by Debra Webb
The door opened and a shift in the vehicle warned that Julian had gotten out. Was he stopping for gas? Or maybe to pick up someone else? His friend? The dark-haired man who had helped him murder his wife and her associates?
Rowan squeezed her eyes shut and fought to slow her respiration. Whatever Julian intended to do—whatever happened once the trunk lid opened—her chances of survival were far better if she did not panic. It was essential that she remain calm and keep her head clear of the distress lingering just beneath the surface of her composure. She was well aware how he thrived on the fear and panic of his victims. She refused to allow him the satisfaction of seeing her mounting apprehension.
Though she was admittedly apprehensive, she was not afraid of him. Death was not something to which she looked forward. The idea of never seeing Billy again and causing him pain scared her more than the concept of dying. These were things she did not want to happen. He had been so kind to her, always, she didn’t want to be the reason he suffered. But this would be difficult for him.
At the same time these worrisome thoughts nagged at her, she was also grateful for the possibility that in all likelihood this nightmare was about to be over—one way or another.
She supposed there was a silver lining to the darkest clouds.
The vehicle shifted again as, presumably, Julian slid behind the steering wheel once more, then they were moving forward again. Slowly this time. Half a minute later the car stopped a second time. Once more he exited, the shifting of the vehicle confirming his movement.
Rowan strained to hear. There was no traffic noise. No sound at all.
Gravel crunching had her holding her breath. The slide of a key into the lock, the twist and then the lock popping preceded the trunk lid opening.
Rowan’s gaze shot upward. She blinked repeatedly at the trunk light blaring in her face.
Julian stared down at her. “I’m going to cut you loose and I expect you to do exactly as I ask. You have the power to make this as difficult or as easy as you like.”
Psych 101. Allow the patient to believe the power belonged to her.
He removed a knife from his pocket and cut her ankles free, then her hands. She rubbed her wrists, peeled the tape from her mouth with a grimace, then the remains stuck to the skin around her wrists. When he’d pocketed the knife, he offered his hand. As much as she wanted to slap it away, it would be foolish not to accept his assistance getting out of this damned trunk.
Besides, she wanted him to believe that she intended to be completely cooperative. Also Psych 101.
When she was on her feet. He said, “Bring the tape. We’ll need it later.”
She reached into the truck and picked up the tape, then backed away a step, putting a small space between them. She didn’t want to smell the scent of him, to feel his warm breath against the chill of the night. “Where are we?”
He closed the trunk; she blinked again to adjust to the sudden darkness. Slowly the moonlight and stars allowed her to get some sense of place. Woods surrounded their position.
“I thought you would recognize the place, Rowan.”
She turned around to see beyond the car, beyond the narrow drive. An old white house sat just ahead in the sparse moonlight like a ghostly apparition against the darkness.
Not just any house...the house. The house where her mother had lived as a child.
“Why are we here?”
“We’re here because this is home, Rowan. I thought you might want to hear the whole story. The truth. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted all along?”
A new outrage roiled inside her. How she hated this man. Even as the sheer hatred seethed under her skin, pulsed against her breastbone, he was right. She wanted the whole story. The truth. Or at least his version of it.
“Are you capable of spewing anything other than lies, Julian? You’ve lied to me since the first time we met. Every single thing about you is a lie.”
“Shall we go inside? This wind is chilly.”
He didn’t wait for her answer; he grabbed her by the arm and ushered her forward. She didn’t resist. For now, she would hear him out. Her curiosity wouldn’t allow her to do otherwise, no matter that whatever he told her would as likely be a lie as the truth. They climbed the few steps and crossed the porch.
He slid a key into the lock and opened the door.
“How did you get the key?” Images of the real estate agent lying on the floor of her office with her throat slashed whipped through Rowan’s mind. She winced. Another murder because of his obsession with her.
“I’ve always had a key.”
He prompted her across the threshold, flipped a switch that filled the room with dim light.
Bile churned in her belly. “You bought the place.”
“I did. Decades ago. The house had been sitting empty like a tomb without a single corpse for all that time. Of course, I couldn’t walk into the attorney’s office and announce that I was the long-lost heir and wanted to take possession of what was rightfully mine. I purchased this abandoned property by paying the back taxes. It was all quite simple.”
Rowan turned on him. “Nothing about any of this is simple. I know what these people were. What they did. I also know what you did.”
He laughed, those blue eyes of his twinkling with the sort of condescension that came naturally to a man as arrogant as Julian Addington. “You have no idea.”
She struggled to slow down the fury escalating in her blood. She couldn’t lose control. Her future depended on her ability to outwit her mentor. To outmaneuver him intellectually and emotionally.
And then to run like hell.
“I wish you could have seen the barn in those days.” He smiled, obviously remembering. “It was a work of art. Our father—oh, wait.” He searched her face, his smile slipping into a frown. “I’m sure you know by now that your mother was my sister.”
“Yes.” She hated to acknowledge the idea, but it was part of that truth for which she’d searched so long and hard. She couldn’t pick and choose the parts she accepted. It was all or nothing. “But since my mother didn’t claim you, I don’t think I will either so don’t expect me to call you uncle.”
