Page 196 of The 6:20 Man

Her face crinkled and she gave him a weak smile that showed a bit of the innocent, kindhearted woman he thought he knew. “You’re a smart person, Travis. And I do like you. I really do. You’ve always been so nice to me. You remind me a little of Dennis, actually.” She stared off for a moment and her look hardened once more. “But when I found out that witch had killed our baby and was now with another woman? Well, I had to do something.”

“But why send me the emails? Why set me up to take the fall, Jill?”

“You were the perfect choice, Travis. I did all the analysis. You’re an Army Ranger, so you know how to kill people. You slept with Sara. You wanted a relationship with her and she rejected you. No one could really be certain you weren’t the father. Those are motives to kill. I tried to be very logical in choosing you. But the main thing was you loved the woman I loved. In a way you took her away from me.”

“I didn’t even know you two were seeing each other.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she snapped. “Okay?” She aimed the gun more rigidly at him.

She glanced over at the large computer where the Hummingbird logo was prominently displayed. “Now Hummingbird is my baby.”

“Yeah, I remember you saying that to me. The only baby left to you.”

She said absently, “I liked Will, too. It was a shame.”

“What do you mean?” he said sharply. In the face of all this he had forgotten all about Valentine.

“When we got back from the bar? He came to my room later. He was really good at hacking. Better than I thought he was.”

Understanding filtered through Devine’s expression. “He finally traced the emails I got. And he traced them back to you. I found the information taped to your computer screen where you showed it was Will who sent them. But that was obviously all a lie.”

“He was good, despite being a pig. And I hated the way he always used the word dude. I mean, it was like a bad 1980s movie or something.”

“And when Will found out it was you?”

“He wanted an explanation. I told him I would give him one. At my office, where I told him I had documents that would explain all. I think I convinced him that you had killed those people and were trying to use both of us to cover up your crimes.”

“You told him I had asked you to track the emails as well?”

“I did. And I intimated that you were working with people that could set us both up as being involved in all this. He wasn’t a US citizen yet. So he was terrified of being deported. Before we left, I did as much as I could on the computer to turn the tables on him and show he was the source of the emails, and not me. I taped up that piece of paper on my computer for people to find.”

“And then what happened?”

“On the drive over I asked him to get something out of the glove box. While he was doing that, I injected him in the neck with the same sedative I used on Stamos. I drove him to the lake near the town house. I stabbed him in the chest and tied a heavy rock to him. Then I threw his laptop and phone in the lake, too, after I rolled him into the water. Will was very heavy, but I was very determined. When I was throwing his stuff in, my phone fell out of my pocket and went into the water. I had some blood on me from stabbing him. I cleaned it up as best as I could, but I probably missed some.”

Devine glanced down at his hand where he had rubbed off the stains from her car seat. Will’s blood? “And the gas in the house? That was you?”

“I had to come up with a reason for Will’s disappearance, namely, that he tried to kill all of us and then disappeared. I went back to the town house, packed some clothes in his suitcase, and tossed it in a Dumpster in the downtown area. Then I came back and fiddled with the gas.”

“But weren’t you afraid of dying from the gas? I mean, you were really close to it, Jill, when I carried you out of the house.”

She looked at him calmly, with an utterly uninterested expression, which, under the tense standoff, was terrifying. “You should have just let me die, Travis. It would have been much better for me and certainly much better for you.”

“Meaning now it’s my turn? Is this what Dennis would have wanted?”

“Dennis never had a chance to know what he really wanted. But for what it’s worth, I’m very sorry, Travis.”

She fired the gun and the bullet slammed into his right shoulder. He fell back against the file cabinet and then dropped to the floor. The blood spurted down his front, and he desperately tried to use his shirt to stanch the bleeding.

She moved closer and aimed the gun at his head for the kill shot.

“I’m sorry, I meant to shoot you in the chest. I don’t have really good aim. But it won’t hurt anymore in a second, Travis. I promise. I never wanted any of this to happen.”

A second shot rang out.

Devine watched Tapshaw stiffen as a bullet went into her back, traversed her thin torso, and exited out her chest. In his wounded, muddled state, Devine thought he could see the bullet in midair. The round smacked into the wall and stayed there.

Tapshaw swayed on her feet for a moment. Then the Sig fell from her hand. And she followed along with it, hitting the hard floor face-first and not moving again, except for one last involuntary twitch as life quickly transitioned to death.

A bleeding and rapidly weakening Devine swiveled his head to the doorway.

Helen Speers stood there with her Glock still pointing at where Tapshaw had been standing a moment before. She looked down at Devine and started to run toward him, her phone coming out as she tapped in 911.

“Travis!” she cried out.

Right as Devine’s eyes closed.