Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 532(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
I stood in the grove where Ani had died, even though I’d never set foot in it.
A little girl stood looking up at me, blood dripping down her face and a doll clutched to her chest, her eyes huge pools of black. “Bhaiya, you killed me,” she said in a small, high voice…and that was when I realized I was Bobby. Young, with scraped knees and scratched-up arms from all our play.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my pulse a lump of muscle in my mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
Her face smudged, morphed, and suddenly, I was sitting across a table from Jocelyn, the cards scattered in front of us. “I wasn’t that bad, was I, Tavish?” she was asking. “Not bad enough to murder.”
“I didn’t hurt you.” Sweat broke out all over my skin.
A very feline look. “You know that’s a lie, love—you’ve always been so good at those. Audrey’s true son, a man who acts through life itself.” She picked up a tumbler of whiskey. “I’ve begun to think that you believe your own lies—that’s why you’re so good at it. You convince yourself of a whole other version of events.”
I plunged to the ground, the hard concrete rushing up at me so fast that I knew I’d die, my face shattered to pieces and my bones shrapnel. “JOSS!”
I stared at the door to the motel.
It took my brain several long seconds to figure out that I was still sitting upright in bed, not falling from the balcony of Jocelyn’s luxurious suite. Where Susanne had been about sophisticated glamour, Jocelyn had been a proud maximalist.
Velvet, tassels, everything gilded, her home should have looked tacky but it had instead looked like the den of some old-world vampire who’d collected only the best things through time. I’d been part of that collection, a “pretty boy” she’d met at a high-stakes poker table in Las Vegas.
“Don’t tell me I’m too old for you,” she’d purred in my ear in the elevator up to her penthouse suite. “I saw the way you looked at me from the other side of the table.”
I’d lost the game to her, and that night, I’d lost a piece of my innocence. Because Joss hadn’t been Susanne, who had made me. Joss had been the opposite, her intent to break me in ways that I didn’t understand until it was almost too late.
Her death had freed me.
Swinging my legs off the bed, I took long, deep breaths and reminded myself of that. Jocelyn wasn’t around anymore to tempt me with “just a little taste” of things bad and dark and destructive. I’d never understood why she did it, why she went all out to destroy those around her.
Joss smiled at me from across the room…and I realized I was still dreaming. Walking over to me dressed in the long black gown in which I’d last seen her, her hair slicked back in a perfect updo, she leaned down in a wave of musky perfume to tap me on the jaw.
“Make me a villain if you want, Tavish”—a sultry whisper—“but you know the truth: Of the two of us, I’m the only one who’s never killed anyone.”
* * *
—
My face as haggard as if I’d been on a bender, I walked into the ICU the next morning to find an alarm going off and medical staff rushing about. My heart shoved into my throat, but all the patients I could see, including Diya, seemed stable.
It was only a half hour later, when a harried-looking nurse came to log Diya’s vitals, that I said, “Jack, what happened? Before?”
The sandy-blond man’s eyes widened. “You don’t know? It was your sister-in-law.”
“What?” I jerked to my feet. “No. I’ve been with Diya all this time. Figured I’d stay out of the way.”
“She went into cardiac arrest,” the nurse said. “No one has any idea why—her heart wasn’t touched during the stabbing. But she is badly injured, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that her heart just gave out under the pressure, though the doctors are thinking she’s had a reaction to a change in medication.”
My mouth went dry. “Could someone have messed with her meds, given her something they knew would hurt her?”
Jack’s expression closed up, an acute alertness in his gaze. “Why would you ask that?”
“The cops still aren’t sure there are three bodies in the house, not just two,” I whispered, quick and low. “And Shumi’s husband beat her.”
“Christ.” Open shock. “Do the police know?”
“I tried to tell them, but—” Shrugging, I stroked my hand over Diya’s hair, my fingers trembling. “Diya and Shumi are the only witnesses to what happened in that house. I’m terrified Bobby is alive and about to come after them.”
The nurse’s breathing was faster now. “Look, don’t worry. It was probably a genuine medical reaction, nothing more.” He took a deep breath, was calm again by the time he began to take Diya’s pulse for the chart. “I feel even worse for her now, though. I didn’t realize she was an abuse victim.”