Who. Cora Jenkins and Caleb Ripley What. An accident that spawns an idea Where. A boat house in Lake County, CA When. Thursday night, August 11 2011 Warnings. Angst, blood, and death. All the appropriate Dexter/Lumen warnings
It had been an accident. Cora hadn't been planning on taking action now. She hadn't even been planning on tailing him that day, but fate had intervened and when she'd seen the long-followed figure of Jeremy Chase crossing the street she had to follow him unprepared. And that's how things had gone terribly wrong.
She'd tailed him all the way to a location she'd just recently discovered and staked out once before, a house by the lake in Lake County, California that was presumably a property his family used during the summer. It was so similar to Jordan Chase's River Jordan camp that it made both her and Lumen sick just thinking about it, but they managed to stomach it for the sake of finding out more about the man Cora had been bent on following for months. Following instead of acting. Because as much as Cora talked, there was still a small part of her that was hesitant to take a life.
Lumen knew it, so she'd been doing her best to stall the young girl on a mission, and it'd worked up until this point. She'd been against this from the start, especially since for whatever reason Cora was hell bent on keeping Caleb and Dexter out of it. Why? Cora just insisted this was her experience, not theirs, but they both knew the truth. Cora didn't want to slip up in front of them. Didn't want to get as far as having the asshole strapped to a table and not be able to plunge the knife into his chest. She didn't want to admit she was still human enough to hesitate in killing the man responsible for what had happened to her. She wanted to prove she had the stones. Lumen had never hesitated, at least not completely. Cora was trying to be bigger than the shoes that had been given to her.
Cora had been caught off guard. What she hadn't known was that while she'd been watching him, he'd also been watching her. Jeremy had known what was going on for some time, especially after all his friends had started getting picked off one by one by Caleb. When she started following him that day, what she didn't know was that he'd been counting on it, so he'd been ready. He'd caught her unawares and dragged her by the hair into the boat house, intent on tying her up for god knows what and that's when pure instinct had taken over. There'd been a struggle, a struggle for her life that ended with a hunting knife Cora had grabbed from the wall in Jeremy's gut and Cora covered in blood that wasn't hers. Then with shaking hands she'd grabbed her phone where it had flown across the room and mercifully not broke. There was only one number she could call right now.
"Caleb? It's C-cora. Could you please... please come. I need hel... I'm at..." After she'd given Caleb her location she'd hung up without a word, collapsing to the ground in a sitting position and staring numbly at Jeremy's dead body and her hands covered in his blood. Caleb would know what to do. He'd know how to fix this. So she waited.