Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 96402 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96402 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
“You’re not going to.” Cairo climbed out of the truck. “No one is going to know you were involved.”
“But—”
“Listen. You don’t know who did this, but while they’re playing this sick game with you, they’re not trying to kill you,” he said. “If the game ends, who knows what the fuck this psycho will do, and we don’t know who he is to see him coming. You can’t go to my dad talking about Letter Men and burning Cavendish alive. If he doesn’t flat-out arrest you, it’ll get very dangerous for you in Bedlam, very fast.”
“Bella,” I whispered.
“We won’t leave her like this. I’ll tell the sheriff I came out to an abandoned farm to fuck around and interrupted Bella’s murder. The guy attacked me.” He gestured to his shoulder. “And got away. I didn’t see his face, but going by the arrow, he’s connected to Cavendish’s death.”
I was listening even if I couldn’t move. “Do you think that will work?”
“Yes. The sheriff won’t blink an eye. His officers will work the scene. They’ll find any evidence if it’s there and look into Cavendish’s background on their own. She will have justice. By Judge Stone’s hands, or ours.”
“Okay.”
My voice was small. I was small—curling in on myself, pressing my forehead to my knees. Bella’s cries. Her bulging eyes begging me to stop played on a horrific loop in my mind.
“Let’s go.” Cairo lifted me up. He groaned in pain but kept up till he placed me on the passenger seat. “You can’t be here when the sheriff arrives. I’m taking you back. The guys will take care of you while I handle this.”
“I... should drive,” I said, though I still didn’t move.
“Sleep, Rain.” He gently closed my eyes. They stayed close. “This won’t happen again. The shit finally made the mistake that’s going to end him. No one messes with what’s mine.”
His possessive kiss stole my lips—the final send-off pushing me off the cliff. I sank into the darkness, where the Letter Man waited.
JACQUES
“Cavendish ordered his own execution.” I repeated it, and for the points stacked against my IQ, it made no damn sense. “He asked to be burned alive?”
“I don’t know that he specified the how,” Legend said, voice not carrying. He glanced in his room where Rainey was an unmoving mound beneath his sheets. “According to Cairo, it wasn’t just that he threatened to kill Jennifer Wilson. He ordered Rainey to kill him to save her life. Afterward, another deranged fuck took over.”
I softly shut the door, leaving her to sleep. Legend followed me down to the kitchen, silent and allowing me to think.
I can’t imagine what he thought was going on in my head that was different than his. I had no obscure theories to recall. My mind wasn’t a source for abnormal psychology.
This was new.
“How did it start?” I asked. “Why?”
“Cairo got as much out of her as he could. Rainey said she didn’t know him. Cavendish was a stranger to her, and she can’t begin to guess who this new guy is.”
Legend pulled ingredients from the fridge, preparing to make a late-night meal. People marvel that a young wealthy man knew how to cook as well as Legend did. But then people were ignorant creatures who based their conclusions on stereotypes instead of reason and observation.
Learning to cook and become self-sufficient was the logical path for a person with absentee parents, who frequently lost nannies and housekeepers for refusing to pay them a salary suited to the amount of work they made them do. Legend spent a considerable amount of time in his formative years in this mansion alone. He had to learn to cook. No one else was doing it for him.
“That doesn’t follow,” I said. “If this is a personal vendetta, naturally they cannot be strangers. Their paths will have crossed at some point and set off the chain of events that led them here. If de Souza doesn’t know the direct cause, then there must have been an indirect one. Example, she ran over Cavendish’s little sister in a hit and run, and didn’t know she had a brother. There must be something,” I repeated.
“Only one fault in that logic.” Legend brought out the cutting board. The onion reduced to mince under his knife. “A vengeful brother would light her on fire. He wouldn’t give her a choice between killing him and a random woman. The plan clearly wasn’t to have her arrested for his death either. His accomplice continued the sick game instead of turning her over to the cops.”
“You’re correct.” I dug my palms into my temples, clenching my teeth as pressure built behind my eyes. “This does not correlate to the majority of revenge killings. Why are both of these people determined to make Rainey de Souza a killer?”
“What do we actually know about Rainey in the first place?” Legend’s voice was growing small. “I remember the times she came to the distillery, rattling in the back of the truck with the corn delivery. She’s not lying about the farm or the old woman who rode with her...”