“Yeah, why?” I muttered, enjoying the comfort that he gave me.
“Because you’re going through an adrenaline dump, and sometimes that can stir things up in people after atraumatizing event,” he mentioned, and I realized he was right.
I hadn’t really given myself the time or space to think about everything we had been through, but the thing my mind seemed to focus on first was the cabin fire.
“Hector, I’m sorry I didn’t think to grab some of your important things from your house to save.” My voice strained as guilt washed over me that I hadn’t grabbed at least some photos or something.
“The only things in that house I wanted to save were you and Sarge,” he said, tilting my head back to look at me. “Nothing else matters—nothing.”
He leaned down and kissed me, gently but with conviction, as though he knew he’d almost lost me tonight.
Pulling back, he looked down into my eyes. “Did you wash your hair yet?”
I shook my head, and he reached down to grab my shampoo bottle. “I’ll do it. Tilt back.”
He lathered his hands up and began to massage it through my hair and scalp in a way that sent tingles through my whole body.
“Oh, my God. Why are you so good at that?” I asked, tilting my head back and enjoying the feel of his fingers kneading my scalp.
“I used to have longer hair, remember?” he said, and I vaguely remembered that, but then my mind blanked as his fingers continued to work their magic through my hair.
“Woman, you keep making those noises, and we’re never gonna leave here,” he said in a gruff, throaty tone.
I hadn’t even realized I was making any noises, but that was what Hector did to me. My brain ceased to function whenever his hands were on me.
“Iris,” he said, but it was a warning. “Let’s finish up in here, and we can go to bed.”
I hope he didn’t mean to just sleep. I wanted sleep, but I also wanted his hands and mouth all over me.
With that thought, I hurried up in the shower. After drying off and brushing my hair and teeth, I climbed into bed to wait for Hector, who was taking Sarge out for the last time.
Despite my best efforts, exhaustion overtook me, and moments later, all snuggled in bed, I was lulled into dreamland.
That dreamland was a wonderful place that included snuggling with Hector and Sarge. Being lost to that dreamworld—as good as it was—was how I almost missed hearing Hector tell me he loved me for the first time as he drifted to sleep with me tucked up against his side.
28
“Periods teach you how to get blood stains out of a lot of things, which is probably why you hear more stories of men getting caught for murder.”
—It’s science
Hector
It took two weeks for Jennings to get out of the hospital due to his severe burns and smoke inhalation. Personally, I was glad he’d suffered.
I had gone to visit him, unfortunately with Andrews supervising me. I knew she likely hadn’t trusted me to be alone with him—smart on her part. As someone who had more than once in the past blurred the lines between right and wrong, this likely would have been another situation to add to that list.
I had never felt more rage in my body than I did listening to Jennings carelessly and callously discuss how this was all Iris’s fault for finding the body in the first place. Knowing he’d planned to kill her simply becauseshe was in the wrong place at the wrong time and ruined his chances of getting away with his crimes had me contemplating how to cross a few of his medical wires to make him suffer a bit more. Andrews’s presence had prevented that.
I had also gone to visit Diden at the hospital and learned that once she heard Steve’s podcast linking the body we found to other collegiate athletes, she had become fixated on the case. Having been a collegiate athlete herself, she’d taken this case personally, even though she hadn’t known any of the victims. She’d begun feeding Steve inside information to help him, and somewhere along the way, the two of them became involved, which blurred the lines even more.
We’d learned a lot in these past two weeks, including that our podcaster, Steve, was correct. We’d confirmed the woman’s body we had found in Lake Echo had not been his only victim. Jennings was a roving ranger, meaning he moved from one park to the next depending on where the need was the greatest. A summer in a national park in Montana to help with the busy season, and then when that slowed down, he did a six-month stint in Florida.
He moved roughly every six to twelve months, allowing him the perfect opportunity to learn the lay of the land, find a lake, find a victim, and then leave before most of the bodies were ever even found.
Several of the women Steve suspected Jennings of killing had their cases reopened to search nearby lakes.Andrews had filled me in this afternoon with the latest information.
“The women were indeed all collegiate athletes,” she said. “Apparently, Jennings had a high school sweetheart who went to college on an athletic scholarship. He couldn’t get into that same university, so he traveled to see her, only to find out that when she was at a tournament, she had cheated on him.”
