Брайан Фриман: Alter Ego

“You weren’t the only one. He and Mo intimidated a lot of victims. And they killed others.”

Aimee took Serena’s hand in a weak grip. “I’ve only known you a short time, but you’ve saved my life twice. Thank you.”

“I’m relieved you’re okay.”

“Can I ask you something? You felt me calling to you when I was in the box, didn’t you?”

Serena found herself at a loss for words. She didn’t know how to explain what she’d felt as she hunted for Aimee.

“It’s okay to admit it even if you don’t understand it,” Aimee went on. “I told you, I don’t understand how it works myself. I just knew if there was one person who could rescue me, it was you. So I tried to reach out to you.”

“I wish I could say I believe in those things,” Serena replied, “but I’m still not sure. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we found you.”

She checked her watch and saw that it was getting late.

“I have to meet Stride,” she told Aimee. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll send Tarla your way,” she added.

“Thanks.”

Serena went to the hospital room door, but then she turned back. She returned to the bed and said, “I do have one question, Aimee.”

“Sure.”

“You told me that you were sure Art Leipold wasn’t guilty.”

“That’s what I felt,” Aimee said.

“Did you also know about Lori Fulkerson?”

“What do you mean?”

“Lori kept saying she could feel you inside her head. She kept talking about you being able to see what she’d done. Like you could look inside her and know she was guilty. I was wondering if that was true. Did you get a bad feeling from Lori Fulkerson even before she abducted you?”

“You don’t believe that, Serena. That’s not who you are. So why ask?”

“Lori believed it,” Serena said. “So I was curious.”

Aimee looked away at the darkness and shook her head. A smile played across her lips and then went away. “Well, the irony is, whatever Lori felt was all in her own head. She made that happen, not me. Maybe her guilt finally caught up with her, because I didn’t suspect a thing. I didn’t feel anything from Lori Fulkerson at all.”

Stride sat on the green bench at the end of the Point.

The Christmas lights decorating the homes in the town of Superior still glittered on the other side of the frozen harbor. Fishing shanties and trucks dotted the ice, and music from someone’s radio floated across the bay. He didn’t notice the cold or the whip of the wind that sent flurries through the night air. He had his arm around Cat, who huddled next to him with her legs pulled up on the bench. Her chin was balanced on her knees.

Days had gone by since the shooting, but Mo Casperson’s eyes still followed him. When he slept, he saw her. When he was awake, he remembered. Sometimes a twitch rippled through his muscles as he felt himself pulling the trigger again and again. He could still see each bullet strike her body like a movie scene replaying in his head.

“Was it awful?” Cat murmured as if she could read his mind.

He didn’t answer immediately. Then he said, “It wasn’t what I expected.”

“How so?”

“It was easier.”

“And you don’t like that?”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t like that.”

Cat leaned her head against his shoulder. “Would it have been easy to kill Dean Casperson?”

“If he’d hurt you? Yes.”

“I don’t regret what I did,” Cat told him firmly.

“I know.”

“Do you think I was wrong?” she asked.

“I’ll always think it’s wrong if something puts you in jeopardy. That’s just the way it is.”

Cat had a copy of the new People magazine in her hands. She held it up, which she’d done a thousand times already. The night made it hard to see, but they could both make out her face next to Dean Casperson’s on the cover. She was famous, just as he’d feared. The media had camped outside their cottage all week. Her story was everywhere. For now, she was a hero in the press, but for every hero, there eventually was a backlash. The reality of all the attention was beginning to sink into her head and scare her.

“This is who I’m going to be forever, isn’t it?” she asked. “I’m always going to be the girl who took down Dean Casperson. Look at the headline: ‘The Teenager Who Exposed Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret.’ When I die, that’s the only thing they’ll say about me.”

He kissed the top of her head. “That’s so not true, Catalina.”

“Come on. You know it is.”

“What I know is that you’re seventeen years old. You have your life ahead of you, and you can do whatever you want with it. By the time you’re done, nobody will remember Dean Casperson, but I think they’ll all remember Cat Mateo.”

She shoved him playfully. “You don’t believe that.”

“Yes, I absolutely do.”

“I’m nobody special,” Cat said.

Nobody special.

Stride wanted to laugh at the very idea of it. He thought about this girl and the amount of death she’d seen in her life and the amount of heartache she’d experienced since she was a child. He thought about a girl who would have the courage to let herself go into a room with a predator and turn on a camera and put her life and her body at risk.

“Sometimes it takes a while to recognize special,” Stride told her. “Especially in yourself.”

She didn’t say anything for a long, long time. When he felt a quiver in her shoulders, he realized she was crying silently. He knew it was partly out of love, partly out of terror and relief catching up with her. He simply held her close and let her get lost in her tears. She didn’t stop until they heard the rumble of a car engine and saw Serena’s Mustang plow through the snow and park beside Stride’s Expedition.

“I figured I’d find you two here,” Serena called to them.

She got out and joined them on the bench. Cat wiped her face and put on a smile, and Serena put her arm around Cat just as Stride had. The three of them sat on the green bench together in spite of the cold, in spite of the snow. Peaceful minutes ticked by, and none of them gave a thought to getting up and going home.

They were a family.

Stride didn’t think about the future. He was done with that. And he was done with the past, too. This month had been a reminder of his mistakes, but he couldn’t change them. He couldn’t go back and undo what had happened to Mort Greeley. He couldn’t save Art Leipold. He couldn’t rescue the victims of Lori Fulkerson. Every journey had its failures and setbacks, and all he could do was try harder and do better at whatever came next.

The fact was, life had given him more chances at happiness than he deserved. If he’d taken a last breath at that moment, he would have been at peace with his regrets, because his regrets had led him here. He had a wife again and a teenage daughter, two things he never would have believed possible. He decided he wouldn’t change a day of his past or correct his mistakes even if he could.

They were part of him. They were who he was.

They were what made him Jonathan Stride.