“Stop pulling my leg, Vincent.” His arm had to start quivering soon. “You were the best of us at keeping track of things. That’s why we always asked you to be the judge in any challenge.”
He gave her that beatific smile with no hint of evil to it, and moved the Taser from one hand to the other so fast that she had no time to react.
Keep him talking, she told herself instead of panicking. Give yourself time to think. It wasn’t hard to follow the instruction—because even though she was standing face-to-face with him while he threatened her, she still found it difficult to believe that the boy she’d once raced across the sands had turned into a monster.
Her questions were infinite.
“Busted,” he said with a huge laugh. “But the number is my special secret. No one will ever know what I’ve done. Not the whole of it.”
“Were you always like this?” The question came from deep inside her. “When we played as children, did you go home and torture animals?”
He tilted his head partially to the side. “Could be I was born this way,” he said and his eyes were laughing again, his amusement inexplicable and slippery. “Or could be it was the third bedtime tuck-in or the thirtieth that did it.” Another shrug. “Personally, I’m going for nurture over nature—my baby brother is definitely having a hard time hiding his crazy these days. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with him. I dealt with the problem, didn’t I?”
Cold fingers on Anahera’s neck. “Where’s Kyle, Vincent?”
60
“He burned down your cabin, Ana. I’m sorry.” Streaks of red on his cheekbones, his tone abashed. “Such a petty, vindictive little shit—and he wasn’t smart enough to change out of his kerosene-splattered jeans before he came home. I didn’t make clever choices all these years to be brought down by a spoiled brat who thought he was the big bad in the family.”
“Did you look him in the face when you killed him?”
“No.” Several golden strands of Vincent’s hair lifted in the slight breeze before settling back down. “Do you think I’m a monster? He was my baby brother. And if he’d kept on being a good little psychopath and hiding who he was from everyone, I’d have been a proud sibling. But no, he had to go and start playing asinine ego games.”
No doubt Vincent would brush off Kyle’s disappearance by saying his brother had gone traveling abroad. Nothing strange in that. Nothing strange in Kyle settling down in another country, either.
No, Vincent wasn’t stupid.
Anahera had seen no more movement, accepted that she’d fooled herself in her desperation. “So,” she said, “what do you plan to do to me?”
“My tastes have become far more sophisticated than with my first… lover.” A softness to his gaze, memories of murder and pleasure. “There’s no fun in just bashing in a woman’s face. It’s the difference between sculling a mug of cheap beer and savoring a fine wine. These days, I like to take my time.”
“I’ll be missed,” Anahera warned. “Just like Miriama was missed.”
“I told you, I had nothing to do with her death!” It was the first time he’d lost his temper, his voice rising and his hand shaking on the Taser.
A loud noise sounded in the trees at the same instant.
Vincent swung that way instinctively—and Anahera took the chance to run.
“Ana!” he shouted from behind her, but she kept on moving in an erratic weaving pattern, her feet pounding the earth and her lungs bursting.
“Drop it.” The words were cool, calm—and accompanied by the sound of the safety being disengaged on a gun.
Skidding to a halt, Anahera looked back and saw Will standing less than seven feet behind Vincent, a rifle pointed to the back of Vincent’s head. “You’re too smart to risk it,” he said when Vincent didn’t drop the Taser.
“You’re not authorized to have a gun.” The words were bitten out. “I checked with my source. Your paperwork’s still pending.”
“And you’re not authorized to have a Taser,” Will replied in that mild tone that gave nothing away. “There’s no way I’ll miss at this range. In case you’re hoping I’ll blow out your brains so you can go down in a blaze of glory, you should know I intend to shoot out your spine. I’m sure the prison hospital staff will be gentle as they turn you over so you don’t get bedsores, and when they reattach your catheter.”
Anahera couldn’t see Vincent’s face, but she could imagine the expression on it. To a man who’d been a prince, then a king, the idea of being helpless in anyone’s hands would be an enraging one. And, when it came down to it, Vincent Baker was a coward.
She wasn’t the least surprised when he dropped the stun gun.
“Turn around,” Will ordered. “Hands behind your head.”
Vincent obeyed, his eyes meeting Anahera’s across the clifftop clearing as Will closed in on him. “I guess our date will have to wait,” he said, that perfect, innocent smile on his face. “We would’ve had so much fun.”
61
Vincent’s arrest pounded a shock wave through Golden Cove. Especially when it came out that there was a recording of him confessing to his heinous crimes. Will had turned on the recorder on his phone partially through the standoff, and the device had picked up both Anahera’s and Vincent’s voices. Not everything but enough.
“Thank God,” Anahera said to Will four days later, when they finally had a chance to be together.
Will had been caught up in the logistics and legalities of making sure Vincent would never again walk free. The one thing he hadn’t had to explain was illegal use of a firearm. Because the rifle he’d used to disarm Vincent was one of the decommissioned pair that hung in his rental; it wasn’t capable of firing even a single shot.
As for why Will had brought it with him—he’d run into Evelyn Triskell just as he was leaving the house. She’d stopped her car while passing his place, and yelled out a “Yoohoo!”
It turned out she’d gone for an early morning coffee-and-croissants run to Josie’s. But what she’d wanted to tell Will was that, on her way back, she’d glimpsed a hoodie-clad figure cross the road in the distance, moving from the hillside bush track to a track that Will knew led to the cliffs.
“The one he came from, it’s no doubt a messy track to run at the moment,” Evelyn had said. “Rain always turns it into a bog for at least a week, usually causes a rockfall or two along the way.” Pursed lips. “It’s probably one of the local boys wanting a challenge, but you really should do something about blocking off that track while it’s unsafe.”
Will’s instincts had kicked in.
“I memorized the track routes during the search for Miriama,” he’d said afterward, his eyes like chips of slate. “I knew the track Evelyn was complaining about started at the Baker property. I figured it had to be Kyle. I could see him setting the fire to get back at me—and I knew that’s where you must’ve gone.”