Bad Blood
Page 57

Kane’s eyes were closed now, like he couldn’t bear looking at me, couldn’t bear remembering, but couldn’t stop. “By the time I got to Lorelai’s house, she was gone. You were gone, Cassie. And Darren’s body was at the bottom of the stairs.”
I saw the entire scene through his eyes: the brother he’d hated and feared and loved, dead. The woman he’d fallen for, responsible. It was your fault he came after her. Your fault he hurt her.
Your fault he was dead.
“Lorelai killed Darren in self-defense,” Agent Sterling surmised. “Unless you’d told her about him, she probably thought that she’d killed you.”
I tried to reconcile that with the mother I remembered, the mother I knew.
“You cleaned up the crime scene,” Agent Sterling continued, offering Kane no respite. “You brought your twin’s body home.”
“I never told.” Kane sounded like a boy, like the child who’d been forced to keep his family’s secret, to carry his brother’s burden.
“Your family locked Darren away, under the chapel,” Sterling said softly. “He was dead, and they still put him in shackles. And Sarah Simon—you left her body down there. You let her family think she’d left town.”
Kane had no response. Something had snapped inside of him. Something had broken. And when he finally did speak again, it wasn’t to confirm Agent Sterling’s statements.
“In Serenity, I’ve found balance,” he said, a shadow of his former self. “In Serenity, I’ve found peace.”
 
 
YOU
You’ve always protected Lorelai. Borne what she could not. Done what she could not.
But this time? You didn’t kill for her.
You killed Five for yourself. Because you liked it. Because you could.
Lorelai is weak. But as the Masters take their seats at the table, you are not. Some want to punish you. Some want to take the knife forever from your hand. But others remember—what a Pythia is.
What a Pythia can be.
The Master who preceded Five—the man who chose and trained him and has reclaimed the empty seat, a man you recognize—puts an end to conversation when he hands you a diamond, bloodred, in honor of your kill.
This is a man used to leading. A man used to being in charge.
“There is a threat,” the newcomer says. “I can take care of it.”
He’s talking about Gaither. About Lorelai’s daughter and her little friends and how very close they are to discovering the truth.
You allow your gaze to capture his. “It’s already taken care of.”
The acolyte’s third kill is already under way. The body should be showing up soon, and if victim two didn’t send your message, this one will.
“And if the problem persists? If their investigation leads them to our door?”
“Well, then…” You turn the bloodred diamond in your hand. “In that case, I suppose you can ask for judgment once more.”
 
 
Kane’s twin killed Ree’s daughter. Darren tried to kill my mother, and she killed him in self-defense. I should have been overwhelmed. I should have had to fight to view the situation with detached eyes. But instead, I felt nothing.
I felt like this—all of it—had happened to someone else.
Lia, who’d been watching with Sloane and Michael from behind the scenes, confirmed that Kane Darby had believed every word he’d said, and I found myself turning toward Agent Sterling. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“Kane will testify against his father,” Sterling replied. “About the drugs, what his father did to Darren, the role he played in covering up the death of Sarah Simon. Given the extenuating circumstances, I think I can convince the district attorney to cut Kane a deal.”
That wasn’t what I’d been asking—not really. I was asking where a person like Kane could go after something like this, how he could possibly move on.
Celine, who’d observed the debrief, cocked her head to the side and raised one manicured hand. “Just to clarify: we’re actually buying the idea that a little kid killed two people and tried to kill a third, causing his parents to chain him up in a basement for twenty-three years, at which point in time he killed someone else, broke out, and got himself axed?”
There was a long pause. After a moment, Sloane answered her. “That seems to be an accurate depiction of the working theory.”
“Just checking,” Celine replied lightly. “On a related note, this is the most effed-up thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Stick around,” Lia told her. “The puppies and rainbows come after the murder and mayhem.”
Agent Sterling snorted. But the moment of levity didn’t last. I could see the FBI agent debating whether to open her mouth again. “I don’t know if I buy Darren’s involvement in the Kyle murders or not. Kane believes his brother killed them—that doesn’t mean he’s correct.”
You showed up, Kane. The Kyles were dead. Mason, who had a history of watching as your brother slaughtered animals, asked you to tell Darren that he wouldn’t tell. That single sentence had been enough to convict Darren in Kane’s eyes, in his family’s eyes. But that sentence had been spoken by a boy who grew up to become a vicious killer himself.
A boy someone had groomed for great things.
“We have the files from the Kyle murders.” The fact that Dean hadn’t spiraled into his own darkest memories—of being groomed, of watching—told me that even when normal wasn’t an option, going on was. “There must be some way of seeing if the story lines up.”
“The average ten-year-old male is fifty-four-point-five inches tall.” Sloane popped to her feet and began pacing the claustrophobic quarters of the observation room. “As an adult, Darren Darby was only slightly above average height. Allowing for variable growth patterns, I would estimate his height at the time of the Kyle murders to be between fifty-four and fifty-six inches tall.”
“I’m assuming that if we wait, we’ll see where Blondie is going with this?” Celine asked the room at large.
“Anna and Todd Kyle were stabbed to death,” Sloane told Celine, her eyes alight. “They were knocked to the floor prior to the attacks, making it difficult to gauge the height of their attacker. However, Malcolm Lowell put up more of a fight.”