Page 185 of Perfect Liar

“Ellie, you stay there. Don’t move away from the boat.”

The man jerked his head at the other warehouses.

“I lost my weapon back there. I can’t harm you.”

The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

“Who the hell are you?” Jess asked.

The shadow didn’t respond.

“Give me your name. Why are you out here? Oh, and if you move, I shoot…with or without your answers.”

“Aw come on, red. The name’s Simon, but listen, there’s some bad shit going on in this town. You should go home.”

Jess moved closer to him, slowly, one step at a time, and then she gasped.

“Oh my god! Detective Parker, what are you doing out here?”

My heart crashed against my rib cage, and my lungs quivered. It couldn’t be. This wasn’t right.

I stepped into the light. I needed to see his face.

His expression contorted as he stared at me.

“Well, I’ll be damned. Ellie James, you’ve come right to me,” he said.

No, no, no. He wasn’t supposed to have an accent.

Disguised pieces of information had drifted around in my subconscious and played out in my nightmares for so long, but it never came together, not until that very moment.

The facts had always been there.

Simon Parker had been posing as a Stonington police officer to get close to me.

I shouted at Jess.

“Don’t let him go! He’s not with the police…he’s one of them!”

Parker laughed, and with each word he said from then on, his British accent got stronger.

“You’re quite a dumb bitch, Ellie James. You and Hastings should have stayed in the UK. He’s out here somewhere looking for you…but he’ll be too late.”

Jess looked over her shoulder at me.

“I’ve got him. You get back to the boat, Ell?—”

Parker was on his feet in a split second. He nailed her in the face with his fist.

Her gun flew out of her hands and slid across the planks as she landed on her back. Parker rushed on top of her and put a knife to her throat.

He was going to take her away from me.

I screamed her name.

Another shock of adrenaline hit me, and something I had never experienced overwhelmed me. The desire to fight eclipsed my fear, defeating my brain’s usual lockdown, letting someone else in my head to take over.

Someone who didn’t sound like me.