Page 94 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

Jennifer Alsop. Sex worker and drug addict. Disorganized to the extreme. Killed several clients. Died when one of her intended victims set fire to her house, coincidentally on the same date Joan of Arc was burned at the⁠—

Fuck.

“Mary Glenn. Howard Marshall.”

She gives me a sarcastic golf clap. “Congratulations, Dr. Mohr. You’ve pinpointed the source of my trauma.”

I know her preferred brand of animal cookie, but I didn’t know her real name.

A horrible thought grabs me. “Were you in the house that night?”

“Yes.” She lifts her chin and meets my gaze, her expression fierce. “So you could say I learned some fucked-up lessons about men and managing risk.”

Another memory surfaces: an old news article about the case that included a mention of Jennifer Alsop’s daughter.

No. Not daughter. Daughters.

“There were two of you,” I say. “Twins.”

Her head snaps up, her eyes glittering dangerously. “Leave my sister out of this.”

But I can’t. The explanation I’ve been groping for all week hits me harder than Overton’s fist did.

“That wasn’t you on Sunday, was it? That was⁠—”

Her knife is out, and quicker than I can blink, she’s around the table, her knee dangerously close to my dick and her blade against my neck.

“Leave my sister out of this,” she hisses. “She got adopted. She has a life. Her hands are clean. Got it?”

Everything she’s not saying seeps into my chest, filling the cracks that formed when I found the tubes of evidence. Rue didn’t get adopted. Rue doesn’t have a life. Rue’s hands are filthy.

“Baby,” I say roughly. “I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t want you to know.” Her words emerge like they’re being dragged over razors, making me think she’s never said any of this out loud before. “Maybe I did trust Gomez. But trust isn’t what keeps me safe, and I did what I had to do.”

“So you would’ve destroyed my life if you had to?”

“I would’ve destroyed Gomez’s life,” she says sharply.

“Same thing,” I bite back.

“Why the fuck would I ever have guessed you were the same people?”

I gesture down my body. “I don’t know, my height? My eyes? My voice?”

“Your voice,” she says in an exaggerated low growl that’s apparently supposed to be me. Then she flops back in the chair and folds her arms over her chest. “Besides, it’s not like you recognized me.”

I did, though. Morticia drew me in like nobody other than Rue ever has. I think some part of me always knew. Why else would it feel like my whole world is collapsing right now?

“How did I not see it?” I mumble more to myself than to her. “How did I miss that Rue Bellamy’s a killer?”

She looks at me like I’ve lost a step. “You don’t know me well enough to be surprised.”

Wow. She’s questioning my devotion. “I found your hiding place easily enough,” I remind her, but it’s met with a dismissive laugh.

“If you actually knew me, you’d know I never keep all the important things in the same place.”

A distant warning bell starts clanging in my head.