“Because I killed Benjamin that morning, before I left for school. I broke his neck.”
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Cassie took in a horrified gulp of air.
Was Dylan joking?
She knew he wasn’t. He sounded perfectly matter-of-fact, and that only made his words more chilling. In any case, his version was the more plausible. A healthy rabbit, suddenly dead.
Cassie remembered the way Benjamin’s head had hung, limp and disjointed. At the time she had wondered about it and now it made sense.
Why had Dylan done that? Killing an innocent pet was a psychopathic act. No normal boy would do such a thing. What had his reasons been, or had he simply wanted to kill, to feel the bone break in his grasp, to snuff out a harmless little life?
What kind of a creature was he? She’d thought him to be a normal boy, if rather shy and introverted. Now she was finding out that behind his quiet exterior, a monster lurked.
His words had rendered her speechless, and she shuddered, as if a bucket of ice had been poured down her back. She had no idea what to say, what to do next. But Dylan seemed unconcerned.
“Good night,” he said, and turned over in bed so that his back was facing her.
Blindsided by this sickening revelation, Cassie stumbled out of the room. Back in her bedroom, she huddled under her duvet, in a state of shock at what she had discovered that night.
Ryan was a liar. What she’d found, and what she hadn’t found, tonight had proven it. He’d been feeding her falsehoods, stringing her along, making empty promises that were based on nothing but his own warped imagination.
His own son had confirmed he did this—and thinking back on the conversation with Dylan, Cassie buried her face in her pillow.
His words, and the casual way he’d spoken them, had terrified her. He’d talked about killing in cold blood as if it meant nothing to him. If he could do that to a rabbit, what else could he do? What might he do to her?
With fear and anger warring inside her, sleep was impossible for Cassie, and she was still awake when, much later, she heard the sound of Ryan and Trish returning home.
As they walked down the hallway, laughing softly and whispering in their efforts to be quiet, she checked her phone.
It was after eleven. They must have stayed at the pub till closing time. This hadn’t just been a polite get-together, it had been a festive evening.
Listening to their giggles as they passed her door, she imagined they must be walking close together, perhaps even arm in arm. What would happen when they got into the room, and into that immaculately made bed?
Cassie shut her eyes as tight as she could, squeezing them painfully closed to try and block out her imaginings.
Then she got up and opened her window. Even though it would make the room freezing cold, she wanted to hear the scream of the wind and the roar of the sea as it foamed over those dark, glossy pebbles, and she wanted to drown herself in its rage.
She knew the alternative—hearing any whisper of lovemaking from the room down the hall—would push her over the edge.
“You bastard,” she whispered viciously as she climbed back into bed.
“I hate you for what you’ve done.”
*
Cassie hadn’t thought she wouldn’t sleep at all, but she must have at some stage during that terrible night, because she woke abruptly to the sound of laughter from the kitchen.
She sat bolt upright, gritting her teeth as she heard Ryan’s guffaw and Trish’s piercing, bell-like laugh. She threw on clothes, and then although her hands were shaking with anger, she did her makeup carefully to conceal the paleness of her face and the dark shadows under her eyes. She was going to show Ryan that she wasn’t in pieces about this and, in fact, didn’t care at all.
She checked the time on her phone, and to her consternation, she saw that she had an email from Jess.
The happy letter she’d written just yesterday explaining that she and Ryan were an item felt like it came from a different lifetime. How stupid, how gullible she had been.
She was mortified by the confession she’d made, but at least she could now vent her anger to Jess in a caustically worded reply.
She opened the email and as she read it, she felt her heart sink.
“Hi, Cassie,” Jess wrote.
“I think we might have a situation here! I am totally confused and feel I have done the wrong thing.
“You know I told you I worked for friends of friends. That’s how I met Ryan and his family. Well, his friend, whom I know quite well, is named Olive and she lives in one of the nearby towns.
“Anyway I told her the good news and she emailed me back. She said that you were lying because they attended Ryan’s birthday party two weeks ago and everything was perfect. Ryan and his wife were making plans for a family holiday over New Year.
“I don’t know what to say or do! I feel terrible that I might have given the wrong info or misunderstood your email. Would these friends not know if they were divorced? I need to know what to say to her because she’s demanding answers. Please can you help me!
“Love, Jess.”
Cassie stared at the letter in panic.
Jess had innocently spilled the beans, and now there was every chance that the angry friend would tell the Ellises.
Crimson with shame, she reread the email she’d sent Jess. There wasn’t much room for doubt in it. Cassie had said there was a spark, she’d mentioned the nonexistent divorce, she’d used the word “dating,” and worst of all, she’d told Jess about the overnight stay at a hotel.
There was no way to back out of this; it was totally incriminating. She’d been truthful and now her own honesty had come back to bite
