She tried to spring to her feet, to defend herself, to fight, found herself pinned.

“Scream,” he warned, “and I’ll shoot you, not to death, but it’ll hurt. Then I’ll gag you. I’m looking for a little conversation, but we can go with your bleeding on the floor and a monologue. Your choice.”

“What do you want, Trent?”

“Didn’t I just say?” He slapped her—not too hard, just enough so she’d know who the hell was in charge. “What did I say? Repeat after me. Trent wants a little conversation.”

She had to swallow the bile that wanted to rise into her throat. “Trent wants a little conversation. You don’t need the gun, Trent. I’m tied to the chair. I can’t go anywhere.”

“Are you telling me what to do?”

“No. I’m asking if you’d put the gun down while we talk.”

Her mind emptied but for terror when he stuck the barrel under her chin. “Denied! How about I just pull the trigger? How about that?”

“I can’t stop you, but then I wouldn’t hear what you came all this way to say to me.”

“You’re shaking, Darb. You scared?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m scared.”

“Good. You should be.” But he removed the gun, stepped back. “Scared little baby doll, aren’t you? You’ll give me whatever I want, won’t you?”

When he pinched her breast, she couldn’t stop the flinch, the shudder, but she made herself say, “Yes.”

She’d thought she’d hated him to her capacity to hate. But she found more.

“Do you think I want sex from you? I could take it if I wanted, but you’re not getting off, oh no. No goodies for you, bitch. You want to know what I want? I’ll tell you what the fuck I want.”

The rage in his voice had her bracing for another blow, but he spun away, spun back, gesturing wildly with the gun. “I want my goddamn life back, the life you stole. I want every minute of the time I spent in prison back. I want my business back instead of having my own fucking family shove me behind closed doors, paying me to keep out of the damn way, and not embarrass them. I want my fucking partners dead, my so-called-friends dead for cutting me out, taking what was mine. I want to stop pretending I’m sorry for smacking around my own wife when she deserved it.

“How about that, Darb? Can you give me what I want?”

His face, red with fury, shoved close to hers. Submission, she thought, he wanted her submission, her humiliation.

Maybe if she gave it to him she’d live.

She let the tears come, let them flow. “I’m so sorry, Trent. I’m so sorry.”

“Are you, Darby? Are you? Were you sorry when you sat in court, when you testified against me? You didn’t look sorry, you lying cunt, when they found me guilty and you and that bitch of a mother of yours hugged like it was your goddamn birthday.”

Give him what he wants. “I was afraid, I was afraid and I made a mistake.”

“A mistake? Is that what you call it? The first week I was in prison, because of your mistake, I got jumped. Bastards beat me up just because they could. Mistake?”

Oh, the irony, she thought, but kept her head lowered, her eyes down. “You were so strong. I was afraid.”

“You belonged at home, at the home I gave you, under the roof I put over your head, not out grubbing in the dirt like some damn dog.”

The dog, the dog, the dog. Someone would find the dog, her truck. Someone—

“Are you listening to me?” He yanked her head back.

“I’m ashamed, so ashamed. I don’t know how you can ever forgive me. If you could let me try to make it up to you—”

“Do you think I want you?” With a wild laugh, he gave her hair a vicious yank, then let go. “Do you think I came all the way down here, holed up in this hick backwater, because I want you back? You’re going to pay, Darby, pay for all the things I want and can’t have back.”

He jabbed the gun into her stomach. “How’s this for a start? How’s your mommy doing, Darb? How’s she doing, mommy’s little baby girl? You know how easy that was?”

She heard her own ringtone—incoming text? Distracted, Trent drew the gun away, pulled her phone from his pocket. “From Roy. Are you fucking him, too?”

Trent dropped her phone on the floor, stomped on it.

“Sorry, Roy, Darby can’t come to the phone right now.”

The shaking came back so her knuckles rapped, rapped, rapped against the arm of the chair. “What are you talking about? About my mother?”

“What? Oh right.”

