The Amateurs, Book 3

by Sara Shepard

  Just like he knew she’d come alone. This was the Brett and Seneca game now; they were the only players.

  He opened the wine with a corkscrew, poured the amber-colored liquid into the glasses, and slid one toward her. “I’d like to propose a toast.” He raised his glass. “To us. To being alike in so many ways.”

  Seneca stared at the glass but didn’t touch it. It took her a while to speak. “I figured it out, Brett,” she said in a low, empty voice. “I finally know why you killed her.”

  The severity of her tone surprised him. The raw, painful anger shone so nakedly. Power vibrated in her quivering fists. And her face reminded him of something, though he wasn’t sure what. He felt a tiny, nervous flutter in his chest, then shook it off. Okay, so she wasn’t as frightened as he’d expected. He still had the upper hand here. Of course he did.

  “It’s why you told that story about Elizabeth trapping you in the shed,” Seneca said. “When you tried to escape, that house you ran to—it was the house my family was staying in. This house.” She swept her arm around the space. “And the woman who answered the door, the woman who didn’t believe your story and walked you home and returned you to Elizabeth—it was my mother. Am I right?”

  The wine soured in Brett’s mouth. He stared at Seneca impassively, trying to feel next to nothing. He’d prepared for this conversation. He’d been ready for it ever since he met her in Dexby. He’d almost blurted it out to her after rescuing her from that fire in the hotel…but thank God he hadn’t. It hadn’t been time.

  “Of course that’s right,” he said. “Good for you. You’re really my star pupil.”

  “You’ve known for years.” Seneca put her hands on her hips. “You’ve known…me…for years.”

  Suddenly, he knew what Seneca reminded him of: Occasionally, Elizabeth had allowed him to watch nature programs, and there had been one about a tiger stalking its prey, its head lowered, its eyes wide and hyperfocused. Moments later, it attacked an unsuspecting gazelle, ripping it to shreds. Seneca’s determined little eyes reminded him of the tiger’s just before it pounced.

  “I saw you that day I came to your beach house,” he said. “You were cowering behind your mom, that bitch.” He enjoyed that Seneca twitched a little hearing this, though his tremulous voice bugged him. He didn’t sound nearly as badass as he wanted to be. “And it wasn’t so hard to track you down after I escaped. I remember an Annapolis bumper sticker on your car when your mother walked me back to Elizabeth’s. It took some doing, but I eventually found where you lived. You were eleven the first time I found you in Annapolis. I’m guessing you didn’t see me when I watched you at your swim meets?”

  “Nope.” Seneca stared at him, dead-eyed.

  “I was the one sitting on the top bleachers, looking bored. But I wasn’t bored. I watched you backstroke to the wall. I watched your mom clap. I really wanted her to see me and remember me as the kid she didn’t save, but she was focused on you.” He shrugged, waving a hand. “She forgot about me so fast. But I didn’t forget her. I just had to wait for the right time to do what I needed to do.”

  Seneca’s gaze was like a wall of stone. It seemed like everything he was saying was bouncing right off her. “So you killed my mom all because she took you back to Elizabeth’s that day, is that right?”

  “Of course it is.”

  She snorted. It was an ugly, mocking sound. “I’ve been thinking about that the whole drive here. Don’t you realize how irrational you are? How self-centered? How was she supposed to know your situation?”

  The old rage flared inside him, volcanic-hot and spiny. Irrational? Self-centered?

  He shifted forward on the couch. “Your mother turned a scared, desperate kid away. It was like she didn’t hear me. She didn’t care that I was afraid. She just walked me back to that house, la, la, la. Didn’t want to destroy her peaceful vacation with a messed-up kid in her house, did she? Didn’t want to mar any of the memories! So she delivered me straight back into the nightmare.” He looked hard at Seneca, his heart jumping, his throat contracting, feeling the sudden urge to either roar or sob. “You and your family got to go on, blissfully unaware, while I rotted away. That wasn’t fair. So I vowed I was going to do something about it—make her pay.”

