“She’s been in limbo all this time.” I basked in my shame at leaving her there. “He needs to let her go.”
As always, Asa heard more than I said, and he drew me against his side. “This doesn’t make you weak.”
“I barely remember her. I’m not sure I do remember her. I shouldn’t have locked up like that.”
“She’s your mother.” Asa rested his chin on my head. “No one blames you for not wanting to hurt her.”
“She’s dead.” I forced myself to say it. “I can’t hurt her.” I swallowed again. “She asked me to end it.”
Whatever afterlife she believed awaited her, she had hoped I would help her reach it. An act of mercy. An act of love. Instead, I performed an act of cowardice. I allowed her to be taken by a man who would rather die than live without her.
“Let’s circle back to the den.” I wiped my face dry with my tee. “Maybe we missed something.”
“Your father has a piece of her now,” Asa reminded me. “He’ll find the rest.”
That was what I was afraid of.
“None of this makes sense.” I balled my hands into fists. “Why involve her?”
Why involve me?
Selfish? Yes. Whiny? Also yes. But come on. Did karma really have no one else to pick on?
“She fought a compulsion to kill you, specifically.” He sounded thoughtful. “That confirms Colby’s Game Over theory. The murders weren’t random.”
“We need to take a closer look at our victims, dig up their connections to their specific summoner.”
The best cyber sleuth in the business was on her way to us, but I figured I could give her a head start.
“Hey.” I didn’t waste time on pleasantries when I dialed Colby. “We need to be looking for a link between the summoners and their victims. They weren’t random. They were targeted.”
“I know.”
“Oh.” I should have known better than to think I was ahead of her, but I did have one confession left she couldn’t know. “Well, we didn’t figure out they were assassins until the last victim got away.”
“Got away?” Colby click-clacked in the background. “No one has gotten away.”
“I did.”
“What do you mean you did?” Clay bellowed in my ear. “Who came after you?”
A child’s first word is often a variation on mother.
Funny how I couldn’t get out a single one of them.
“They sent her mother,” Asa told Clay for me. “Saint collected her before anyone was hurt.”
A fountain of profanity spewed from Clay’s mouth, and I swore I could feel his spittle rain down on me.
“Mom couldn’t name him, but the director is behind this. He must be.” I yanked myself back from the edge. “I don’t know if she meant the entire thing or just her part of it.”
“We know he’s out of the office.” Asa lent his weight to my worry. “If he carried those bones with him, they would have offered him a bargaining chip if he ran into your father before he was ready to face him.”
I’ll trade my life for the bones of your wife, that I murdered and hid from you while I imprisoned you and raised your only child to be a psychopath.
The sad thing was, I could see the director believing that was insurance enough to save his hide.
He really had no idea who his son was or what Dad was capable of if he thought he would survive this.