Page 135 of Reaper and Ruin

I let my anger get the better of me, remembering the men who’d stalked X in the darkness. He’d avoided death only because he was skilled and because Levi and Whip had his back. We’d known someone was paying people on the list to come after us.

But I never would have expected it to be the woman perched above us now, staring down at us with hate and malice in her eyes. “That’s how you met Travis, isn’t it?” I asked. “Travis never made the booking for Paul Jeddersen’s place or for Nyah to come to this house, did he? That was you. You just threw him under the bus when you realized we were getting close to working it out.” I shook my head. “And we killed him for it.” Not that I felt an ounce of regret over it. He might not have made those bookings and lured Nyah and me into houses where danger lurked on the other side of the front door, but he was hardly innocent. There was no guilt. I’d seen the haunted look in my daughter’s eyes after she’d been left alone with that man for days.

The world was a better place with Travis dead.

Francine’s mouth flattened into an angry line. “Don’t say his name.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why not? You don’t want me to speak ill of the dead?”

“Vi!” Nyah clutched my arm.

I knew I was being wild and reckless, antagonizing the woman. And yet I was so angry. So deeply, bitterly hurt. Sofucking over people underestimating me because I was the fat, ugly, gentle girl who never made a fuss and never wanted to be seen.

Levi, Whip, and X had seen me anyway.

Will and Ari had seen the good in me, even when I’d stabbed and killed a man right in front of them.

This baby growing inside me would never hear me call it fat or ugly or useless.

I wasn’t going to stand here and let Francine walk all over me. If she was going to kill me then she would, but I wouldn’t go down being scared.

I wouldn’t go down without a fight.

“Travis was a piece-of-shit rapist and murderer, Francine. But you already knew that when you tracked him down, didn’t you? You knew that’s why he was on the list.” It wasn’t really a question. More of an accusation.

“He was a genius,” she hissed.

“He was a high-school dropout who killed cats for fun.”

She shook her head. “He rigged that warehouse perfectly, just like I asked him to. He planted those explosives on the cliffs. He created this trap for you to fucking rot in, you stupid bitch! Is it familiar? He said it’s just like the one your foster parents kept him in when you were kids. The one you never let him out of.”

I’d known nothing about that until Travis had mentioned it the night we’d killed him. Though I didn’t doubt it.

I also knew, if I had known I wouldn’t have let him out, only for him to peep on me in the shower, torment me, hurt me.

The gun in Francine’s fingers shook, but something in her words clicked puzzle pieces together in my head.

She might have delivered me on a silver platter to Paul and Travis. She might have watched it all through the nanny cams.

But the kills weren’t hers.

She had helped facilitate them. She’d written the rhymes. The one he’d uttered that night in the park before we’d followed him back to our childhood home had never sat right with me. I remembered thinking at the time that they hadn’t sounded like his words.

Francine had blood on her hands, no doubt, but she’d never actually pulled the trigger herself.

Judging from the way her entire body shook right now, she knew she couldn’t.

“You took Travis from me too,” she whispered. “We were supposed to be together. We were a team.”

Oh, that was rich. “You don’t really believe that, do you? He strung you along, let you write your letters, made you think he needed you when all he really wanted was for you to supply him with girls to rape and kill. Just like Paul did. I bet he got real excited when he realized it was me whose life you wanted to ruin. I’ll give you that, you had that in common. Is that what you bonded over?” I curled my lip at her in disgust. “But your mother was right, Francine. Men like Paul and Travis will never love you. Men like them don’t know how to love anyone. That’s really why you’re mad right now, isn’t it? It’s not at me, or Levi or Whip or X. You hate yourself for believing their lies when really you knew better.”

I knew I was right when a tear dripped from her eye, splattering on the dirt floor beneath me. She swiped at her face with rough, jerky motions to prevent it happening again.

“What’s your plan here, Francine?” I asked. “If you’d been able to kill, you would have already killed Nyah a week ago, am I right? Clearly you were happy to drug her because otherwise the guys would have found her when they checked this house out after you gave us the address. But this is a much nicer neighborhood than Saint View. The neighbors would have calledthe cops if they’d heard shouting. You would have had to keep her quiet while you were at work somehow.”

Nyah’s exhausted, raspy voice lent itself to my theory. “My brain is so foggy,” she whispered. “But how… She never came down here. I don’t think…”

I remembered the lovely case of food poisoning X had given us. Whatever Francine had given Nyah to keep her quiet, she’d probably put it in her food.