Page 65 of Split You Open

“I never sent this,” she mutters. “I thought it got lost in one of my moves.”

“Why would he hate you?” I ask her.

“Because,” she starts. “I kissed him. It happened amid a job that had gone sidewise and I thought we weren’t going to make it out—so I threw caution to the wind and went for it.”

I shoot a surprise glance at Rhett whose gaze is trained on Blair’s face. He was right. Blair does, or did, love Ledger.

“It looks like Ledger took something from me once a year since then, if I’m to go by the objects in this box. There was also that picture in the glove box of the SUV we stole the night we hightailed it out of here.” She glances at Rhett. “That must’ve been the first time he started stalking me. Ledger gave Dixie’s men that picture.”

I stare down at the box in Blair’s hand, wondering at it.

This doesn’t look like hate.

It looks like an obsession.

No, it looks like…

“This is an addiction,” I blurt out, surprising everyone. All eyes fall on me but mine land on Blair. “Ledger was stalking you for years. I always thought he was going on business trips, not…” I shake my head. “Not getting his fix of you. He never stopped after Ashleigh, he just got better at hiding whatever it is about you that drives him to do reckless and dangerous things.”

“Fuck. Him.” Blair starts to toss the box into the flames, but Santi stops her.

“Hold on a second,” he says. “We were just talking about how none of this feels right. It’s like we’re missing a large piece of a puzzle. We should keep this until we know it’s not absolutely necessary.”

Rhett frowns. “When will we know that?”

“After we interrogate him,” I decide. “This way we get answers. Maybe even closure.”

Everyone looks at me as if I’m crazy.

“He won’t tell you the truth,” Blair informs me.

“You don’t know that,” I counter. “Let’s put Ledger in the hot seat and let him talk. Before he took off after you, he claimed that this isn’t what it seems. So, let’s see if he can fill in the gaps for us.”

One of Blair’s brows quirks up in interest. “So… torture?”

“Talking,” Rhett corrects as if she’s mispronounced a word rather than suggesting something heinous. “Interrogation means ‘conversing’.”

Blair crosses her arms over her chest. “Not in the world I grew up in.”

“Yeah, well that world was shit.”

“And a world where you lure people in to kill them is better?”

Rhett’s mouth slams shut.

“Blair…” She looks at me. “Let’s talk to him, okay? We can figure out what to do from there.”

Blair hums noncommittally. Her eerie mask of indifference is back. There’s not even a flicker of emotion in her eyes. They’re just… empty. The hair on my neck and arms rises in alarm.

“Alright?” I press when she says nothing.

After a beat she concedes with the tightest of nods. “Alright.”

“Okay, cool,” Santi says on a shaky exhale as he looks around all of us anxiously. “I guess it’s interrogation time.”

“No.” I shake my head. “Not tonight. Tonight we’re going to appreciate that we’re back together and just relax. We’ll deal with Ledger tomorrow night, after a day of figuring out how we’ll deal with him. For now, no more talk of Ledger.”

Everyone looks at me.