He kept driving.“Don’t leave me in suspense.”Come on, tell me more.Atlas needed her to keep talking.“You’re the expert on killers.You’re the one with the degree that lets you get in their minds.Tell me more.”
“I think the other kills in the area were practice runs.”Softer.“I think he was working up to his real target.And I think that real target is you.I think he wants to punish you…”
They’d reached a red light.Atlas angled his head toward her.He found Lily staring straight back at him.
“He wants to destroy everything that you have.Eliminate the people closest to you.He wants to take everything away, and when nothing is left…that’s when he plans the end for you.”
His teeth had clenched.With an effort, he eased the tension in his jaw.“I could have died in the blast at that damn cabin, Lily.”
“I thought so, too…but now I wonder…” Her voice turned considering.“I wonder if putting us in the basement was part of the plan.”
Obviously, it had been part of the plan.The better to hold us captive.
Only he didn’t think that was what Lily meant.
She confirmed his suspicions when she added, “I think we need to see that crime scene.We need to see if the basement was destroyed or if somehow, it was saved.Because you were right when you once asked me if I knew how to set bombs.I know a great deal about them, thanks to Richard Hawthorne.”
The bomber she’d interviewed.Lily and her killers.
“The thing about Richard is that he always directed his explosions.He could stand ten feet behind them, he could watch the destruction, and he would never get hit.He liked to be up close, you see.He liked to feel the heat on his skin but never get burned.”
The light had changed.He saw it from the corner of his eye.His head turned toward the front, and he advanced, but he felt Lily’s stare on him.
“Richard told me that it was all about the positioning.That if he wanted, he could have an impact that would take out one room of a house but leave everything else untouched.”
Sounded to him like Richard had been incredibly cooperative with Lily.Do you always get your killers to reveal all their secrets to you?Atlas had certainly revealed all with her, very, very quickly.
Voice still musing, she noted, “The explosion at the cabin looked so big.I thought for certain the whole place was engulfed, but…what if that fire didn’t touch the basement?”
“It destroyed everything there, Lily.”He could still see the high flames in his mind.“It was so hot the firefighters couldn’t even get close.The place was nearly obliterated.”
“Appearances can be deceiving.I think we should get back to that cabin.”
Yeah, they damn well would be going back.If she had a hunch, an instinct—whatever, he’d listen to her.They’d follow her lead.But not that night.He wasn’t going to the scene of their near deaths then.He was taking her home.Locking her inside his house.
Because if she was right…if the killer truly wanted to punish him by taking away the people close to him…
Fuck me.I thought telling the world that she was my fiancée would keep her safe.That she’d be under my protection.Instead, I might have just put an even bigger target on her.
“Don’t even think about taking back my ring,” Lily said, as if reading his mind.He was starting to wonder if the woman could do just that.“We’re a team, remember?We will take him down together.”
“He’s not going to kill you, Lily.”I won’t let him.“If you leave me, if you go far away, you could be safe.You haven’t committed any crimes that he thinks you need to be punished for?—”
“You don’t think murder is something that requires punishment?”A casual question, but tension beat in her words.“Because most people do.And you see, I murdered a man once upon a time.David Warren.The name that Gage tossed out as a threat to me?I killed him.I killed David Warren.I watched him fight for survival in his last minutes, and I stood there, and I did nothing.I am my mother’s daughter.I am as cold and uncaring.And I smiled when he died.”
He could not speak.
“But, by all means, please continue thinking that I am some sweet, innocent person who needs protecting.When people think that about me, they underestimate me at their own peril.”
ChapterEighteen
She’d confessed to murder.Confessed.She’d never even told her mother what she did, though Lily knew that her mother certainly suspected the truth.
I murdered a man.She’d smiled when he died.What kind of person did that?
The daughter of a serial killer.Someone who is just as screwed up on the inside as her mother and?—
A knock on the guest room door.Because they were back at Atlas’s estate.He’d driven with intent focus and very little talking after her confession.Once they’d arrived, all safe and sound, he’d vanished into his study with Desmond.Probably to start a thorough review of the video footage that she’d heard him talking about before that door closed—security footage of Benedict’s house.
