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“Maybe you would like the voice of Daniel Knolls better.” He switched from the Indian accent to a throaty rumble. “You don’t remember me the night of Marian’s party, do you?”
She didn’t answer.
“Marian introduced us. You responded politely, but with disinterest.” He strolled farther into the room. She moved backward an equal distance. Her caution seemed to amuse him.
He said, “I, on the other hand, took a great deal of interest in Marian’s young, attractive, and very affluent friend. Marian had grown tiresome. I had already solicited for her replacement on an online dating service, but I never had to pursue it because you were such an ideal candidate. You virtually dropped from that blazing sunset sky and into my lap. That very night, I began contemplating Marian’s demise.”
Talia’s shudder was involuntary.
He noticed it, though, and her revulsion seemed to please him. “In effect, Talia, you’re to blame for Marian’s ghastly end. Come to think of it, Elaine’s, too. If not for your friendship with them, they would still be alive.”
When she flinched, he said, “What’s the matter, Talia? Can’t take the chastening for getting your friends killed?”
“My friends are dead for only one reason. Because you are criminally insane.”
“Who told you that? Dr. Easton?”
Even as she squared off with him, her mind was scrambling to think of a way to get around him, to go through him, to overpower and disable him until help arrived. Surely help would arrive! “Where is Mike?”
He laughed. “The tub of lard?”
“What have you done to him?”
“I’ve put him out of his misery. He was huffing and puffing like a steam engine before I choked the life out of him.”
She couldn’t withhold a mewl of anguish, but she held herself upright by sheer force of will. If she cracked in the slightest, she would shatter completely. If she did that, she was doomed. She probably was anyway, but she wasn’t going to give Jasper the satisfaction of watching her fracture.
“Drex knows that I’m here.”
“Unsurprising. You two have become nauseatingly attached. But he’s at the courthouse, waiting for me to show up.” He tapped his cheek as though in contemplation. “I must say, there was a brief period of time today when I actually entertained the noti
on of going there to witness his fall from grace.”
“Dressed as a woman and wearing a wig?” Talia scoffed. “Drex picked you out of a surveillance camera video, Jasper, and he wasn’t even challenged by its poor quality. You gave yourself away. You’re not nearly as clever as you perceive yourself to be.”
“Yet he’s there while you’re here, eager to get your hands on this.” He fingered the button on the blazer.
“What was in the envelope?”
“A pebble,” he said, grinning. “Evidence of nothing. I confess to having experienced a brief panic attack earlier today when I thought I’d lost this beauty.” He rubbed the button again. “But then I remembered that it was the one button I didn’t switch out. I wanted to have one to wear until the others could be incorporated into my new wardrobe, whatever it might be.
“I came out of the panic when I realized that this blazer, button intact, was in my suitcase the whole time. But the episode gave me an idea about how lure you back here. I really hated to leave with unfinished business between us.”
No doubt the unfinished business meant the finish of her if she couldn’t think of a way to escape him. “Drex knows about your silly button collection. He knows how you think. He’ll figure out that the call from Mr. Singh was a trick. He’ll come after me.”
His lips formed a rueful moue. “Meaning no slight to you at all, dearest, but I think it’s me he’s after. He’s been on the chase for a long time, hasn’t he?”
“Since he was nineteen. That’s when he learned that you had killed his mother.”
He reacted with a start. “His mother?”
“Lyndsay Cummings.”
“Well, well, what do you know?” He laughed. “He’s the child? Lyndsay thought her ex-husband and son were a well-concealed secret, but I knew about them, of course. Just like I know about your little eggs stored in an ice tray.”
She couldn’t hide her shock, and it made him smirk. “I wonder what they do with the ova if they aren’t used before the mother dies. Hmm.” He waved off the thought. “Anyway, after I disposed of Lyndsay, I spent several months trying to pick up the trail of her ex-husband and the boy. I didn’t want to live looking over my shoulder for the vengeful Cummings men.”
“Drex’s father legally changed their names so you couldn’t find them.”
