Murder

  Murder

  A Sinful Secrets Romance

  Ella James

  Contents

  Copyright

  Part 1

  Prologue

  1. ONE

  2. TWO

  3. THREE

  4. FOUR

  5. FIVE

  6. SIX

  7. SEVEN

  8. EIGHT

  9. NINE

  10. TEN

  11. ELEVEN

  12. TWELVE

  13. THIRTEEN

  14. FOURTEEN

  15. FIFTEEN

  16. SIXTEEN

  17. SEVENTEEN

  18. EIGHTEEN

  Part 2

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY ONE

  TWENTY TWO

  TWENTY THREE

  TWENTY FOUR

  Part 3

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY ONE

  TWENTY TWO

  TWENTY THREE

  TWENTY FOUR

  TWENTY FIVE

  TWENTY SIX

  TWENTY SEVEN

  TWENTY EIGHT

  TWENTY NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY ONE

  THIRTY TWO

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  FLAWLESSLY BROKEN

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  “Murder: A Sinful Secrets Romance,” by Ella James.

  ©2016, Ella James. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Ella James.

  Part I

  He takes her in his arms

  He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you

  But he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end

  You’re dead, nothing can hurt you

  Which seems to him

  A more promising beginning, more true.

  — Louise Gluck, from “A Myth of Devotion”

  Prologue

  The night is dark. The road is white. The snow-caked trees that crowd the shoulder dangle icicles that click as wind dives down the famous ski slopes, somewhere in the pinkish clouds above us.

  The weather radio said the snow will keep on through tomorrow night. A New Year’s blizzard, maybe twenty inches. This is Breckenridge in winter. Frozen to a crackle. Cloaked in white.

  Gwenna’s breath and mine plume silver in the velvet dark that hangs like a stage curtain over the curved road. Snow is falling fast now, caking our jacket hoods and freezing in a sheen of sparkles. Her coat is the color of a plum—or blood. The thick down softens her form. She reminds me of an animal: one sweet and small, in need of shelter.

  I must be more head-fucked than I thought, because she turns around, her cheeks red, her lashes wet with snowflakes, and I realize she’s about twenty feet ahead of me.

  “Bear?”

  Her large brown eyes are widened slightly—in affection or alarm? Her mouth twitches, then presses into a small, red line. She doesn’t speak, and there’s no need. I know her so well. I can see the worry on her face, the burden of her fear and grief a notch between her brows.

  “Come walk by me and hold my hand.” She pulls her left glove off and reaches for me.

  I oblige her. Anything she wants. With two long strides, I’ve closed the space between us. My hands are ungloved. I told her I forgot my gloves, but that’s a lie. I need to feel the sting.

  Her hand folds around mine and Gwen gasps.

  “Barrett! Brr, I need to warm you up…” She pulls my hand into her jacket sleeve, gripping it tightly. “Crazy man.”

  She laughs, despite the somberness of our affair. Her eyes, wet ink in the moonlight, shine with love—for me.

  “Hang on.” With her right hand, she unzips her jacket. “Come here…”

  She takes my hands and pulls them into her jacket, pressing them atop her sweater, underneath which I can feel her heart beat.

  Her face tilts up to mine, despite the driving snow. “You can’t be leaving gloves at home. It’s so cold. You’ll get frostbite.” Behind her words, there is a smile—a small, lopsided smile she gives me almost all the time. A dreamy smile I love more than life.

  I try my best to return it.

  Her boots shuffle in the snow as she tries to step closer to me. “It’s so freaking cold. Even with a-all these layers.” She shivers, and I pull a hand out of her coat, tucking her close to me and rubbing my hand over her back.

  “Better?”

  “Yes!” Her voice trembles with cold.

  I press her hood over her head and rub behind her neck, down to her shoulder blades, right where she likes.

  “I love you.” Her eyes peek out from behind the faux-fur lining her big hood. I see them crinkle with another smile.

  “I love you too.” I pull her close again, and God, I’d like to keep her here forever, locked against me like a splint.

  “My Bear,” she whispers.

  I swallow. We’re not there yet, but I’m starting to feel frozen—on the inside. A deep breath does nothing to thaw me. She rubs my arms through my jacket and smiles at me again. This smile is curious. Perhaps concerned.

  “Your nose is red,” she croons.

  Her sweet voice doesn’t thaw me either, but I still smile. “Yours too.” I hug her close once more, but even that can’t pierce the ice that’s thick inside me.

  We walk on, along the road’s edge, through a deep snowdrift I worry will spill into her boots.

  Somewhere miles away, I hear a lone firework.

  She takes my hand again, searches my face as we walk slowly. “I’m glad you came with me. I’m feeling better than I ever have before. Just knowing that I’m not alone, you know? Jamie used to come with me, but you’re different. I feel…healed or something.”

  My jaw clenches. I force my lips to curve up at the corners. “Good.” I know my eyes on hers are earnest. “That’s good,” I murmur.

