Chapter 5

Jill Roberts and Charlie Walker

There was a hole in her stomach.

That wasn't much of a surprise, since everyone now knew the story.

No one any longer thought Jill Roberts to be an inspirational sole surviving victim.

Everyone now knew the truth.

Jill Roberts and Charlie Walker murdered multiple people.

Charlie Walker likely had killed Marnie Cooper, Olivia Morris, Rebecca Walters, Deputy Hoss and Robbie Mercer.

And Jill Roberts likely had killed Jenny Randall, Deputy Perkins and Kate Roberts.

Trevor Sheldon and Charlie Walker had been killed for sure by Jill Roberts.

Many of the deaths who the public didn't know for certain of who killed who, people speculated about.

There were also speculations about who had tried to kill Gale Weathers. It was of course, well known by now, that Jill was the one that almost killed Sidney. And that Charlie had tried to kill Kirby.

Kirby had a hole in her stomach, and she knew how it got there. By Charlie.

But no one was sure of who had killed Gale.

It was suspected to have been Jill, as she had mentioned to Dewey about the shoulder wound that Gale had sustained.

Kirby stared in the mirror at her reflection, hands balancing against the edge of the sink, as her eyes wandered to the scar on her belly and all the stiches there.

It had been almost a year since she had very nearly died.

It still felt like her stomach had a blade in it.

She made sure never to move too much when getting up after waking up.

The doctors spent hours and hours tending to her, stitching her up, according to her parents and her brother.

Thankfully, she was unconscious through most of it, and numbed up through all of it.

She couldn't really count how many stitches she had in her.

She had stopped trying to count ages ago.

She had been eighteen when she almost had been murdered. Actually, technically, she had been murdered. The doctors had had to restart her heart after what Charlie had done to her.

Technically speaking? She had died, just for a few moments, after the paramedics had found her.

Kirby wished she could feel relieved over the fact that she thought she had seen light, and thought she had heard her loving, deceased grandmother's voice during that period.

But she couldn't.

Assuming that it wasn't her brain lacking oxygen during that time, and she wasn't hallucinating, and there was in fact, life after death, that didn't reassure her at all.

At least when she thought it was over, she thought she wouldn't have to remain with the memories of not being able to trust anyone.

But now? The memories might just never end, even after she died.

But all that "was there life after death," could wait hopefully for a few more years.

Kirby left the sink and went back to her bed, sitting down on the edge of it, staring across the room at the picture on the table in front of her.

That picture was the most painful thing in this room for her to look at. It was a picture of her, Olivia and…Jill.

Kirby slowly pulled her loose fitting, think, white shirt down over her scar.

She hadn't been able to bring herself into throwing that picture out, no matter how much of a bad sign that that was.

How long had Jill been planning what had happened? Just how long?

Had she and Kirby and Olivia ever been friends?

Had Charlie ever really been Robbie's friend?

If it had ever been real, at what point had Jill's ambition and darkness overtaken whatever loyalty or love she might have felt for those around her?

At what point had the friendship stopped?

At what point had Jill decided that she was alright with murdering her own mother?

Was Jill born the way she was, or had she become that way through ambition, envy and misunderstanding that fame was not the same as real love?

When had the plan been hatched? When had Jill and Charlie created this plan?

At what point in time had Jill become a monster or had she always been a monster?

Kirby whispered, staring at the picture, "I loved you, Jill."

Kirby had never put much stock in the idea that girls being friends meant that they were "sisters," but that was how she had felt for Jill and Olivia.

They had been her sisters.

Or at least, Kirby had thought that Jill had been her sister as well as Olivia had been.

Apparently, she and Olivia had meant nothing to Jill at all.

Then again, Kirby had to wonder…

It hadn't been Jill that had gutted Olivia.

And it hadn't been Jill that had almost killed Kirby.

Charlie had attacked and brutally murdered Olivia. And he had stabbed Kirby.

Had that…had that been what Jill had thought of as love? As not being the one to kill her friends?

Yes, Kirby knew that Jill had killed. She had almost killed Sidney and probably Gale. Had definitely killed Trevor and most likely her own mother.

And she most likely had killed several other people.

But was her not being the one to kill Olivia and not being the one to almost kill Kirby the closest thing she had shown to love for her friends?

Kirby scoffed, looking away from the picture that was mocking her.

She knew she needed to stop thinking about that.

In the end? Regardless of her part in it, Jill had been a part of the plot that had led to Olivia being killed in one of the most brutal ways imaginable, and had been a part in the plot that had almost led to Kirby dying and staying dead.

Kirby hadn't known Charlie well until that point, and she wondered if she had tried to reach out to him, if he would have gone down the path he went down. But that didn't matter, did it? He made his choices, simple as that.

And Jill? Maybe if her mother had sent her to therapy, maybe if Kirby and Olivia had seen the signs, they could have helped.

But Jill had never said anything.

Kirby closed her eyes, pain that had nothing to do with her stomach wound, filling her.

She knew that all of the locks on her door were secured. She had no concern right now of someone attacking her.

She was going to be going back to school this year to graduate, but in the meantime, she needed time to heal, and her parents knew this.

Kirby opened her eyes and threw one last glance at the picture of her, Jill and Olivia on the table across from her bed, before she switched out the lamp next to her bed.

She would need much longer than a year to heal, if she wanted to forget whatever had been between her and Jill.

Had she and Jill ever been friends, really? Had Jill ever really loved her or Olivia?

Kirby turned to her lamp and switched it off.

It would be eight years later, when Kirby made the choice she made to go into her preferred profession. And she would tell herself that it would be to hunt down the monsters of the world, make them afraid of her, instead of making people like her afraid of them.

But somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that that wasn't the only reason why.

Some part of her knew that the key to her decision had been Jill.

Whether it was for revenge, or hopes of stopping the killer before they got themselves killed, maybe telling herself that she could have saved Jill before she had gone down the path she'd gone down, Kirby knew at the end of it all, Jill was the reason why she had chosen to become a FBI special agent.