Page 69 of Waiting For A Girl Like You (Haven House #4)

He rummaged through a drawer, pulling out a prescription bottle to pop two pills into his mouth before returning to the table to gulp them down with his water. “Finish eating.”

Taking a bite of her sandwich, she chewed slowly. With food in her system, she could stay more alert, but the nausea was still right there, riding her stomach as it threatened to revolt.

“You’re worried Zanmi might try something with Kris,” she said. “But what about Claudia and Emily? Shouldn’t you be worried about them, too? ”

“I’d be more worried about Damon than his sisters,” Michael replied before swiping up his own sandwich. “He’s got all those sickos in heat.”

Michael clearly hated Zanmi. He hated Taylor. Hated Toby. And yet, here he was.

It didn’t add up.

Jamison studied the man across from her. “Why are you doing this?”

Chewing his sandwich, Michael Sinclair kept his eyes averted.

“Cecilia and I had a fight before my last deployment. It was time to start our life together, and I told her she had to cut ties with Toby and Taylor. I’d been working hard to transition her out of that relationship.

It was working, with Toby only showing up now and then. ”

“Transitioning her out of a relationship? So before that, you were just sitting back while your girlfriend’s brother was torturing and murdering women?”

Michael's gaze snapped to her face. “Our fight was about Toby. He had killed those girls in Missouri, and we had agreed that she wouldn’t get involved, but he convinced her to help. Then he went after her student. Her fucking student, and yet she still wouldn’t cut ties with him, too afraid of what he would do.

By then, he was planning to move back to Hollingsdale and had planted Taylor pretty deep at Fairweather. ”

She almost asked why he hadn’t just gone to the police, but the answer was obvious. If he had, CeCe would have been arrested. Locked away and left to rot.

But she would’ve still been alive.

“Why didn’t you just kill him?” Giving up on her food, she was ready to ask the big questions. Her emotional and physical state couldn’t get much worse, so she figured, why not go for the gold? “You were a soldier. A hero. Heroes don’t let the bad guys win.”

Michael found her reasoning funny. “Bad guys always win, Jamison. War is not comprised of good versus evil because they’re all evil. It’s just one monster battling another for supremacy.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s still true. And Toby?” He gave a humorless laugh. “Toby’s nothing new, nor even the worst monster I’ve come across. ”

She tilted her head to the side, noting how his pupils dilated. The pills he’d taken were for pain, and likely why he was willing to talk. “Is that why you bombed those buildings?”

“All my targets deserved what they got.” Michael sobered, and he lifted his shirt, showing the tattooed names of the children who died. Right over his heart, just as he said. “Except them. I carry them here. Like I carry Cecilia. The innocent victims of violent men.”

Now or never, she chose to use his statement as an opening. “Cecilia killed herself. She wasn’t a victim. She killed herself. She ate that manchineel willingly.”

The entire atmosphere went still. There was no air, no sound, nothing but the staccato of her heart as it hammered with the knowledge that Michael Sinclair was about to kill her.

The fire in him—the absolute hate and pain he carried—shone through, etched in every line on his face and tightening muscle of his body.

Michael tilted his head, observing her as if she were the prey and he the predator.

“As I previously stated, Cecilia and I got into a fight the night before I deployed. I told her we couldn’t move forward with our lives if she were still involved with Toby.

She got upset and said it was over. She chose you and your family—a family that abandoned her—over me.

It cut deep, so I left and slept my last night stateside at Bruce’s place before flying out a few hours later. ”

“What does that—”

“I didn’t say goodbye. On Christmas. Fucking Christmas .

It was her favorite holiday. She never got to really celebrate it growing up, so I always made it special for her.

And then I left. I ruined it. I ruined her.

” His massive chest pumped rapidly with a mixture of loss and desperation to be understood.

“I got on that plane thinking we’d work it out.

But Toby beat me to her. He showed up at our place and tried one more time to pull her back.

