Page 156 of What She Saw
“Great imagination.”
“Did your father figure this out?” I asked. “Did you shoot him?”
Her smile flickered. “I loved my daddy.”
“But Daddy discovered something, didn’t he?”
“You don’t know anything.”
I shook my head. “What did Daddy figure out five years after the festival? Did he find a few mementos from the other girls in your room?”
She stared at me with a steady gaze that felt more detached than connected.
“He freaked out, didn’t he? I mean, that festival was a disaster for him. I hope you denied it all. Confirming the man’s discovery would have been a final blow for him.”
“You have a lot of answers.” Her flat tone suggested I’d hit a nerve.
“And then what? You spiked his whiskey. Was he barely conscious when you wrapped his hand around the gun and pulled the trigger?”
Silence settled over her.
“Come on. It’s just us girls here.”
“Shut up.”
“Hopefully the poor old man never felt a thing.”
Her eyes glistened.
I kept pressing. “And Taggart? Did he get too close? Did you spike his whiskey?”
She shoved out a breath as she blinked. “He wouldn’t let the case go. He was ready to pull in the FBI and run the forensic tests all over again. He was convinced that new technology would give him more precise information.”
“You drugged him. Shot him.”
Her brow knotted. “He wasn’t a happy man. Haunted, really. It was an act of mercy.”
She might have seen herself as a sympathetic angel, but I saw the demon scratching under her skin. “And Brian Fletcher?”
“I knew Tristan was alive. I figured with you in town, old memories would be resurrected. It was a matter of time before he told someone about her. And I couldn’t trust what she might have remembered.”
She’d been waiting for the last shoe to drop for thirty-one years. “You going to keep shooting people?”
“I just might.”
“You going to toss my body down the mine shaft?”
Her eyes brightened with interest. “You are clever.”
“I like to think so.”
“No one will remember it soon. The barn is falling in on itself, so I’ll buy the land and bulldoze over it all.”
“Sounds almost convincing.”
Cody barked. Big paws thumped through the thicket toward me. He’d broken free. As he bounded out of the woods, Bailey shifted her gaze. It was a slight shift, the hint of a hesitation. But it was enough. I drew my gun from the small of my back and raised it in one smooth move I’d practiced at the shooting range a thousand times before. My shooting instructors said muscle memory was critical.Don’t give yourself a chance to think. Just react.
Bailey and I fired at the same time.
