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She shuffled back a step, getting some distance from JD and, for the first time, she looked me in the eye. The hate was so intense that I took a stumbling step back. I felt instantly dirty, I felt like bugs were crawling all over me.
I’d never been loathed before.
And my blood turned to ice water because suddenly, I knew JD was right. Paige was the killer. She killed my dad! And I’d invited her into our lives, I’d let her take care of my child…
“Why?” I croaked. “Why do you hate us? Because my dad had an affair?”
“An affair?” hissed Paige. Her sun-kissed, California drawl was gone: her real voice was quick and vicious as a flick knife, with a strong Eastern European accent. “He got my mother pregnant then paid her off like she was a whore. She’d never had money before. She spent it on booze and drugs. He destroyed all our lives. My whole future.”
Destroyed their lives? There’s more. There’s more I don’t know. I felt like I was falling again, just like when I first found the photo of Maria. I felt my eyes filling with tears. “Please, Pai—Please, Radoslava, just take the knife away, please!” She didn’t move a muscle. In fact, despite how angry she was, her hand wasn’t even trembling. That was scarier than the knife itself, in a way. “Why didn’t you just kill me?!” I sobbed. “Why come into our lives, why all this?!”
“Because I wanted to see you suffer,” said Radoslava. “I wanted to see you lose your father and mourn him and finally envy him because he didn’t have to live in fear. I wanted you to know it was coming.”
Oh God. There was something in her voice, an undertone that was like nails-on-a-chalkboard to a mother, the trigger that makes you snatch your child away from someone. Radoslava was unstable. And she had a knife to Cody’s throat. How could I not see this? Jesus, her arms, muscled and lean from being in the military, not from triathlon training.
“That accent,” said JD, shaking his head in wonder. “And Jesus, you got the best poker face I’ve ever seen.” He jerked his head towards the ruined living room. “I sat there talking about Radoslava Burski, I said your name…and you just handed me a mug of coffee.”
I suddenly started running through it all in my mind. The attack in Mexico…Paige had said she was shopping but she’d been there, in a ski mask with the other gunmen, hunting us down. And then, after JD saved us, she’d changed and raced back to the hotel, clutching shopping bags. She’d come to the speech, not to support me but so she could watch me get shot. “Poland,” I thought out loud. “You said your mom had broken her leg so you had to fly home to California. But you flew to Poland, didn’t you? You were there, at the dam, watching, while one of your men drove that bulldozer into the scaffolding?”
“And she was driving the car that rammed us into the water,” growled JD. “And now I know why she insisted on coming to meet Van der Meer. I thought someone had intercepted that bottle of cognac before it was delivered, but it was her. When she bumped the table, she dropped the poison in the bottle.”
I stared at Radoslava in horror. I remembered lying there on the deck, feeling like my insides were on fire, and Radoslava shoving people out of the way so she could kneel beside me and hold my hand. She’d pretended she was in pieces, terrified for her BFF. She’d been enjoying watching me die.
That was the biggest betrayal, in a way, the one that made me want to crawl into a deep, dark hole and never come out again. After years of being a lonely, awkward geek, I’d thought I’d finally found a friend. But it had all been a lie. All my teenage self-hate came back, only a thousand times worse. Of course no one wants to be your friend!
But none of that mattered. Only one thing did. “Please,” I begged, tears coursing down my face. “Please, if you want to kill me, kill me. But let Cody go.”
Radoslava shook her head. “This isn’t over yet.” And, dragging Cody with her, she moved towards the door.
I wanted to throw up. “No,” I sobbed, near-hysterical. “No, no, please no. Take me, take me!” But she kept moving.
“Mom!” sobbed Cody.
I stepped forward: I couldn’t stop myself. Radoslava glared at me and scraped the knife against Cody’s throat, leaving a red scrape mark. I froze.
JD was in her path. He’d kept his rifle leveled at her this entire time, never letting it waver.
“Move,” said Radoslava.
Cody was full-on blubbing, now, his face shining with tears. “JD, help, I don’t wanna go.”
