The hollow footsteps rebound off the dock, the water a perfect conductor to send an electric jolt of awareness through me as Drew closes in. I turn so that I’m between them, trapped. “Why?” It leaves my mouth as a whispered plea.
“You made this happen,” Drew says, disgust evident on his shadowed face. “You were always so jealous of Chelsea, fearful of her stealing me away. You manifested your own fear. And when it came true, you did the most unoriginal thing.” He scoffs. “Got knocked up. To keep us together. To trap me. To ruin me. I couldn’t allow that to happen.”
Still the psych professor. Still trying to teach me about myself. I look down, stare at the dark water lapping between the slats.
A flash of my dream. A glimpse into the past. My vision tunnels as his words generate a sensation, an image. Fear encases me as the sharp slash of a razor-sharp blade tears into my flesh. Red stains my skin.
I blink the memory away, trying to stay in the present. “You attacked me,” I say. “Right here. On the dock.” I touch my unbandaged hand to my stomach, the pain alive and real.
Drew’s beautiful face draws together in anger. “You forced me, Cynthia. You wouldn’t listen to reason when it came to—” He breaks off, turns his head away. “My intent wasn’t to end your life.”
But my death was the result, and he felt no remorse.
The way he feels none now.
I sense Torrance moving closer. “It was astonishing,” he says. “See, when Cam changed her mind and didn’t follow me home, I remembered you were here. I came back.” He pulls my hair loose of the bun, strokes the strands. “I’d never witnessed anything so passionate. I was in awe. All my life, I felt this hollow, empty void. This lack of emotion that I hid from the world. Nothing made me feel…until I saw the beautiful, violent dance between you and Drew.”
I cringe away from his touch. “You hide well.”
“It’s a learned skill.”
All my training, all Rhys’s training, and we both missed the clues. Torrance is a psychopath. Lack of empathy did more than allow him to watch my brutal murder; it fostered something dark and deviant inside him. Ignited a sick desire.
Torrance wouldn’t rescue me from the lake. He’s not built that way. “You left me to drown,” I say, piecing the night together. “Then what? You went home and jerked off?”
His laugh is callous. “Well, yes. But first I cleaned up the scene. I understood enough to know that Drew’s crime was one of passion. He left behind the murder weapon”—he prods the tip of the knife between my shoulder blades—“so I hosed down the dock. I made sure my source, should I ever need anything in the future, would be safe.”
That’s why there was no DNA or any evidence to test, and how Drew made it back in time to be with Cam. “Why did you do it?”
“To torment me,” Drew answers. He pulls out a crumpled wad of letters.
“Blackmail?” I ask, appalled. It seems so petty, to have suffered these years for something so inconsequential as money.
“No.” Torrance steps forward, his shadow looming in the moonlight. Those shallow, dark pools stare right through me. “He had answers. I wanted to know what he felt when he first thrust the knife into your belly. Gutting you like a fish. And when that wasn’t enough, stabbed and raked the blade over your chest, mutilating someone that he once loved.”
Ripping the letters in half, Drew shreds them into small pieces, then tosses them into the lake. Torrance sent the note to me, I realize. He’d been playing some twisted game, stalking both killer and victim.
“Are we done yet?” Drew says. “Let’s get this over with.”
My gaze flits between the men. Adrenaline mounting. I take a step away, and Torrance raises the knife.
“Patience,” he says, watching the moonlight glint across the weapon. “You know, I tried not to be this way. I resisted the urges. I relived that moment in my mind, never acting on it. Until Agent Nolan showed up. His probing questions ignited that spark all over again…and I just had to know what it felt like for myself. I thought Jo would be perfect, then I waited for the right moment. Once I was confident I could pull it off, I finally did it.” His handsome features mutate into a lethal scowl. “But it was lacking. It wasn’t even close to that first time.”
Fear still clawing internally, I lift my chin in a show of bravado. Now this, I understand. “You experienced a first kill vicariously. As a voyeur. A killer never gets that first experience back. It’s a never-ending chase for a high, like a drug addict.”
A haunted void fills his dark gaze. “Jo was supposed to be perfect. I memorized everything… But do you know how hard it is to actually replicate a murder? TV makes copycat killings look so easy. It’s not. Fighting the victim…wounds inflicted in the wrong places. It’s fucking hard.”
I swallow, sending the acrid taste of bile into my bowels. He killed Joanna. So senselessly. He tried to replicate Drew’s attack…his murder…and he’s flippantly comparing the act to television. His voice is passive. Unaffected. His act of violence an afterthought.
I glance between them, pulse slamming my arteries. I have to keep them talking, find a way out. “Which one of you killed Cam?”
“I tried again,” Torrance admits. “But her body—” He shakes his head. “She wasn’t right. The baby was too far along. Drew kept whining.”
My gaze snaps to him. He was a part of her violent end. He helped take her life, take her away from her child and family. “You’re weak. Pathetic,” I say. “A disgusting narcissist.”
“It was a necessity,” Drew says. “She could implicate me. She had to know if she ever said anything… She shouldn’t have met with you. But I made sure her baby would be all right. I called 9-1-1 from her house.”
Filmy acid roils my stomach. How can he justify taking Cam’s life? The same way he justified killing me?