  “Yeah, and did it make you feel better?” Seneca’s eyebrows rose. “After you killed her, Brett, did all your problems vanish, just like that?” She snapped her fingers.

  He scoffed, annoyed. What kind of question was that?

  “It didn’t. That anger was still inside you, putrid as ever, wasn’t it? That drive to make things right, to settle your score—maybe it got even worse after you killed people, am I right?”

  She searched his face, but Brett looked away.

  “There was a hole inside you that you needed to fill, so you kept finding more to fill it with,” she went on. “Except nothing you did made you feel better. No matter how many people you killed, no matter how much revenge you got, you were always your same, shitty self when it was all over. Well, I have news for you, dude—you’re never going to change. You’re always going to be you. You’re always going to be a mess.”

  “Of course I’m always going to be a mess!” Brett groaned. “My freaking childhood was taken away!”

  “You’re not the only person that’s happened to!” Seneca roared right back. “And all those other kidnapping victims in the world? They don’t turn into murderers!”

  Spit flew out of her mouth as she spoke. She was leaning so close to him now he could see the freckles on her nose, the flecks of yellow in her wide, furious eyes. She isn’t afraid of me, he realized. Not one bit.

  Enough of this. He needed to get control back. He splayed his arms across the cushions and took a leveling breath. “So then why are you here, Seneca? What do you want to know? Do you want me to explain it to you? Would you like to know how I tracked Collette? How it all went down that very last day she was alive? What I did to her moments before she died?”

  Seneca froze. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

  “Maybe you’d like to hear what else I did besides kill her? Or how scared she was? Or what she said to me?” He grinned. “I remember every word she said. Some of it was about you.”

  Seneca stepped back like he’d just taken a swing at her, but she didn’t spit out a quick and decisive no. She’s curious, Brett thought deliciously. In a dark, messy corner of her soul, she wanted to know every last detail.

  “Or maybe we should instead talk about how I kept tabs on you after it was all over?” Brett asked, feeling his confidence rise. “I saw up close how broken you were about her death. How shocked you felt that your mommy had been taken away from you. It felt good to see that, you know. Finally you were feeling pain like my pain. I saw that necklace of hers you started wearing. And I knew your little secret—that you stole it off her body. She’d been wearing it when—you know.” With a grin, he placed his hands around his neck, pantomiming someone getting strangled. “I also noticed how inquisitive you were, how desperately you wanted answers about what happened. God, it plagued you for years, didn’t it? You barely got through high school! You dropped out of college! In fact, I knew the moment you signed on to Case Not Closed. I was watching your e-mail—I saw the Welcome letter they sent you.”

  Seneca swallowed hard. She was trying hard not to react, but he had to believe that each new realization was shocking her like a bucket of ice to the face.

  “So of course I joined that site, too. And we became friends, didn’t we? Just casual acquaintances at first, but I really wanted to get to know you. See what made you tick. See what you were thinking about—because you held your cards pretty close to your vest when it came to your mom, and I wanted to know more of that sadness. I just couldn’t get enough—I was like an addict. So I saw who you were friends with on the site—good old Maddy Wright. I met him, too—in person, though, and wow, did we hit it off.” He belted back another swig of wine. “And what a coincidence, Maddy Wri
ght was from Dexby, another place I knew well. It all got me thinking: How fun would it be to have two people related to my victims in one room…with me in the middle? Even better, what if we were trying to solve a case…together? Really…become friends?” He heard his voice crack again and felt a pang in his chest. “The more I planned it, the more I wanted it to happen.”

  Seneca blinked at him. “So you encouraged Maddox toward the Helena case. And then he invited me. And you.”

  Brett nodded. “I said he should get a crew together. I knew he’d pick you…and me.”

  “But why? I mean, if you knew where I was, if you were still so angry at my entire family, why put us through all that? Why not just kill me?”

  “Because…” Brett shrugged, knocked a little off-kilter again. “You’re the gift that kept on giving. If I couldn’t hurt Elizabeth, at least I had you.”

  “Hmm.” That tiger stare, that condescending tone, it had suddenly returned in her.

