“There was a redhead,” Isabel said. “She was attracted to a redhead, wasn’t she? A woman. Were they lovers?”
In the eerie twilight, Mallory’s mouth tightened. “That bitch. She got Mallory drunk and slept with her. And in the morning, she acted like it was nothing. But I knew. I knew she’d tell. I knew she’d tell her redheaded friends. So I had to take care of them, of course. All six of them, just like before.”
Isabel didn’t waste her breath with any reasoned argument. Instead, she said, “We wondered why the women were going with… him. Why they didn’t feel threatened. It was because Mallory was a woman.”
“It’s not my fault if people don’t look beneath the surface.” She-or he-laughed.
“Mallory didn’t know what you were doing, did she?”
“Of course not. She wouldn’t have been able to hide our secret. I had to do that. And I had to protect her. When she got abnormal that way.”
“What about the women in Alabama?” Isabel asked, only vaguely aware that the wind was gusting wildly now. “The brunettes? Mallory got involved with a brunette woman?”
“She was staying with a cousin over there. Just for a couple of weeks. But that was long enough. Long enough to start mooning over that dark-haired bitch. I didn’t even wait for that to get started. I just took care of it. I got rid of her. And the rest of them. The other five.”
“The ones who would have told?”
“Of course.”
“How did you know they would have?”
“Oh, don’t be stupid, Isabel. I always knew who’d tell. As soon as I saw you, I knew you would.”
“But Jamie was first, wasn’t she?” Isabel asked. “Jamie was the one who caught Mallory’s eye.”
“I thought she was over it,” the thing inside Mallory said. “She was involved with Alan, she was-was normal. But then she talked to Jamie about buying a house. And she felt… that… again. That longing. That desperation to be touched like that. By her.”
“They became lovers.”
“Lovers? What they were doing had nothing to do with love. Mallory thought she deserved to be punished, because she’d lived when the other girls had died. So she let Jamie punish her. And take pictures of it. But I made her stop. I made her go back to Alan.”
Realizing, Isabel said, “And you made her forget. Always. You made sure that her attraction to other women was… like a fantasy to her. Didn’t you?”
“It was an aberration. She didn’t need to remember that.”
Isabel nodded slowly. “That’s why Mallory never reacted to anything we found out about Jamie. As far as she knew, as far as she could remember, they’d never been involved.”
“I protected her. I always have.”
“So you sent her back to Alan. Then you watched Jamie for a while, didn’t you?”
“So sick. Ugly. And she was mad at Mallory for not wanting to do those things anymore. That’s why she got too rough with her next lover and killed her.”
“Hope Tessneer.”
“I decided to scare Jamie before I got rid of her. Besides, I was curious. So I took that one’s body and hid it. It was fun to watch Jamie panic. Of course, she was thrilled when Mallory called her. Thrilled to meet her. And, you know, she didn’t struggle at all. Isn’t that interesting? Supposedly all dominant and powerful, and she died with hardly a whimper.”
“But you killed her too quickly,” Isabel pointed out, glancing toward the box she had flung aside. “You didn’t know where she’d hidden the photos. The proof of what she and Mallory had done together.”
“I thought they’d be in her apartment. But they weren’t, of course. I didn’t know where they were.”
Isabel swallowed. “Until Emily?”
“Well, you told me to put her on the list, Isabel, didn’t you?”
The sick sensation in Isabel’s stomach churned even more. “I did?”
“Sure. You told me she might have seen something. Might know something about her sister’s killer. And she’d seen the photographs, of course; I knew that as soon as she handed over the ones with Jamie and that other bitch. I didn’t think she’d seen Mallory’s, but I couldn’t be sure. So I had to get rid of her.”
“Blood on my hands,” Isabel murmured.
“You and Rafe, both so guilty. I think part of him knew all along. I could feel it, even though Mallory never did. I think that’s what made him psychic. You said the trigger had to be a traumatic shock, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
“Poor Rafe. He couldn’t consciously believe Mallory could do anything like that. Not his friend and fellow cop Mallory. But I think he noticed something there where Jamie died. I’m not sure what; I’m very good at cleaning up after myself. Whatever it was, it told him Mallory had been there. So he knew. Deep down, he knew.”
“And woke up with blood on his hands.” Isabel drew a breath. “He’ll know for sure now. Both Hollis and me dead, probably Dean, too, and you-Mallory-still alive. He’ll know.”
“No, see, you still don’t get it. The change is finally complete. I got tired of only coming out sometimes, of being asleep inside Mallory so much of the time. So I’ve been taking over. More and more. Mallory’s gone now. She’s never coming back. And after I’ve taken care of you, I’ll leave.”
It was true, Isabel realized. She looked at the shell that had once held the personality, the soul, of a woman she had liked very much, and knew without doubt that Mallory Beck was gone. She had started going away when six little girls had died on a lake, and over the years more and more of her had fallen away.
Until now. There was only this. This evil thing that had lived deep inside.
Isabel knew.
This was the evil that had killed Julie. The evil Isabel had sworn to destroy. Crouching in the darkness. Waiting to sprint.
Wearing the face of a friend.
He/she glanced down at Hollis, faintly dissatisfied. “She’s not blonde. Neither was that stupid, nosy reporter.”
“Cheryl Bayne. She’s dead?”
“Of course she’s dead. Little twit hadn’t even realized, but I think she’d seen me slipping into the gas station a couple of days before your partner and I found the body. It bugged her enough to send her snooping around the place, but I don’t think she even knew what she was looking for. Until she found it, of course.”
“What did you do with her body?”
“A cop to the last, aren’t you?” The thing inside Mallory laughed. “They’ll find her, eventually, at the bottom of a well. I didn’t have time to play with her, you see. I had to get busy. Because she wasn’t a blonde. But you are, and you’ll make five.”
Isabel knew she didn’t have a hope of getting to her calf holster and second gun. Not without a distraction. But even as she thought of that, her mind was suddenly clear and calm, and she was aware of a strength and utter certainty she had never felt in her life.
She wasn’t alone.
She would never be alone again.
“Mallory.” Rafe was there, stepping from behind a tall monument at a right angle to the women, his gun extended in two steady hands.
“Didn’t you hear me, Chief?” The black-gloved hand cocked Isabel’s pistol and held it aimed at her heart. “Mallory’s gone. And I’ll kill Isabel if you so much as twitch.”
“You’ll kill her anyway,” Rafe said.
“Go away like a good chief and I might let her live.”
“Evil,” Isabel said, “always deceives. That’s what it’s best at. That’s why it wore the face of a friend this time. And that’s why we can’t let it walk away alive.”
The thing wearing Mallory’s skin opened its mouth to say something, but the wind that had been steadily gaining strength abruptly sent a gust of hot air through the cemetery, and the birch tree beside the chapel flung one of its broken branches through a stained-glass window.