“I’m not. I’m seriously not.”
“Talk is cheap, Pollack. You researched me, got information that you probably shouldn’t have gotten from any source that I know of, and you found me and held me at gunpoint demanding that I take you to her. You’re obsessed, all right. So obsessed that you don’t know how deep you’re in.”
“Who the hell are you, man?”
“I’m your worst fucking nightmare, asshole. And I’m not even close to exaggerating.”
He shudders and seems to sink into his chair.
I look around his small place, which is even smaller than my own. He’s certainly not living in the lap of luxury. Is he in a witness protection program? If that’s the case, what is he doing having dinner at The Glass House?
Someone is helping him.
Or…he’s just that rich. I don’t know a lot about Derek Wolfe’s Treasure Island, but I do know it cost over a million dollars a day to go there.
It may have cost more to take part in the extracurricular activities.
I don’t know.
But…
A man sits across from me who does know. He’ll tell me what he did to Katelyn. I have no doubt about that. All I’ve done so far is threaten to blow his head off. I’m no stranger to inflicting torture, and he will tell me what I want to know.
But first I’m going to get some general information about the island.
How much it cost to go there, and who else was there.
“I know what you people did to the women on that island. I know you treated them like animals, and once you caught them, you could do whatever you wanted to them, save kill them. You sit here and tell me you didn’t do any physical harm to Katelyn. Maybe you’re not lying. If you had done physical harm to any woman on that island, I doubt you’d be walking around a free man. Which means you did something horrible to her, something you’re embarrassed to tell me. Even when I have a gun pointing at your head. So basically all I can ascertain from that is that you are some psycho freak, Pollack. And I don’t like thinking about some psycho freak anywhere near Katelyn.”
“She doesn’t seem like a Katelyn to me,” he says. “She’ll always be Moonstone.”
“Why do you call her Moonstone?”
“All the women—they had names of gemstones. She was called Moonstone, probably because of her light blue eyes, her blond hair, her fair skin.”
What does a moonstone even look like? Katelyn is a diamond, for sure. The rarest, clearest diamond ever.
“Her name is Katelyn,” I say through gritted teeth. “She was never Moonstone. I don’t care what they called her on that island. The person on that island was not her. She was held there against her will, you sick freak.”
“You think I don’t know that? I’m in love with her, for God’s sake.”
My jaw drops. “You? Happily married man that you are?”
I drop my gaze to his left hand. He’s still wearing the fake wedding band he wore when he accosted Katelyn at The Glass House.
“I’m a married man.” Pollack holds up his left hand, displaying a gawdy thick gold band. “I just thought this woman was a friend of my daughter’s. I can see now I’m mistaken.”
Right. He’s married. This tiny studio shows no sign of any woman living here. And he thinks he’s in love with Katelyn? Seriously?
“You don’t know what love is.”
Again, though, my past filters through my mind. The times I thought I was in love with Emily and the others. I wasn’t in love with any of them. I was in love at them. In love with the control. And again, as I look at Pollock—his tired face, his receding hairline, his damned yellow eyes—part of me sees familiarity. Physically we have no resemblance to each other whatsoever, but I was once a man who treated women poorly.
Are we even that different?
I suppress a shudder that wants to run through my body and turn me to ice. I didn’t hunt women. I didn’t torture or rape them. But I did strike them on occasion. I did keep them locked up.
I told myself it was for their own safety, and that the punishment was necessary for their disobedience.
I convinced myself that they made me do it.
God, I was fucked up.
I don’t deserve Katelyn now, and I may never. The only way I can possibly hope to is if I go back to LA and make amends as best I can.
Which will undoubtedly end in my death.
Pollack rings his hands together. “Just kill me. Kill me now and get it over with. I can’t live like this any longer. If I can’t have Moonstone, I’ll die anyway.”
“Don’t give me that pity party bullshit,” I say. “I don’t buy it now, and I won’t ever buy it. You did some kind of heinous thing to my woman, and the only reason you’re not dead now is because there’s more information I want to get out of you.”