Page 154 of Dying to Meet You

“Stupid bitch.” Beatrice kicks me in the ribs and then in the kidney. Two quick jabs. “Sit up before I kick you in the head. Andyoushut up!” This last order is directed at Lickie.

Lickie quiets, but probably only because Beatrice backs away from me.

Nausea wells in my throat as I look over my shoulder at her. She’s still aiming the gun at me.

“So now you know I’m serious,” she says in a low voice as I struggle onto my ass, my broken hand cradled in my lap, tears streaming.

I don’t understand why this is happening. But I know I could die here tonight.

Beatrice—still aiming that gun—grabs my phone up off the floor with a gloved hand.

Oh God, gloves. She planned this. She lured me here to kill me. Panic claws at my insides. “Who’s the text from?” I gasp.

“Doesn’t matter,” she says, powering down the phone. “Nothing matters anymore. This ends tonight.”

“What ends?” I need to keep her talking.

“You’re going to kill yourself, Rowan. You poor thing. Because you feelawfulabout killing Tim, and the guilt is eating you alive.” She nudges a notebook toward me. “After all, Tim used you. His notes are very confessional. Now you know that he never loved you. It was just too devastating, so you cracked.”

You’re the one who’s cracked. It’s the first clear thought I’ve had since she broke my hand. Blood pounds in my ears, but I need to concentrate. “If you shoot me, you’ll get caught. Why take that risk? We spoke on the phone just a half hour ago.”

“That was by design. Actually, I learned this from you—watch yourlocation data. My phone is at home in my apartment right now, pinging away. I called you on my iPad. Later tonight I’ll throw it off the pier.”

“But the new surveillance cameras,” I choke out. “You’ll be on the footage.”

“They’re switched off. In fact, they’ve been flickering on and off for two days,” she says. “Maybe the ghost did it!” She laughs.

“Nobody would believe that.”

“I’mverybelievable, Rowan. You bought into aghost baby, for fuck’s sake.”

Pain throbs through my arm like a wave. But I keep arguing. “It still won’t work. Too many people know what I was working on. I dug up a lot of information,” I lie. “And Tim’s birth mother has decided to talk to the police.”

“That junkie? She’s dead, Rowan. It was so easy. All I had to do was gift her some high-quality fentanyl. She OD’d this morning.”

My chest seizes.Oh Laura. If it’s true, then it’s partly my fault. My digging set her off.Oh God. “But why cover up for Marcus Wincott? Why do you care if the whole world knows he was a creep?”

She grabs a broom that’s leaning against the wall and swings at me. My hands are useless, so I yank up my knees defensively. The broom handle slams into my head, and I gasp.

“That creep was my father, you idiot. And I won’t let you take down the family. Not over one dead man’s bad choices.”

I’m trying to process this bombshell as she steps up to the railing. My phone is still in her hand. She throws it over the railing, and it seems to take forever until I hear it smash two stories below.

59

Natalie

Her mother isn’t answering her texts, and Natalie is about to explode. Because if Tim had these reports, he probably found Beatrice’s picture, too.

And he would have wanted to ask her some questions. About the medallion around her neck. And the name tag.

Natalie also has questions. Beatrice said her father was “too good for us.” Did she mean Marcus Wincott?

And if she did—and Wincott also had a child with Betsy Jones—then it leads to an even wilder possibility. It means Natalie could be Marcus’s grandchild.

And also Beatrice’sniece?

It’s too crazy to say out loud.