Every Single Secret(86)

“Where did the two of you go?”

“We got in my car and drove around for a while. We talked. I told her about my life—how I grew up. About you and Cecelia. About the time I hurt myself, and Cecelia held me in her arms.”

“How did she respond?”

“She felt sorry for me. She wanted me to have sex with her.”

“Did you?”

My heart slammed in my chest.

“No. I drove her east of town, outside the perimeter, and down this gravel road. I explained to her that the only way I could connect with another human was to hurt myself or them. And then I told her that I was not going to hurt myself.”

“Was she frightened?”

“She tried to run.”

“You stopped her.”

“Yes. I stopped her. I strangled her. It felt . . . it was good.”

“How so?”

“I felt close to her. We talked . . . I talked to her.”

“About what?”

“Everything.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know. A couple of hours.”

(laughter)

“What’s so funny, Heath?”

“I don’t know. That I thought you actually could do something to stop me from being me.”

“I can help, if you’ll give me a chance. This doesn’t have to be a life sentence. But I can only do it if you’ll stay here at Baskens. I need you here, where I can administer intensive therapy. We need time and privacy—”

“No. We agreed: one week to wrap up your study, and to help me stop the nightmares, and then you owe me. You help me tell Daphne. But there’s more. You need to do something about Cecelia.”

“Why?”

“She’s been talking to Daphne. Telling her things she doesn’t need to know.”

Leaves rustled and twigs snapped just below the trailhead.

Heath, back with Cecelia.

I leapt up and gripped the iPad, my heart skittering wildly. He would pitch her off the edge of the mountain, and we would troop back down to our car and drive away from this hellhole. We’d head down the switchback roads, back through Dunfree, slowly, coolly, like he hadn’t just murdered someone—maybe two people—and I’d helped him dispose of their bodies.

I couldn’t do this anymore. This was the end of the line. The end of everything.

I walked to the edge of the cliff and closed my eyes, Heath’s crashing footsteps echoing in my ears. He was almost to the top. And he would expect to find me here, waiting.



Friday, October 19

Night

When I see the green truck drive past, relief and elation wash over me. Luca is okay. And if I can get to him, I will be too. I burst through the door of the station.

But it is a mistake.

The minute I hit the sidewalk, I’m blindsided, football-tackled and pushed to the dark side of the building. I yelp once—a swallowed cry—then find myself looking up into Heath’s eyes. They glitter, catching the light from the street lamps lining the sidewalk behind us. Or maybe it’s the reflection from the sparkly cutout jack-o’-lanterns and ghosts tied to the lamps.

Heath snatches the iPad I’m clutching and tucks it into the back of his jeans.

“Is that why you’re running from me? Because of what you heard on that?” He’s in my face now, and I can see that even though he’s wiped most of Cerny’s blood off, a trace of it has settled into the creases around his eyes. The bloody crow’s-feet give him a demonic look.

“Please, Daphne,” he says. “Can’t you see that running’s not a possibility for you now? Too much has happened. What you’ve done, what I’ve done . . . we’ve gone too far. We can’t go back.”

I can’t answer. My throat feels used up, rusted out.

“We have to face this together. Can’t you see that I’m the one person in this world who understands you? I read you like a book from the first moment I met you. I read you, and I gave you everything you ever wanted. A hero, a rescuer, the strong, silent type, right out of a romance novel, who wouldn’t ask too many questions, who wouldn’t get too close. I played it perfectly and you believed me. And now we’re a team. I know you. And now, finally, you know me.”

I don’t answer, and I can tell it frustrates him.

“I was going to tell you about who I was, but I wanted to do it on my own terms. That’s why I took the extra key from the Nissan. I couldn’t take the chance of you running away. But then Cecelia wouldn’t let up, constantly trying to meet with you, acting like the two of you were friends. I told her to stop—that it was my story to tell—but she wouldn’t listen. She was jealous of you, how much I loved you. She was going to tell you everything just to spite me.”

He lets go of me and rakes his fingers through his hair. The crazy thing, the thing that doesn’t make an ounce of sense, that the most astute therapist in the world couldn’t untangle, is that even after all I know, I still have the impulse to comfort him.

“I’m smarter than this,” he says. “I swear, I just miscalculated.” His eyes are wide pools of innocence. I wonder how he makes them look that way, how he fakes it so well. “You have to believe—I only killed the other ones, the other girls, because I wanted to prove to Cerny that he had hurt me. I thought it would make him feel guilty when I told him how he’d driven me to do it. But the man has no remorse. He didn’t care, not about the girls, not about the fact that telling you about my past had to be handled very delicately.”