I try my best to keep calm. Rochelle is clearly insane, yet I don’t care. I hate her. I hate him.

  Did he know? Did he know she killed my family? Did Ryan know she killed the girl he said he loved? Oh, God. Oh, God, she killed them! She killed them all.

  I feel tears coming. I feel my body tremble.

  Jason. Oh, God, he thinks his father had something to do with my family’s death. What have I done?

  I need him to know. I need to tell him I’m sorry. I need to find a way to get out of this and back to him.

  Tonight, he fights in a cage while I will fight just as hard for us.

  “You’re right!” I cry out. “He would have loved you.”

  “Don’t patronize me!”

  “I’m not!” I yell. I can’t yell. I have to keep calm. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He cares for you.”

  “I know he does! He loves me.” She covers her face. “He loves me, and if you and that man weren’t nosing around, I would have left you alone. I would have, but now I can’t. I can’t, and it’s your fault!”

  “I want to help you. I want to get back to Jason. Then you can get back to Ryan. No one has to know.”

  She laughs maniacally. “I killed your family! Do you think I believe you?”

  Biting back rage, I try to say whatever I can in order to make it out of here alive. “If they weren’t gone, I would have never met Jason.”

  She looks at me curiously.

  Oh, please forgive me, Heidi.

  “Heidi wouldn’t have let me be with a man like him.”

  Her eyes narrow.

  “She would have hated him like she did anyone else I ever wanted to date.”

  Rochelle nods. “She threatened to tell. She threatened to tell my mother, Ryan’s father.”

  “She didn’t understand,” I say as bile fills my mouth.

  She shakes her head. “She needed to die.”

  I hold back a sob and close my eyes.

  She grips my shoulders and shakes me. “She needed to die!”

  “Okay!” I cry out. “Okay!”

  I open my eyes, and they meet hers. Her eyes are as black as night, her pupils fully dilated. She is fucking gone.

  “He knows,” she whispers and smiles. “He knows I killed them. He hates that I killed them.”

  “I’m sure he hates the position it puts you in.” I cringe inwardly.

  “What position!” she spits, and her saliva hits my face.

  “He loves you, right?”

  “Of course he does!”

  “That position. Putting someone he loves in the position that they”—I pause and try to remain calm through the lie—“kill for love.”

  “I did it for love. I did it all for love.” She steps back and starts pacing. “I went to talk to her. After she threatened to expose us, I wanted to make sure she kept her mouth shut. Your parents came into the room and told me to leave. I hit him over the head with the barrel of my stepfather’s gun. I made them tie him up. Then I made your sister tie your mom. She wouldn’t stop screaming, so I cut your mother. I cut her up good.”

  I close my eyes and try to focus on something other than her voice as she continues to tell me how she slaughtered my family. I don’t know how I manage, but I do.

  “I didn’t shoot them.” She sits at the end of the bed. “It would have been easier, but then Ryan’s father would have gone to jail. It was smart thinking on my part. It all was. No one suspected a twenty-two-year-old graduate student could pull that off.”

  “I need to use the bathroom,” I tell her.

  “No. No, because I haven’t decided what I am going to do with you yet.” She sneers, “I can’t stand the sight of you.”

  “I understand,” I lie. “Can I at least get a drink? My mouth is dry. And maybe a blanket? I’m very cold.”

  She stands up and walks out of the room. I pull on the ropes tied to my wrists, trying to break free, but the pain sears through my right wrist, and I know it’s broken from the fall. I whimper and close my eyes tightly.

  No, I tell myself. No crying. Be strong, be strong.

  She leaves me alone for a long time. I don’t know if I am in shock or if I am just unfeeling. I know my head, my wrists, my whole body hurts, but I don’t let it take me.

  I ready myself for a fight. I ready myself for vengeance. I ready myself for any opportunity given to unleash years of fury. And if all else fails, I ready myself for death.

  She comes in and tells me to open my mouth as she holds a glass of water in her hand. I do as she asks. I open my mouth for more, and she shoves something in it and holds my mouth shut.

