Page 96

Chapter Thirty-five

Lake

There wasn’t enough light in the car park. It was a stupid thought. No car park in the world used floodlights, but it didn’t stop me wishing for them. There were too many dark spaces that the light didn’t penetrate. It meant he was probably watching us. How pissed would he be that Baxter hadn’t come alone? I turned in a slow circle, scouring every corner.

Nothing.

The look of slight concentration on Baxter’s face said he was relying on a different sense than sight—one I didn’t possess. “Anything?” I whispered.

He shook his head as he walked forward a few steps, the slight stiffness in his shoulders giving away his nervousness even as he tried to look anything but.

I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be naked in bed with Baxter, stroking his face and whispering sweet nothings in his ear. I wanted to tell him that despite us only being together for such a short time that I loved him. Because I did; there was no denying it. I wouldn’t be here at stupid o’clock in the morning if I didn’t. Maybe it wasn’t too late to tell him. I opened my mouth, intending to lay my feelings at his feet.

“OWEN,” Baxter shouted, the volume of his voice and the echo it caused making me cringe. “I’m here. Just like you wanted. So the least you could do is show yourself.”

The silence that followed was thick and suffocating, pressing in on me until it felt louder than any sound.

“Fine,” Baxter said into the stillness of the car park. “You’re wasting my time, so I’m going to leave. I guess the only talking you can do is with a knife. And you couldn’t even do that face to face. You had to stab me in the back.” He took a step toward the car, already reaching for the door he hadn’t locked.

A footstep sounded from behind us.

I spun around; Baxter turned more slowly.

Another footstep.

He was on the other side of the car park, a good fifteen meters away, which left nothing but a dark figure to be seen.

“Are you just going to stand over there?” Baxter taunted. “Come closer. Let me see you. It’s like the phone calls, isn’t it? You’ll call, but you don’t have the balls to actually say anything.”

“Maybe this isn’t the way to—” I didn’t get any further. Baxter was on too much of a roll.

“What’s wrong?” he continued. “Are you scared?”

The figure started forward, one deliberate step at a time. Slow. Unhurried. Like he had all the time in the world. His head was down, making it impossible to see his face. He disappeared behind a column for a moment, the primal part of my brain screaming that he was going to pull some sort of trick, but then he reappeared on the other side of it.

He paused halfway across the space, choosing a point in front of the light. He lifted his head and his hands at the same time, fingers splayed. “No weapon.”

His voice was jarringly similar to Baxter’s. It made it easy to picture how Jamie had been fooled into letting him in. All it would have taken was a slight obscuring of his face—poor light, a hood up, his head turned away. With none of those things in play, it was impossible not to catalogue all the similarities and differences between him and Baxter. Same height. Owen’s waistline was a little thicker than Baxter’s, with the gradual weight gain that happened to most of us over the years unless you obsessively hit the gym.

His hair was shorter, which did away with the curl. It made me realize how much I loved the tousled nature of Baxter’s hair. The tickle against my nose when I buried my face in it after sex. The feel beneath my fingers when we kissed, and I cupped his scalp.

In contrast to his waistline, Owen’s face was thinner and more drawn, in a way I instinctively knew had nothing to do with his advancing years and everything to do with the life he’d led. The kind where he’d murdered his own twin brother and then had to live with that. Plus, whatever had happened to him prior that had placed him on such a destructive path.

Baxter would never look like this.

Despite everything he’d endured, Baxter smiled too much. He had too many friends, even if he claimed they were no such thing. He saw too much good in the world.

“Hello, Owen.” There was no tremor in Baxter’s voice. “It’s good to meet you at last. Properly, I mean. Without me lying on the floor, dying.”

Owen tipped his head to one side and studied his brother, giving the impression he was looking for chinks in his armor. A flicker of disappointment appeared before he masked it. He’d obviously expected the choice of venue to trigger Baxter, which it would have done if we hadn’t already been here, done that, and got the T-shirt.

His gaze moved to me, the stare assessing. That was another difference between them. No matter what emotion Baxter might exhibit, whether it be amusement or fear, it was always there. Whereas Owen was a blank slate.

“I see you’ve brought a friend,” Owen said. “I assume you think two against one is wise after what happened before.”

“I insisted on coming,” I said, not wanting to take anything away from Baxter’s tough stance.

“How sweet,” Owen replied. “And how uncharacteristic of a man who teaches history and writes books. What would your sister make of you being here, Lake Larson? Her name’s Verity, right?”