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And they were going to save him.
“Everett Thomas and I grew up together. Did you know that? No? You’ve certainly been a busy bastard. Digging up the past left and right. Figured you’d either hit on that point or were damn close to the discovery.” A flash of another match lit his face. He bent the match and lit a candle. The light sputtered around him. A thick, white candle that sat on the charred remains of a table inside of LeBlanc’s.
Not in the main part of the bar. No, the main part had been destroyed. The fancy counter. All of the rows of expensive whiskey that he’d stocked for customers. Gone in an inferno that left ash and destruction in its wake. But the building had once been a huge warehouse. Full of twists and turns. Back rooms. Patches on the first floor had been spared in the fire.
Even in the faint light of that flickering candle, he recognized his place. He’d sweat blood to reshape LeBlanc’s from what it had first been when he bought the building. How could he not know it?
Beau was in a chair. One of the few that had somehow survived the blaze. The chair wobbled beneath him. Not close to steady. When he inhaled, he smelled smoke and…whiskey? Yes, the scent of whiskey was everywhere. And his clothes…why where his clothes so wet?
But his clothes didn’t matter at the moment. What mattered was the killer who waited in front of him. Right near that white candle.
“If you had stopped poking at the past, you wouldn’t be here right now. But you were digging. Digging and digging. You’d left New Orleans. I’d left. Even Everett had left…but you would not stop, would you?”
Beau lifted his chin. “Fuck yourself.”
“You moved here because she did, didn’t you?”
Yes.
“Can you keep a secret? Oh, wait, you’ll be dead soon. Of course, you can keep it.” His hand waved over the flame of the candle. The light from the match had long since died. “We came here because of her, too.”
Avalon.
“Everett got off on killing women who looked like her. Did you notice that? All the same build, height, and hair close in shade to hers. Even the eyes were the same. It was because she got away. Made her special. I tried that bit a few times, too, but…hell, I knew they weren’t her. No substitute for the original, am I right?”
“You’re…dead.” His tongue felt thick in his mouth, and Beau swore he could taste ash.
“No, but you will be, soon enough. I’m going to carry out Everett’s last wish. It’s kind of the least I can do, considering I’m the one who ordered the hit on him.”
“Bastard!”
He picked up something that had been on the table near the flickering candle. Sauntered forward. “Do you recognize this?”
Beau squinted.
“You should because it’s your knife. It was in evidence at the station. I took the liberty of slipping it out of evidence. I waited for you to come out. I knew you’d go for your Jag.” More laughter. “After all these years, you had to go for the Jag again, didn’t you?”
“How…” His heart thudded. Almost painful. Heavy in his chest.
“That tranquilizer hits hard, doesn’t it? I’m really not good with doses. And I have no idea how much actually got into your system before your burly ass broke the syringe. Drugs aren’t my thing. And, honestly, knives aren’t, either.” He peered down at the knife in his hand. “Too much blood. I don’t like blood. Everett, though? He did. When we were teens, we experimented.”
The cuffs bit into Beau’s wrists. The chair rocked as he strained. Rocked.
“I liked the fire. Started small. You know, burning the foster houses I was in. Burning clothes. Toys. Took a while to work up to people.”
“Because you’re…not supposed to burn people!”
“Royal is like your brother, isn’t he? But not really? That’s how Everett and I were, too.” He still held the knife. “He came into the group home where I was one day. Sometimes, you just connect with someone, you know? Everett liked to use his knife. I tried to tell him it was too messy. Since I was fire, I thought it would be cool if he was my opposite. I burned. Why not let him drown? Fire and water. Kinda cool, huh?”
No, it wasn’t.
“We tried water for him. Didn’t work so well. Everett said you couldn’t hear the screams under the water. He liked to hear the screams. For him, I think that was the best part.”
“Because he was…a sick…fuck…” Beau could feel blood dripping from his wrists. He’d strained so hard against the cuffs that he was bleeding.
“He was. Agreed. Damn but I loved that about him.” A sigh. “He got me to kill my mom. Like yours, my mom dumped me. I was seven. She just walked away. Told people I scared her. Me. A freaking kid. But I found her. Everett and I did. She had a whole other life. Another kid. I watched her and I waited and when she was alone, I trapped her in my fire.”
The first victim. The forty-year-old wife and mother. “You killed your…own mother?”
