Page 123 of Her Dark Lies

“I want you to listen to reason. I’ve grown to care about you these past few months. Jack will lead you to ruin. He will break your heart. He will never love you the way he loved me.”

“You killed him. What does it matter now?”

I took a self-defense class once, and one thing that stuck with me is this. Never hesitate. Don’t draw back and let them realize you’re going to swing. Plow ahead, even if you don’t have all your power in the swing. The unexpected motion is as much a weapon as the weapon you hold. Your attacker naturally expects some sort of windup if you’re trying to hit them. No pause. Just go straight in.

I walk closer, closer, closer, then, exactly when she would expect me to hesitate and stop, I lunge forward, knife out. She turns slightly, flinching away from me, and I catch her in the shoulder, feel the blade sink into her flesh. She screams and drops the gun. I try to yank the knife back out to stab her again, but the metal is sunk in too deep. I’d been going for her heart and ready to crack bone. Now I’ve just pinioned her against the wall between a door and a massive stone sarcophagus.

I don’t know who is interred inside. I don’t really care. Its edge is sharp, the stone as square as the day it was carved. It will do.

She wrenches herself free from my grip with a cry, eyes black with madness, and comes at me. She manages to punch me twice and I stumble back, blood slick down my face, mingling with Katie’s. That gives me strength, and I launch at her again, forcing her back against the stone before I pin her good arm. She kicks my knee, and pain shoots up my thigh, but I don’t let go. The edge of the crypt doorway is behind her, and I push hard against her body, forcing her back, back, back until she is wedged into the space. Slowly, my hand moves from her elbow, to her shoulder, to her throat.

“What are you doing?” she grinds out. “Don’t be an idiot. We can work together, we can—”

“I will never let you hurt another person I love.”

I shove, and the momentum of my body propels her into the stone. With a twist of my hand, I force her head against the edge. I push, hard, until I’ve levered her neck around the corner. She is whimpering and screaming and fighting, clawing. She scratches my face. I don’t let up. She gets a finger under my pearls and pulls. The clasp, already damaged, breaks free. Pearlspingoff the floor.

And now she’s ruined my beautiful gift, too.

I am stronger than she is. I am enraged. I have the right angle to accomplish my goal. It’s her, or it’s me. There cannot be a world in which we both survive.

She says something I can barely hear, something pleading,please, and then the resounding crack of her neck snapping echoes in the chamber.

I hold on to her lithe body as it shudders and shakes with the last moments of her life. It doesn’t take long. I release her, and she slumps to the floor.

I wipe my hand under my nose and fling droplets of my blood onto her lifeless body, blood mingling with the scattered pearls in the darkness.

“Goodbye, Morgan.”

71

Finis

Will Compton finds me there, in the crypt, shivering with cold, lying next to Morgan’s dead body.

“Claire. My God. We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“It’s over,” I manage. “It’s over. Is Jack?” I can’t even finish the words. I’ve been down here all this time, afraid to find out the truth. Afraid to hear I’ve lost him forever.

Will pulls me to my feet, wraps me in a blanket.

“He’s alive. They’ve taken him to Naples. He was badly hurt, but he will make it. Ana...”

He breaks off, and I know then my elegant mother-in-law is dead.

“She killed Katie, too. And Fatima. Before I...”

I collapse against Will, who shushes me. I allow him to walk me from the crypt.

There is fire.

There are lights.

There are questions.

All I can do is turn my face away. I am not capable of answering them.

72