Katrina choked back a sob. If Eliza had left behind Dobby and her cell phone, did she really want to hear the answer to her next question? “What happened to her?”
His expression changed, becoming sad and furtive at the same time. She didn’t like those quick glances he kept taking over his shoulder. “She told me she was a former addict and I tried to get her hooked on heroin again.”
“Why would you do that?” Katrina momentarily forgot her fear of the gun pointing her way and let shock show through. “After all the trouble she’d gone through to get clean, why would you want to drag her back down again?”
“Hey.” His voice was sharp. “You think I don’t want the same things you do? Someone to come home to each day? To care for me and be by my side as I grow older? But I know that won’t happen with a person who isn’t addicted. Although Eliza liked what she saw in me, she wasn’t going to stick around if she was clean. So I tried to remind her how good drugs can feel. When I asked her to get high with me, she refused.”
Katrina experienced a fierce pride in her sister. She knew how hard it had been for Eliza to fight her cravings, yet, not only had she beaten her habit, but she had also managed to refuse this man to whom she had been attracted...and the allure of relapsing. That had shown incredible strength.
“I may have done a little more than usual because I was showing off to Eliza, so when she turned me down, I got a little crazy,” Latimer continued. “I held her down and forcibly injected her. But the stuff I gave her was bad.”
Katrina swallowed hard. “Are you saying she’s dead?”
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t what I wanted.” He looked over his shoulder again. “She told me about this spot where she used to spend great times with her twin as a kid. She talked about how she hoped the two of you could start fresh one day. I thought this would be the best place for her.”
Risking a movement of her flashlight, she illuminated the area behind him. It became clear what he kept looking at. A few feet away, just behind him, there was a disturbed patch of earth, the exact size and shape of a body.
“Is that...?” She lifted a hand to her lips.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I buried her where I thought she’d be at peace. I come here most days now, even keep my stuff buried here. It’s like she’s guarding it for me.”
Katrina bit back a sob. Her troubled sister had known so little peace, but to be robbed of her life in such a way? By a selfish man who wanted to use her as his partner in addiction... She choked off her anger, turning her thoughts in another direction.
“So you were the person warning me off all this time? It was all you?” She was having trouble with that. Somehow Latimer didn’t seem competent or organized enough to have orchestrated the threats that had been made against her. “You did it all on your own? You hired Cordelia Mellor to pose as Christie Foster? You got Aidan Hannant to warn me off? You were behind the break-ins? You drugged my dogs? And the plan to discredit me, so no one would listen to me? You came up with that?”
Even as she listed all the things that had happened since she started searching for Eliza, she got the feeling he wasn’t really listening. His focus was on Eliza’s grave.
“Look, I didn’t want to do that. But I had to try to stop you from finding the truth.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You think I like threatening women?”
She still couldn’t see this man, this shaky, weak man, having enough energy and intelligence to go through with the plan to intimidate her. But that wasn’t the most important thing she needed to think about right now.
Although he genuinely appeared to feel bad, Katrina reminded herself that he had killed her sister. And now she knew everything. The thought struck fresh terror into her. There was no way she was getting out of this alive. Unless...
“Sergeant Colton knows where I am,” she said, bluffing. It was true. Sort of. If only Spencer had checked his messages...
“Him? I’d almost forgotten.”
He pointed to one side of Eliza’s grave. There, slumped on the ground like a pile of dirty laundry, was Spencer. He wasn’t moving, and from the dark slick covering the left half of his head and face, it appeared that he was bleeding heavily.
Forgetting the danger, she started forward. “What have you done to him?”
“I hit him with a rock when he found my drug stash and saw where I’d buried Eliza,” Latimer said. “I think he’s dead.”
Chapter 17
“What have you done to him?”
Even though it sounded like it was coming from a long way off, Spencer knew that voice. If he could just move past the persistent drumbeat inside his skull, he might be able to figure out whom it belonged to.
The person who answered wasn’t as helpful. It was a man, but he didn’t speak clearly and the only words Spencer could make out were “drug stash” and “Eliza.” They should mean something, but his head felt like it had been filled with cotton balls and rational thinking wasn’t an option.
He should probably try moving, but it was easier to stay like this with his cheek resting on the sandy ground and leaf litter. He wondered why he couldn’t feel any pain. Liquid, sticky and warm, was oozing from the wound on the top of his head and trickling down his face. He didn’t know how much blood he’d lost, but it felt like a lot...
Katrina!
That was whose voice he’d heard. And the person replying had been talking about Spencer finding the stash of drugs and the shallow grave. A brief memory came back in a rush and he saw Kenyon Latimer lifting a rock, about to bring it crashing down on his head.
Did Boris get away? He couldn’t ask the question out loud, but he pinned his hopes on his canine partner’s experience and resilience.