  She comes closer to me. We are leg to leg, shoulder to shoulder. I’m walking off the road, so she seems as tall as I am.

  “Bear?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you okay?”

  I blink. “Of course.” I stroke her hand. “I’m supposed to ask you that.”

  She smiles a little, tight and sad. “I am.”

  We’re almost to the bend where the road curves into a copse of trees when pops like mortar sound above us. The clouds are too thick to see the fireworks. They glow faintly—green, pink, gold, purple, blue.

  Gwen’s face looks delicate and beautiful in the changing light. Her eyes hold mine, and she smiles.

  “This is kind of nice.”

  I nod. Her gaze shifts upward, and I struggle to swallow.

  Fuck.

  I shut my eyes. I think about
her under me tonight, about the way she leaned up when we both finished and wrapped her arms around me, bringing me down on her.

  “Sweet Bear. Something’s bugging you. I’m going to find out. Unless you decide to tell me. Hmm?”

  A snowflake melts on my temple, and I can feel the ghost burn of her lips there.

  “I love you. You know that, right? You’re mine—and you will always be mine. Just because I said so.”

  “Bear?” Her voice is high and sharp. Her hand is on my arm.

  I keep my eyes shut, even as the moisture freezes on my cheeks.

  “What’s wrong?” Her voice is softer now. Inviting. Understanding.

  I inhale, and I can’t feel my frozen chest. I still can’t look at her.

  “Hey…” She wraps her arms around my waist.

  Don’t do that.

  “Is it the noise?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut tighter. Shake my head.

  “What is it then?”

  She strokes my shoulders. I can barely feel it through my jacket. But my hands are free. My hands are free to reach into my pocket.

  “It’s okay, baby.” She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me lower. Her lips touch my face—ice cold. I feel her stand down off her tiptoes.

  “Is it me?” She whispers. “I’ve been feeling like it’s triggering for you. Something about this. Coming here?”

  She knows me, this girl. Gwenna misses nothing.

  It’s an effort to open my eyes. To look at her face. Gwenna, whom I love. Gwen for whom I’ve waited my whole life.

  That I have to do this…

  That this is the end. It hurts so much. I ease my hand into my pocket, wrap my fingers around the gun grip. I look into her lovely eyes, although it almost kills me.

  “Gwen…”

  ONE

  GWENNA

  OCTOBER 20, 2015

  “Shit!”

  I smack the mouse with my whole palm, making my giant iMac monitor quiver on my desk. Then I lean in, squinting at the frozen image of the woods inside the bear enclosure.

  “Ugh.”

  Just like the last two times, I’m pretty sure that right beside that tree—right there, near the upper right-hand corner of the screen—is…something. The ground and limbs and leaves don’t match up right. I can’t explain it. It’s as if a ghost is there, making things almost imperceptibly blurry. Someone in a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak. Someone in the universe’s best camouflage.

  I seem destined to go crazy, though, because each time such a thing has caught my eye on one of the bear cams, it’s been impossible to tell for sure.

  The first time I saw something funny in the footage was two weeks ago, Cam 2, at 4:45 a.m. The blur looked man-sized. I could have sworn I saw an arm swinging, the shadow of an arm, with the rest of the body behind a tree. But it was too dark, and the image therefore too grainy, to say for sure.

  Then last week, last Wednesday I believe it was, I was following Aimee from Cam 4’s view to Cam 3’s, trying to be sure he didn’t try to bash his new tracker anklet against that freaking rock like last time, when I saw it again: a funny blurriness on the screen, right up against the bottom of a pine tree trunk. The cameras film in color, but not infrared, so all I could manage to identify was a smudge.

  I froze the frames, getting down into the milliseconds, looking for the subtle differences between the frames—and there were subtle differences. As if someone was moving: a semi-invisible form, moving between two trees. But it was dusk. Again, I couldn’t quite be sure.

  And then today—right about the time I finished kicking some punching bag ass in the clearing and started heading down the hill behind my cabin, which is situated at one corner of the 300-acre Bear Inc. enclosure, I heard this weird noise. It sounded like two people wrestling in the leaves.

  I booked it home and reviewed the footage from Cams 1 and 2, the ones closest to where I was walking. And I found this. This—person. I swear it is! A person in some kind of top-notch camo—or a ghost. I can only see the back and maybe a bent head, but it totally looks like a person.

  …A person-like blur.

  Would I swear on it in court?

  Well, no.

  Can I be one-hundred percent sure where the person’s outline ends and the thick woods begin again? Not exactly. But it seems like something. Seriously it does.

  And if it is something, I need to know. If it’s someone, I have to be cautious. With all the ruckus going on around here lately, it could be anything. Maybe evil Haywood has some asshole spying on me. Maybe there’s a serial killer in the area, one who gets off on victimizing girls with disabilities. The likelihood he would have an invisibility cloak seems slim, but you never know. It could be really good camouflage. They make some patterns that blend in really well with the woods inside the Smoky Mountain National Forest. My property backs right up to it.

