Killer

Chapter 28: Enemy Lies Dead

Fenne Lily — For a While

I stood in the middle of my bedroom in cozy socks, a bra, and underwear. A drained expression was on my face as I stared at myself in the mirror. It seemed insane that after everything that had happened—the deaths I had seen and the constant terror I was living in—it just felt overwhelming to get dressed. Due to the deaths and my terror, even the simplest of choices made my mind even more agitated.

I never thought in the seventeen years of my life so far that I would be here and experience these terrible things. I would love for things to go back to how they once were. My mom dating random guys who would sometimes live with us to being a nobody at school who was ignored and ridiculed often by Rachel Davis, who was now dead. I wish I never touched that snuff videotape because of the mess that I was currently in. I wondered what things would be like if I hadn't bought and watched the tape with Jace.

Suddenly, I began to shake. I sank my half-naked body onto my soft bed, smelling Jace's black coconut cologne lingering behind on my messy sheets. He left two hours ago after I told him I needed some space. Hot tears were rolling down my face.

"What happened to you, Rachel?" I asked out loud. "Who would do something like that to you?"

It had been hours since she died, my old bully, who was discovered floating facedown in Mila's pool. The news couldn't wait to circulate among the public. Rachel was involved in a lot of stuff, from what I knew. She was in the social committee club and was the queen bee of Tanglewood High—that girl everyone knew. She was a pretty and strong-minded girl who happened to be on the cheerleading team. She was once the girlfriend of the popular Tre Hilsun, who was co-captain of the football team. The information about her death spread like wildfire. How could she have died? Did she accidentally fall into the pool and drown? Or was it something so much darker that no one else knew—suicide perhaps? But why?

There were so many questions I had in my mind that I needed answers to. The two days before her unexpected death, she confided in Tegan on her phone and threatened to do something to me at Mila's party, strongly admitting it would be the night I would take my last breath. It turned out to be the other way around, and she was the one who took her last breath. The feeling wasn't a coincidence.

I started to think more deeply: had Rachel stumbled over a secret no one knew about tied to the true reason for Mr. Burke's arrest or who framed him? Or something else entirely? To me, nothing made any sense about what caused her death. I wondered if someone tried to set her up and actually killed her over something she knew about them—that person retaliated to keep their secret buried, right?

I finally got up from my bed, rubbing any tears away from my face. Grieving over someone who gave me nothing but hell was a waste of my time, honestly. I still needed to figure out how I was going to move forward from this, but for all I knew, there was a killer out there in Tanglewood. If that same someone could kill Rachel, then they could kill me, too.