He chuckled, the sound a mere rumble. “We were inseparable as children. I was her protector. Her only friend.” He sighed. “You see, Rowan, this was something you and your mother had in common. Neither of you were ever very good at making friends. Sad, but true. Quiet, withdrawn. The classic wallflower.”
“Why would my mother bother making friends?” Rowan ripped the tape from the hem of her jeans, first one leg and then the other. “It wasn’t like she could bring anyone home. They might end up planted in the garden or on the dinner menu.”
He laughed outright then. “I can honestly say we never once consumed a human victim. Human cannibalism was not a part of our profile, as your friends at the Bureau would say.”
Rowan tossed the wad of tape across the room. “I am curious about one thing, Julian. Did you go into psychiatry in hopes of learning what made your mother and father want to kill? What makes you want to kill? Was it some blind attempt to understand and heal yourself?”
The sheer delight in his eyes made her want to tear into him with her bare hands.
“You would never know that I didn’t attend university or medical school, would you? My ability to pull off the charade was utterly brilliant. The real Julian Addington, however, did graduate at the top of his class. A list of honors followed his name. I found this quite pleasing.”
“You stole his identity.” She should have realized. The Bureau should have found this trail. How had he gotten away with all this and no one noticed one damned thing?
“Come, let’s sit down.” He clamped a hand around her arm once more and ushered her toward the worn sofa. He took the roll of tape from her and placed it on the table next to the sofa. “Addington was h
ardly the only blond-haired, blue-eyed candidate I considered. But he had no surviving family and his brilliance intrigued me. He had a great deal of money, which was a nice perk, and that lovely old Victorian his grandmother had left him. It all worked out remarkably well, don’t you think?”
This was one aspect she had not considered. Of all people, she knew how intelligent Julian was. Still, how had he fooled her and everyone around him so thoroughly?
Rowan shook her head. “What made you decide to murder your biological parents? Perhaps you blamed them for making you the monster you are.” She considered the idea. “No,” she amended. “I think you wanted all the glory for yourself. Or maybe you just wanted my mother all to yourself?”
Despite the anger and hatred and disgust she felt, some small part of her needed to know why he had done this to her...to her mother. Mainly she wanted to know if what she had been told was the truth. Had her mother murdered her parents or had it been Julian, as the police had suspected? She needed to understand how and why.
“Very well,” he said. “Just remember, you asked. It was your mother who took the ax to our parents. She turned into a regular Lizzie Borden when she hit puberty. I tried to stop her, and she almost killed me, too. And then she disappeared. Left me for dead.” Fury tightened his face, flashed in his eyes. “It took me forever to find her once more. And then I made sure she paid dearly for what she had done.”
Every ounce of willpower Rowan possessed was required to prevent the outrage from exploding out of her. “You and your parents ruined her. Devastated her. Turned her into what you were, and she didn’t want to be anything like you.”
The fury on his face told her she’d gotten it right.
“She was a coward. Not worthy of being one of us. She had no idea the sheer beauty of taking a life. The extraordinary gift of feeling that life drain away and yet feeling your own surge to greater heights.”
“If she wasn’t worthy, why bother with her? Why not just leave her alone? Why destroy her life?”
“She didn’t deserve to live after what she did,” he argued. “I wanted her to suffer as I had. I wanted to watch her squirm and wallow in the fear of what might occur next.”
“I see,” Rowan goaded. “You couldn’t stand that she had a normal life with a normal family. You didn’t have that. Your wife hated your guts and your daughter was a killer just like you. Every part of your life was fake, a lie. You were envious.”
“Touché.” He laughed. “Perhaps I was jealous of what she had with Edward. After all, she was mine. We were meant to be, and she took that away from me. So I took something from her. Your sister. If not for your mother’s interference, my daughter would have taken you as well, but in the end, I was grateful she did not, or the past twenty years would have been immensely lonely for me.”
Rowan struggled to even out her respiration, to slow the spiral toward losing control of her emotions. “You insisted my father killed Alisha. How can I trust anything you say under the circumstances? My mother isn’t here to defend herself so it’s easy for you to lay all the blame on her.”
“But you believed all of it, didn’t you, Rowan? Every story, every lie—you accepted it all without hesitation. You wanted to believe what was easiest, what was safest. Edward suffered the same plight. He didn’t want to see the truth.”
Rowan swallowed back the bitter taste his words evoked. The bastard was right. She had accepted the easy way out. Not now. Never again. “You’re the reason she’s dead. You—” she flung the accusatory words at him “—made her feel as if she had no other choice and she ended her life. You took her from me. And then you took my father. Give yourself a pat on the back, Julian. You’ve succeeded in making me feel the pain, making me want it to end.”
“Dear, dear Rowan.” He shook his head as if she were a distraught child. “You are so naive. Do you really believe that your mother would have purposely left you for any reason? Oh, I’m sure she considered it, thinking that the move would be in your best interest. But no, she would never have left you willingly.”
