“No, no, no! It’s Sara!”
Mind buzzing and heart rate kicking faster and faster, Reason felt Madness’s pull. She did look so much like Sara. God. Sara. Sweet Sara. “She’s not Sara. She’s Jennifer . . . Jenna Thompson.”
“Her name isn’t Jenna. It’s Sara. Sara Thompson!” Madness screamed.
“Sara is dead.” A chill shivered over tight skin leaving waves of gooseflesh. For a moment panic gripped. Chest muscles tightened. Lungs refused air.
Reason rose quickly, trying to get away from the screams of Madness. It wanted control. “We need to think. I need to think.”
Pacing back and forth, Reason and Madness were chained together. Each wished for the impossible: to be free of the other.
Jennifer was the little sister they’d barely noticed. Sara had had her little sister with her many, many times and had often joked that the two were twins separated by a decade.
“Could she have seen us when we killed Ronnie?” Madness wailed. “She might remember us.”
“She was so young.” When the girl had been found alive, they’d been so fearful. That fear had been the chip Reason had used to subdue Madness.
“What does she remember? What did she see? Did Ronnie talk about us?”
And then little Jennifer had vanished from the radar for twenty-five years. No one had known where she’d gone. No one had come for them. And life had gone on.
“We should have pressed Ronnie harder before we killed him. We should have made him show me the girl’s body.”
“You’re right.”
Youth and inexperience had led to that mistake. Control over Ronnie had not been as complete as they first thought.
“We need to fix this mistake.”
“I know.”
Time to clean up the loose end of little Jennifer Thompson.
Chapter Ten
Friday, August 18, 6 P.M.
When Rick pulled into the driveway of the Big House, he spotted the black SUV immediately. Alex. Tension creeping up his back, he parked behind the SUV and helped Tracker to the ground. The dog moved toward a patch of woods and hiked his leg. Marking his turf. “I hear ya, buddy.”
He climbed the steps and found the front door open. All these months of living here and he’d never changed the locks. Alex remembered his mother had always hidden a key in the side shed.
Through the front door, Rick shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the banister as he tossed his keys in a dish he kept on a small table by the front door. After the interview with Jenna today, he was loaded for bear and looking for a fight. Maybe it was time he and Alex cleared the air once and for all.
Alex sat in the kitchen at the new counter Rick had built. He’d loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves to his elbows. His hair stood on end as if he’d run his fingers through several times and he held a long-neck beer in his hand.
“Beer is in the refrigerator,” Alex said.
Biting back a what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-here, he moved to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer. He twisted off the top and took a long pull. “Change your mind about the land?”
“No.”
Anger he’d jealously clung to for over a year twisted in his gut, straining for release. Even the files Alex had sent over didn’t soften the sharp emotions. “Then why’re you here?”
“You get the files?”
Rick drew in a breath. “Yeah. No matches.”
Alex shrugged. “Worth a try. Killers don’t always stay in the same jurisdiction.”
“Why’re you here?”
Alex set his beer bottle down with deliberate precision. “To set the record straight about Melissa.”
Rick rested his hands on his hips. “What’s there to say?”
Alex’s gaze sharpened to a knife’s point. “There’s a shit ton to say, and I’m hoping this time you’ll listen instead of taking a swing.”
When Rick had found out about Alex and Melissa, he’d been out of the hospital just days. He’d been on pain meds and deep in the grip of grief for his father, his dog, and the job he thought he’d lost. Alex had come to him, trying to explain, but he’d pulled himself up and landed a punch that had connected with Alex’s jaw. Alex had shouted obscenities but had not struck back. Instead, he’d left and the cold war between brothers had been born. Later, Rick had learned through Georgia that he had broken Alex’s jaw.
“So, say it.”
Alex’s gaze locked onto Rick’s like a laser. “Melissa lied. She and I were never, ever, an item. Not for a second.”
Rick didn’t blink as he raised the bottle to his lips and paused as a memory socked him like a one-two punch.
“I can’t marry you.” Melissa had stood at his hospital bed. Her gray eyes were clear, no traces of crying, and her short, blond hair as perfect as her makeup. She twisted off the ring he’d given her weeks earlier. “I’m in love with Alex. And he loves me.”
“My brother! Is this some kind of bad joke?”
“No. I owed it to tell you, face-to-face.”
The memory twisted in his gut. “She said she was in love with you and that you loved her.”
“She lied. Or was living in such a fantasy world she didn’t know up from down. Maybe she just wanted to break up with you and knew this was one of the few things she could say that would really piss you off.”
“She said my brother was in love with her.” He ground the words out as if they were cut glass.
“Did you stop to think for just one fucking second?” Alex said, his tone low and his jaw clenched. “I’m your brother. I’m your flesh and blood who has known you for over thirty years. I’ve always had your back. And you took her word over mine. I’m still fucking pissed off about that.”
Rick scraped at the beer bottle label with his thumbnail. “Why would she tell me she was sleeping with you?”
“Who the hell knows? She’s a nut job. Maybe she was afraid of dealing with a man who might be paralyzed or crippled. Maybe she just wanted to hurt you because she knew you really didn’t want to marry her.”