She looked like she wanted to disagree, but instead she sighed. “I suppose.”
“Why did you kill him? Was it because you found out what he was doing?”
Summer shook her head. “When the cops came to me and told me that they believed my husband was a serial killer, I thought they were insane. I knew my husband, and I would know if he was murdering people. I refused to believe them. I didn’twantto believe them. They told me to look under the bed and warned me to be careful.”
“You found the box.”
“Yes, but not until a few weeks later. I wouldn’t look. I kept telling myself there was no need to. I loved Carlton. He wasn't a murderer. But the thought was always there, at the back of my head, poking at me. Eventually, curiosity got the better of me and I looked.”
“You went to the cops.” Of this he had no doubt. He knew Summer would do the right thing despite the fact that she had loved her husband.
“Yes. I asked them what they needed me to do so they could arrest him. They asked me to wear a wire and try to trap him.”
“You agreed.” Again, he knew this without her having to say it.
“Yes. I was a nervous wreck all day. When Carlton finally came home, I tried too hard to act normal so he wouldn’t know that I knew.”
“But he knew,” Luke said grimly.
Summer shuddered. “I saw a side of him I'd never seen before. I saw the man who had killed at least seven women. He knew I knew, but at least he didn’t figure out that I’d been to the cops. He didn’t know I was wearing a wire. He admitted everything. He told me he was going to kill me. He had a gun, but he only wanted to use it to threaten me, he wanted to kill me with his own hands. He wrapped them around my neck. He was squeezing so tight I couldn’t breathe. I believed I would die before the police could get to us. Somehow, I got my hands on the gun. I shot him, once in the stomach, and he let go of me but only for a moment. He was so angry. His eyes were like windows into Hell. He came at me again and I shot him in the head. He died instantly.”
Her support of him suddenly took on a whole new meaning. Her husband had been accused of murder, she had protested his innocence only to find out she was wrong and he was really guilty. Now she had finally decided to give a relationship another try, and on their first date he was questioned by the police and suspected of murder, yet Summer still believed in him.
“I had his blood all over me,” she murmured. “There was so much of it. I think I was screaming when the cops finally got there. I needed to get the blood off me, but I couldn’t. In the end they sedated me, and when I woke up, I was clean.”
“I'm so sorry, Summer.” He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her against him. He didn’t know what to say to her to make her feel better so he did the only thing he could. He held her.
* * * * *
6:11 P.M.
“Shh, it’s all right,” Luke whispered to her over and over again.
She was shaking. She’d spent so much of the last thirty-six hours shaking that her muscles ached.
Summer couldn’t believe she had actually told Luke about Carlton. She hadn’t spoken to anyone about it. Not Aggie or Hope. Not her parents or siblings when they turned up at the hospital after the cops had filled them in on what had happened.
How could she talk about it?
She felt such shame. She had been going about her life, getting dressed, putting her makeup on, doing her hair, making love to her husband, sleeping in his arms, all in a room where people were dying.
Never would she forget the day she dropped to her knees and finally looked under the bed. She had been so confident that the police were wrong, that her husband was innocent, that he would never abduct someone and take their life.
But he had.
He had killed young girls just like her. She was fairly certain that had the police not caught on to him and what he was doing, he would have killed her too.
How could she have been so wrong about him?
Carlton was her husband. The person she had planned on spending her life with. She had believed he was her soul mate, her other half. She had planned on having children with him. What did that say about her?
She couldn’t bear to look at her family and friends after that, knowing that they knew what her husband had done and that she had been so stupidly unaware of it. So instead of staying and dealing with it, she had packed up her bags and run.
Nine years she had been here. Nine years and she had never told anyone about Carlton.
The fear that she would make another mistake and pick the wrong man again, coupled with her guilt over her part in those women’s deaths, had kept her from dating. The worry that people would see her differently if they knew the truth about her disastrous marriage had kept her from letting her friends get too close.
But now it was out there.