When he pulled out, I gasped, legs shaking and chest heaving as my body buzzed with the aftershock of what we’d just done. His cum slid down my thighs, warm and filthy, and I knew I’d feel him there forever, even when I finally washed myself.

  If I ever had the opportunity to wash again, that is. Given who he was, I might not. I might not even survive another hour in this world.

  At that thought, I sagged against the tree, but Malachi caught me before I slid to the forest floor.

  “Get dressed,” he commanded.

  My limbs felt weak and rubbery, but I forced myself to move anyway. I grabbed my T-shirt off a nearby bush with trembling hands and dragged it over my head with all the grace of a newborn fawn. My panties were shredded beyond use, so I left them on the leaf-strewn ground and reached for my satin pajama pants, which were a wrinkled mess beside them.

  Malachi didn’t offer help. Just watched.

  Once I’d managed to fumble my way back into my wrinkled pants, he stepped forward. Then, without warning, he picked me up and slung me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing.

  I let out a surprised yelp, but he didn’t acknowledge it. Just started walking, back into the belly of the forest that had swallowed us both whole.

  His hand gripped the back of my aching thighs as we moved, fingers pressing possessively into my skin. My hair hung down toward the forest floor, and with every bounce of his stride, my head spun a little more.

  I should’ve screamed at him. Pummeled his back and demanded more answers. But I was spent. Totally wrecked.

  Eventually, the trees thinned, and Malachi put me down, setting me roughly on my feet. The silhouette of the old house loomed before us, and he put one hand on the small of my back and pushed, silently commanding me to walk toward it.

  “This place looks condemned,” I muttered, blinking at the hulking old structure through dazed eyes.

  “It is,” Malachi said. “That’s why I bought it. It’s the perfect place for condemned souls.”

  When we reached the front door, he opened it and nudged me forward. I walked. Not because I wanted to, but because I knew that if I didn’t, he would make me.

  He marched me through the house and down the stairs, and we’d just reached the dim cell on the basement level when it finally hit me.

  I hadn’t asked the most obvious question yet.

  “Where’s my father?” I blurted, my voice hoarse.

  Malachi looked at me, one brow arched.

  “That’s funny,” he said, his tone so smooth and casual it made the hairs on my arms rise. “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

  27

  Kennedy

  I stared at Malachi through wide eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  He took a small step closer. “Where’s your father, Kennedy?” he asked. “I know you’ve been in contact with him.”

  “Is this a joke?” I shook my head. “Why would I know where he is? I only found out he was still alive a few weeks ago!”

  Malachi tilted his head. “That’s not true, sweetheart.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said through gritted teeth. “The Carver—you—took him from me when I was twelve, and you’ve had him this whole time. So what the hell are you talking about? Did he escape from you? And you think I know where he’s been hiding?”

  He lifted a brow. “It’s just the two of us here, Kennedy, and no one’s watching or listening in on us. So you can drop the act. You know there was never a Carver.”

  I stared at him for a moment, utterly stupefied. “You’re literally the Carver,” I finally said. “Are you so delusional that you don’t even know you exist?”

  “I’m not the Carver. You just assumed I was,” he replied. “Although, to be fair, I wanted you to assume that. You and everyone else. And technically, my kill count and methodology does classify me as a serial killer now. I’m just not the one you think I am.”

  I sneered at him. “So… you’re a copycat killer?”

  “Of sorts.” Malachi smiled faintly. “But it’s hard to copy someone who never really existed.”

  I threw my hands up, head shaking. “Unbelievable,” I muttered. “You’re even more psychotic than I originally thought.”

  He let out a heavy sigh. “You know, when you sent me that message about your father last night, I thought you were finally ready to start telling me the truth. Or at least enough bits and pieces of it to help me out,” he said, eyes flickering with disappointment. “That’s why I brought you here. I really thought you were done playing all these games. So what’s with the sudden back-tracking?”

  “Back-tracking?” My head was still shaking as confusion roiled in my guts. “What message are you even talking about?”

  Malachi pulled out his phone, tapped on the screen, and showed it to me, displaying the message I’d sent him about my father’s link to the other early Carver victims.

  “What’s that got to do with any of this?” I asked, brow furrowing.

  He let out another heavy sigh. “I see you’re really set on playing your game again,” he said, tilting his head. “So, here’s the deal. I’ll play along for now.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked. Knowing him, ‘playing’ could entail anything from a simple word game to using me as a dartboard.

  He put his phone away and pulled out his gun instead, making me shrink back in terror. “Sit down,” he said, waving the barrel toward the mattress on the floor. “I'm going to tell you a little story about myself. Once you hear it, I think you'll realize just how much I know. And that'll make you realize there's no point in pretending anymore. No point in hiding.”

  I lifted my palms to show him I was cooperating with his demands as I slowly sank to the mattress. He finally put the gun away, seemingly satisfied I wasn’t going to do anything stupid, like charge at him or try to run out of the cell.

  “I was in a car accident that killed my parents when I was ten,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I think you already know about that, don’t you?”

