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There was no risk of the others overhearing from their spot down the beach, but he leaned in close, pitching his voice low anyway. “I need your help tonight. Benedict might not even be home, so it may all be for nothing, but if he’s there….” He paused, his shoulders slumped like he was carrying the weight of the world on them.
I reached for him, pulling him closer, and pressed a kiss to his temple. “We’ll do this together,” I promised.
“I couldn’t get a warrant. Mauritius is a non-extradition country too. If I can get him onto the plane alive, I can arrest him the moment we’re in Australian airspace. I’ll have forty-eight hours to interrogate him and get a confession.” His frown was pronounced, the tension around his eyes pulling them tight. But I knew Ezra, and I knew that he wouldn’t leave things to chance, especially not something like a confession.
“How will you get it?”
He huffed out a humourless laugh. “I can’t torture it out of him, if that’s what you’re asking.” I nearly shook my head, but he’d already continued on, knowing that’s not what I was asking. “I’ve put together every piece of evidence that we’ve compiled. I have a folder stashed in the plane with it all in there. I can only guess what his motivation was—money, jealousy over Rosa’s success—who knows? But I’ll find out. He’s fucked, and he’ll know just how badly by the time I’ve finished with him. I’ll tell him that I can get a plea deal if he cooperates. I’ll promise immunity on a few charges if I have to.”
“Zali and Ry will fight you—”
“Zali and Ry want to kill him, Tris. I need your help to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked. My stomach clenched, yet hope soared in me. Was this the solution? Was this the means to protect them that I’d been looking for? If I had to kill the bastard, I wouldn’t hesitate, but there was no way I’d let them do it.
“I need you to be a witness. Take everything in, write a contemporaneous statement. Help make whatever confession we can get out of him irrefutable. I want to put him away for life. I’ll make sure justice is served. Proper justice, not vigilante justice. I can’t watch them destroy themselves, Tris.”
“I want to kill him myself,” I confessed. My gut churned, nausea climbing up my throat. “If it means saving them, I’ll do it.”
Ezra spun and grabbed my hands, squeezing them tight. His eyes flashed with fear, and his face drained of colour as he shook his head and breathed, “No.”
I lifted my lips in the ghost of a smile and squeezed his hands back. “From the moment I found out somebody had stolen Rosa’s identity, I knew Zali would want to end them.” I shook my head and took a steadying breath.
“Finding out what happened to Ry’s dad—seeing his loss so raw—has made me want to wrap them in cotton wool.”
Ez leaned in closer, pressing his forehead to mine, and I knew he felt the same. It was why he’d come to me with his plan. He cared as much as I did.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how I can get in there and do it first, finish him off before they even get a chance to raise the proverbial gun.” I huffed out a laugh and shook my head. “But your insistence that we not bring weapons put that idea to bed. How am I supposed to steal yours if you don’t have it?”
“I have my revolver. But you aren’t touching it.” His voice took on a hard edge, a no-nonsense tone that I knew there was no negotiating with.
I sighed, closing my eyes and letting my head hang low. “I can’t let them take a life any more than you can, but my reasons aren’t so noble—”
“I don’t give a fuck about the law on this, Tristan,” he hissed, standing up to pace. That edge in his voice was gone. Now it was doused in panic, a frantic need for me to hear him.
“I don’t care what the Criminal Code says or even what morality says about it.” He gripped his hair and pulled it the way he always did when he got frustrated, and I reached out for him, clasping his hand and pulling him between my legs. He turned to me, agony in his eyes, the crease in his forehead deeper than usual. With his thumb pointed at his chest, he shook his head and said, “My reasons aren’t noble, Tris. They’re selfish.”
He gestured to the three of them walking up the beach toward us. “I won’t let Zali and Ryder live with the knowledge that they’ve taken a life. I won’t watch them destroy themselves with the guilt. I can’t. I’ve seen it before, and it changes a person. I won’t let you do it either.”
“I’m with you,” I said. I wouldn’t tell Ezra, but I’d overheard his conversation with Puglisi. I’d listened to every word of his impassioned plea and heard her cold response back to him. Nearly all the evidence we had was inadmissible, but Benedict didn’t need to know that. If we could get a confession, we could nail the bastard.
Then once he was in jail, we’d let natural selection take its course. I’d seen what inmates did to people serving time for crimes against kids. Hardened criminals might have a moral code that differed distinctly from that of the rest of society, but they shared its abhorrence for child killers.
Benedict’s confession would be his death warrant.
Karma might have been a bitch, but she was a patient one.
He’d get what he deserved.
I was determined to protect Zali and Flynn, and Ezra had the answer—make him talk. I believed in Ezra, in his experience and expertise. I had faith that he could pull this off. I knew in my gut that once we got Benedict on Australian soil, Ezra would take care of it.
“If we can get him, we can prove that Rosa was innocent. We can prove Benedict murdered them.”
I nodded, my mind made up. “We finish this properly. We find out why and how he did it, and then we nail the fuck to the wall with his own confession.”
The fight rushed out of Ezra, and he sagged against me in relief, dropping to his knees in front of me. His breath came out in shuddering pants. I held him close, my arms tight around his shoulders as he buried his face in my neck. “Thank you,” he whispered, his voice choked up. “Fuck, it’d kill me if you had to live with having ended him.”
“I know, Ez,” I murmured. “I love you too.”
