I catch Jace’s icy gaze in the mirror and I hold it defiantly, refusing to show the fear he wants to see, even as a sharp point pricks my hip.
“Here.” He throws a bath towel at me, holding it by the very edge with his gloved hand. “I can’t stand the sound of chattering teeth. Now move.”
I hug the towel around myself and stumble to keep up as he uses the edge of the knife to herd me left and down the hall, toward a faint glow of light, never laying so much as a finger on me. I think that’s intentional. Now I understand why he forced me into the bath—hoping to rid my body of all evidence that he ever touched it. That brings me some small comfort that rape isn’t on the agenda.
“In there.”
I find myself in a small, simple bedroom with a double bed adorned by a quilted blanket. A clunky wooden nightstand sits on the far side, decorated with a picture of two small children smiling out at me, and a sizeable granite rock with a clock embedded in its face, telling me that it’s nearly four a.m. Resting next to the picture and the rock clock are a set of handcuffs, a glass with clear liquid in it, and two plastic ziplock bags with contents I can’t see from here.
That’s his plan.
He’s going to bind my wrists and pump me full of drugs. That’s how I’m going to die. An overdose, just like Celine. Quick, clean, the least risk of leaving evidence of himself in a struggle. “Coward,” I whisper.
“Why? Because I’m smart? Because I’m not stupid enough to use a gun that could somehow be traced back to me? Because I’m not animalistic enough to carve you into pieces with this knife? Anyone can buy Oxy; no one will ever be able to connect those dots. Not even your overpriced PI.”
“Like I said . . . coward.”
“Get on the bed,” he demands. He doesn’t even sound like himself anymore.
He sounds like someone who’s preparing himself for murder.
But I refuse to prepare myself for dying.
My instincts tell me to run, and so I try, spinning on my heels, ready to claw, punch, knee my way to safety. Because I am going to die here if I don’t.
He’s ready for it, though. Pain explodes in my cheek as his fist connects with it. I stumble back and lose my balance, falling onto the mattress.
“You never listen, do you?” he snaps. He sets the knife down on the nightstand—at least he didn’t stab me—and, seizing my ankles with rough hands, he hoists my legs onto the bed until I’m lying on my back. I’m still so dazed, I don’t realize that he’s bound my wrists at the front with the handcuffs until after the metal click sounds.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say, stalling, struggling to breathe through the pain. I need to keep him talking. Just long enough to stall that lethal cocktail from sliding down my throat.
“Yes, I do. You won’t stop. You said so yourself, that day in my office. You’re like a dog on a bone with that fucking vase. I guess I can understand, given the value of it.” He shakes his head. “Celine and all her note-taking. Who keeps paper records still? I’m glad I was at her apartment that day when you handed those books over to that friend of hers. I thought I’d covered my ass when I deleted her pictures and that post she was writing.”
Realization hits me like a hard slap to the face. “You did take it, after all . . .” I was right the first time around. It wasn’t Grady. But then . . . why was that vase in Grady’s closet?
“Of course I did. I’m not going to leave millions of dollars behind.” He dumps the crushed contents of a pill bottle into the glass, tapping the bottom of it once . . . twice . . . I’m guessing he’s not going to stage this as a suicide, seeing as there’s no reason for me being out here, in the middle of nowhere. “I had already decided to sit on it for a while before I got it appraised, to see if Celine was right. But once I learned you guys were inventorying everything she owned, and I realized that she also kept written catalogues, I just knew that little friend of hers would find a record of it. And with my luck, he’d start thinking the same thing she did—that this was a real find—and then he’d notice it was missing. And, lo and behold, I was right.”
“So you killed Celine for money?”
He scoffs. “What kind of a bottom feeder do you take me for, Maggie?”
And now he’s coming at me, grabbing the back of my neck and hoisting me into a sitting position. He lifts the lethal cocktail.
He’s not going to put that in my body. I’m not going to let him.
He must see the unspoken determination in my eyes because he picks up the knife. I gasp with panic as he approaches me, aiming the edge at my neck until I feel a sharp pinch. “So here’s how it’s going to work. You’re going to drink every last drop and not move, because if you move, this knife will slice open your throat and you’ll bleed out quickly.”
I close my eyes as tears slip down my cheeks. As much as I’d like to defy him and fight, my survival instincts keep my body frozen in place. Maybe there’s not enough Oxy in this drink to kill me. Maybe someone will rescue me in this isolated part of the woods.
He presses the glass to my lips. “Open!” I do, and he pours the liquid down my throat. I struggle to swallow against the chunks of too many pills and the burn of alcohol.
I’m going to die here tonight.
I wonder how long it will take.
I glare at him, waiting for him to pull the glass away. His eyes flicker to mine once but then shift away quickly as he does. As if he can’t actually face what he’s about to do to me.
Good. At least he feels guilt.
“You shouldn’t have killed her,” I mumble bitterly. “If you hadn’t killed her, I wouldn’t be here now. So this is all your fault. You have no one to blame but yourself.”
He shakes his head, tucking the knife back into the holder hanging from his belt. “She would have turned on me eventually. Do you even have any idea what your friend’s mental state was that night?”
I wince against the gritty pill residue left on my tongue. “No, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me?”
CHAPTER 46
Celine
November 15, 2015
I can still fix this. I know I can.
I smear the tears from my cheek with my palm as I gaze at his picture.
It’s been weeks since I found out that Jace slept with his assistant and I still can’t shake the hurt. That day, when my phone beeped with a group text from Marnie to Dani and me, saying “Guess who’s banging her boss! Shhhh . . . ,” followed by an image of Jace lying asleep in his bed, it was like someone punched me in the gut.