  “I knew about the accident. But I didn’t know you were in the car with them,” I said, voice barely above a whisper.

  “My sisters were there too. We were on our way to a family lunch.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, unable to stop the rush of empathy. “That must’ve been really hard on all of you.”

  “It was hard on Hannah and Cameron. But I was just numb afterward,” he replied, shrugging. “At first, everyone thought I was in shock. But eventually, my uncle realized something deeper was going on.”

  “Elijah?”

  “Yes. He took us in after our parents were gone,” he said, nodding slowly. “Anyway… he eventually noticed something was wrong with me.”

  He spent the next few minutes describing a traumatic brain injury that the doctors had initially missed when he was assessed after the accident. It had severely impaired his ability to feel empathy, fear, or remorse, and that in turn had led to a strong inclination to violence and manipulation.

  In other words: it had turned him into a psychopath.

  “That injury took a lot from me, including my ability to love,” Malachi went on in a stony voice. “But it didn’t take away my ability to care for people who were important to me. Didn’t take away the desire to protect them.”

  “Sounds pretty close to love, if you ask me,” I said, eyes flicking back to his face.

  A ghost of a smile quirked up his lips. “I thought the same for a while. But apparently, it’s not,” he said. He paused for a beat, then spoke again. “My uncle was a great man. He raised my sisters and me like we were his own kids. Never made us feel unwanted, or like a burden, even though he’d chosen not to marry or have kids of his own. Never made me feel like I was wrong or broken, despite my condition. Just took it all in his stride.”

  “That’s nice,” I murmured.

  “When I was seventeen, I received a full-ride scholarship to Caltech for a double degree. Computer science and—”

  “Accounting?” I cut in, arching a brow. “Or was that forensic accounting story of yours total bullshit like most of the other stuff you’ve told me since we met?”

  “It was true. Everything I told you that night was true,” Malachi replied. “Except for one small detail.”

  He paused again, and I stared at him silently, waiting for him to continue. He seemed set on telling me his whole life story, and I was happy to listen, because the longer he blathered on, the longer I had to stay alive and think of a way to escape.

  “I’m the youngest of the siblings. So by the time I flew out to California for college, Hannah was already married and living in Boston, and Cameron had moved out to share an apartment with her best friend. That meant Elijah was alone again, so I flew back to visit him whenever I could. I always enjoyed his company.”

  “Nice of you,” I muttered.

  “When I was in my junior year of college, the Carver struck for the first time. The case took over the national zeitgeist for a long time. And then Elijah was accused.”

  I sighed, rubbing my temples. “For what it's worth, I'm sorry that happened,” I said. “He didn't deserve any of that. Neither did anyone in your family. Including you.”

  “I know. He was innocent. But that didn’t stop the vitriol from the public. One of those motherfuckers even burned his house down,” Malachi said, voice laced with bitterness and barely-concealed fury. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah. It was horrible.”

  “That abuse went on for a long time. I flew back to see him and comfort him whenever I could, and my sisters tried their best too,” he said. “But it didn’t stop. Elijah became completely withdrawn. Depressed. And who could blame him? He’d lost so much. He even lost his job because of the pressure CBU faced for having him on their staff. And that job was his true passion. He was independently wealthy, so he didn’t even need to work, but he absolutely loved teaching. He was absolutely devastated when that was ripped away.”

  “The way he was treated by the world was disgusting,” I said. “I made that very clear in the podcast. I never thought he was guilty, and—”

  Malachi lifted a palm to cut me off. “I know. Just let me finish,” he said. “My uncle called me a week before his birthday in 2015, telling me I didn’t need to fly home as we’d initially planned. He said he’d decided to take a vacation to get away from it all, and he sounded upbeat and optimistic about things for the first time since the accusations started flying around. So I wished him a good trip. Told him to send me pictures.”

  He fell silent for a moment, and I sat up a little straighter. “There was no vacation, was there?” I asked.

  “No. It took me four days to work it out. I was talking to a friend from the dorms who was studying psychology, and he happened to mention something about people who are planning to kill themselves. Apparently, a lot of them suddenly seem happier to their loved ones before it happens. Because they know it’s all going to be over soon. All the misery and suffering. Over.”

  “So what happened?” I asked in a small voice.

  “I called my sisters and told them to check on Elijah. Then I got the first available flight out.” Another lengthy pause. “My sisters couldn’t find him in his house. I knew he’d always loved a spot by the lake near his old house, before it burned down, so I went out there, and…” He trailed off again. “I was too late.”

  “I’m sorry, Malachi. Really,” I said softly.

  He sounded so sincere, so heartbreakingly human, and that terrified me. Because if I started to understand him, I might forget what he really was: a cold-blooded killer.

  His eyes hardened. “I thought everyone would realize the mistake they’d made once they heard about his suicide,” he said. “But instead, most of them doubled down. Said he’d done it out of guilt. Said it was proof.”

  “I know. People are awful.”

