scar on my stomach suggested no one was infallible and no one was untouchable.
"Zane thinks whoever tried to kill me on Halloween is different from my stalker," I commented, curious to see what both Steele and Archer thought. "He thinks—"
"Zane doesn't know shit," Archer growled. "He made vague promises about helping you out, but I guarantee he is just buying time to work out how he can monetize your situation. Trust me, Princess, if he thought your stalker would pay good money to have you hand-delivered in a body bag, he'd have done it. Or tried to, at least. He wouldn't get far with us around."
My heart sank. Some small part of me—since believing Zane hadn't killed my mom—had started thinking he wasn't as bad as he'd been painted. If he’d loved my mom, then he couldn't be. Right?
Steele made a sound that caught Archer's attention. The big guy sighed and swung his gaze away from the TV to look at me with an edge of apology in his eyes. "I know you think he has some redeeming features that your mom fell for, but... he just doesn't. He was a piece of shit even while he was with Deb, and he's a hundred times worse now. You've probably blocked the memories out, but he was quickly dragging your mom down a dark and dangerous path. There's no silver lining to Zane D'Ath."
Disappointment burned through my veins like acid, and I bit my cheek to keep it from playing out across my face. Archer seemed sincere, for once, and I couldn’t think of a reason for him to lie about that.
But where did that leave me?
"So you think it was my stalker at the Clown on Halloween?" I asked him with an arched brow. The TV screen showed our race cars all lined up at the start line, but Archer hadn't hit the button to start the game yet.
He looked back at me with one of those intense, guarded stares—the sort of stare that stripped me bare and made me shiver. "No, I think Zane's right on that. Your stalker, like Deb's stalker, is obsessed in a sexual way. He wouldn't kill you before..." He trailed off with a small cringe, and I could guess the rest.
Before he got a chance to play out all his twisted fantasies. It was probably why he'd shifted his fixation from my mom to me after she’d died. Unfulfilled desires and all that. It was sick, no doubt, but it definitely gave weight to the theory that it'd been someone else trying to kill me that night.
"Also, you said it was more than one person that night, didn't you?" Steele asked, thoughtfully tapping his controller against the arm of his chair. "I think they were after you for something else. The girl that died on Riot Night was an attack on you, too. So this has been going on for a while."
I had nothing to say to that. He was right, of course. I'd convinced myself that the girl killed on Riot Night had just been a coincidence. An accident or something. But the second attempt to murder me suggested it’d been, in fact, a deliberate attempt on my life.
"But why?" I lamented aloud. "I don't get it. Why would anyone want to kill me?"
"That's what we want to work out," Archer murmured. He rubbed his thumb over his lower lip, lost in thought. "Does anyone spring to mind who might want to kill you? Or who might benefit from your death?"
I shook my head, chewing at the corner of my lip. "I've legitimately gone over this in my brain a thousand times, and I can't think of anything. My trust fund, maybe? But it's not even a million dollars. Hardly worth hiring someone to kill me for, considering how much paid killers probably get."
Steele shifted in his seat, and I looked over at him, worried he was uncomfortable or in pain. His eyes were locked on Archer, though, and his brow was deeply furrowed.
"I doubt that's it then," Archer replied, his voice flat and emotionless. He was probably pitying me for my small inheritance when he had the entire D'Ath Estate up his sleeve. Prick.
Steele huffed an annoyed sigh. "Arch—" he started, but broke off when the sound of a door slamming echoed through the house.
My shoulders bunched, my whole body tense with fear, but seconds later the mouthwatering aroma of pizza met my nose, and Kody appeared in the doorway.