Dungeon Games (Masters and Mercenaries #6.5)(58)

At least she knew why he wanted to kill her. A million would likely buy him a shiny new boat. Terry was always complaining that he didn’t get a good deal. After their mother had died, she’d left the money to Kevin because Terry had gotten their dad’s boat and his business. Kevin hadn’t wanted it and she hadn’t even thought about it after he died. She hadn’t even realized he had another life insurance policy. “It won’t work. Derek will investigate.”

“Your new pervert boyfriend? He can investigate all he likes. He’ll go exactly where I want him to go. He’ll end up here at this house and he’ll find your body. I’ll even make a little call after the scene is set. Well, I’ll let my girl call it in. She can call 911 and say she heard you scream or some shit. The police will get where I want them to go.”

She knew something he didn’t. “What girl?” She sighed. “Starr. Of course. You’re going to pin everything on Will Daley.”

“Hey, he’s the one who got himself into this freaky crap. After Starr tells the cops about how he liked to beat her, they’ll believe anything. You know as well as I do that perception is the key to getting a conviction. Kevin taught me that. I knew I had to come down here and handle you because I’m pretty sure there’s paperwork in that box Grant sent you. He said there were some files in there. Kevin always kept a second set of records. I couldn’t let you find out about the policy. I’m the secondary on Kevin’s life insurance, but I’m not on yours at all. Once you got your hands on that money, I wouldn’t be able to get it away.”

She had to die before she could claim the policy in order for Terry to get the money. She would have very likely claimed it and set up some sort of charity to help at-risk kids. It would have been a worthy way to honor her husband.

She had to give it to him. The cast worked. No one would think he could do this much damage with a broken arm. A cast was easy to fake with nothing more than a sock and sticky gauze bandages. Unless someone touched it, they wouldn’t know it wasn’t hard. That was what she’d felt when he hugged her. His arm had been soft where she should have felt the cast.

“How do you know Starr?”

He moved down her body. She shivered because she hated the feel of his hands on her. The ropes shifted and she could feel him twisting, making new knots. Her torso was completely frozen, but he hadn’t tied her lower legs yet. She just had to wait for the right time. “She’s from the neighborhood. I went to school with her. Caught back up when she worked on a boat I was sailing for some rich guy. She’s the one I broke my arm over. She came back to New York with me and we hatched this plan to get the money. She got a job at the therapist’s office so if the cops look, they’ll find records of me coming in every couple of days. She also found the Daley guy. He’s perfect. He’s got a whole hidden life. He lies to everyone in his circle. He’s perfectly set up. I can see it now. ‘But he seemed so normal.’ Yeah, that’s how all serial killers seem. They’re going to find your body in his house and his system full of drugs. He got high. He got violent. He got sloppy. That’s the only way to catch serials. By the time his trial starts, my girl and I will have a sweet new boat and we’ll be in St. Lucia, far away from here.”

“You left Will alive?” She felt bad for the doc. He’d been trying to explore his nature and it had gotten him in trouble, maybe dead.

He shrugged a little. “Sure. It’s better to have him alive and protesting. He won’t remember a thing and I made sure he doesn’t have an alibi for the other girls I did. You know that was the funniest thing of all. I thought I would hate it. I thought that killing those other girls was just smart. I thought I would tie them up and shoot them, but when I looked into that first girl’s eyes, I wanted my hands on her. I wanted her to know it was me killing her, judging her. And somehow, she became you, dear sister. She morphed into you.”

He’d gone way off the deep end. “This is not going down the way you want it to.”

He adjusted the ropes and pulled out his cell, frowning at it.

“She’s supposed to be here, isn’t she?” Karina walked through the plan. Maybe Starr was in another room, but then why would he keep glancing back at the door, checking his phone. Someone had to get Will’s car home. They wouldn’t risk coming together. If Starr got pulled over, she could claim her boyfriend was just drunk. She couldn’t get away with two bodies.

So she was missing in action. More time for Karina.

“It won’t work if he’s not here. You have to time this just right, Terry. If you’re even a little bit off, the cops are going to figure it out.”

His jaw tightened and he stood back up, looking out the window. “No. They won’t even bother. I’m handing them a great case. The cops will run with it. They’ll look like heroes for stopping this guy at five. I’ve taken little trophies from each girl and Starr hid them here. They’ll also find the rice. I thought that was pretty funny. She used to work at an amusement park. She ran a booth where she wrote people’s names on grains of rice. The stupid f*ckers still haven’t found them. I laid out everything.”

It might have actually worked, except there was no way Derek let the little things slip. Maybe it was time to disrupt Terry’s calm. She needed him close. She didn’t need her hands to hurt him. She just needed to get her feet close enough.