  “I decided right then and there that I was going to find the real Carver. Hunt him down and make him fucking pay,” he said. “Slowly and painfully.”

  I shouldn’t have been watching him the way I was right now. Shouldn’t have noticed the fire glimmering in his eyes, the way his shoulders moved beneath his shirt, or the faint scar above his brow that tugged every expression into something harder. He was talking about death—about slow torture and vengeance—and yet, all I could think about was how dangerously alive he seemed.

  It made me feel sick, but it also made something flutter low in my core.

  “So that’s the small detail I wasn’t honest with you about,” he went on. “I didn’t struggle to look for a job after college and eventually go to the police academy because of that. I chose to go there straight after graduation.”

  “So you could become a detective,” I said, nodding slowly. “Because that would help you track down the Carver.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s also when you changed your last name?”

  He nodded. “At the time, Cameron had just changed hers to our mother’s maiden name, because she was still living near Corwin Bay, and people were giving her a lot of shit just for being related to Elijah,” he said. “So I decided to change my name too. No one in California really knew who I was, but I figured if I ever wanted to move back east and get on the Carver case, I’d need a clean slate. A different surname. One no one would question.”

  “Makes sense. Conflict of interest, right?”

  “And guilt by association,” he added, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Plenty of cops wouldn’t want me anywhere near the case if they knew who my uncle was… or who they thought he was,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Anyway, I turned out to be good at detective work. Really fucking good. And the stuff I told you about having a knack for cold cases? That was all true. So, once I made the move back east a few years later, I knew it was only a matter of time until someone pulled me in to reexamine the Carver case.”

  “Right,” I muttered.

  “Not that I’d been waiting,” he said. “I was already working on it in secret from the second I graduated the academy. Reading the files, combing through all the databases I could access with my badge. Totally illegal, of course. But the great thing about my condition…” He gave me a faint smile. “I don’t lose any sleep over breaking the rules.”

  “Because you’re incapable of guilt or remorse.”

  “Exactly.” The sinister smile lingered for half a second longer, then faded. “Anyway… I was stumped at first. Like everyone else. I must’ve gone over the files a hundred times before I finally saw through the cracks.”

  My pulse picked up. “How?”

  “I always thought it was odd that the first five victims happened to attend that book club. Same night, same time, every week for years. And they were also the only victims whose bodies were never recovered,” he said. “But I didn’t think much of it for a long time. Like everyone else, I assumed it was just another strange coincidence in a case full of them. But something about it kept itching at me.”

  “So you called the library?” I asked, thinking back to my conversation with Marla. She hadn’t mentioned any of this.

  He shook his head. “No. I hacked into the security footage from the shop across the street from the library parking lot. They had a camera aimed right at the exit. And what I saw…” He narrowed his eyes, voice tightening. “Every Saturday, like clockwork, the five of them left together. An hour early. But you know all about that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I muttered.

  “For a long time, I assumed they were into something shady. That they were targeted by the Carver because of whatever it was they were up to,” he said, rubbing a hand along his jaw. “But eventually, I stopped asking why the Carver killed them, and started asking if he ever really did.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Their bodies were never found, Kennedy,” Malachi went on, voice low and sharp. “Because the first five victims didn’t die. They faked it.”

  I stared at him open-mouthed, so confused and shocked that I couldn’t even muster up a vague sound of acknowledgement in the back of my throat.

  “The Carver wasn’t a person,” he went on. “It was a performance. A fabrication. And they were the ones behind it. All five of them. Working together.”

  I blinked again, slower this time. This conversation couldn’t possibly be real. I had to be hallucinating right now.

  “That’s why the first five riddles were so much harder than the rest,” Malachi said, eyes glittering with something manic. “They needed time to go into hiding. To make it believable. They left just enough blood at each site to suggest wild animal predation. Because if police found the sites too soon and couldn’t find any bodies…” He tilted his head. “That would be a red flag, wouldn’t it?”

  I shook my head slowly. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Kennedy,” he replied, eyes narrowing again. “The Carver wasn’t a lone killer. It was them. Christopher Miles, Silas Boone, Heather Voss, Brian Delgado, and last but not least…” He paused, chucking darkly. “Mark Campbell. Your dear old dad.”

  My stomach lurched. “You really are insane,” I hissed. “They were all victims.”

  Malachi leaned in slightly, voice almost fond. “We both know that’s not true. But like I said, I’m happy to keep playing this little game of yours for now,” he said. He reached out to stroke my hair. I flinched, and his hand dropped back to his side. “I’ve always got time for you.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you think you’ve figured out, but I swear, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said in a low voice.

  He let out another dark chuckle and slowly shook his head at me, like I was a child who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar while stubbornly proclaiming her innocence.

  “Once I figured out what the five of them had done, I had my work cut out for me. Not only did I need to know where they were, I needed to know why,” he said, eyes sharpening. “What makes five people decide to get together and start a murder club? Something like that doesn't just come out of nowhere. And it would take years of planning, too. So I knew my best bet for getting answers would be to find at least one of them. And I intended to find all of them anyway.”