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Oh, God, Rafe.
She took another step backwards, past another blown-up picture. This one had been taken in the rain, blurred with water. Two bodies lit up by the blue glow of light.
Donni looked away with a muted sob.
“I must have watched that video of the trial a hundred times,” Jason said. “People were saying that it was the sight of your face that had killed him. That he’d had a heart-attack because of his own guilty conscience. But your bag clearly touched him. No, I didn’t think it was murder at all, after seeing that. I knew you did something to him. And you did, didn’t you?”
“No, I—”
“Don’t fucking lie to me!”
She screamed when he lunged at her with a knife—not a prop knife, this time. When it plunged into the posterboard behind her, there was a dreadful shearing sound.
The boards had been anchored down with cords and weights to keep them from being blown away, but the whole thing was a flimsy construction performed in haste. The rip of blade in paper made a loud, high-pitched sound that seemed to echo in a juddering frisson along the back of her spine.
“A-all right.” She brought her head down. “I did it. I killed him.”
“I knew it.” His voice was a hiss. “Nobody would believe me—they all thought I was crazy. That I was obsessed. But I knew the truth. It wasn’t enough to ruin your own career, or that you dragged him through the criminal justice system for years and years. You had to fucking kill him.”
(It always hurts the first time)
“He raped me,” she said. “Over and over. He deserved to die.”
“He was a good father,” Jason snarled. “A good husband. And a brilliant director. He was worth ten of you. One hundred, even. I mean, just look at you—you’re nothing.”
Not true, a voice whispered inside her head.I did what needed to be done.
She took another step backwards. “Then why now? Why wait?”
“Because I’d forgotten about you,” he spat. “And then I figured you’d faded into obscurity, like all of the other wannabes. Too old and too fat to matter. Reliving your glory days in some ragged slum of a bar, while you turned tricks to feed that gnawing, incessant hunger.”
(You don’t turn heads the way you used to)
Donni flinched again and the pictures blurred as her eyes watered.
(How about a quick fuck for old times’ sake?)
“But then I read that article. I saw your husband’s scandal with the wine. And there you were—Donni Blake. Hale and hearty and alive, living in a big, beautiful house you didn’t deserve.”
He closed the distance she’d put between them in two steps.
“I decided to remedy that.” His fingers tightened around the knife. “It was a simple manner of planning from that point. Meeting your stupid husband and convincing him that I was on his side. That pompous idiot was so eager to tell his story that he would have cut off his own cock and balls. But as eager as he was to download the malware I sent to him, my questions made him suspicious. And when he Googled my name and couldn’t find anything about me, I knew that his next step in his foolproof plan would be to go to you.”
But I beat you to it, she thought.I bet that confounded your fucking plans.
“And the others?” she asked. “Why did they have to die?”
“The woman—Opal—confronted me at the funeral. She had seen me with my camera and was kicking up a fuss about this being a private event. So I left, and I waited, and I followed her home. Beat her over the head with a rock when she answered the front door.”
And then posed her like a doll, Donni wanted to say.As if she were a human prop.
It had been her blood spattered over the pumpkins.
“And Christophe?”
“He caught me outside your house. I knew he wouldn’t go to the police because then he’d have to explain why he was there, too. And your stepson had already cornered him, warning him away. But I knew he’d try to contact you. You really do have quite the harem, don’t you?”
He laughed cruelly.
