A cold horror settles over me. He left town after Mariana, but came back for Zoe?
“Why did you kill them?” I push for more time. “They were innocent.”
“Innocent?” He spits blood onto the ground. “You think greed is innocent?”
He stands. The wobble in his stance is gone. His posture tightens. His eyes fix on me with terrible, final clarity.
There’s a chilling logic in his tone. “The first one wasn’t planned. I’m not some psychopath.”
That he doesn’t think he is shows how dangerous this situation really is. He’s delusional.
“I was in a bar a couple of towns over. One of those places where people tell you their whole life story because they know you’ll never see them again. She talked about needing a down payment. About wanting out of a controlling family—men that didn’t let her breathe. She made herself sound alone. Like I was the only solution.”
His features twist in disgust.
“I’d just come into a lot of money. More than I’d ever need. I offered help. I sent her ten grand.”
The quarry falls silent, even the wind is holding its breath.
“Then”—his eyes blast wide open as if it still surprises him to this day—“I found out about her boyfriend. She didn’t tell me about that, did she? Because sheknewwhat she was doing. She knew I had to think she was alone in this world for me to help her. She manipulated me.”
The words leak out of his mouth like a curse.
“Her story wasn’t survival. That was a strategy.”
He steps closer, the gun loose in his hand. “If she were decent, she would’ve stopped herself. She wouldn’t have kept it. She would have sent it back.”
There’s no room for reality in his rules. He decided she deserved it. Deserved to be killed for taking his gift. A killer justifying his violence.
He takes another step closer, and my body seizes as he closes the distance.
“I asked to meet her at this very quarry to talk. And do you know what she had to say to me? All she said wasthank you.” He shouts the words into the open air. “Thank you!”
His words ricochet across the quarry walls, echoing back until they return to his wet, bloody mouth as maniacal laughter.
He calms quickly, and his voice is flat again. “So I ended her.” His gaze bores into mine. “And do you know what surprised me?”
I’m too shocked to speak.
He smiles. “It felt right.”
He nods, lips pulled into a tight, determined line. “That’s when I understood what money really does. It doesn’t change people. It reveals them. Every woman since madethe same choice. Took what was offered. Took more than they deserved. Took without shame.”
His gaze hardens. “Now aren’t you lucky I solved the case for you, Officer Johnson?”
His mind quickly drifts from the women he hated to the woman in front of him. “And you’re the one who had to fuck this all up.”
He pins me with a vehement stare and strides in my direction.
I drop back into the mushroom position, curling over my belly, knees wide for balance, hands bound but tucked in close. It worked once. It’ll work again.
“You think I’m falling for that twice?” he mutters, wiping his mouth, his blood dripping onto my shoulder.
He bends down, face angled away from my head, and hooks both arms under, this time pinning my bound wrists against my chest.
He hauls upward with everything he has left. His raw strength and adrenaline drag me across the gravel. I fight to stay low, to make myself heavy, but he grunts, shifts his grip, and hauls me closer and closer to the edge no matter how much I resist.
“Killing me won’t save your brother, Mike,” I gasp, the words scraping out of a throat that barely opens.
