Page 97 of Sentinel's Kiss

“Do you?” he said. “You had to keep digging and digging, didn’t you?” He showed her laptop to her before throwing it on the ground.

Leaving her line of sight, she felt him start up the car. Wiggling with all her might, she tried to jump out of the trunk, but he backed up fast. Crunching her laptop, he ran over it a few times, each time jerking on the brake and then jamming on the gas so Ashley was bounced back around. He came out and showed her the ruin of her laptop.

“Stan, this is all a big mistake. You don’t want to kill me.” Her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton and all she wanted to do was vomit. But she had to get him to see reason. “The police have the evidence that you didn’t kill Kelly, Mira, and Alison. You’re cleared.”

Except he was stuffing her in a trunk like Sarah. Could the evidence have been faked? Or were there two murderers? Ashley racked her brains to see how they could be connected. It all went back to the Poconos Hunting Club.

“You’re right. I didn’t kill those three women. But I did kill my wife. I killed Sarah. And you would have pieced that together eventually.” He blinked down at the computer and flung it into the lake with a howl of rage. “Once you found out who my father was, it would only have been a matter of time.”

Ashley didn’t know what he was talking about. Up until the moment he threw her in the trunk, she thought he was innocent. There had been no proof. All there had been was Josh’s determined push to paint his brother-in-law a killer, even after all the evidence pointed away from that. But the joke was on her. Josh had been right all along. Maybe if she had believed him, she would have been more careful around this maniac. Maybe her last words to Josh wouldn’t have been fuck you. She bit back a sob. He’d never know that she loved him. If they ever found her body, he’d be haunted by her death and blame himself.

“I didn’t want kids. I didn’t want to be a father. But did she listen to me? No. She had to be a mother. Said she needed it. Was going to leave me if we didn’t try. I liked trying.” He flashed her a toothy grin. “It was one of the few times we weren’t fighting. Sex could have solved all our problems. Until she peed on a stick and came up pregnant.”

Stan grabbed the folder that Travis had given her out of the front seat of her car. He waved it at her. “These fucking idiots were so happy. Tough bikers and general badasses, going all soft for a baby. I couldn’t get near her for four months. If it wasn’t her jackass of a brother, it was Evil’s sister Jules, or that cunt Ryder, all over my house. My house,” he snarled. “I couldn’t get rid of them.”

“So you went to the Poconos Hunting Club,” Ashley said. If she could only keep him talking, maybe someone would notice what was going on.

“Shot some deer. Went fishing. It was all right. I thought I could handle it.” He laughed up at the sky. “I thought that maybe Sarah was right. We could put our shitty childhoods behind us and become the parents we never had.”

“What changed your mind?” She was furiously trying to saw through the zip tie holding her wrists together by rubbing it over an exposed nut in the trunk. She couldn’t let him see what she was doing, even if she wasn’t making much headway.

“Are you interviewing me again?” He made a show of looking around. “Am I on Candid Camera?”

“You seem to want me to understand. I want to understand. Why did you kill Sarah?”

“Sarah was unconscious before she went into the water. I didn’t want her to suffer. You?” He grinned. “I want you to die afraid, and screaming.”

“Why?” she whispered, chilled to the bone by the absolute loathing in his voice.

“Because you brought my father back into my life. I killed that bastard when I was nine years old. It was deemed an accident, of course. He got drunk and drowned while fishing.” Stan smirked. “He got drunk and fell asleep. I rowed us out to the middle of the lake and overturned the dinghy we were on. I swam back to shore. Dried off and got changed and then walked back home. That’s where I was when they came to tell me the news he was dead.”

“You said you were afraid of the water. You said you didn’t know how to swim.” It was one of the reasons she believed he hadn’t killed Sarah.

“I lied. But everyone believed me. Except for those assholes at the Poconos Hunting Club. They decided it would be funny to toss me in the lake in my sleeping bag. I swam to save myself. And anyone who saw me would be able to tell you that I could swim just fine. I was so pissed, I locked them all out of the cabin that night. But something had happened while I was underwater. I saw my father.”

“That’s impossible,” she said.

“I know that, you stupid bitch.” He crushed the file in his hand. “It doesn’t change a thing. He was laughing at me. I wasn’t the one who should have the water as my grave. Sarah needed to die.”

“Your dead father told you to kill your pregnant wife?” Ashley said. This was a gigantic level of crazy that she hadn’t even expected.

He crouched down on his haunches and peered at her inside the trunk. “Pregnant bitches get drowned. It’s what my father taught me. I am just like him.” He shook his head and laughed.

Ashley thought back to the horrible story about his pet collie that his father killed because she was pregnant.

“But I didn’t kill Sarah that night. I sat shivering in the cabin trying to deny who I was. But it was no use. My father had come back from the dead. I saw him in mirrors and heard him in my head. If I wanted him to go back to hell, I had to make sure no child of his blood would be born. So on my next camping trip, I refused to bunk with those morons and booked a private cabin. They saw me retire that night and they saw me get up at dawn to go out hunting with them. What they didn’t see was me sneak out and drive home that night.”

Ashley rubbed the zip tie as discreetly as she could. He was insane and there wasn’t anything she could do to talk him out of this. She tamped down on the panic while he monologued. The longer he talked, the better chance that someone would notice that there was a car parked too close to the water.

“With Sarah’s death and my father gone—back to the watery depths or the burning fires of hell or wherever his soul was rotting—I was at peace for two years. Until you came by with my adoption papers and your research that you dug up, and my father was back again. I’m tossing these in the trash can. Hopefully a diligent cop will pull them out and tie those SOBs to this. You’re screwing Sarah’s brother, right?”

“How did you know that?”

“Your roommate told me. I thought she was you. From behind, you almost look alike. She told me you were with Sentinel. So I went to his house and saw you both leave. I followed you. Say, you’re not pregnant by any chance, are you?”

Ashley shook her head. She wouldn’t be this calm if she was. She’d be a screaming, crying mess.

“Pity.” He shrugged and then slammed the trunk closed, leaving her in darkness.