  Brett clenched his fist. “What does hmm mean?”

  “I think you did it because you wanted to control something. Control people, because you’d been controlled your whole life. You were a puppet, but you wanted to be the puppeteer. So you found us. You used us to work through all your pain.”

  Brett twisted away. “Since when did you become a shrink?”

  “You’re not that hard to figure out, Brett. Sorry.”

  “Yeah, well.” Something squishy and vulnerable pulsed inside him, making his cheeks flare, making his hackles rise. “I also needed you to find Elizabeth. I was going to leave you alone after that. Except it didn’t turn out that way, did it?” He felt a darkness settle over him again. “You robbed me of that chance. But I’m not angry at Elizabeth anymore. I don’t feel vengeful toward her—she’ll get what’s coming to her. But I do feel vengeful toward you.”

  Brett rose to his feet. Seneca stepped back a little. As he stood, he noticed a small, faint light glowing from within her shorts pocket. It was her phone, making a perfect, neon square beneath the cotton. At first, he figured she had an incoming call or text—but that was impossible. He’d installed the cell phone jammer he’d bought from a shady guy he’d met on Craigslist, and all cell phones were disabled the moment they crossed the threshold.

  So what was still running on that phone? It took him only a moment to make the mental leap. Then he dropped his wine glass to the floor, where it shattered to pieces, and leapt for her. Seneca jumped back and screamed.

  Brett grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled the phone from her pocket. Just as he thought, the video function was on—the timer at the bottom said the video had been running for more than five minutes.

  “You recorded us?” he screeched.

  Seneca tried to grab the phone back, but Brett was too quick. Roaring, he hurled the phone across the room. It slammed against the wall and dropped to the wood floor with a thud. It felt like a betrayal, a slap across the face. Seneca hadn’t just come here for a play-by-play, she’d come to trap him, the stupid bitch. She was as heartless as her mother.

  Seneca ran to the shattered phone, but he caught her by the shoulders and spun her around, catching her unawares. Suddenly, in the dim light, she looked just like her mother—that heart-shaped face, those big blue eyes, that pouty mouth. If he squinted, he could picture Collette Frazier standing in the doorway of this very house all those years ago, unmoved by Brett’s story, apathetic about his plight. All the pain he’d held in years ago, all the agonizing worthlessness, all the regret and fury, it rushed back in a flaming, sparking fireball, exploding from his limbs, spewing from his mouth. He saw himself scared and frantic as he rang the doorbell to Seneca’s family’s rental house. The relief when her mother answered flooded him anew, as though it had only happened moments before. Here was his hero. Here was the person who was going to make everything right.

  Why hadn’t he just run from her when she’d walked him back home? Why hadn’t he bolted down the sidewalk and hid? But Brett knew why: Elizabeth had brainwashed him. A refrain rang in his head, over and over: Your parents don’t love you. Nobody loves you except me. The world thinks you’re a piece of shit.

  “Your mother was supposed to save me,” Brett hissed at Seneca, digging his nails into her skin. “I will never forgive her. And I will never forgive you.”

  He closed his hands around her neck. Inhaled her slightly sour scent. Felt her whole body tremble. It gave him a rush, really—here she was, Seneca Frazier, finally within his grasp. It felt like a circle was finally being closed. He’d set out to ruin a family, and now he was doing it.

  “You’re getting what you deserve,” he whispered, and closed his hands around her neck tighter, squeezing and squeezing, just wanting it to be done.

  SENECA FELT BRETT’S strong hands crush her neck, and something in her chest gave. He pressed on her windpipe, and her lungs screamed with panic. She grappled to move his hands away, but his grip was too strong—and then, suddenly, she was on the ground, her head slammed into the round rug, the weight of Brett’s body on top of her.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God, she thought. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to run out of the house after she got his confession. Or if Brett did try to get violent, she’d stashed a Taser in her bag. She noticed it in the doorway out of the corner of her eye. It was almost within reach of her foot, but Brett was pinning her thigh, so she couldn’t quite snag it.

