killing time ; leigh-anne pinnock

prologue.

Time heals all wounds.

Since she was a toddler, these four words were all that twenty-five year old Leigh-Anne Pinnock had been taught, a mantra that had been passed on by relatives and instilled within herself by millions, both strangers and friends alike reciting a truth that, to her, held little to no meaning.

You can't continue living in the future if all you can focus on is your past.

When Leigh-Anne was a mere five years old, still naive and wonderstruck and enchanted by fairytales and cartoons displayed on her mother's color television, she had been witness to the murder of her entire immediate family, her parents and two sisters slain in cold blood while she hid in the closet of their home located in what had once been an idyllic suburb of Buckinghamshire, England. Spending most of her teenage years in dozens of foster homes until a distant aunt contacted her and invited her to her place of residence in New Zealand, Leigh-Anne had spent what felt like her entire life in isolation, crouching in corners and hiding in the shadows while wishing she were invisible, praying that eventually she would be taken from the Earth in the same way her loved ones had.

Moving on is the only way to survive.

Though Leigh-Anne had been reluctant to fly halfway across the world to live with someone she had only viewed distantly in black-and-white photographs, the move to New Zealand had turned out to be a blessing in disguise, a desperately needed excuse to leave the secrets and demons of her past locked firmly in the cobblestone streets of her hometown, constant sunlight and azure waters taking over the cloudy days and raging storms she had left behind. Soon she had taken all of the steps necessary to begin starting over, wiping her slate clean and making new memories, and for the first time in what felt like a never-ending eternity, Leigh-Anne was close to finding what most would call true and utter happiness. She had finished out high school in Buckinghamshire by attending her classes through an online program, and after trying to continue her education through three trial courses at a college close to her aunt's home, she soon realized that in a place like Auckland, she could learn more on her own than struggling to understand New Zealand's culture and traditions by a foreign instructor.

It took Leigh-Anne a short three months after first moving to the west island's bustling main city to find a job, a modest career at a seafood restaurant overlooking the beach, and though the tips from a part-time waitress didn't offer much financial stability she had managed to acquire a small apartment on the opposite side of town, a convenient five blocks from her place of occupation and a reasonable rent with which she split with her childhood best friend, Jesy Nelson, who had moved to be with her as soon as she herself had completed university. Whether it was the constant companionship from such a familiar face or something else entirely, Leigh-Anne had all but forgotten many of the wounds from the life she had once lived back in England, contentment and waves of protection rushing over her like the tides on the shore and replacing the constant urge to look over her shoulder, fear morphing into comfort and the nightmares that had been plaguing her dreams since she was a toddler disappearing all but completely.

In fact, there were times, as she stood on the pier gazing down at the crystal seas as they lapped gently at her feet while a cool breeze cascaded around her bare shoulders, that Leigh-Anne could pretend that none of it had happened, that her parents were merely a phone call away and that her life had once been normal--and there were times when she almost believed it. Until the last month in the year of her twenty-fifth birthday, there had been no signs of any impending danger, no whispers of secrets wrapped around the palm trees threatening to fall down to Earth like blanketing snowfall, no phone calls from blocked numbers or random letters placed upon her doorstep, not even a single trace of anything that may warn Leigh-Anne of what was to come. Though it was true that the monster who had slain her family, an anonymous serial killer known only to London police as Jack the Ripper, had never been brought to justice, she lived by the belief that he, for all intents and purposes, no longer existed. She had no reason to be afraid of moving shadows on street corners, not when the street corners were shrouded in sunlight, and Leigh-Anne no longer feared that the faceless demon from her past would come back to finish what he had started twenty long years ago, not when she lived in a completely different country, a paradisaical universe that was millions of miles from England and, as far as she knew, millions of miles from peril.

It wasn't until the first week in December that the fantasy world Leigh-Anne had created for herself came crashing down, a turn of events that began when she started to notice strange vehicles parked across the street from her apartment and, in a whirlwind of days and hours that she could never get back, ended when she came across a man who had drawn her in from the second she laid eyes on him. At first, she didn't notice the warning signs, nor did she allow herself to listen to the alarm bells that sounded in her brain everytime she would catch his eye--he was the embodiment of everything she had ever wanted, complete with a rewarding career, impeccable confidence, and drop-dead gorgeous looks to match, and in truth, if she did find his sudden arrival odd, Leigh-Anne never could have guessed this mysterious stranger's true identity even if she had managed to try. For all she knew, he was still back in Europe, running from the law while continuing to murder anyone and everyone who crossed his path, not even sparing a single thought to the five-year old girl who had hidden in the closet while he singlehandedly took away everything she had ever known.

Time heals all wounds, but in some occasions those wounds are secured only to be ripped open with even greater force, inflicting new ones in the process. Leigh-Anne would find this out firsthand in ways she could have never imagined, and she would learn that she could never outrun her past, at least not completely.

After all, Jack the Ripper leaves no witnesses.