Ann Peterson - Accessory To Marriage

He grasped her arm and willed her to face him. “What happened, Rees?”

She drew in a slow, deep breath. “About four months ago I published an article in an academic journal. An article about Kane, though I didn’t use his name. I don’t know how he got a hold of an academic publication in prison, but he did. And he figured the article was about him. He was very angry with me. He didn’t like some of the things I wrote.”

“What did he do?”

“I had one more meeting with him for the book I’m working on. He agreed to see me, but whenever I asked a question, he wouldn’t say a word. He’d just stare.” She closed her eyes and covered her mouth with trembling fingers. Her face grew more pale than death.

“What else, Rees?” he prompted.

She swallowed hard and opened her eyes, latching on to his gaze as if grasping for a lifeline. “That was when he started returning Dixie’s letters. He started courting her.”

A picture formed in his mind. A horrifying picture. Dread plunged to the hilt.

Kane acted out his violent fantasies on women to serve his twisted sense of revenge. He chose victims with the same hair color as the woman he believed had wronged him. Then he played out his game—letting his victim loose in an isolated forest, hunting her down, slitting her from neck to pelvic bone. With each woman he killed, he fantasized he was asserting his power and dominance over the woman who’d humiliated him—the true target of his hatred.

And this time, he feared Kane’s true target was Rees.

A chill clambered up Risa’s spine. She recognized the expression on Trent’s face, the cloaked alarm in his eyes, and it shook her from head to toe.

Trent was afraid. Afraid for her.

Her head whirled as if the earth had been pulled from under her feet. “Trent? What does this mean?” Her whisper hung in the air, thin and fragile as gossamer. Of course she didn’t have to ask the question. She knew what it meant.

Trent drew himself up, the flash of fear suddenly gone, replaced by the cool, in-control exterior she knew so well. But his calm facade did nothing to reassure her. Nothing to stop the spinning in her head.

“Kane may be fixated on you.” He paused as if judging her reaction, testing how much truth she could bear. “The way he was fixated on his wife before he killed her. Before he was caught. He may be seeking revenge against you this time.”

His words settled cold in the pit of her stomach. She’d seen the malevolent hatred in Kane’s eyes the day he’d married Dixie. She’d heard it in the guttural undertones in his smooth voice. Till death do us part. And somehow, though his thinly veiled threat was directed at her sister, she’d known he meant it to hurt her.

It was the rest that she was struggling to accept. It was the rest that made her mind whirl and her stomach seize. “He seduced Dixie, married Dixie, and now is going to kill Dixie because of that article I wrote about him.” It wasn’t a question. She knew, but she didn’t want to face it. She’d give anything in the world to not have to face it. “Dixie is going to die because of me.”

Trent leaned toward her. His hand tightened on her arm. “You can’t blame yourself, Rees. If you hadn’t written that article, chances are he would have searched until he found some other way you humiliated him. And if he couldn’t find anything, he would have made something up. He’s the monster here. Not you.”

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