He loved that she was honest with him, but that didn’t help Shelly.
But just maybe, finding Suspect X would.
Out of all of Belle’s posse, Jules knew Sadie the least—although that was changing fast.
“Deep breath,” she told him now, still holding his hand. “And exhale... Now shake it out...”
She released his fingers and shook her own hands out in front of her, loosening up her neck and shoulders, too. And yes, Jules did the same because it sure as hell couldn’t hurt at least totrynot to look like a ball of tension.
With her curious mix of Meg Ryan messy blonde curls and her no-nonsense, best-friend-of-the-rom-com-heroine face and manner, Sadiewasthe perfect sidekick for this terrifying encounter.
Terrifying, because if Caroline Russo had truly been a victim of the same boy or boys who’d targeted Shelly, she had every right to be freaking furious. And irreparably damaged,andstill desperately hurting.
Jules hated the idea that he might, simply by asking her to talk about it, make her feel worse.
But maybe, just maybe, knowing that someone believed her and wanted to fight for justice would make her feel better instead.
Jules met Sadie’s eyes and nodded. He was ready. She nodded back. So he rang the bell.
They already knew Caroline’s mother was out. They’d watched her pull out of her garage and down the driveway, alone in her car. Which meant Caroline was home.
There was movement from inside of the house—Jules sensed it more than heard it and he smiled up at the peephole, trying his best to look harmless and, yes, as Belle said, not-scary.
The door opened.
Caroline was a year older than he was, but she hadn’t gone to college. As far as anyone knew, she rarely left her house. She was thin—almost painfully so. Like, eating disorder skinny. Jesus.
Jules took another deep breath. “Hi, Caroline. My name’s Jules Cassidy, and this is my friend Sadie Thompson. We’ve never met—I just moved to town a few weeks ago—and, well, it’s come to my attention that there’s a serial rapist targeting the girls here, and I’m part of a group who’s trying to find him, because this has to stop. Just a few days ago, another girl woke up in the woods with no memory of what happened the night before and?—”
She closed the door in their faces.
Shit! Jules leaned in and called through the door. “Caroline, is that what happened to you? Please talk to us! I know this must be hard, but any information you can give us would help, because right now all we know are the rumors and?—”
The door opened, and the look on Caroline’s face was one that would haunt Jules’s dreams.
“Where were you a year ago?” she asked, and he was about to repeat the fact he’d just moved to town when he realized she was looking daggers at Sadie.
Who had tears in her eyes as she shook her head. “I didn’t know,” she admitted. “But now I do and... we want to put this fucker in the ground.”
“In jail,” Jules corrected her. “We want him arrested and put in jail.”
“Speak for yourself,” Sadie said, still holding Caroline’s gaze. “I personally want this fucker dead, or at least beaten within an inch of his life. But first we need to find him. And talking to you just might help.”
Caroline pushed open the screen door and let them in.
Hobbit made an evidence board.
Without Jules even asking, he knew not to use any of the girls’ real names, instead using only their first initials.
Jules stood in his bedroom—it was unanimously agreed that storing the board in the summer house was a no-go, plus he knew that his mother would respect his privacy—and stared at Hobbit’s artistry.
“Damn,” Belle said. “That’s spooky.”
Hob had listened carefully, taking extensive notes, at Jules’s and Sadie’s account of their conversation with Caroline. He knew the facts surrounding Shelly’s assault, too, and the similarities, particularly when color coded as he’d done it, were striking.
He’d used three giant pieces of white foamcore, taped together in a way that allowed it to stand on its own as well asbe folded for storage. The pertinent facts for C-for-Caroline were listed in blue and he’d used red for S-for-Shelly. He’d chosen a thick black marker for the main list, using words and language from Jules’s and Sadie’s debrief.
Like Shelly, Caroline had recently broken up with her boyfriend. Jules had remarked that both girls werevulnerableand Hobbit had bullet-pointed the word on his overview list, with both a blue and a red check beside it.
