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“He was so jealous. Lock would have done anything for him. But it didn’t matter. I saw into his soul. It was pure black. I didn’t know what he’d do. I swear I didn’t know what he’d do. I just wanted him to leave us alone.”

“I know. You did the best you could.” What was she talking about? Who was she talking about? Was there someone else who had done all the things I thought Corrine had done to me? To Lock?

“He said he’d kill me. I didn’t care. But when he said he’d kill Lock…”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“He’s dead. I killed Lock. I killed him,” she cried. “But he said those awful things. He said I was crazy. I’m not crazy! I just wanted Lock to save me. I just wanted Lock to see what I saw. I wanted to protect him. And I did. Now he’ll never know it. I didn’t mean it.”

What did she want Lock to see? Who did she think she protected Lock from? She raised the gun, aiming straight for my head.

“Come inside, Corrine,” I said. “We can figure this out.”

“It’s too late,” she said. “Lock’s dead because of me. Now I’m dead anyway. I can’t take it back. I want to take it back.” Then she lowered the gun. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion after that. She took a step back. Then another. Then I realized what she was about to do.

“No!” I shouted.

But she took one more step back until she was at the very edge of the bluff. She dropped the gun off the edge. She stretched out both arms as if she were an angel. Then Corrine fell backward into nothingness.

FORTY-THREE

“Is he dead?”

Roy Dennison sat across from me. I’d seen this room a hundred times, but usually from the other side of the window. I supposed Mark Gilchrist sat behind it now. Probably Sheriff Rafferty too.

“I don’t know,” Roy said. “But I’m still the one asking the questions.” We’d been here all night. I could see the sun just starting to rise from the window across the hall.

I lifted my wrists, showing him the cuffs. One of the deputies repositioned them so my arms were in front of me, but wouldn’t remove them. “Are these still necessary? What do you think I’m going to do to you?”

Roy sighed, but reached over and unlocked the cuffs. I rubbed my wrists and sat back.

“Go through it again,” he said.

“Why? I’ve done it twice already. Plus the night I came to your house. Do you think I’m going to change my story? Slip up? I know how this works.”

“Do you? Because right now, all I can see is you’ve been lying to me from day one. The second Corrine Egan told her story in front of you, you should have come to me. Told me about Lock’s proclivities and what you suspected. If you’d done that, maybe they’d both still be alive right now.”

“Is he dead?” I asked again, more desperately. I had watched as two stretchers were wheeled out. Corrine had been pronounced dead at the scene. I watched what I thought was the life drain from Lock’s eyes. But when they took him away, they did it with sirens. Now, no one would answer my questions.

“Two people, Mina,” he said. “One dead. One with life-threatening injuries. You don’t have a scratch on you? You refused treatment.”

“Give it twelve hours. I’ll have bruises all along my torso and my shoulder, Roy. I told you. Corrine jumped off that bluff. I didn’t push her. Before that, she had a gun pointed at me. If your deputies haven’t found it at the bottom of that bluff, they’re not looking hard enough. You think I tried to kill Lock?”

“I don’t know anything anymore,” he said.

“Yeah. You do. You’re accusing me of hiding something. Except I did come to you. I told you everything that’s been going on. I gave you photographs. You didn’t believe me. Instead, you gaslighted me and took the word of a woman who was tragically unstable. She as much as admitted to me that she was the one who painted my car. Left that dead bird for me. Sent the photos. I told you. I warned you. You know me.”

“I thought I did,” he snapped back. “You sabotaged the task force, Mina. I want to know why.”

I rolled my eyes. We were getting nowhere. He read me my rights. He cuffed me and dragged me into this interrogation room. But he hadn’t yet arrested me. He was trying to catch me in some lie. I knew Roy well enough to know there was something else going on. Something he wasn’t telling me.

“How did I sabotage it? Daniel Palicki murdered Jade Darby, Lara Pasko, Gretchen Small, and Fiona McBride.”

Something flickered in Roy’s eyes. He was good at this. His colleagues called him a human lie detector test. I knew he knew I was telling the truth. But he wasn’t. I felt it in my bones.

“What?” I asked him. “You might as well tell me. We know each other far too well for games, Roy.”

He slapped a hand on the table. “Fine. Last night, we found Fiona McBride’s cell phone buried in a plastic bag behind a loose brick in Palicki’s fireplace. And the digital forensics came back on Palicki’s phone. A couple of interesting things popped up. I was looking for you. You weren’t answering your phone. Then, you place a 911 call from your residence. I show up, I see Corrine dead and Lock nearly dead. And you… with not a single satisfying answer as to what happened.”