  I tilt my head to the side, as if that will help my eyes focus. Then I let out a long sigh, rewind and view the footage one last time, and click the red button on the upper left-hand corner of my Safari window.

  The computer’s clock says it’s 5:15 p.m., which means I need to get moving.

  I let out my version of a bear moan. Living alone, I’m free to be as dramatic as I want on any given day. With no pets or people, just me here in the forest and the bears—various distances away from me, in the enclosure behind the cabin—it’s not like my shouting, cursing, singing, dancing, or moaning is going to upset anyone. The house next door is empty. That evil bastard Haywood.

  I’ve still got to get a shower, but first…

  I hustle from my office into the living room, then through the half-wall opening between den to kitchen. There, inside the cabinet underneath my big, trough-style sink, I keep a bottle of Emile Pernot “Vieux Pontarlier” Absinthe for just such an occasion as this.

  I twist the top off, bring the bottle to my lips, and take the smallest of swigs. The warm, licorice taste coats my throat, leaving behind a tang of bitterness as I shut my mouth. I imagine I feel more relaxed as I put the bottle back under the sink.

  Absinthe aficionados would be horrified by my bastardization of their fancy drink, but whatever. Again—no one here but me.

  I strip out of my workout clothes as I march toward my bedroom, set my iPhone in the Bose sound system on my dresser, grab the remote, and blast some Florence + The Machine as I quickly scrub my body, wash my hair, and dry it, tilting my head upside down and flinging my long, copper locks around like a ’70s rock star. I swipe deodorant underneath my underarms twice, because I know I’ll sweat tonight, then apply a faintly blue eyeliner that makes my brown eyes pop, followed by my signature red lipstick. I don’t care what anybody says about redheads and the color red. It’s bullshit. I can rock the red.

  My phone starts playing witchy-sounding music—the theme song from the Harry Potter movies—as I shimmy into hunter green leggings, but I can’t talk to my bestie Jamie and get ready, so I decide I’ll call her from the car. After a parting eyebrow arch into the mirror, I drift into my room and spend a second staring longingly at a an oversized gray hoodie picturing the cover of one of my favorite books, My Antonia, before tossing it aside and grabbing a boring, cream sweater that hits me about mid-thigh. I have these ridiculously awesome Prada combat boots that would breathe some life into this bleh, but I don’t want to draw that kind of attention tonight, so I settle on a pair of brown Tory Burch riding boots that would only look expensive to the most discerning eye.

  I shake my head around a few more times, letting my armpit-length auburn waves cascade around my face, before I fasten my hair into a casual French braid. Then I grab my backpack purse, my adorable bear keychain, and my phone out of the Bose dock, and sprint toward the garage door: a trek that takes me through the office that adjoins my room, then the den—where the cabin’s front door is—through the kitchen, and into the laundry room beside the breakfast nook. The place reeks of gardenias, which are potted and blooming on every
spare surface, including the top of the washing machine. I inhale deeply as I slip out the door and into my garage.

  The radio in my Mini Cooper (code-named Anderson) is set to NPR, and after deliberation that lasts about the length of my long, twisty driveway, I decide leave it there, distracting myself with an interesting discussion about transgender elementary schoolers before, about two miles from my destination, I call Jamie.

  “Are you thereeee?” she asks, in lieu of a normal greeting.

  “Not yet.” I sigh.

  “Are you ready?” she asks. “Are you still going to do it?” She sounds perhaps skeptical. I can’t tell for sure. She’s got this thing she does where even I can’t read her intonation. Tricky whore.

  I sigh again. “I guess maybe. Probably,” I modify.

  “You can do this.”

  I sink my nails into the leather of the steering wheel and glare out at the traffic.

  “It might help,” she says.

  “Might.” I attack the stitching on the wheel’s side with one dark purple fingernail and make a turn toward the courthouse.

  “I wish I could be there,” she says in a sympathetic tone. She’s got the weirdest accent—Southern and phonetically proper, all at once—and something about it always reminds me of Scarlett O’Hara.

  “It’s okay. I know you can’t be, and it’s no biggie.”

  Jamie’s a publicist for country music stars, and one of her mouthiest, most trouble-making clients is filming an interview with CMT in two hours.

  “It’ll either go well or it won’t. I’m trying to prepare for either way.” I sound a lot more chilled out than I feel.

  “Keep me posted. I’ll say a prayer,” she says.

  “Thanks.”

  I roll into the Sevier County Courthouse parking lot five minutes late, but still take the time to reapply my red lipstick before exiting the car. It’s an attitude thing. Once I feel as if my ’tude is cemented safely in place, I allow my eyes to linger on the left side of my mouth. I try to see myself the way they’ll see me. The way I saw me the first day I woke up in the ICU.