  Brett twisted her head to the side with a jerk, bringing tears to Seneca’s eyes. There was an ecstatic grin on his face, a look so evil and diabolical that Seneca roiled with fear and let out a small whimper. Brett moved a little closer to her as though to listen, his grin broadening. “That’s right,” he cooed.

  He wanted her to be afraid, Seneca realized. It was like he was feeding off it.

  She couldn’t give Brett more power, then. He might kill her, but she wouldn’t let him get everything he wanted.

  “Whatever,” she managed to cough out. “Kill me. But that confession of yours? It’s already uploaded to my cloud. You broke my phone for nothing.”

  A flare of panic passed over Brett’s features, but it quickly submerged. “You’re bluffing. That recording is gone. Maybe you shouldn’t have come here by yourself, huh? But you had to, didn’t you? No one had your back. And now you’re going to die alone.”

  He squeezed harder. Seneca couldn’t hold on for much longer. Come on, she willed herself, feeling her heart straining against her chest. But her field of vision was narrowing. She could feel herself growing weaker, giving up. Was this really how it was going to end?

  When she shut her eyes, a thin column of light appeared. Death? she thought with horror. Was it really already here? But then, stepping through the light, literally bending it sideways as though it were a column of beads, a figure appeared in her mind’s eye. The face sharpened into view, and she gasped. She would know those big blue eyes, high cheekbones, and silky blond hair anywhere. It was her mother.

  Honey, her mother demanded. It was her voice, clear and clean—but also kind of bossy, exactly as her mom used to be. Honey, get up. You got this. You have to.

  Seneca stared at her mother helplessly, wordlessly, breathlessly. How was she here? Why was she just staring at her with that faint smile? Why was she making rising motions with her hands?

  Your hands are free, her mother instructed, gesturing to Seneca’s hands, which flailed at her side as Brett strangled her. Grab his ear and twist.

  “Huh?” Seneca whimpered.

  You heard me. Grab it. Come on. You’re a badass. I didn’t raise a wimp.

  “But I can’t!” Seneca whimpered.

  You can. Her gaze upon Seneca was steady and strong. I’m right here.

  And then, before Seneca knew what was happening, lightness began to fill her, a golden column dripping from her head down to her feet. With a burst of unexpected energy, she lifted her shaky hand, grabbed Brett’s ear, and twisted it hard. He let out a screech of pain, jolted ba
ck, and released his hands from her neck. Coughing, Seneca scrambled away and shot to her feet. Brett grabbed for her ankle, and for a moment, she started to stumble, but she was able to shake him off and got in a swift kick to his face. Brett wheeled backward, clutching his nose. “What the hell?” he screeched.

  Keep going, her mom’s voice thrummed inside her. Keep going.

  Brett was on his knees now, so she shoved him with a force that surprised even her until he was flat on his back. He hit the floor with a terrible crack. Blood gushed from his nose. He was swearing under his breath. Seneca wiped sweat from her face, trying to figure out what to do next—should she run for her purse and the Taser? But it was several steps across the room—if she hesitated even slightly, Brett was going to get the upper hand again. He was so much stronger and bigger.

  That doesn’t matter, her mother urged. Bigger isn’t always better.

  Then something on the coffee table caught her eye. The corkscrew’s sharp, shining tip was pointed straight at her. She lurched for it. Brett noticed, and his eyes popped wide. He grabbed at her leg again and tried to take her down, but she kicked him in the stomach and he retreated, a strange, gurgling sound emanated from his throat. Brett tried to scramble backward, and Seneca saw as his gaze whipped around the room, probably trying to find his own weapon. But Seneca marched over to him and stood on his chest hard, pressing her weight into his sternum. That same superhuman strength filled her. She felt buoyed, powered by her mom. She could do this. She was doing this.

  The corkscrew shook in her hand as she raised it over her head like a knife. Tears streamed from her eyes. The pale, vulnerable strip of skin on Brett’s neck shone in the pale light. He stared at her imploringly, his lips trembling, and then shut his eyes and grimaced.