But first, I had to get out of the chair, so I drew in a breath and tensed my muscles, getting ready to surge to my feet—
A beam of light flashed across one of the windows. My head snapped in that direction, and I looked at the window, wondering if I’d imagined the light. But I hadn’t. A second later, another beam of light appeared, and several sets of heavy footsteps thump-thump-thumped on what seemed to be an old, creaky wooden porch attached to the front of the cottage.
The footsteps whipped back and forth, back and forth, from one side of the porch to the other, almost as if someone outside was pacing out his anger, anxiety, and frustration.
“. . . bitch killed all my men . . .”
“. . . can’t believe you captured her . . .”
“ . . . giving her exactly what she deserves . . .”
Muffled voices sounded outside, drowned out by the whistling winter wind. I couldn’t make out all the words, but I recognized one of the voices as belonging to Rivera. Of course he was outside. He’d spent far too much time and effort turning me into his pretty little plaything not to want to finish acting out his delusional fantasy.
The voices stopped, the knob turned on the front door, and Rivera stepped into the cottage. He was still wearing the same expensive suit he’d had on before, and he looked as handsome as ever, right down to the stubble that darkened his jaw.
He studied me from head to toe, his black eyebrows arching in his face, as if what he saw surprised him. After a few seconds, he pulled a small silver flask out of his jacket pocket, unscrewed the top, and took a long, healthy swig of the contents. I could smell the caustic burn of alcohol all the way across the room, even stronger than the hair dye.
“Well,” he slurred. “I see that you’ve been busy. You’ve only had her, what, three hours? And you’ve already got her all dolled up just the way you like ’em. That’s quick work. Even for you.”
I frowned, wondering who he was talking to. The things he was saying made it almost sound like . . . like he hadn’t done this to me. Like he wasn’t the one who’d dyed my hair, painted my face, and tied me down.
I thought back over everything that had happened over the past few days and all the clues that had pointed to Rivera—the lipstick, the men he’d sent to Jade’s house, the threats that Tucker had made against him about dealing with his mysterious problem. And I realized that while those clues pointed to Rivera, they also led to another person. Someone else who also had access to all of those things.
All along, I’d thought that this whole thing was like two separate but connected jigsaw puzzles that I’d been trying to work at the same time. Well, all of the pieces had just snapped into place on one of them, and my heart dropped as I realized just how wrong I’d been about the Dollmaker.
Rivera turned toward the open door. “Aren’t you going to come in and admire your handiwork?”
A shadow appeared in the doorway, and a man slowly stepped inside. The person who was the real Dollmaker.
Bruce Porter.
25
Suddenly, everything made sense. Why Rivera’s credit card had been used to purchase the Heartbreaker lipstick. Why there hadn’t been any trace of Elissa in Rivera’s office or bedroom. Why the stones of the caretaker’s -cottage—Porter’s home—had shrieked and wailed with such violent agony instead of Rivera’s mansion.
Damian Rivera wasn’t the one who’d abducted Elissa and killed all those other women. It had been Bruce Porter all along. He’d just used his boss’s money, resources, credit cards, and manpower to help him do it and then cover his tracks after the fact.
The one thing that I still didn’t understand, though, was Porter and his motivations. But it was obvious that he was the Dollmaker and that Rivera was indulging him, covering up his messes just the way Porter had covered up Rivera’s drunken disasters for so many years. It wasn’t even a real partnership as much as the two of them seemed to be codependent in a desperate, diseased way, each unable to function without the other.
“Aw, don’t be shy, Bruce.” Rivera took another hit from his flask and stepped aside so that Porter could walk closer to me. “You certainly weren’t when you were making her look like that. You were smiling the whole time. Well, except for all the grumbling about having to dye her hair. I told you that you should have just slapped a wig on her and been done with things.”
I shivered at the thought of the dwarf bending over me, his fingers in my hair, him touching my face, him carefully painting my lips the way he had done to so many other women before he killed them.
Porter crossed his arms over his chest and eyed me, disappointment flashing in his pale blue gaze. “A wig wouldn’t have been the same.” He shook his head. “The dye’s not the same either. You know that they have to be natural blondes.”
“So sorry to disappoint,” I snarked. “Although I think that I can safely say in this case that blondes don’t have more fun.”
His eyes glittered with a hard, angry light. “I had a nice girl all picked out, and you just had to come along and ruin everything.”
I bared my teeth at him. “What can I say? I’m an evil bitch that way.”
“Yes, yes, you are,” a third, familiar voice called out.
More footsteps sounded, and Hugh Tucker strolled into the cottage.
For once, I was almost happy to see him. The vampire might be a cold-blooded killer, but he wasn’t the worst thing in the room. Not by a long shot. Rivera and Porter were tied for that dubious distinction.
Tucker moved over to the fireplace, away from the other two men, creating a clear divide between himself and the combined sickness that was Damian Rivera and Bruce Porter. Couldn’t blame him for that. Then again, Tucker was his own special kind of disease.
As I studied the vampire, I once again thought back over everything that had happened the past few days, and another small puzzle piece clicked into place in my mind, one that made everything else snap into focus. Red-hot anger sizzled through me, and I grabbed onto that burning heat, riding the wave of searing emotion and slowly letting it cool, congeal, and harden into an icy block of rage, hate, and determination in my heart.
Tucker shook his head. “You just can’t leave well enough alone, can you, Gin?”
“I could say the exact same thing about you.”
His black eyes narrowed, but I didn’t say anything else to fill in the real meaning behind my words. After a few seconds, Tucker snapped his fingers at the other two men.
“Leave us,” he ordered.