She doesn’t understand why she’s being treated like this. She was just shot. She is avictim. Again, Talia tries appealing to the officer. “I need to know: Is Meera dead? And where is my fiancé?”
“Detectives Burrows and Harris will be here soon,” he says, addressing the wall behind her. “They will speak to you.”
Fuming, Talia lies in silence and allows the nurse to take her vitals until, at last, Burrows and Harris enter the room. Harris nods to the younger officer, and he and the nurse shuffle out of the room, leaving the two officers at the foot of the bed and Talia chained and vulnerable before them.
She asks again. “Please, can you tell me if Meera Ratnam is dead? You know what she’s capable of, and you know I’m not safe if she’s still alive. I mean, look at what she did. She shot me.” Talia attempts to gesture to her leg before remembering she can’t move her arms.
Harris pulls two chairs up to the side of the bed, and she and Burrows sit. “We’ll get to that,” she says. “First, I’d like to ask you about Malcolm Gray.”
Talia feels lightheaded. She wonders what that nurse put in her IV bag. “What about him?”
“You went to high school with him, yes?”
“And college. He was my boyfriend. But what does—?”
“Did you know his wife, Clara Belle Linhart? She met Malcolm at Auburn University, yes?”
Annoyance creeps in. Do these detectives not understand what she’s just been through? Can they not see that she needs to rest? “You’re asking questions,” Talia says, “but it feels like you already know the answers. What is the point of all this?”
“Three years ago, Malcolm and Clara Belle’s home in Opelika was burglarized. Clara Belle was bludgeoned to death, and Malcolm was left with a traumatic brain injury. He still hasn’t regained speech.”
“I remember hearing about that. It was very upsetting.”
Harris continues as though Talia hasn’t spoken. “Police never found their suspect, and the attack was ruled random. However, Malcolm’s parents have their theories, mostly having to do with a woman named Natalia Danvers who had a crush on him in high school and followed him to college.” She nods at Talia. “That’s you, correct?”
“I didn’t follow him to college. He was my boyfriend. We were in love, and we agreed to go to college together.”
“That’s not how Mr. and Mrs. Gray seem to remember it.”
“They’re lying. They never liked me.” Talia tries to sit up, and her chafed wrists scream in protest. “Could I please get these cuffs removed?”
“In the five years that passed between Malcolm’s graduation at Auburn—when he first started dating Clara Belle to the night of the home invasion—Malcolm’s parents say he received hundreds of emails and messages and texts from you. They say he only neglected to get a restraining order because he felt bad for you.”
“Well, we dated for years. It would be weird if we simply stopped talking.”
“Okay,” Harris says, “but is it true that you moved to Austin right after Malcolm’s accident three years ago? That you legally changed your name to Talia, cut off ties with your family, and started a new life?”
“I wanted a fresh start. Is that a crime?”
“No.” Burrows’s mouth twitches, as though he’s tempted to smirk. “But it was a crime to kill Clara Belle Linhart and to nearly kill Malcolm Gray. And it was a crime to murder Amanda Reade three years later.”
No. No, no, no. This can’t be happening. The words spill out of Talia’s mouth faster than she can even form them. “Clara Belle was killed in a random burglary gone wrong,” she insists. “And Amanda disappeared. No one knows what happened to her. She was unwell. She stole my boyfriend. She harassed me for months.”
“I think you’ve been telling yourself these stories for so long that you actually think they’re the truth.”
“I’m telling the truth. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Burrows gives Harris a subtle nod, and the two stand. “We’ll continue this later,” he tells Talia. “Why don’t you get some rest?”
“How am I supposed to rest while I’m chained up like this?” Talia asks, but she doesn’t get a reply. The door swings shut behind the detectives, and once again, she is alone.
Her head spins. Her wrists throb. The silence is oppressive. All Talia wants is for Townsend to come into her room and wake her from her nightmare. Willing herself elsewhere, she closes her eyes, and she must nod off, because the next thing she knows, someone is pulling back the curtain around her bed.
Townsend,she thinks.He came for me.
But when she opens her eyes, it’s not Townsend who stands at the foot of her bed but Meera, looking positively murderous.
A scream erupts from deep in Talia’s belly, so raw and feral it threatens to split her throat in two. “Guards! Help!”