She refused and said she wanted to wait for me, so he drugged her.

He drugged her and dragged her back to Florida.

That’s what they were doing on that inlet across from Haven House.

He was trying to show her their old home, thinking it would convince her to return. ”

The story was exactly what Toby had told the authorities. He had taken CeCe from her home in Missouri without her permission, not to hurt her, but to convince her that it was time to come home so he could be with Evie.

“Can we backtrack for a second?” Michael might not answer the question that kept nagging her, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

“One thing is completely confusing me. If Toby is so devoted to Taylor and wants her to have a baby, why is he obsessed with my sister? The things he said in that graveyard…they were sick and disgusting, but we believed that he held some sort of deranged love for Evie. Are you trying to tell me it was fake?”

“It wasn’t fake,” Michael said. “Toby loves Evie. He always has. Taylor will never compare to your sister. Not in his heart.”

Frustrated with his answer, Jamison waved a hand in exasperation. “Then why is Taylor doing all this for a man who loves another woman?”

Michael shrugged. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Taylor is what we call a narcissist. She can’t accept that anyone —especially poor Toby—could love someone other than her. She gaslights herself almost as much as she gaslights other people.”

“Did you say poor Toby? That’s a fucked up way to describe a serial killer.”

“I’ve often wondered what Toby would’ve become without Taylor. He likes pain. He likes to inflict it, but killing? Mutilating the women? Removing their eyeballs, sawing off their legs?” Michael shook his head. “Would he have done it without Taylor pressing him to go further for the thrill?”

An image of Toby in his jail uniform, writhing on the table and screaming, appeared in her mind. “Yes, I think so. He’s insane. I mean, mass murder aside, why would he come in and steal random things from Haven House? That behavior—”

“Was for Taylor.”

“What do you mean, was for Taylor ?” Her gaze narrowed on him. “Taylor put him up to all that crap?”

Michael smirked. “You think the rest of the world has become obsessed with your family and their insane story? Well, guess what? Taylor was the Fairweather's first Super Fan.”

Jamison didn’t think this could get much worse. Obviously, she was wrong. “You’re telling me that Taylor told him to steal our stuff?”

“Taylor loves your mother’s paintings the most and has them hanging at several of her properties,” he replied.

“Toby would talk about Haven House and the massacre all the time, and I guess through their years together, Taylor became just as obsessed. She wanted souvenirs. Trophies. Hell, she even encouraged him to act out that night when he killed women.”

She slouched in her chair. “I don’t… I don’t get it, Michael.”

“It’s simple. Taylor was raised in a world where the lives of others were considered insignificant.

She loves wielding power over Toby, over anyone really, and when he killed, it was only when she was with him.

Even while in college. Her father bought a villa near Grenada so Taylor could easily zip on and off the island because she demanded to stay close to him.

” Michael’s green and brown gaze stared at her, unwavering and filled with suppressed rage.

“Cecilia was well aware that Taylor was Toby’s pressure point, and when Taylor appeared out in that swamp, chasing her through the brush and edging Toby into a frenzy, she fucking knew what was going to happen. ”

From the beginning, Liam had always thought that was the case. His very first theory during the investigation was that CeCe had chosen to end her life rather than face what her brother might do.

“Wait.” Jamison leaned forward. “Taylor was there that night?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Taylor told me.”

Jamison gave herself a second to let that information settle in her mind. “When?”

“Not long after I finished building this place.” His expression turned to dark amusement. “I was done with my... public service work and planned to live a quiet life. But I went to see Taylor during one of my visits to Haven House.”

“Whoa, what?”

“Cecilia is buried there. Even in death, I can’t stay away.” He stood to clear their plates, chuckling. “By the way, that forest? I don’t know what the Fairweathers did, but it’s haunted as shit.”

