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If anyone watches the security tapes back, they’ll see someone is with Billie—they’ll see that they’ve forced her into the wheelchair, that she’s not the killer. But she doubts the image will be good enough that they’ll seewhois with her. Just a figure.
And what good is that to her?
Even if they somehow pick Trevor as the killer from those tapes, Billie will be long dead. She needs him done for. And she needs thatnow.
“Gahhdddd!”
She feels the bulbs of hair rip right out of her scalp as he yanks her back into focus.
“Oh shut up.” His murmur is rife with annoyance, his earlier patience cracking like dried-out farmland under the hot summer sun. “Fuckin’ skank,” he adds with a grunt and tucks the gun into the back of his waistband.
With that, he’s pulling her off the ground by her hair and throwing her into the wheelchair. It rattles on impact and would’ve smacked into the wall if Trevor’s grip on the arm didn’t keep it steady.
“You know,” he starts, a touch breathless, “you could go with something you’ve never had before in your godforsaken life. Dignity. A new concept for you,” he continues, mumbling his words as though only speaking to himself and not to the bloodied girl he wrestles into the wheelchair straps. He leans over her, fastening the buckles above the wheel to keep her secure, never flinching as her crimson fists coming down on his back. “After all, it is you who’s responsible for all of this. Kate, too. I always knew she was ruthless, but when she told me about what your little crew of trash-bags did to Henry… even I admit I was surprised. I mean… hacking up a body?That’s fucking grim.”
“Yeah? And what do you call what you’ve been doing?” Billie’s voice is strained tight, but she still croaks out the words with as much hatred as she can muster. “Decorating?”
Finally, Billie’s strapped into the wheelchair.
Trevor stands back with a breath of relief and studies her—either to admire his handiwork or to assess for any ways she might get out of the three black straps wrapped around her and buckled tight.
Apparently, he’s satisfied. And he looks down at her, a dark smile dancing on his lips. “Less like decorating and more like taking out the trash.”
He reaches out for her.
Billie flinches, her body rigid and unmoving as his face inches closer and closer to her own. But his hands rest on the arms of the chair instead, and he’s so close that she can taste the bourbon on his breath.
“Blame your precious Mary-Kate,” he croons. “If she hadn’t enlisted my help in getting Cletus and his blackmail letters out the way, none of this would’ve ever happened. You lot would have gone on with no one knowing your crimes. And your darling friends—Carmine—would still be alive.”
A fresh wave of tears water her eyes. Carmine. Just the sound of her name punches guilt like ice-cold knives through her chest.
“Kate started this…” he adds with a shrug and draws back to stand over her, “but I’m the one to finish it. I knew the night we killed Cletus what I had to do. Maybe I did it for Henry. Maybe… I liked it… got a taste for it… But we both know, Billie, you’re getting exactly what you deserve.”
Her one good leg is all that she has, and she uses it to kick out at him. But it’s a weak attempt and she doesn’t reach him.
But—
She didn’t kick to hurt Trevor, or even touch him.
She needed the wheelchair to make a sound. A creak, a groan, a squeak, or even just the rattle of her body jolting in it.
Billie needed to draw the attention of the shadow… the shadow that’s stretching out over the floor down the corridor, right from the doorway of her hospital room.
And with Trevor’s back to it, she just might have a shot.
As though she didn’t move at all, Trevor goes on, “Someone needs to get rid of you. Preston might think he wants you, loves you even. But you’re nothing more than trailer trash, a drunken slut. You’re less than a nobody.You’re a nothing.”
“Preston will know,” she hisses, but her voice just isn’t strong enough to carry down to her room where Preston’s woken up, where his shadow reaches even further out of the doorway now and climbs up the wall. He’s looking for her in there, dazed, confused maybe, but his silhouette growing means that he’s coming closer to the corridor, coming closer to saving her.
She just needs to stall. “He’ll figure it out and—”
“And what?” Trevor laughs an icy sound. The shadow thickens into a body in the doorway. Coming closer. “He only thinks he needs you. But once you’re gone? He’ll get over it. You don’t belong, Billie. But he’s never going to let you go for as long as you’re alive.”
Preston is too far down the hall to see clearly, but with a flicker of her gaze his way, she knows he’s standing in the doorway. She turns her gaze back up at Trevor and she parts her lips to speak, to stall a bit more, but all that comes out of her is a wretched sob, one that shudders in her chest and floods her hammering heart with panicked hope.
“Don’t cry for him,” Trevor grins, misreading her entirely, and that shadow climbs higher up the wall, all the way to the ceiling where it stretches and warps. “Cry for yourself. Preston will be better off. He’ll find someone better than you could ever be. Someone like him.”
And the shadow moves… it follows the tall, broad-shouldered man who slowly walks towards them, whose steps are soft and silent, and whose dark eyes stay fixed on Trevor’s back.
