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“You think I want peace?” she hissed. “My daughter is dead. There is no more peace for me.” She tightened her grip, pulled Lexie forward so they were scant inches apart. “And it’s your fault.”
The involuntary whimper Lexie let out had no effect, not on the way she so harshly held her or the hard glare she fixed her with. “Please,” she whispered again. “I never meant for Sara to get hurt. I tried to find her. I tried . . .”
Esme’s disgusted gaze slid over her. Lexie felt cold and vulnerable beneath it. After a few seconds, she released her grip, the sudden absence of pain a short-lived respite as she stepped away. For the first time, Lexie noticed the knife in Esme’s hand. Her stomach clenched at the sight, and her chest contracted. She heard her own loud, shallow breaths, felt her face twist in recognition and fear.
“She was everything to me,” Esme said, facing away, her big, brown overcoat adding bulk to her frame that wasn’t truly there. “You took her away.”
“I’m sorry,” Lexie cried. “I’m so sorry.”
As true as that was, Lexie still used the opportunity to search the room while Esme’s back was turned. Dark stone walls. Low timber ceiling. Half-rotten floorboards covered by an inch-thick layer of dirt and debris of time passed. There was a rickety door behind her that went god-only-knew where. And then her eyes landed on a miracle; a couple of feet away, against the wall to her right, rested her purse. Esme must have dumped it there when they’d arrived. Cream in color, it was not her favorite, but with the addition of the Smith & Wesson revolver Nico had paid for, she’d had to switch to the bigger size for practicality’s sake. That same revolver, she knew, nestled holstered and loaded in the bottom. Assuming Esme had not found it—which she hoped against hope that she had not—if she could reach it, she could use it.
Esme turned back around as she finished her quick reconnaissance. “You were supposed to be her friend,” she said. Her lips had begun to tremble. She looked tired. Gaunt. Like a person with nothing left to lose. “You were supposed to protect her. He was supposed to bring her home.”
Somewhere deep in her consciousness, Lexie recognized how imperative it was that she stall whatever was about to happen. She needed time to get to that gun. “You mean Nico?” she asked.
Esme tilted her head, daring Lexie to say the wrong thing.
“He told me what happened to Sara in Boston.” Lexie licked her lips. “I didn’t know. At least, not for sure.”
Using the thumbtack she’d managed to dig out from beneath the wooden armrest of her chair, Lexie began to quietly poke tiny holes in the duct tape around her wrist as she spoke, weakening it bit by bit. It was frustratingly slow, the unnatural bend causing her joint to cramp and a few times the tack almost slipped out of her grasp, but she did not stop. She had no clue what she was going to do, but she needed to draw things out long enough for her to . . . what? Escape? Kill Esme before she killed her? Each option that popped into her head seemed even more fruitless than the last, but as she thought of Nico, of her friends, of her cottage overlooking the sea, and the life she had waiting for her, she vowed not to give up without a fight.
“You blame us for her death,” she said, no question in her tone. “That’s why you murdered Isabelle. And Darcy.”
Esme’s eyes flickered. She didn’t answer, but Lexie felt the confirmation in the air. How long, she wondered, had Esme stood gloating her victory to the two of them before she’d started mercilessly plunging in the knife?
“And Kyle?” Lexie let her eyes find their way back to his body. “What did he have to do with any of this?”
Esme followed her gaze, but stopped, like she too was having trouble looking at him.
At her reluctance to answer for her crime, Lexie felt a stab of anger. She lifted her chin. “You killed him, and you can’t even say why?”
Esme’s eyes shot to hers. “I did no such thing.”
“Then how did he end up dead?”
After working her jaw for a time, Esme narrowed her eyes. “I will not explain myself to you.”
“How did you even manage to do all of this?” Lexie shouted, all caution being thrown to the wind as she came to terms with the severe unlikelihood of her living to see another day. “Look at you, you’re skin and bone. You couldn’t possibly have dragged me down to this dungeon, dragged him down here—” She stopped, remembering the parking lot at Rusty’s, Kyle fighting with their attacker. She’d been seconds away from jumping in to help when . . . another. There had been another. “Oh, my god,” she whispered. “Your husband helped you do all of this, didn’t he? You’re in it together.”
Suddenly, Esme stalked forward, her knife-hand jutting out threateningly. Lexie shrunk back. “I may be slight, but I am not weak,” she snarled. “And I’ll not have that man taking any credit for what I’ve done. What he was too weak to do.” She straightened to her full height once more, though she kept the blade firmly fixed on Lexie’s trembling form. “I killed those whores. I sent them to their graves knowing that they deserved to die for what they did to my Sara. And I will do the same to you, whether he likes it or not.”
Lexie swallowed. What did that mean? Was George Riley aware of what his wife was doing, content to let it happen? Or had she somehow forced him to do her bidding while she masterminded the whole thing? Someone else was there in that parking lot.
Esme watched Lexie process all this with no expression on her face. She was dead inside, that much was clear. Whatever remained of who she was before all the killing started was being swallowed up by her need for vengeance.
“You don’t have to do this,” Lexie pleaded.
Esme approached her like a tiger would its prey, shoulders bunched, poised to unleash her fury. Lexie knew her time was up. She still hadn’t made it fully through the duct tape. Frantically, she gripped the tack and poked and poked, uncaring if Esme noticed or not. It didn’t budge. She poked some more. Esme was on her now, lowering herself down to Lexie’s level, her eyes glowing with a bloodthirsty high as she drew her elbow back, the knife gleaming in the light.
“Sara left because she hated you,” Lexie said in a clear, calm voice.
Esme froze.
“She ran away from you. She ran away from this farm, from your husband who beat her, beat you. What? You thought nobody knew?” Lexie scoffed, revolted even now by the life Sara was forced into by birth. It was no wonder she chose to escape in whatever way she could. “You were the one who was supposed to protect her, but you didn’t,” she growled. “And she hated you for it.”
The words had the desired effect. Esme’s face crinkled and shook as she took the blow. Then the sound of a gunshot drew both their gazes to the door.
Nico was first through the front door, kicking in the rotted wood with ease and throwing the beam of his flashlight into every corner of the Riley’s farmhouse. Zoe was hot on his tail, the two of them sweeping the front room as Frank and Seth came through the back to meet them in the middle. The place was pitch dark. Still and chillingly vacant.