  “Swallow!”

  I fight as I feel the pill dissolve in my mouth, trying to push it to the side with my tongue so it doesn’t go down my throat.

  “Swallow the fucking pill. If you want to use the bathroom, swallow it!”

  She is growing more and more irritated. I open my mouth and stick out my tongue.

  “Not as stupid as you look,” she sneers. “In twenty minutes, after the pill kicks in, you can use the bathroom.”

  “What did you give me?” I ask, trying to remain calm.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She leaves again, and when she comes back in the room, she looks at me. “I won’t hesitate to shoot you in the fucking head if you try anything stupid.”

  She unties my wrists and then my feet. I look at my wrists, both swollen, one definitely broken.

  I stand up from the bed, and she shoves me. I fall on the floor, and she laughs.

  “Get the fuck up, whore.”

  I push myself up on my elbows, ignoring the pain. I know it’s now or never.

  I turn and lunge at her.

  “You sick bitch! You sick fucking bitch!” I use what strength I have to try and wrestle the gun from her hands. It slips from her hands and slides across the floor.

  She is bigger and unharmed. She pushes me off her and kicks me.

  “No! Please no!”

  I scramble toward the gun, and she kicks me again. I reach for it, grasping the cold metal.

  “I don’t want to kill you,” I tell her, pushing past the pain to hold the gun in my hands like Jason taught me. “I don’t want to, but I will.”

  I sit up, pointing the gun at her, and she laughs.

  I click the safety off. “I will. Don’t you move!”

  “Fuck you!” she screams and lunges at me.

  Chapter Twenty - Eight

  Ryan and Dr. Bennett pull up in the same car. I don’t even bother saying hello as I go directly to the passenger seat and yank Ryan out.

  “You sick, sorry bastard! I know what you did to Heidi. Now you tell me where the fuck Lo is, and you tell me now, or so help me God, I’m going to rip you apart slowly and painfully like you did Heidi’s heart.”

  His mouth opens and closes, but no words come out as Dr. Bennett rounds the front of their overpriced foreign car.

  “Now, Jason, there must be some sort of misunderstanding. Our family loves Lorraine, and we loved Heidi as well. Ryan didn’t do anything but fall in love as a teenager with a girl he planned a future with. It was ended all too soon and tragically, but he loved her, and then we took in Lorraine.”

  “What do you know?” Ryan finally croaks out.

  I pull him back and slam him against the car. “What do I know? What the fuck do I know! I know you cheated on Hi. I know she wanted nothing more to do with you until you threatened to kill yourself. I know that after she died, you manipulated Lo into wearing a wig and fucking you, all so you could pretend you still had Hi. I know that you did all of this to Lo in this very house.” I point to their home behind me.

  “You wonder why she went back to her own mental prison.” I look to Dr. Bennett. “Because living here, she wasn’t Lorraine, not to your twisted-ass son. She was Heidi.”

  I turn my gaze back on Ryan. “And you were dead to Heidi long before she was dead to the earth. So tell me, pretty boy, who were you fucking?”

  He hangs his head in shame.

  “Dammit.” I shake him and slam him into the car again. “I don’t know where Lo is. I don’t know who the fuck killed her family, but I do know it ties back to this family. So, Ryan, I’m going to ask you one more time, and if you ever loved Heidi one little bit or cared for Lorraine even the slightest, you will answer me. Who were you fucking?”

  He looks at his dad.

  “Let it be, Mr. Stanley,” the doctor practically growls at me.

  I turn to him, releasing Ryan, and hold my hands up. “You have no idea what these are capable of when someone I care about is in danger. Lo is a woman of her word. She said she was going to be somewhere, and she wasn’t there. I can’t find her, and I have a feeling you guys somehow might know where she is or who she’s with. I don’t want anything more than answers.” I shake my head at him. “You’ve gotta know, Dr. Bennett, that I’ll get those answers by any means necessary.”

  “She’s missing?” Ryan asks from behind me.

