Edge of Midnight (McClouds & Friends #4)(51)



“McCloud? I haven’t seen Sean for fifteen years, and he didn’t—”

Whack. The slap made her ears ring. “Not Sean. The other one. His brother. Don’t be thick, Olivia. It makes me angry. I’m being sweet and gentle now. You wouldn’t like to see me angry. Trust me on this.”

“I don’t know his brothers! Davy and Con are both older than him. They’d already left town when I met Sean, so I never even—”

Slap, slap, an openhand and a sharp backhand batted her head back and forth. Her eyes flooded with tears. “Not them.” The fake friendliness was gone from his voice. “The other brother.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “You mean…Sean’s twin? Kev?” she faltered. “But Kev—Kev’s dead.”

“Twin?” The knife lifted away. “They were twins?”

“Y-y-yes,” she said, teeth chattering. “Identical.”

“Hmm. Interesting. They didn’t look like twins.”

She was pathetically grateful to have given him something he wanted, but the reprieve was all too brief.

“Kevin McCloud told you where he hid the tapes,” he said. “I had you in my rifle scope. I saw that son-of-a-bitch hand you that notebook. I never forget a face. Particularly not a pretty one.”

His words blew her mind wide open and three hundred and sixty degrees around with their terrible implications. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “You’re talking about fifteen years ago? Those guys chasing Kev, trying to kill him…it was all true?”

“You know damn well it’s true,” the man snarled. “We didn’t know your name, or I would have taken care of you then. And that stubborn f*ck Kevin never told us dick, no matter what we did to him. And we were creative. You would not believe the crazy shit we tried on that kid.”

Her mind shied away in horror from the images his words invoked. “You tortured Kev?” she whispered. “Oh, my God.”

He gave her a mock bow. “C’est moi. Then I saw you on TV. Remember that interview about your bookstore? You must have been feeling pretty confident, hmm? Must have thought I’d given up.”

“My God,” she whispered helplessly.

He plucked at the buttons of her blouse with the tip of his knife. They popped off, the shirt gaping. “Where did he hide those tapes?”

“I—I don’t know anything about any tapes—”

“I’ll start with your ear.” The knife dug in beneath her earlobe. “I’m sorry to get you all bloody before we play, but if you insist—”

“No! Please! He stopped me outside the library,” she quavered.

“What did he tell you?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, struggled to remember. “He said…he said someone was trying to kill him. He didn’t say who.”

“And the notebook he gave you? What did you do with it?”

Liv hesitated, her body vibrating with stark fear.

“I don’t need to worry about fingerprints, or genetic material,” he murmured, almost idly. “They’ll never find your body. There’s a plastic tarp to catch the mess. I’ll wrap up what’s left of you after I’m done. Tuck you in a nice, deep, wormy hole. It’s all ready for you.”

She hoped desperately that she was not killing Sean by saying this. “He told me to give it to his brother.” Her voice was barely audible.

“And did you?”

She nodded, insofar as she could with a knife at her throat.

“Tell me all about this notebook, Olivia. What was in it?”

“Ah, sketches,” she squeaked. “I just leafed through it. Landscapes, I think. Animals, birds, maybe.”

“Anything written?”

“He wrote a note to his brother,” she admitted.

“What did it say?” His voice was frighteningly gentle.

Her eyes overflowed. She hated herself for her lack of self-control. “I couldn’t read it.” She forced the words out. “It was in some strange code. I don’t know anything about any tapes. I wish to God I did.”

“Ah.”

There was a long, terrible silence. She shut her eyes, and waited for him to do something horrible to her with that knife.

“You know what?” he asked, in a tone of discovery.

Her eyes opened a careful slit.

“I believe you,” he said wonderingly. “I actually do. You poor unlucky little bitch. You really don’t know f*ck-all about any of it, do you? All of this trouble and expense and exposure. All for nothing.”

Her teeth chattered. The hideous leer spreading over his face killed any hope before it could surface in her mind.

“Unfortunately for you, this state of affairs is no longer current.” His face was a mask of regret. “You know way too much now. Nothing personal, babydoll. I’ll try to make it up to you by making your last moments very sensual.” He wrenched her blouse open. Buttons flew, pattering onto the tarp around her. The fabric gave way, fell off her in shreds. The knife bit through the cord that held the cups of her bra together.

“I love to look at naked girls. Never get tired of it,” he said genially. He grabbed the waistband of her pants, started in on the buttons.

She began to scream. Grabbed the nail, closed her fingers over it until it bit into her palm. Yanked with desperate strength.

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