Her Dangerous Revenge

CHAPTER 66

Number four is dead.

Cooper stared down at his shaking hands. He clasped them

together and squeezed. Hard.

But still they shook.

"How long are they gonna keep us here?" Vincent mumbled from

somewhere above him.

No one had an answer. Cooper's best guess? The police were still

securing the area, locking down the school premises to try and

catch a serial killer.

If the killer hasn't slipped away already.

After Stephanie's heart-stopping announcement, Cooper had spent

the better part of an hour pacing. He'd walked from one end of the

gymnasium to the other, his eyes locked on his shoes.

And, since thinking about his impending doom was far too heavy

for Cooper to fully comprehend, he instead focused on that: his

shoes. He hadn't realized how filthy they'd gotten. What was he, an

animal? As he paced, he caught himself thinking how he would

clean them when he got home.

Yes. He would clean his shoes. And then he would call a therapist.

Because at this point, Cooper was fairly confident he was having a

mental break.

Vincent had been the one to finally put a stop to his incessant

pacing, dragging him over to the bleachers—quite literally. He'd

grabbed Cooper by the scruff of his hoodie and all but hauled him

along, throwing him on the rickety bench where Calla sat,

Stephanie propped against her side.

No one had moved since then. No one had dared.

Across the gym, just inside the double doors leading outside, two

officers stood on alert. They wore the half-worried, half-panicked

look of men who had no idea what the hell was going on. Other

officers, including Deputy Pendowski and Officer Hand—the same

two who had knocked on Cooper's door only a few weeks ago to

drag him into the station for questioning—shuffled in and out of

the gym, muttering into their radios in low, terse voices.

A small unit of detectives showed up within the first hour,

including the lead man on the case, Gerald Michaels. Cooper's

mom had gushed about the handsome detective enough times that

he felt as if he knew the guy personally.

He didn't look like the ruggedly attractive man from his mom's

daydreams, though. Not anymore. The case of the Greenwitch

Killer had aged him, turning his sandy hair grey, his eyes heavy

with dark circles. The lines around his mouth were deeper, more

prominent.

He looked like a man who'd stared too long at death, ready and

willing to pay the price that it demanded—only to find that the price

was too steep. Far too steep.

Cooper watched him now as he gestured for a nervous freshman

to take a seat in an ancient foldout chair, which doubled as the

makeshift interrogation space. They'd been bringing faculty and

staff into the gymnasium for the last two hours, writing up

preliminary reports.

Two hours . And they'd only just started on herding in students for

questioning.

As it turned out, a lot of kids had still been in school in some way,

shape or form when Jessica's body was found. After-school

practice, club meetings, and tutor sessions meant that nearly half

of the school had been quarantined. None of the students had

been allowed to leave the rooms they'd been found in once the

police came to shut things down.

Which meant Cooper, Vincent and Calla were stuck in the gym with

a group of panicked freshmen and one very distraught Stephanie.

Above him, Vincent sighed heavily. The creaking of the bleachers

as he shifted his weight made Cooper flinch.