35. MEGHAN

Boise, Idaho

Now

Domanska didn't even stop for a bathroom break. We left just before the sun had broken the horizon and made the drive from Salt Lake to Boise in five hours flat.

When we pulled into the station, I expected to be met by a flurry of momentum that matched the no-pee-breaks-energy in the car. But even after Domanska had returned from the bathroom in the station, Kittleson kept us waiting.

I did what Domanska couldn't and wandered through the building until I found him—talking with another detective outside his open office door about another case.

"Get out here, and let's go arrest his ass!" I called. Today was finally the day we brought him in. The day he finally faced the music for what he'd done to me and god-knew how many other women.

That was the moment a woman poked her head around the corner of the office door.

She was wearing fuzzy pink slippers and the comfiest-looking purple pajamas I'd ever seen.

She looked right at me.

But my surprise that she could obviously see—and hear—me turned to total shock when she whispered, "Oh my god. Meghan."

I took a step back, and the expression on her face crumpled. "I'm so sorry," she said, and the fluorescent lights in the hallway outside of Kittleson's office flickered wildly.

I shook my head, trying to take it all in. "What? Hold on, you can see me?" Was she some kind of psychic? Did that also explain the pajamas somehow?

She nodded. "I'm Brecia. And I'm so sorry. I tried to stop him that night. I wanted to come after you, but you were moving so fast, and I didn't want to let him go . . ."

The lights flickered around us again, and suddenly I understood. I remembered the sound of the woman's voice as I ran through the trees and down the embankment, thinking I was escaping.

She'd been there that night too. Because he'd gotten to her first.

I stared at her in disbelief. She flinched at my gaze, as if I might be gearing up to scream at her.

Instead, without really thinking about it, I brushed past Kittleson—who was still yammering on about something that didn't sound very important at all—and leaned in to give her a hug.

When I did, I learned the answer to every question that had crossed my mind in the past thirty seconds—and every question I might possibly ask in the future about Brecia. As our arms touched and we embraced, I saw with crystal clarity everything she so badly wanted me to know about her own murder. About what she'd tried to do the night I died. And about what she'd done afterward. Everything words couldn't ever have summed up no matter how hard we'd tried.

When we stepped apart, I could see that the same had happened for her. That she understood what I desperately wanted her to know, too. Where I'd been all this time. What it meant that I knew she'd tried to save me, even if it hadn't worked out. Everything I wanted to say.

The fluorescent light overhead finally popped, and Kittleson cursed. "Damn it," he muttered. His phone was ringing yet again—like it had been ever since Domanska arrived. He finally hurried into his office to answer it.

That was when another voice—frantic and shrill—became audible above the sound of the phone.

Brecia and I turned at the same time to see a young Latina woman with curly black hair flying down the hall toward us.

"He's running!" she cried.

And from the way she brushed past desks and around doorways, I knew that she was dead too.