  “That’s what the fuck I said and why the fuck I’m here.” I look over my shoulder at him. “Honestly, the past is the past. I don’t care where you get your dick wet. I care about finding Lo and making her feel safe for now and forever.”

  “Rochelle,” he whispers.

  Dr. Bennett moves toward us. “Shut up, Ryan. Shut the hell up right now. You’re under duress. Our lawyers will blame coercion. Shut your mouth, son.”

  I laugh. “You think I’m going to the cops? No, I know the system is fucked from the inside out, so no, this won’t go beyond us.” I look at Ryan. “Rochelle, as in your stepsister?”

  He nods.

  “Where the fuck is she, then?”

  He looks at his dad then back at me before shrugging his shoulders.

  I swing and connect with Dr. Bennett’s jaw. He stumbles and falls backward onto the pavement of their driveway. I land on top of him and start pounding. The cobra inside me is ready to kill.

  “Stop!” Ryan yells like the pussy he is. “The river house! Rochelle stays at the family house when she’s in town, but she’s not expected here this weekend.”

  I get off Dr. Bennett and grab Ryan, yanking him over to my car. Pushing him inside, I round the front and climb in.

  Dr. Bennett is on the ground, holding his head. I don’t give a shit if he calls the cops. Let them come to the river house. I have a feeling there is a much bigger story for them than my assault and battery charges on the doctor back there.

  “Directions,” I bark, and Ryan mumbles off where we need to go.

  I peel out of the driveway and don’t bother looking in the rearview mirror.

  “Rochelle is sick. She’s mentally ill,” Ryan says, looking out the window.

  “You’re right; she is sick. As in sick and twisted. At eighteen, why would she want to fuck her fifteen-year-old stepbrother?” I raise my hand. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. Just shut the fuck up and let me get to Lo.”

  “I hope she hasn’t done it again,” he says in a whisper I don’t think he intended for me to hear.

  I grab him by the hair and slam his head into the window of my door. “Talk, Bennett. What could she do again?”

  “It’s my fault,” he cries out as tears stream down his face.

  “Look here, fucker. I don’t care if you piss your pants or cry a fucking river; the only thing that matters is Lo. Now you fucking talk and tell me everything you know.”

  “It’s because of me. She killed them all because of me.”

  I slam my hand down on my steering wheel as I turn down the secluded road to their river house.

  “She wasn’t taking her meds. I told her Heidi was going to break up with me if I didn’t end it with her. I loved Heidi. Rochelle promised no more—she promised. She went to the Boschs’ house. She said it was just to talk to Heidi. Only, when she got home, she was covered in blood, wearing a sick smile.”

  I don’t bother listening anymore. I throw the car in park and jump out. The river house is smaller than the Bennetts’ home, but no less elaborate. The lights are all off, and there is no sign of life here. I don’t care. This is the only lead I have, so I have to follow it.

  At the front door, I turn the knob to find it locked. At the back door, I find the same, so I bust the glass and reach in with my hand bleeding to get inside.

  Immediately, I hear her voice arguing with Rochelle. Following the sounds, I storm into a bedroom, not thinking about what I may find on the other side of the door. Ryan barrels in behind me.

  The sight in front of us kills me inside.

  Lorraine’s blond hair is a mess around her face. There are streaks of blood down her mouth and across her cheek like she tried to wipe it away. She stands with a gun pointed at Rochelle, but her right wrist is swollen and bruised and at an awkward angle. She isn’t shaking; there is fury in her voice; and she has the gun in a firm grip, given all her injuries.

  “Lo,” I say on a whisper, and her eyes come to mine.

  “She did it, Jason,” Lo says with venom in her voice. “She killed them.”

  “She’s sick,” Ryan tries to defend.

  I look over my shoulder at him and glare.

  For the first time in my life, I am fighting the demons inside me to handle this. I want nothing more than to have Rochelle die by my hands, but there are guiltier parties than just her. Ryan and Dr. Bennett know what she is capable of, yet they still put Lo in danger.

  “I’m sick and twisted,” Rochelle cackles at Lorraine before spitting at her feet.

