“It’s too late for that,” Paul says, shoving her from behind.
Freya stumbles and rolls onto the ground. Paul reaches to yank her to her feet, and she pivots onto her hip, jabbing her foot into his groin.
“Now!” she shouts.
I charge and swing. Paul dodges, releasing the lantern so it smashes and a burst of kerosene lights up the night. He grips Freya’s hair in a fist and presses the gun to her temple.
“I’ll blow her brains out,” he says, backing toward the cliff.
I stop, frozen in place, unable to reconcile the person I grew up with, the person who came to my parents’ weekends at boarding school, with this person in front of me. Could any part of that relationship have been true, or is this person, this angry man, one of the reasons I grew up feeling so alone?
Freya meets my eyes. “We’ll never be what you want, Paul,” she says.
“Don’t look at Charlie,” he says. “After tonight, you and I will be together. Charlie won’t be there. Duncan won’t, either. It’ll be you and me alone, the way it should have been.”
“It won’t, though. And it never was.” Freya pauses, her gaze locked on mine. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I do understand. Paul needs control. It’s the only way he feels connected. Now we have to make him feel alone all over again. We have to make him lose control.
I mirror his steps. “Ginger tried to rip my throat out,” I say to Freya, and only her.
“That’s my girl,” Freya says, “but you should trust her. She likes you, more than she lets on. And she’ll listen to you if you ask in the right way and show her who’s boss.”
“She was thirsty, but Gilcrest brought her some water,” I say. “He’s down the trail, hurt badly but not dead. And Seton’s coming. With an army behind her.”
“He’s lying,” Paul says.
I ignore him. “Gilcrest told me to tell you he loves you. And he’s sorry.”
Freya closes her eyes and whispers a silent prayer. “Thank you,” she mouths.
Paul reaches the edge of the cliff. “You should have left well enough alone, Charlie. Why did you have to keep asking about Isaac? What did it matter after all this time?”
I’ve already established that if Paul killed Isaac, my mother would have been lying for him all these years, and why would she have chosen Paul over my father? But maybe I missed something. Maybe Paul really did kill Isaac, and my mother’s concerns about Reid, the ones Hadley told me about, were unfounded, after all. The only connection I’ve found between Isaac and Paul is the money Paul lent out. “Isaac came to New York with a plan to rehab the Landing,” I say. “He wanted you to invest.”
“I refused,” Paul says.
“But he left with fifty grand,” I say.
“He knew too much,” Paul says. “He knew about Freya, about the things I’d done. He figured out the things I was still doing.”
“The night Isaac came to the West Village,” Freya says, “I told him about being stalked. He must have known it was you.”
“Isaac found your necklace when we were kids, the one I stole,” Paul says. “He promised me it was our secret. He understood how much you meant to me. And what I’d do to keep you close.”
The money Mrs. Haviland found in the ledger suddenly makes sense. “Isaac figured out you were stalking Freya and blackmailed you,” I say. “That’s why you gave him the money. And that’s why you killed him and let my father take the fall.”
Paul glances over the edge of the cliff, into the abyss. “I didn’t kill Isaac,” he says. “Reid did. Reid did what I told him to, right until the end.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Paul holds the gun to Freya’s temple as they teeter near the edge of the cliff, and his words echo in my mind:Reid did what I told him to, right until the end.
Reid killed Isaac Haviland. It’s what I feared, and what I hoped might not be true. When I speak, my voice sounds distant, free of emotion, as though it belongs to someone else. “Why would Reid kill Isaac?” I ask.
I don’t dare ask the other question, the one I’ve wanted the answer to since I left my brother on the dock earlier tonight: Did Reid kill my mother, too?
“You barely knew your brother or what he was capable of,” Paul says. “Reid saw the way Jane acted around Isaac before anyone else noticed. He told me the way Jane touched Isaac’s arm and laughed at anything he said. And Reid wanted to be a hero. He needed someone to nudge him in the right direction.”
