Chapter Thirty-Four
Glad she knew aboutthe out-of-the-way bathrooms and wouldn’t have to wait in line, Sarah did her business and washed her hands.She straightened her hat and slung her leather handbag over her shoulder, then unlocked the deadbolt.Ben would be fussing outside, no doubt, unhappy that she was out of sight.She didn’t want him worried about her and would go right back to his side.This was a happy day.She wanted him happy, too.
Suddenly the door pushed violently inward.A tall, slender man shoved her back.She stumbled hard—almost fell.Her big hat was knocked to the floor.The toilet was to her left, the sink to her right.She was trapped.
The man ripped off the rhubarb head of leaves on his head and threw it down.His hair was mussed, his teeth clenched, but she would know him anywhere—the light blond hair, the pale blue eyes.His slim physique.
“Hi, Sarah.Remember me?”Reaching behind him, he flipped the lock, closing them in.
“Colin,” she breathed.“What—what are you doing here?”Mira’s troubled brother.
Yet, in an instant, she knew why.
Every event that happened in the past month came together in awful finality, like the snapping of a bear trap.Memories of Colin’s raw, traumatized grief at his sister’s death rushed back.She clearly recalled his wailed entreaty to her, “Couldn’t you have saved her?”He blamed her, Sarah, for Mira’s death.She understood that now.Well, hadn’t she blamed herself?
So, it wasn’t Ridley Kemper after all.Her stalker was Mira’s very own brother, Colin Korhonen, a deeply distressed young man.His grief had morphed into rage.And now that rage grew into a demented desire for revenge.
The Weirdo was Colin!
Cold fear gripped her throat.The lure of pure panic clawed at her.She wanted to shout for help.Her throat worked, but she couldn’t get a proper breath.
“Go ahead and scream.”His eyes glittered with an unbalanced gleam.“Nobody’s gonna hear you.”
“Colin, please,” Sarah choked out.She held up her hand.She would have backed away from him if the tiled wall weren’t already at her shoulder blades.“You know I didn’t want Mira to die.She was my best friend!”
He tore off the remainder of his costume and threw it aside.Like magic, he produced a knife, silver and glinting, and waved it in the air.“Some friend you were.Feeding my sister those drugs.It should have been you who died.Not her.She was good.And kind.Her heart was bigger than you ever knew.”
“I didn’t feed her drugs—”
“But no,” he said, ignoring her protest, “you didn’t die, notSuper Sarah.”He spat the words.“You get to live the high life.Going to festivals.Strolling around like a queen.You’re still breathing while my sister is in her grave.You’re alive while Mira rots in the ground.After she was gone, there was no one.No one for me.”
“Colin,” she entreated, “your parents told me they were taking you back to Finland.”She had to keep him talking, at least until her brain started functioning.“They said they’d see to your care just as Mira did in the States.They’d get you doctors, the medicines you need.”
“Bah, their doctors lie.They said I’m schizophrenic.I don’t need them.Or their meds.Fuck them.I left Finland.I needed to be in America.Whereyouare.”He cut his knife through the air.“Think I’d forget what you did?I came back to get you.”He raised his knife.
With terrified fascination, her gaze clung to the shiny blade.Because Ben had showed her, she recognized the make.It was a Bowie, with a cross-guard and a concave clip point.It must have been a good eight inches long, much longer than hers.
Longer than hers!
Her panic cleared long enough to remember her own knife.
Advancing on her, Colin Korhonen waved his weapon in complex swirls.“I remembered the time you were attacked in your apartment hallway.You told everybody how scared you were by your stalker’s knife.He held it to your throat, didn’t he?”
“Th-that’s why you sent those emails,” Sarah stammered.“Why you left that note on my truck, always with a knife icon.”