Dread and uncertainty abruptly swallowed all her anger, leaving her vulnerable. “I know what she did. I found her.” A blast of renewed anger had her adding, “You know the story well, you bastard.” How many times had they discussed that painful event?
“You did find her,” he agreed. “That was the plan. That was the beginning of you and me, Rowan. The first time I reached into your life and touched you.”
The blood roaring through her body suddenly quietened. “What are you saying?”
“You mother was dead before she ended up hanging from the end of that rope.” He held out his hands, turned them up. “I squeezed the life out of her miserable existence with these very hands, but first I promised her that in time I would have you for myself. I taunted her with how devastated you would be that she had taken her life and left you behind. It was the perfect revenge.”
“You killed her.” The words were barely audible. I couldn’t stay. The dreams of her mother saying those words to her were nothing more than what her mind wanted to believe. The truth was something entirely different.
Her mother hadn’t killed herself. She hadn’t left Rowan.
“I did,” Julian agreed, “and it was the most exhilarating moment of my life. Nothing has ever come close to that moment. Believe me, I’ve attempted to re-create that incredible high.”
Rowan drew back her hand to slap him, but he grabbed her wrist before her palm impacted his jaw. “I hate you,” she spat.
“You see, Rowan, I’ve watched you grow. Watched you mature into the woman you are. But, like your mother, you disappointed me. Now I’m going to watch you die. I only hope that taking your life will be as incredible as taking hers was.”
“Then do it, you son of a bitch, and let’s end this now.”
She would fight to her last breath to kill him first.
“Not just yet,” he said in that cunning, scheming tone that told her this was far from over. “If I had only wanted to end your life, I could have done that months ago. But I waited for the perfect moment and it finally came. Now, you must wait. Because before I take your life, there’s something I want you to watch.”
* * *
Billy pulled over into the grass in front of Charlotte Kinsley’s home.
Every minute of the past hour had felt like an eon. An ambulance, the crime scene van and four WPD cruisers were already scattered around the yard. No sign of the coroner, which meant they hadn’t discovered any bodies since Billy last spoke with Lincoln. Two unmarked sedans sat in the mix. Most likely Pryor and some of his people.
If the man was smart, he wouldn’t get in Billy’s way. Not right now.
He strode across the yard, the two officers guarding the perimeter waving him on past. He pushed through the front door and stopped to assess the scene. Charlotte and her two kids were huddled on the sofa. Lincoln sat in a ladder-back chair directly in front of them. Pryor and his agent hovered behind him. Cops and forensic techs were combing through the place.
“Chief Brannigan—” Pryor strode toward him “—you cannot be here. You are no longer a part of this task force. You need to exit the premises ASAP.”
Outrage—so hot, so fierce—shot through him, and Billy could hardly restrain the urge to pound the guy right there in front of half a dozen or so witnesses. Instead, he leaned close to the man and said for his ears only, “Back the fuck off or I will rip your head off right here.”
Being reasonably smart in addition to incredibly arrogant, Pryor turned on his heel and marched back over to his pal. The two immediately started to confer quietly behind Lincoln’s back.
Billy walked straight to the sofa and crouched down near Charlotte. “You okay?” he asked. He gave a nod to Lincoln and his deputy chief stood.
“I need to return a call. I’ll be in the kitchen for a moment, Chief.”
/> “I keep telling myself,” Charlotte said, her voice shaking, “that I should have done something different. I should have looked before I opened the door. I should have found a way to knock him out.” She shook her head. “This is my fault.”
Billy gave her hand a squeeze. “First, this is not your fault. Addington wasn’t going to stop until he got what he wanted. If he hadn’t done it today, it would have been tomorrow or the day after. Second, you did exactly what you should have done by cooperating with him. You know as well as I do what he would have done if you had refused.” He didn’t want to spell it out with the kids sitting right there.
Charlotte managed a slight nod. Her face was red from crying. The devastation in her eyes was the worst.
Billy braced against the fear that wanted to sprout inside him. “Did he say anything while he was here—to you or to Rowan—that might give us some idea where they were going when they left?”
She shook her head. “Nothing like that. He mostly just told her what he would do if she didn’t do exactly what he said.”
Billy gave her hand another squeeze. “Have you called your husband?”
She nodded. “He’s on his way home.”
“When you’ve finished your statement with Detective Lincoln, why don’t you let us take you to your momma’s house. We’ll need to do a little more forensic work around here. You all can stay at your momma’s until tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
She nodded. “I don’t want to be here until I know Rowan is okay.”
Billy’s gut clenched. “I understand. I’ll have Detective Lincoln get this wrapped up and take you now.”
“Thank you.” She hugged her kids to her shoulders. “I just need to get them someplace they’ll feel safe. It’ll be a while before we feel that way again here.”
Billy gave her a nod and went into the kitchen to catch up with Lincoln. “How close are you from being finished with questioning her?”
“She’s told us all she knows.” Lincoln shrugged. “I don’t see any reason to keep her and the kids any longer.”