Thorne heard the soft splash and closed the porthole. Yes. Gwyn had escaped. She should never have given herself up back at the crash scene. She should have kept running. In his mind he’d been screaming for her to do exactly that, but his body and his voice had betrayed him.
‘I know who you are,’ the kid in the corner said quietly.
‘Oh?’ Thorne reached him in a few unsteady strides and dropped to his knees. ‘Turn around. I’ll try to get your cuffs off.’ The kid – Blake Segal, the judge’s son – complied, and Thorne fumbled with Gwyn’s lockpick. ‘Gwyn’s better at this than I am.’ His fingers burned like fire, his circulation still coming back after lying on his cuffed hands for so long.
‘You’re Thomas Thorne. The man who my father said killed my mother.’
Thorne paused, then went back to picking the lock. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think you’re being set up, just like my dad.’
Well . . . The ‘just like my dad’ part was a hundred percent wrong, but Thorne could pacify the kid for a little while if he needed to. He might need him should the opportunity to escape arise.
He hadn’t expected to be put on a fucking boat. His mind replayed the sight of Gwyn disappearing from the porthole, and the splash, and he hoped like hell that she was a strong swimmer. She’d been raised on a crab boat, for heaven’s sake. She should be a good swimmer.
The lock on Blake’s cuffs gave and he turned around, rubbing his wrist and giving Thorne the first look at his face.
Holy shit, the kid looked just like Richard Linden. It was like going back nineteen years.
‘What?’ the kid asked. ‘You just went . . . I don’t know. Like you saw a ghost.’
‘I kind of did,’ Thorne murmured, then forced his body to cooperate as he lunged to his feet, because he needed to put some space between himself and this kid who looked so damn much like the asshole who’d almost ruined his life. His head went dizzy and he remembered being in the hospital on Sunday, feeling the same way. ‘Deja-fucking-vu all over again.’
Blake was studying him like he was some kind of microbe under a microscope.
‘What?’ Thorne demanded.
The kid shook his head. ‘I’m trying to decide what I believe about you.’
Thorne sighed. ‘I’m innocent. I hope that’s what you choose to believe.’
‘Did you kill my uncle Richard?’
Thorne was shocked. ‘No. I tried to save him.’ And he wasn’t your uncle, kid. He was your father.
‘I read about that a few years ago. All about the trial, I mean. My mother didn’t want me to and my father forbade it.’
Thorne’s mouth quirked up. ‘So you had to do it. I can understand that.’ He blew out a breath. ‘Look. I’m sorry about your mother. I hadn’t seen her in almost twenty years. I didn’t even see her Sunday morning. I was unconscious.’
‘I read that too. Online.’ He fidgeted with the other cuff.
‘Stand up. I’ll try to unlock that one too.’
Blake complied once again, lifting his hand while continuing to study Thorne’s face. ‘Did you know my mother well?’
‘No.’ He set to work on the second cuff. ‘She was a few years younger than me. And shy.’
‘I can’t picture her as shy,’ he murmured. ‘Did you know my . . . uncle?’
The deliberate pause had Thorne glancing at Blake’s face, and he realized the kid knew. Or at least suspected.
‘Yes.’
Blake made a frustrated noise. ‘And? What was he like?’
Thorne sighed. ‘You aren’t going to like my answer, so can we pretend like you didn’t ask?’
‘No.’ Blake grabbed his shirtsleeve. ‘I need to know. Nobody would ever tell me anything, and I need to know.’
Thorne heard the lock click open. He removed and pocketed the cuffs. Gwyn had already put the other pair in his back pocket. He scanned the floor, scooping up her discarded cuffs. Her gun holsters were like flags proclaiming she’d escaped. He picked them up too, rolled them up, and . . .
His chest hurt. Lavender. He could smell her perfume. He shoved her holsters under his shirt and turned to Blake Segal, who watched him with something akin to desperation.
‘What exactly are you asking, Blake?’ Thorne asked carefully.
‘I look like him.’
Thorne didn’t pretend to misunderstand. ‘You do. A lot.’ He went to the knife chest and began arming himself from the dozens of blades, sliding a stiletto into one pocket and a sheathed short-hilt military-grade utility knife into another. These were Tavilla’s tools, he knew, and he wondered how many people had been murdered with them.
‘Have you ever killed anyone?’ Blake asked.
‘No. Beat up a few, but only if they threw the first punch.’ He glanced sideways at the kid. ‘Should I trust you with a knife?’
‘Yes,’ Blake said soberly. ‘But if you threaten me, I’ll do my best to kill you.’
Fair enough. ‘I won’t threaten you,’ Thorne promised, and hoped the kid wasn’t a sociopathic liar like his father had been. He handed him a medium-sized blade with an easy-to-handle hilt.
‘Was Richard my father?’
Thorne drew in a deep breath and carefully closed the doors to the knife chest. ‘Yes. I believe so, anyway.’ He turned to face Blake, whose eyes were now closed, his breathing fast and shallow. He couldn’t imagine what the kid was feeling, so he offered no platitudes. ‘You suspected?’
‘Yeah. They told me I was adopted. Then later, when I saw pictures of my uncle, they told me that they’d picked me because I reminded them of his baby pictures.’
‘That’s . . . so wrong.’
Blake nodded. ‘He raped her? My mother, I mean?’
‘I think so. That’s the testimony we heard from a man who was once one of’ – your uncle’s? your father’s? – ‘Richard’s friends. Well, not a friend, necessarily. More like one of his followers. He was popular back then.’
‘Until he was dead.’ Blake sucked in a sudden breath, as if something had just occurred to him. ‘Who killed him, if it wasn’t you?’
Thorne found himself hesitant to answer. ‘Look, kid. Blake. Let’s get out of here, okay? Then I swear I’ll answer any question you’ve got to the best of my knowledge and ability.’
‘You just did,’ Blake said dully. He took a deep breath. ‘What do you need me to do?’
The question came none too soon, because there was a scratching at the door. Someone was unlocking it.
Thorne gestured for Blake to return to the corner where he’d been, then hid himself behind the door, his heart pounding so hard it was all he could hear. He scanned the room, looking for any other evidence that Gwyn had escaped through the porthole.
He found nothing. Good. Let them look for her on board. Even buying her a few extra seconds could make the difference. Unfortunately he hadn’t thought to arrange the box to make it look like he was still in there.
The door opened and a slender man walked in. Thorne had no idea how many people were currently on this boat, but there would soon be one fewer. When the slender man had entered far enough, Thorne shut the door behind him and grabbed him, clapping one hand over his mouth and one arm around his throat.
This guy would be an easy win. He was puny. He was . . .
Shit. He was Detective Brickman. Fuck this. He couldn’t kill a cop. Even a dirty one. He put the knife blade carefully against Brickman’s throat. ‘Do not move,’ he breathed. ‘Do not make a sound or I will slice you from ear to fucking ear.’
He could feel Brickman’s shiver. Good. Quickly he grabbed the smaller of Gwyn’s holsters from inside his shirt and rammed it in Brickman’s mouth, then he shoved the cop to the floor, knelt across his legs, and yanked his hands behind his back, restraining him with the same cuffs that Brickman had used on him.
‘Karma’s a bitch, isn’t it?’ he murmured, then used the second set of cuffs on Brickman’s ankles. He dragged the cop to the corner behind the door and covered him with the remnants of the refrigerator box. He turned to find Blake Segal staring at him with wide eyes.
‘Holy shit,’ the kid breathed. ‘Why didn’t you kill him?’