.”
“I … that means nothing.”
“I spoke to him that night. The night you were taken. On the phone.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It was the home phone. I called, he answered, and I spoke to him for eleven minutes.”
“What you’re saying right now proves nothing!” I fire back at him.
“I have proof, Audrey. I can show you the call log from the phone company.”
“They would have said in the trial …”
“It was dismissed as evidence. Yes, the call logs show a call was made to my mother’s house. That it connected and that I spoke to someone for eleven minutes—right in the middle of the time you were being held—but it doesn’t prove who I was talking to.”
“You could have been talking to your mother.”
“But I wasn’t. She was sleeping. She was sick in bed.”
I know this. It was all said at trial. But nothing about the phone call.
“I am telling you, Audrey. I spoke to him that night. He was home. He wasn’t there with you.”
“So what if you did speak to him!” I’m getting agitated. “That means nothing! He could have left and …”
I stop my words because he didn’t leave me that night. He was there, in my apartment. I was tied
