normal brain cell.” She kicked at him. “Of course there’s always the chance he might not wake up this time.”
Anger bloodied my vision at the edges, and I suddenly understood why people describe rage as red. I felt the weight of the purse on my hip—Trey’s old gun, fully loaded, heavy with possibility.
“I swear to God, if you hurt him—”
“Shut up. Get on your knees.”
I sank. From that angle, I could see Trey better, and I didn’t like what I saw. He was on his stomach, his face toward me, eyes closed, and there was blood right at his temple. I was suddenly mad at him—God, he was SWAT-trained, how could he let a creature like Charley Beaumont get the better of him?—but then the anger burned clean.
I suddenly had this wild hope that he was just pretending, that any minute he would jump up and wrench that gun from her hand and crack her upside the head with it.
He didn’t move. I still couldn’t tell if he was breathing.
Charley lowered the gun and stepped forward. I saw that it was Trey’s, the new P7M8 I’d found for him. She probably had his wallet too, maybe his car keys. And she was agitated. Whatever she was trying to do, she hadn’t planned it very well. I lowered my hands a millimeter.
She raised the gun. “Don’t try it. I’ve got no problem blowing a hole in your head. His either.”
“Just like Eliza.”
“Shut up! You don’t know anything!”
“I know you cared about her. Very much.”
Charley stared at me. The gun wobbled.
“And I know that you didn’t want to kill her.”
She tightened her grip. “If she’d just taken the money and kept her damn mouth shut, none of this would have happened. I told him to put a stop to it, but he beat her instead. It’s how he solves everything.”
The bruises where someone had banged Eliza up three days before she died. Everyone blamed Bulldog, but that scenario was fast dissolving. No way Charley would have had anything to do with that pathetic loser, especially not sending him to take care of a problem like blackmail.
“Who beat her up?”
Charley was still talking, more to herself than to me. “He said it would teach her a lesson.”
“It did—it scared her into trying to tell my brother what was going on.”
Charley didn’t reply. The gun shook harder, and her eyes skittered from me to Trey to the door. She was ready to bolt, but I knew I had to keep her in place until one of the damn rent-a-cops noticed something hinky was going on.
I dropped my voice, as if we were in it together. “You used Gabriella’s as the drop off point, didn’t you? You’d tuck the money somewhere inside and then leave, and Eliza would pick it up later—that way the two of you were never seen together. But Gabriella noticed. She told you Eliza was stalking you, which meant you had to find a different way of paying her off. She got restless in the meantime, didn’t she? Called up Dylan Flint, got some pictures taken so that you couldn’t deny knowing her.”
Charley breathed harder. The gun wavered.
“I know some other things too, like Phoenix had Eliza’s place bugged. I know somebody heard her call Eric and say she was on her way over, and I know that somebody killed her right after that and cleaned all the surveillance equipment out of her apartment.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be that way. He said—”
“Who said?”
She let out a sob, cut it short with another sharp inhale.
“Who, Charley? Who did it? Who killed Eliza?”
She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. And then she swung the gun in Trey’s direction. “He did, you stupid bitch!”
I froze. “No, Trey would never—”
“Of course he did, you idiot! That’s why he’s here now, to kill me too!”
My eyes were now accustomed to the dark and I could see her better. Trey too. I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”
“Of course you don’t, you think he’s some kind of hero.” She laughed, but it was caustic. “He beat her up, but that didn’t stop her, so he killed her instead, and Landon had to cover it up. Stupid little dyke, it’s all her fault, if she’d have just shut the fuck up…”
Charley continued to rant. I wasn’t quite sure what I was hearing anymore—he this, Trey that, Landon this. She kept using the word “dyke” and other slurs, which didn’t make any sense for the