save my daughter, did you? You killed her. You’re not a hero.”
Despite the monster he had turned into, Ellie couldn’t help feeling sympathy for the man in front of her.
“But Deputy Eastwood has nothing to do with any of this, and neither did those other women,” Ellie said. “You have me now. Where is she?”
“Oh, she’s another one just like you. Thinks she’s better than everyone else. She needed to be put in her place. I made her suffer, too.”
“Where did you leave her body?”
He scoffed. “You should be worried about yourself.”
“Where is she, Hugh?”
“You’ll be together soon. I have the perfect place to dispose of your bodies.”
“All you’ve done is prove that you didn’t deserve to wear a badge,” she spat, thinking of her helpless friend.
Backhanding her, he sent a sharp pain pulsing through her jaw.
“I proved that I’m smarter and stronger than you. All this time you’ve been chasing different leads. Making arrests. Running all over town like a headless chicken. You didn’t have a fucking clue it was me.”
It had been years since she’d last seen him. Since she’d spoken to him. How could she have known?
“You found out everyone I was close to and tried to turn me against them,” she said. “You framed Cord.”
“See how clever I was.”
“And you knew about Hiram.”
“Oh, yes, Hiram and his friend Vinny. All I had to do was pose as a cleaner and I got to talk to your brother. He told me all about Vinny. And that fell into place. Vinny would do anything for your brother, so I helped him get out of that hospital and pointed the finger at the two of them.”
“It was you on the security camera going into Vinny’s room,” Ellie said.
He chuckled. “All it took was some scrubs and knowing one of the guards liked to slip out for a smoke every two hours.”
“You hacked into the therapist’s files,” she said, piecing together the past few weeks. She’d told the counselor—or the woman she’d thought was the counselor—all her secrets, poured out her feelings of guilt, about Hiram and the adoption, her irritation with Bryce, that one night with Derrick, her history with Cord, and the tension between them. “How did you know I was talking to a counselor?”
He barked a laugh. “You can thank your local sheriff for that one. I met him at Haints. A few drinks in and that man has a loose tongue. He bragged that he heard you talking to the deputy. The rest was easy.”
They’d bonded over their animosity toward her. Ellie wanted to scream.
“Did you know that that’s my bar?” he asked.
“You own Haints?” Ellie asked, shocked.
“I bought it because it was across from the cemetery where Cici is buried. And to be close to the cops.” His fingers dug into her arms. “Where I should have been all along, with my fellow officers.” His sinister laugh rang in her ears. “Where I could keep an eye on you.”
“You put that blood on my porch,” Ellie said. “The blood—”
“I took from your precious friend,” he snarled. “Imagine my fun watching it drain from her body. And I didn’t have to go anywhere near your house. Vinny did that for me.”
“But what about Cord? You put his print on Shondra’s truck?”
“Easy peasy.” He laughed again.
“How did you know about his upbringing? About Finton?”
Another sardonic laugh, and he shook her so hard her teeth rattled. “Because I’m the best detective,” he said sharply. “What a mistake the academy made… Once you spilled your guts to the therapist, all I had to do was a little investigating.” He bounced up and down on his heels like a kid with too much energy. “When I learned about his foster family, I knew he’d make the perfect patsy. And finding all those books in his house gave me all the information I needed to plan out the disposal sites.”
“And Finton? You let us think he was part of it. Was he?”
“That sick creep. No. But he was the icing on the cake. With his past and McClain’s, it was easy to make them look like conspirators,” Burton said with a grin. “Really, Detective, I helped you put away a bad guy. I should receive a police commendation.”
He was totally deranged.
Keep him talking, Ellie. She needed time. “Tell me this, Hugh. How did you get that woman to agree to be a fake therapist and help you?”
He pulled at the collar around her neck, choking her. “I have my ways.”
“You held