  Reaching out, I put her in a sleeper hold.

  Ryan steps toward me, and Lo moves the gun to him. “Don’t, Ryan. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  When Rochelle passes out, I drop her to the floor before grabbing the asshole beside me.

  “She’s sick. She’s fine when she’s on meds,” Ryan continues to defend her.

  I pull his arms painfully behind his back. He doesn’t fight me like I would expect; he just keeps his eyes on Rochelle.

  “She’s not right. Dad always told me I had to look out for her, even though I was younger. He said she was delayed, and I had to be her protector.” He shakes his head and continues mumbling. “I didn’t do my job. I didn’t protect her from the pain of the world. It was my job to keep her safe, yet I’m the one who broke her heart. She’s okay if she takes the pills.” He looks at Lo. “I promise you, if she takes her medication, she can be controlled.”

  “I think you’re all sick if you ask me, fucker. There is no controlling someone like her,” I tell him as I take off my belt and tie him to the bed with it. “Put the gun down, angel. Don’t have this on your conscience. We do this the right way. Everything with us will be right.”

  When Rochelle starts to come to, I scoop her up and lay her beside Ryan. She looks at me then at him and snuggles closer like he can somehow protect her. I watch as Ryan fights to keep himself from throwing up at her touch. I shake my head, not understanding their dynamic.

  Reaching in my back pocket, I toss my phone to Lorraine. “You need to call the cops.”

  She grabs it and winces from the pain in her wrist.

  I stand over Rochelle and Ryan, waiting for either of them to make a move.

  Before Lo can get off the phone, I hear the sound of a car pulling up. I take Lo into my arms and hold her tight as I tuck the gun into my waistband.

  Dr. Bennett rushes in and sees Ryan and Rochelle, but says nothing.

  Lo looks at me, then at him, and I give her a squeeze.

  “Why?” she asks him. “Why help her and then take me in?”

  “We thought we could make it up to you,” Dr. Bennett says without meeting her eyes. He doesn’t move into the room with us, just stands in the doorway as we hear the sirens getting closer.

  I fight my need to make them all suffer. I fight the urge to drain their lives with my own hands. I will fight my demons to give her the good she gives to me. I will fight the demons to give her a new start.

  Lorraine is my angel, and as much as I believe in an eye for an eye, she’s had enough tragedy in her lifetime. I will not leave her with more dark memories.

  With her securely against me, I place a kiss on top of her head. I will fight with everything I have to keep her safe with me until my very last breath.

  “How?” She looks up at me. “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t. Heidi wrote it in her journal. Heidi gave you to me.”

  “She always looked out for me.” There is sadness in her tone.

  “She loved you, Lo.”

  She leans against me. “She was my Hi.”

  “Always, baby.”

  She breathes heavily against me. “All I wanted was to get back to you.”

  I tip her chin up so she looks at me. “I’d move heaven and earth to find you, angel.” I pause to give her the words I have never meant more in my entire life than I do now . . . with her. “I love you.”

  Chapter Twenty - Nine

  After the detectives took my statement in the hospital, I hated myself for asking what would happen to the Bennetts.

  “Dr. Bennett was good to me,” I whisper, hoping like a child hopes when their eyes are closed that no one will see them. I need to be honest with the police officer, even if it hurts or makes me feel less than sane.

  Jason’s chest rumbles as he sits on the hospital bed, kicks his boots off, and pulls me into a protective hug, which is exactly what I need right now.

  “He and his son are facing some pretty stiff charges. Both will lose their medical licenses. As for Rochelle, she is going away for a very long time. You have nothing to worry about anymore, Miss Bosch.” The cop looks at Jason, and I assume he told them how I lived in fear for so many years.

  I hear a knock on the hospital door, but the medication the doctor gave me or the drugs in my system from Rochelle make it impossible to open my eyes. Still, I feel Jason tense up. I can’t manage to say anything coherent, but he gives me a gentle squeeze and a kiss on the top of my head, and I know without a doubt that things will be all right.