He bounds to his feet. My reaction is delayed, recalling toolate that he’s not fully restrained. I step backward as he closes the distance.
“Grayson, this is over.” I hold up my hands. The shackles around his ankles slow his advance, but don’t stop him.
“It’s never over.” He positions himself between me and the door. “For this to be over, one of us has to die.”
Fear seizes my breath. “Let me leave.”
“We can’t both carry your secret, London,” he says, voice dropping low as he devours the remaining space between us. “That is, unless we can continue to work through it during our sessions.” His knuckles brush the curve of my breast, leaving a trail of fire in his wake.
“What are you talking about?” I demand, forced to tip my head back to meet his eyes.
He cages me in against the wall. “It’s difficult for small towns to be objectionable about one of their own. No one wants to believe a sadistic killer hides among them.”
My back flattens against the concrete wall as he towers over me.
“But you knew the truth,” he continues, “and you did what you’re so good at doing.” He leans in close to my ear. “You lied.” As he pulls back, he leers down at me with that devious grin. “You’ve been lying ever since, even to yourself.”
I swallow past the ache in my throat. “I’m going to scream this time, Grayson.”
“Go ahead,” he dares. “I’ll snag the first reporter interview I can to announce that your father was a monster you put down.”
The air in the room thins, compressing until my lungs constrict. The fluorescent lights flicker, the buzz intensifying. Every sound is amplified, pulsing with the rapid beat of my heart.
Grayson licks his lips, his body pressed far too close to mine. “The puzzle pieces were all there,” he says. “They just needed to be linked together.”
“You’re mad,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “You’re delusional. You’ve built an entire story around me that couldn’t be further from the?—”
His lips capture mine, silencing my words. The kiss is raw, and demanding, and punishing. A desperate moan escapes me, betraying my fight as heat sears my veins. I brace my palms against the solid wall of his chest and shove, breaking away.
“I wanted to taste the lie on your lips,” he says, a cruel smile pulling at his mouth. “Tastes bitter. Nothing like that sweetness I experienced yesterday.”
He moves farther away, allowing me to breathe and straighten my blouse. When I look at him, he’s seated behind the table, studying me with those knowing eyes.
“All those missing girls,” he says, his accent rolling through the smooth cadence of his voice. “Did you see them? Witness their torture? How long were you a part of it before you decided to kill your father?”
The walls of the white room waver in the corner of my vision, red staining the edges. I seal my eyes closed. The ink on my hand burns, and I cup my palm, rub at the searing flesh. “Three months.”
A wave of relief crashes over me with the confession, relieving the pressure at my temples. As I open my eyes, I expect to see arrogance on Grayson’s face, a smugness in having stripped me down to my blackened marrow. Yet instead, his expression is somber, gazing at me with a frightening reverence.
“Lucky for you, the coroner was a drunk. Couldn’t distinguish between peri- and postmortem injuries. That car crash didn’t kill your father. He was already dead when you decided to drive straight into a tree.”
Anxious, I glance at the metal door, unease threading my nerves. “Nothing you’re saying is fact. You have no evidence, no proof.”
“I don’t need any. The speculation alone will be enough to destroy you.”
He’s right. A renewed investigation into my father now, with advanced forensic technology and investigative procedures, could prove he was the Hollows Reaper—the boogeyman rumored to steal young girls in the middle of the night, a cautionary tale mothers told their daughters to keep them safe at home.
“What did he do with the bodies?” he asks.
“What did you do with the bodies?” I counter.
A brutal smile twists his face. “I buried them, of course.”
My hands tremble. My family home is still in my name. I kept an abandoned house with a dead garden and barren cornfield, rotting down to the foundation. I own the deed to a graveyard.
“You should tell the families where their loved ones are buried, Grayson. The court would be more prone to clemency if you did.”
He hikes an eyebrow. “I will if you will.”
