“I had to leave you in the car for longer than I wanted,” Alana says as she holds the glass against my mouth. “I needed it to be good and dark before I could bring you in, obviously. If I felt like I could trust you, I’d remove your bindings. We’ll see how forthcoming you are.”
My need for water overrides my detestation of accepting something from her hand. The corners of my mouth ache from where the gag strained them, and the water feels like a balm for my dry tongue and aching throat.
Far too soon, Alana pulls the glass away. She turns the faucet off, and then crosses one slender leg over the other. If she imagines she looks calm and glamorous, she’s mistaken. Her bob of hair is disheveled, her face white like paper, and her movements jerky, like a marionette in an unskilled hand.
“I’ll make you a deal, Piper. You give me the answers I want, and you get to go home. Back to your dog, your petulant big brother, and your very cute cop boyfriend. He must be out of his mind with worry.”
“I’m sure that’s a real concern to you.”
“I’m not as cold as you might think. I’ve been in love before, can you believe that?” Alana reaches for the gun, and every aching muscle in my body goes taut.
But she only tweaks it so the handle is angled toward her. “I would prefer to not use this, but if you decide to get loud, I won’t hesitate. And I wouldn’t aim to kill, not the first time, anyway. Just something to keep in mind.”
I stare at it, seeing Emma’s body splayed on the floor, the blood soaking her dress. Has anyone found her yet? Is there any chance someone arrived in time to save her? Where is my locket? Still in the back of the car, or dare I hope that it fell out?
“So do we have a deal? You answer my questions, and I don’t kill you. We all get what we want.”
“How stupid do you think I am? You’ll never let me go. I know way too much.”
“I don’t want to kill you, Piper—”
A watery laugh wheezes out of me. “That’s not the song you were singing to Patrick Finnegan.”
Alana’s eyes spark, and her lips purse. “I said what I had to so I could get the help I wanted. I think you’re familiar with that concept, Piper.”
“You think I don’t realize you’re doing the same thing to me? Dangling my life like a carrot so that I’ll tell you what I know.”
The smile on her face is broad and terrifying. “I knew you knew where Jacob went.”
The victory in her words sends a shiver through my body. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant that you’re trying to get me to share something that you think I know. Matthew, or Jacob—whoever he is—and I were never close. I have no reason to protect him.”
“He said in his letter he would call.”
“How many times do I have to say it?” My answer comes through chattering teeth. “He never called.”
“I think you still have in your head that Jacob is the good guy, and I’m the bad. But I’m not. Not at all.”
“You killed my best friend!” I try to scream it, but the words are a meager squawk. They don’t even echo off the yellowed bathroom tiles.
“No, Jacob did.”
“I don’t recall him kidnapping her. Do you?”
Her mouth quirks. “Even now, you can’t resist being snotty, can you? Jacob’s letter to you was full of lies. Do you actually believe the man who lived next door to him just happened to be an undercover Prohibition agent? That the agent just happened to be ready and waiting for a pickup that Jacob was in charge of? That Jacob just happened to be one of the only people who didn’t get killed? Sounds like a lot of coincidences, don’t you think?”
She leans above me, her face hard and her eyes full of such a dark intensity, I look away. “Well, his coincidences stole my life. Everything I’d worked for and loved—my husband, my baby. And so long as there’s breath in my body—and breath in his—I will make him pay.”
Matthew had mentioned Alan’s widow in his letter, hadn’t he? By name, even. He had seen her in town after Lydia went missing, talking to Patrick Finnegan. Somehow, that detail had seemed inconsequential. The word widow had conjured up a mental picture of an older woman. Certainly not someone only a few years older than myself. Not someone who would have any motive to hurt Lydia.
“And it doesn’t matter what collateral damage there is along the way, huh? The life of an innocent girl like Lydia is meaningless to you.”
“Not at all. I’ll regret her death every day of my life. I promise you that.”
“Then why did you take her?” My voice sounds like it once did as a child, when I asked God the same thing about my mother. I needed her. Why did you take her? “Why did you kill her?”
“Jacob was always cunning.” She sits upright in the chair, her eyes glassy. “Or so I was told by my father-in-law. That’s why the Burks hired him, of course. Never dreamed he’d double-cross them. The private investigators the family sent just couldn’t seem to track him down, but I knew I could. I cared more, for one thing. And also as a woman, there was information I could get that no man could.”