Page 160 of Fire Fight

I knew if I kept her talking, it would give me time to figure a way out of this. My life wasn’t the only one on the line, and Parker was counting on me. I’d at least had a chance tolive, but he was only a kid, and he deserved the chance to escape and experience all the shit I already had.

Well, maybe not all of it.

“Made the connection, did you? Figured out my little riddle? I’ll admit, that first email I sent to Miss McKay was a bit impulsive, but I loved toying with her so much I couldn’t help myself.”

I blinked in surprise. Aspen had thought that riddle had come from someone unconnected to the killer. We should’ve known that was merely another way Mrs. Saunders taunted her.

“Roger Stanhope was my best friend, did you know that?” I shook my head, but she wasn’t even looking at me, eyes focused in some middle distance, here but not reallyhere. “Trey and Wyatt remind me a lot of us…or what we could’ve been if he hadn’t gone and fucked everything up.”

“Trey and Wyatt aren’t together. They never have been.”

Mrs. Saunders snorted. “You think I don’t see the way they look at each other? It’s honestly a matter of time now. She’s going to need someone in the aftermath of all of this, and you and I both know Trey will be there to pick up the pieces.”

Hard to argue with that.

Parker, seemingly tired of standing around, sank to the floor and started toying with his shoe laces. Mrs. Saunders didn’t even spare him a glance.

“It was supposed to be me and Roger. He was my best friend, yes, but I loved him so much more than that—and he loved me. Vicky and all the other tramps he got with were distractions. A way to pass the time of our high school years until we could move away from this godforsaken town and start our livestogether. When he asked me to prom, I knew the time had finally come. It kills me every day that he’s dead, that we never got that chance.”

“Youkilled him,” I reminded her, following Parker’s lead and taking a seat on the arm of the couch. Might as well be comfortable while I listened to the psychobabble.

“Only because Ihadto! He betrayed me.” She inhaled a deep breath, her eyes fluttered closed as she transported herself back forty years. “That night should’ve been the first night of the rest of our lives. I was going to give him my virginity, remind him my heart and body belonged to him, and his to me. We were going to move to California after graduation. Get married, have babies. There was aplan. And he ruined it when he couldn’t stay away from that slut. Vicky Lee.”

She spat her name with four decades worth of venom, like she couldn’t get past her hatred of the girl despite being the reason she was dead. You’d think a gunshot wound to the head and setting her body on fire would’ve been enough to take the edge off, but apparently not.

“I was coming out of the ladies room after freshening up when I saw them sneak out together. They were laughing, holding hands, stealing kisses between steps out the door. Their stupid prom king and queen crowns shone on their hair. The way he looked at her…I realized then he’d never look at me that way.

“And if I couldn’t have him, no one could.”

I couldn’t help but snort. What a fucking cliché. Parker cut me a glare, a silent plea to be quiet, but Mrs. Saunders was so lost in giving her killer monologue that she didn’t even notice us anymore.

“I followed them up to the ridge, watched as they steamed up the windows of his car. I was so furious, you know?” The rhetorical question was accompanied by a burst of manic laughter, and poor Parker curled further into a ball, putting his head down as though that would protect him from the madness. “Roger wasmine. But then this strange sense of calm came over me, and what I had to do became perfectly clear. I’d taken Daddy’s truck to the dance because Roger wanted to hang out with his buddies before, so we agreed to meet there. And Daddy’s shotgun was hidden beneath the seat as always. So I took it out and approached. God, you should’ve seen the looks on their faces when I tapped on the window with that barrel pointed right at their heads.”

She sighed, as though savoring the memory, and nausea roiled in my gut. This woman was fucking insane.

“Roger rolled down the window, but before he could speak, before he could try to spew some pretty bullshit to get me to back down, I blew a fucking hole in his face. Vicky was screaming her head off, coated in Roger’s blood, and I fired on her too.

“But that wasn’t enough, you know? They were deadand it still wasn’t enough. So I took the pack of cigarettes sitting in the cupholder—Roger was a Marlboro man—lit every single one, and dropped them on the seats and floors. Then I waited and watched as it burned and burned and burned. That fire was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The fuckingpowerI felt. A few days later when the story ran in the paper, accompanied by a tipline where the police were asking for information. I’d gotten away with it, and I knew once would never be enough.”

The blue-green depths of Mrs. Saunders’ eyes met mine, the same shade as her daughter’s, swirling with excitement.

“Twelve seemed to do the trick. I wanted to go for thirteen, but Miss McKay managed to survive. You see, Crew…that’s why you have to die. Your life for hers. It’s a bit poetic, since you were the one who saved her.”

“What about Parker? He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“He narced,” she said, a single shoulder rising and falling in a half shrug. “What’s that old saying? Snitches get stitches? Or in this case, little boys who go and tattle to the police get burned alive.”

“Please,” Parker gasped, getting to his feet and shuffling over to her before falling to his knees in front of her, hands clasped, begging. “Please, Mrs. Saunders. You don’t want to kill me. It’s not like they figured you out from what I told them.”

Mrs. Saunders seemed to consider that, cocking her head to the side and regarding him. Then she glanced up at me.

“You know, he has a point. Howdidyou figure it out?”

I grinned, baring all my teeth. “Missy Plano. And your daughter.”

forty-two

. . .