“Well, would you look at that, Callie girl grew a fucking brain.”
Callie let out a dry laugh. “And you killed Adam Wanton.”
“Of course I did. I needed him to disappear so people might still believe he was the killer even if my mom fucked all that up and your stupid boyfriend jumped the gun on the arrest.” Kara reached over and opened the vehicle door. “Get out.”
On wobbly legs, Callie stepped from the car. She scanned the area but wasn’t exactly sure where she was. She and Jag had spent some time on the island when they’d been dating, but they always liked Fort Casey over any other place. “Why’d you kill your college roommate?” She needed to focus on the patterns and motives of the murders. The psychology behind it. She had to understand more about how Kara thought and felt about her actions if she was going to figure out how to get out of this situation alive.
And if she would up dead.
At least she’d know the truth before she went six feet under.
Someone had to.
“She wasn’t Tina.”
“You’re stepmother,” Callie said matter-of-factly. “Why the mood ring?”
“Because that’s the very first gift that Tina ever bought me. I was shocked when she didn’t tell the cops that. It was the first moment I knew I could get away with it. Not that I thought I wanted to at the time.” Kara shoved Callie against the hood of the sedan before reaching in and opening the glove box. She pulled out a gun before leaning against the car. She folded her one hand across her middle but made sure the other one pointed the weapon right at Callie. “I was sick to my stomach for days over what I had done. It was like an out-of-body experience. I was bending over the body, pounding her face with some snow globe or something when I realized what I’d done. I quickly got up, cleaned off all the blood, changed my clothes, and ran off down the hallway screaming like a madwoman.”
“But you killed again. And all women that looked like Tina.”
Kara nodded. “We all have a type. I like women with long blond hair who are tall and slender and smart. That often gets me in trouble. I can’t tell you how many women I have dated that I’ve had to kill because they figure it out.”
Callie swallowed. “But you don’t just kill gays.”
“Nope. Sometimes I kill because I have to. I kill friends or colleagues or hookers because I get the hankering.”
“But you had a fourteen-year gap when you left Seattle.”
Kara shook her head. “Actually, I didn’t. When I left here the first time, I went to Vermont, and I met a lovely woman by the name of Heidi. We were madly in love, until she decided the fun was over. She thought I stifled her. That I was too jealous of her other friends.”
“So you killed her.” Callie let out an exasperated sigh. “How many women did you kill in Vermont?”
“Only six. And since I know what the next question is, I’ll answer it for you. I left them all with a pillow.”
“A pillow?” Callie snapped her gaze in Kara’s direction and stared at her with wide eyes. “In their hand?”
“No. Under their head.”
“Why that object?”
“Again, it had to do with gifts between me and my lover. See, Renee, she loved dolphins. And Ivy, ravens. Yes. It’s a pattern. My MO. Whatever the fuck you want to call it.”
“Okay. So why change the color of the trinkets? Or right and left hands.”
Kara shrugged. “I have to do things in sixes. I’m sure some shrink will have a field day with that one, but that’s the only reason. I’ve always been surprised that the cops in Vermont never really picked up on the pillow thing. They just thought I was staging the scene. I’m a little surprised you didn’t find those cases in your nationwide hunt these past couple of weeks.”
“We’re still looking,” she said honestly. “Any other murders you want to confess to, besides mine?”
“And Jag’s and Tina’s?”
Callie sucked in a deep breath. “Are they dead?”
“Not yet.” She curled her fingers around Callie’s forearm. “Let’s go join them.”
“How about I join you?” Jag’s voice jumped through the air, landing on her eardrums with a solid beat.
Kara pressed the cold metal of the gun into her temple and stood behind Callie. “What the fuck?” Kara asked with an angry grunt. “Where’s Tina?”
Jag raised his palms to the sky and inched forward. “Not here.”
“Don’t come any closer, or I’ll kill her,” Kara said.
Jag stopped moving.
Callie tried to heave in a breath, but she couldn’t. Panic settled into her chest. Her heart beat so irrationally she wondered if it might stop altogether. She stared into Jag’s dark gaze, looking for some kind of solution.
His eyes shifted to the right and then back to her. He did that three times.
The third time she followed where his eyes took her, and it landed her gaze right on the weapon in Kara’s hand.
“Why don’t you point that thing at me, because you don’t want to hurt her. You need Callie,” Jag said. He lowered his chin slightly, as if to tell Callie to trust him and go along.
She swallowed and gave him a slight nod. She’d be ready. She only hoped she’d understand the signal and that she wouldn’t get him killed in the process.
Kara laughed. “Why?”
“To tell your story,” Jag said. “You kill her, and the story changes focus. It won’t be about you anymore. It will be about Callie, the reporter turned crime novelist who tried to take down the Trinket Killer but got her and her boyfriend killed instead. What a tragedy. Hell, I can even see a made for television movie out of this. But you won’t be the heart of the story. You won’t even have a point of view. In the fictionalized book version, you won’t even be on the page.”
Kara’s grip tightened around Callie’s arm so much that