She watched him as he moved about the room. “How is it that we’ve found nothing on your relationship with CeCe? ”

“Because I’m careful with my life. I’ve made too many enemies to count, and Cecilia was a liability that could be used against me.”

Out of everything she’d learned, that was the one thing that made sense. Years in PR had taught her how dangerous exposure could be—how social media could ruin or weaponize a life in seconds.

“But now you’re helping Taylor?”

“That’s what she thinks.”

“So, the phone calls? The stalking? All of it was a ruse?” Jamison shot to her feet and marched across the room. “You’ve been pretending this whole time? You don’t really want to—” she flapped her hands wildly, “—rape me and make some sicko baby for Zanmi?”

Michael looked down his nose at her, unimpressed. “I don’t give two shits about you, Jamison Fairweather. Sorry to disappoint.”

She punched him in the chest.

Hard.

And the man didn’t even flinch. “Feel better?”

“Yes! No!” She surged up on her toes to shout in his face. “Why am I here? Why did you let them take us? Why are you doing this?”

“Because I needed Fairweathers,” he said calmly, “to draw them in. Taylor is making this whole baby mission into a free-for-all. She’s calling in her friends to come and play.

The psycho wants her Fairweather baby, but she wants a boy.

A mini-Toby. And you guys didn’t have any boys for her to take.

Well, until today when your sister gave birth. ”

“What about Xavier?”

“Oh, did I forget to mention that Taylor is also a raging racist? Xavier has always been safe. I only sent Zanmi men there to get their asses shot or arrested. Just like that first night I tried to kidnap you. The men I sent after Emily were completely incompetent, and one of my guys accompanied them to ensure they were taken care of by the police. Same thing with Claudia. As soon as Smitty discovered she was pregnant, he dumped her. She could be carrying a boy, and we weren’t about to give Taylor what she wanted. ”

Jamison stumbled back a step, horror curling in her stomach. “The women. At Haven House and Samuel’s house? You sent those women to—”

“Those fertile women who would have been used on Damon or your brother or even your dad? Yes, I sent them. To. Their. Deaths. Eugene gave me the list of who was the most viable to carry a child, and those are the ones I sent.”

For the briefest of seconds, hope had flared inside her. For a single moment, she thought Michael might not be the monster he pretended to be.

But she was so wrong.

Those poor, misguided women had been murdered by him.

“Eugene Gilbert?” she whispered. “Toby’s friend from college who started Zanmi?”

“Eugene didn’t start Zanmi. Taylor dragged him into it. He wants the group dead as much as I do. They’re bleeding him dry with their blackmail.”

“They could have killed us.” She went to the bed and sat on its edge. “Those women wanted to kill us.”

“But they didn’t, did they? They stupidly ate the fruit I told them were decoys. They never even questioned me.”

“And Taylor didn’t know you were doing it. That’s why she sounded so surprised on the phone.”

“Yeah, that took some smoothing over. Unfortunately, I lost focus during the whole thing and allowed my ego to take control. Something in me needed Taylor to know her people were about to die, so I let your dad’s call to her go through.

It was a mistake, and she almost caught on that I wasn’t completely on her side, but her narcissism won.

She couldn’t fathom anyone not wanting to be dedicated to her needs.

” He inhaled deeply, rubbing an eye that had begun to spasm.

“In the end, it was a win. I was able to eradicate a round of future rapists and use it as a distraction to get my nephew from the feds.”

Staring at her hands folded in her lap, she replayed everything he’d just said. “Are you going to let us go before you do whatever you have planned?”

Michael crossed over to where she sat and knelt in front of her. “Grief twists people into unrecognizable things. I was already standing at the tipping point, but I completely lost my soul when I lost Cecilia.”

That strange shadow returned, merging with Michael’s on the wall. It crouched beside him as if it, too, were listening .

“That’s not a yes.” She shook her head, overwhelmed but somehow clearer in her thinking. One’s impending death did that to a person. “You’re going to let us die here.”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On how fast you run.”