Claire continued speaking, her whisper weak and pathetic. "I tried to talk to him all week, then finally ended up following him. He went to the old shack on the beach."
Her whole body recoiling, Lily finally gave the woman her full attention. "And you saw me?" Saw me and did nothing?
The woman nodded. Her eyes held no apology, only anger. "We argued."
The unknown woman. Had Lily heard Claire and mistaken her for the ghostly voice of her twin sister?
"I told him to kill you, but he refused. He was keeping you. He wanted you for himself." Claire sniffed, as if heartbroken. "There was always someone else. Why were you so special?"
"I wasn't exactly thrilled about it," Lily snarled.
"He told me we'd talk later, that we had to act normal. That night, after dinner, I snuck into his house and confronted him. Asked him why. Why everyone else? Why Judith, why children, why you? Why not me anymore?"
The very twisted nature of the question-why did he want children and not her?-didn't seem to occur to the woman. Nothing did. Claire Vincent was crazy. Maybe it wasn't the technical term, but as far as Lily was concerned, the woman was just fucking nuts.
"I told him I would satisfy him more than anyone else if he'd only let me." Her eyes narrowed and for the first time, she began to show some sign of normal emotion. Anger toward the man who'd caused all of this.
"What did he say?" Lily asked, drawn almost against her will into the woman's story.
"He told me he'd used me. That my own brother had been a better lay than I was."
God in heaven.
"I don't much like Philip anymore, but I did when he was a little boy. And when Roger told me what he'd done, I just lost it. I picked up the wine opener, stabbed him with it, shot him with compressed air. I guess it hit a vein and an air bubble went to his heart."
Lily didn't follow, but she didn't need to. The woman had just confessed to killing Roger Underwood. It was the first thing she'd said that actually made Lily's opinion toward her go up a notch.
"I went back to the beach to finish you off, sure you'd seen me or heard me that afternoon, but you were gone. I've been waiting ever since for you to show back up."
"Which is why you started killing those other men, hoping to make me look like a killer."
The woman shuddered, her eyes closing as she whispered, "Yes. And because those other men were all just like him, and killing Roger only once hadn't been good enough. He raped my baby brother. And he broke my heart."
None of the rest of the evil things he'd done seemed to matter to this woman, who let out a guttural groan as she appeared to drift into unconsciousness.
"Hey! Ms. Vincent? You there?" a voice called from above. "She's gone-the screen's inside the bathroom- she musta climbed out the window and run down to the beach!"
Thankful Jesse hadn't grown a brain since she'd last seen him, Lily tensed and prepared to attack. Jesse's footsteps pounded as he came down the stairs, and Lily, the small knife in her hand, knew she had to disarm him the minute he came into view. She could take the bastard, but not if he kept the gun.
"Ms. Vincent?" His foot appeared.
Now.
She launched, hoping to either stab him in the arm or else surprise him into dropping the weapon, but she wasn't that lucky. The swipe of her knife missed him by no more than the width of a single hair. He was bulkier than she'd remembered, but his reactions were faster than she'd expected, and he spun out of her reach. Lily followed, throwing herself at him before he could bring the gun up and aim it.
They both fell to the floor; she landed right on top of him. Jesse drew back his arm to punch her off his chest, but Lily curled in a ball and rolled off by herself, kicking with all her might as she avoided his fist.
He grunted in pain. "Bitch," he snapped, out of breath from the foot she'd just jabbed into one of his lungs. But instead of fighting back, he slid forward, his fingertips finding the gun he'd dropped. He snatched it up and swung it around toward her before she could get at him. And for the second time in her life, Lily found herself literally staring down the barrel of a gun.
This time, there was no way the shot would miss.
She swallowed, not closing her eyes, glaring at him with all the hatred she felt for the man. Steeling herself for the impact, she was shocked when there was a flash of movement, low, to Jesse's right. Then something swung up from the floor. A thud, a crunch of bone, a man's scream, and then a gunshot.
It missed.
"Wyatt!" she cried, seeing him kneeling beside Jesse Boyd, who was writhing around the floor, screaming about the pain in his leg.
Small wonder, considering an ax protruded from it. The murderous duo had apparently stopped to gather supplies from the garage.
"Lily?" Wyatt whispered.
She launched toward him, wrapping her arms around him to catch him before he could topple over. His arm dangled at his side, the wound bloody and vicious, and she couldn't imagine the pain he was in. Yet he'd still managed to swing that ax, to save her life.
"It's going to be okay," he mumbled, sounding dazed, barely conscious.
"I think that's what I'm supposed to be telling you," she replied, unable to stop kissing his face, stroking his hair. "Let me get your cell phone so I can call an ambulance." Glancing at the two other people who lay on the floor, she muttered, "Or three."
Considering Claire Vincent had stopped moving, had stopped whispering, and hadn't reacted at all to the brief but violent confrontation, maybe one of those would be a hearse instead. Meanwhile, Jesse's screeches had diminished to low whimpers, and when he looked down and saw the ax, he actually passed out. Lily took the precaution of tying him up with a lamp cord.
"Come on," she told Wyatt, not wanting to leave him here, close to the couple who'd nearly killed them both. "Let's call 911. I need to get some pants on, and then we'll wait for the ambulance on the patio." Shaking her head, she admitted, "I could really use a cigarette."
Though the local police wanted her to stay at the scene to answer their questions, Lily insisted on riding with Wyatt in the ambulance. Good thing. Wyatt didn't think he'd be able to let her out of his sight anytime soon. Not without descending into the shakes at the memory of seeing a gun pointed directly at her face.
"You okay?" he asked.
"I think I should be asking you that."
"I'm fine. Hurts, but I'll be fine."
She reached up to wipe at her eyes, not for the first time. "Thank you for saving my life."
"Are you joking? You saved mine, too."
"Does that mean we're now responsible for each other, for the rest of our lives? Isn't that the old saying?"
He turned his head, looking away. Because as much as he wanted her to be part of his life from here on out, he knew she shouldn't be. She'd been thrown into a pit of darkness and tragedy a couple of years ago, but all that was coming to an end. Now she should be with someone who smiled and laughed, someone who'd give her kids, then toss a football around with them in the backyard. Someone who'd charm her and tease her out of an occasional bad mood. Romance her. Grow old together happily.
That wasn't him. None of it. He was serious and intense, didn't want the life he envisioned her having. And while he loved her enough to give it a shot, knowing he would never be what she wanted, or what she really needed, he just couldn't put off the inevitable.
"You're okay; it's all over," he whispered. "You can go now, be free, start over. Live like the past couple of years never happened."
Her voice strained with sorrow, she said, "The past couple of years have changed who I am forever, Wyatt.