When Allie arrived at the house, he watched her every chance he could get, although he was careful to hide it. He had savored every second he’d gotten with her during their tutoring sessions. Savored visiting her at night. Marveled at watching her change for the better. He was attracted to her pain. Her life had been a nightmare . . . and he could relate. Yes, she was still very broken, but he was leaving her in the very best hands. His daughter was fixable. He was not.
He had been anxious to tell Allie the truth—that he was her father—a few weeks after she had moved into the house, but his mother didn’t think it was time yet. The woman was fiercely protective of him and, in her eyes, his safety came first.
The two didn’t know what Allie knew about him and the murders he had committed with her mother . . . or how much the unstable Dariah had told the kids as they were growing up.
And if Allie didn’t fully trust him and Bitty—if she wasn’t truly loyal to them—there was a good chance she would tell others. So their plan was to not only help her but to also win her trust and loyalty before revealing to her that she wasn’t truly an orphan. That they were her family and would be there for her, unconditionally. Always.
The only problem . . . they’d run out of time.
He heard a scraping sound coming from the house.
His hands trembling, he lit another cigarette, then lumbered to the house and opened the back door. Piglet bounded out and yipped at his feet. He watched the small dog as she ran around, sniffing the tree, the leaves, the chair . . . then finally found a place to squat.
There was no way he could have harmed the animal, knowing how Allie felt about her. Instead, he’d only caught her that night and clamped her mouth shut. And since then he had taken good care of her. Several times he had considered returning the dog, but he liked having a little piece of his daughter around.
His cotton shirt was stuck to his flesh, fused to the oozing wounds on both his stomach and back. He pulled at his shirttail and winced. Hope’s face flashed through his mind. If the circumstances were different, he’d be furious that she got away. She, like so many others, had let him down. But he was too weak for fury. His brain too numb.
Staring at the tree again, he realized he was looking forward to what he was about to do. Maybe it’s why he had become so sloppy, murdering so close to home. Maybe he was exhausted and just needed it all to end.
He wanted to call his mother to tell her he was relieved that his struggle was over, but his cell phone had fallen from his pocket at Hope’s house, and he didn’t have a landline. He also wanted to tell her good-bye and that he loved her, although he wasn’t sure it was true. It was a question that had gone unanswered all of his life. He knew he needed her, so if needing her was the same as loving her, he did love her. But if needing was the same as love, he loved the hunt much, much more . . . than both her and Allie combined.
He removed his eyeglasses and set them on a pile of crisp leaves. Then he pushed his shoes off and placed them neatly beside the glasses.
Lethargic from the blood loss, he tried to climb the tree. After three attempts, he finally made it up to the branch. As the rain began to fall, he reached out for the rope. Woozy, he snatched it and yanked a couple of times to make sure it was sturdy enough to support his weight. Then he waited several seconds . . . for what, he wasn’t certain . . . before he slipped his head into it.
His ears pricked as he heard cars approach in the distance. Only an occasional car passed on the sleepy rural road his rental house was on, so he knew who was coming . . . and that they were coming to get him.
His time had finally come.
He looked down to find the pup staring up at him, whining, her head cocked. The sky opened up and rain began falling in sheets. Shivering against the chill, he forced all the air from his lungs and stepped forward into thin air.
As he swayed gently next to the big oak, he was vaguely aware of the dog’s mournful howls and the two sheriff’s deputies, weapons drawn, running in the rain toward him.
EPILOGUE
Six Months Later . . .
BITTY SITUATED THE last box in the back of the Tahoe. It had taken six months to tie up loose ends with the law, get the adoption finalized, and place the house on the market—and now she couldn’t leave town quickly enough.
She needed to be somewhere else to function again.
She had to switch some major gears. After all, everything she’d done for the last few decades was to preserve her son’s life. Everything she’d do going forward was to guarantee the girl a new one.
Louis’s face flashed in her mind and her knees buckled. She leaned against the Tahoe’s frame for support. Since his death, his image muscled its way into her mind several times a day.
The nights were the worst.
In her mind, she lifted a big red “Stop” sign.
STOP!
She raised it higher. STOP! STOP! STOP!
Louis’s image melted away. A short reprieve from her pain until the next time.
He’d come back.
He always did.
She had a girl to finish raising. One who had come so incredibly far, but needed much more guidance to truly save. If it was the last thing Bitty did, she was determined to do right by the girl. After all, if she did right by Allie, she’d be doing something for Louis. Something he hadn’t been able to do for himself.
Thankfully, the law hadn’t pieced together her real relationship with Louis—or else she wouldn’t have been able to leave town so soon, if at all. The new identities they’d assumed years earlier had again worked in her favor. As far as the law was concerned, all Louis was to her was an employee and a friend.
Bitty still hadn’t found the right time to tell Allie the truth: that Louis had been much more than simply Allie’s tutor. He’d been her father, and the real reason behind their move to Grand Trespass.
She feared that revealing the truth would cause the fragile girl, who’d admitted that she sometimes saw a monster when she looked into the mirror, to backslide. Plus, Allie was already afraid of losing her mental faculties—so there hadn’t been a good time to explain that she had not only one, but two mentally ill parents.
Even worse, two who had literally been monsters.