He strolled back for his Gatorade, took a good gulp. “You went running home to her, didn’t you? Went running home to her while your lawfully wedded husband rotted in prison. Even got a fresh new restraining order against me when I got out, and stayed all safe and warm with Mommy.”

“You…” Nothing, even after all he’d done, had prepared her. Nothing ever could. “You killed my mother.”

“You killed her! You signed her death warrant when you put me in prison. I just stole a car—you learn some useful things inside. That’s what they call it, you know. Inside. Stole a car, put my bike in it, poured some beer on the floor, blew some weed inside. Just had to wait for her to come jogging along, and bam!”

He did a kind of dance across the floor. “Man, she flew! Just keep driving, dump the car, ride the bike to where I stashed mine. Boom, and boom. And boo-hoo-hoo, Mommy’s dead.”

Grief, rage, shock slammed into her, so she tried to rock up in the chair despite the restraints. “She did nothing to you!”

“She took you in when you belonged to me! She looked at me, over your shoulder in that courtroom, she looked at me when they took me away, with satisfaction. She shouldn’t have done that. I’m going to kill you when I’m finished, and sometime, maybe in a year, maybe two, I’m coming back to kill that asshole you’re fucking. I’ll do a better job of it than that drunk rube who thought shooting at a house mattered a damn.”

Not just a batterer, she realized through the screams inside her head. Not just a vicious, violent, selfish man. A murderer.

The mask he’d worn, even in court, had fallen away. She saw not only the killer under it, but one who found pleasure in the killing.

And she would die here, by his hand.

* * *

Though he had plenty of time before court, Zane got dressed, save for the tie, dropped a baseball in his suit coat pocket. Maureen was right about it spoiling the line, but he liked being able to turn it in his hand in there when he listened to his opponent examine a witness.

He folded the tie into his other pocket, then pulled out his phone when it rang.

“Walker. Hey, Roy.”

“Hey there, Zane. Is Darby around?”

“She left nearly an hour ago.” Something crawled up his spine. “Are you at the rentals?”

“Yeah. Might be she made another stop, but she’s not answering her phone. Tried texting and calling. But lotsa spots around here service drops out.”

“Yeah. Look, I’m heading out…” He’d call his contact in Raleigh when he got to Asheville. “I’ll swing by Emily’s. She might have gone by there first, just got caught up. I’ll let you know.”

“Appreciate that. You know, I think we’ll call Best Blooms, just in case she decided she needed something from there.”

“Good idea.”

But he heard the anxiety in Roy’s voice that echoed the voice in his own head. Darby wouldn’t get caught up or make another stop that would make her late for work—not without letting the crew know.

He considered calling Lee as he hurried downstairs. Just go by, he told himself. It’s probably nothing. Better to go by.

He tried her phone as he left the house, got voice mail.

“Call me,” he snapped, and jumped into his car.

When instinct says something’s wrong, he thought, listen to it. He started to hit his hands-free to contact Lee after all, made the turn.

Saw Darby’s truck.

He tried to tell himself she’d just had a breakdown, but he knew, already knew, even before he heard the dog howling. Before he saw the cap, the one she’d put on as she left, on the ground.

The dog leaped into his arms when Zane wrenched open the door. Fighting for calm, he called Lee.

“Somebody’s got Darby. Her truck’s on the side of the road fifty feet from our turnoff. The dog was in the truck. Her cap’s on the ground. Somebody’s got her.”

“I’m on my way.”

He thought of Jed Draper, and following his rage, got back in his car, put the dog on the floor of the passenger seat. “Stay down there.”

He peeled out, floored it. What had made him think Draper would take losing a fight without retribution?

Because he’d seen it, Zane realized. Because he’d seen it in the man’s eyes when he’d gotten up off the ground. But if he’d been wrong …

He took a turn too fast, fishtailed, kept going.

I saw somebody who looked sort of like that out on the lake, Darby had said. He gave me the creeps.

No books in the house, playing computer games, no Bingley at any of the hundred-plus colleges he’d checked so far.

Didn’t make any sense, no damn sense, but …