Page 51
“I know. I watched you do it from the service door. I watched you put your hands on his throat, and I watched Rafe come in late with a drink he never got to give him. I stayed on the line so you would walk into that room with my voice still in your ear.”
He makes a sound that is not a word and his fingers tighten on the mask until the plastic creaks.
“What about Lo?”
He says her name like she is still standing in a doorway. Then his jaw locks, because he already knows how this one ends.
“Lauren Brooks stayed on thirty-seven after she said she would lock it. Wednesday night. She said it was work, and it was not. She walked past the gym and saw me with you and kept walking, then she sat in that office and waited for you to pass the glass. I called her as you. She picked up because it was your name she saw on the screen. She took her clothes off in the hall. The blouse. The skirt. The heels. She put two fingers in herself in that last office and said your name because I told her to. Then she tried to say it again when she came. She thought the mask was a game you were playing. I told her it was not you. I told her she looked at you like she could have you, and that was enough. I killed her on that floor, naked, the way she had dressed herself for you. Pretty when she bled. She was.”
He shuts his eyes. When he opens them again they are wet and furious. He turns half away from me and then forces himself back, because he asked for every name and he is going to stand here and take them.
“She was my partner.”
“She was in love with you and calling it loyalty. I watched it and then I ended it.”
“Stop saying it like that.” His voice breaks on the last word and he hates that, too. He drags a hand down his face and leaves it there a second, covering his mouth.
“Kit. Why him?”
He almost does not get the name out. Kit is the one who told him not to work himself into an early grave, and I can see this hits him hard.
“Kit Mori was locking your floors the night after Lo died. Thursday. He was waiting for Ivy. I texted him filth he thought was hers and he walked to the copy room anyway. He got on his knees. He said her name while I had him. Same mask. Same grey. He was not going to leave this building alone, and I was not going to let him keep walking your halls after midnight.”
Rhys shakes his head once, small, like he can unsee the image. His breathing has gone uneven. He looks at me like he is trying to see the trainer again, and he can’t.
“Ivy. What about her?”
He says it softer. He already knows this one is about Lena.
“Ivy Chen came back when no one answered. She should have gone home. She saw my face and she knew it. She never said he to you on the phone because she was already dying on those stairs, but she would have given Pell my name if I had let her walk away. I could not let her walk away. She called you and she stayed on the line. Lena was already coming up this mountain because she would not stay home. That is why I needed Ivy gone before I came here. That is why I waited in the trees until the police car left. Ivy was a threat because she saw me. The others were a threat because they wanted what I want. You.”
“Lena.” He says it like a bruise. His whole body goes tight, and for a moment I think he is going to come at me, not with the lawyer voice, but with his hands. He does not. He stands there shaking and holds the mask instead.
“And Shane?”
That is the one that almost puts him on the floor. His eyes go to his own hands first, clean now, and I watch them shift back to me. I do not like saying this one with his eyes on me, but I say it anyway because he has asked me to.
“Shane Cole was not office staff. He was the man who locked the door behind you at night. He came to the bay after you told him to stay home and he sat in that car and waited because he loved you. He thought the mask was you. He told me things he had been saving for your mouth and I let him. Then I used the line. Don’t scream. Kiss me. Pretty when you bleed. I put the blade where I was meant to put it, in the places where he told me to hurt him. You grabbed my hood. I knocked your hand off and went into the dark because if I stayed, you would have seen me too soon, and I wanted you to see me here. In this house. Not with his blood still coming out of his mouth and onto your hands.”
Rhys looks down at his hands. They are clean now. The shower washed Shane’s blood off, but Shane is still here. His mouth opens. Nothing comes out. Then his voice breaks.
“He said he loved me.”
He presses the heel of his hand to his eyes and leaves it there. He almost cries and stops himself, because he will not cry in front of me if he can help it. When he drops his hand, his face is raw.
“You called me,” he says. “In the tower. In this house. You sent a photograph of me in a towel from those bushes?”
He points toward the glass.
“Yes.”
“You talked to me like you already owned my body?”
“Yes.”
“And the whole time you were the man I paid to keep me fit?”
“You booked the hour, but I took more than the hour.”