There was no dial tone. Frowning, she inspected the phone and its cord. The phone was plugged in, it should have been working. Only it wasn’t.
Okay, that was weird. Alice hurried back to the front of the cabin. She opened the door. “Deputy Ross!”
The porch was empty.
She crept forward, and the wood groaned beneath her feet. “Deputy Ross?” Alice called again. “I was hoping to use your phone or radio. I need to speak with Zander for a moment.” Because all of her instincts were screaming at her. Something was wrong. When Jonathan had told her she was “perfect”—her body had instantly tensed. Maybe she was being crazy or hyper paranoid, but so what? She wanted to talk with Zander, wanted to tell him about the suspicion that had slipped into her head.
But she didn’t see the deputy.
And she did still see Jonathan’s car. Only there was no sign of Jonathan near the vehicle.
Oh, shit.
Alice turned and rushed back into the cabin. She locked the front door as fast as she could. Surely, she was wrong. She had to be wrong. Those thoughts rolled through her head again and again even as she rushed into the kitchen and yanked open the drawer near the sink. The drawer that contained utensils. Forks, spoons…knives.
She had to be wrong. Jonathan wasn’t a threat to her. His brother had been the killer. Right? Right?
Her hand closed around the handle of a knife.
“Alice.”
Her head whipped up.
Jonathan stood on the other side of the counter. Jonathan.
He smiled at her. “I have a secret for you.”
She slid the knife out of the drawer. Kept it at her side.
“My brother loved you. He loved you more than he’s ever loved anything in this world. The day he died in that car accident, Hugh was racing to get to the chapel. He was rushing to get there to you because he wanted to tell you something very important.”
“Jonathan, how did you get inside?” Because she’d locked the front door when she’d raced back into the cabin.
“I came in the back door. After I knocked out the deputy, I just slipped around and picked the lock. I expected a special agent to have a more secure home.” He shrugged. “But I guess this isn’t his real home, is it? Just a temporary place. Like you were a temporary case to him.”
After I knocked out the deputy. Her knees wanted to buckle, but she stiffened her legs, and she shoved down her fear.
“My brother was coming to tell you something very important,” Jonathan continued, as if he just hadn’t confessed to assaulting a deputy. “Do you want to know what he was going to say?”
“Y-yes…”
“Hugh was going to tell you…” He put his hands on the counter, and she saw the knife that he gripped. “He was going to tell you that he’d just found out I was a killer. That I was cutting up pretty women who looked just…like…you.”
***
“What in the fuck is happening, Z?” Randall demanded as Zander’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. They were in an SUV and hauling ass for the cabin. “So the deputy didn’t pick up his phone, and his radio was on the fritz, it—”
“Jonathan Collins shouldn’t have known that I tricked Alice.”
“Uh, okay, but we have the killer. She’s on a slab in the morgue, she’s—”
“Tiffany wasn’t working alone. Shit! The pieces were right in front of me. I didn’t see them. Jonathan was there when we talked about getting Alice to wear a wire. He heard our whole fucking plan. That’s how Tiffany knew to tell Alice to ditch the wire. Jonathan gave instructions to his partner. He told her what to do, what to say. He told her everything.”
Zander took the curve way too fast and the SUV swerved.
“Shit! Slow the hell down!” Randall grabbed the dash board. “Okay, so…what, Jonathan is as crazy as his fool brother? They were working together before Hugh wrapped his car around an electric pole?”
“Maybe.” Or…another suspicion, one that had him scared as hell. “Or maybe we had the wrong brother all along. Maybe Hugh Collins wasn’t the Secret Admirer.”
“A damn body was in his vehicle! He was the killer!”
Another curve waited up ahead. Zander was too far from the cabin. Too far. “Just keep trying to get that deputy. And if you reach him—I want Deputy Ross in the cabin with Alice. I want him so close he can touch her, you got me?”
***
Alice felt the skin of her cheeks ice. “You…killed them?”
“Every single one. And it’s because of you.”
Nausea rose, threatening to choke her.
“I remember the first day Hugh told me about you. I could tell by the way his eyes lit up that you were going to be different. Not like the others at all. You meant something to him. And sure enough, days later, he started talking about wanting to marry you. Said you were perfect.” Jonathan leaned over the counter. “I knew people weren’t perfect. My father taught me that. No matter what I did, I could never please him. I was never perfect.”
She backed away from the counter, keeping her knife tucked behind her jeans. If she could get to the back door, she could run out.
“Then I met you. Saw you and Hugh together.” Jonathan’s lips twisted in disgust. “I was so fucking mad. You were taking my brother away from me. You were ruining everything.”
Oh, God. “And you started killing.” Those women, over and over—“You started killing me.”
“That’s how it began, yes. Those women wanted the world to believe they were perfect. But I watched and saw their flaws. And when I saw, they died.” He rolled back his shoulders. “I wanted to share their flaws with my brother. I wanted him to realize the truth—so I put the photos in your apartment.” He gave a little laugh. “I would sneak into your room all the time, sweet Alice. I wanted to see what Hugh’s life was like with you, and I wanted to leave a piece of myself behind.”
Because he was fucking crazy.
He inclined his head toward her. “Remember your engagement ring?”
Like she could forget it. “The authorities said it belonged to Mary Ellen Jones.”
Mary Ellen had been one of the Secret Admirer’s victims.
“It did
.” He winked at her. “Though I told Hugh it belonged to our great-grandmother. Damn but I loved seeing that ring on your finger.”
She retreated another slow step.
He shoved away from the counter. “But then I started to realize…you actually did seem to love my brother. It was in your eyes. They’d light up, just as his had done. You agreed to marry him. You two started planning your perfect life.”
She hated that word.
“But then, the day of the wedding, Hugh surprised me.” His voice roughened. “I mean, he’d practically been living at your apartment, right, so why did he go back to his old place? He shouldn’t have gone back. He never should have been there.”
She tried to keep her expression blank and not reveal the horror she felt.
Jonathan continued to share his secrets as he said, “Hugh found…evidence, that I’d left behind.”
“You were killing in his house?”
Jonathan shrugged. “Of course. I mean, it was empty. Didn’t we already fucking establish Hugh spent most of his time with you? So why not use his house? It was a perfect place.”
“Stop using that word!”
He smiled at her. “I’d stuffed Vicki’s body in his SUV. I was planning to ditch her after the wedding, but…well, guess I didn’t get around to doing that part, did I? Hugh called me, freaking the hell out. I was at the chapel, with you, like a good brother-in-law to be. I was waiting and he…he was screaming at me. Telling me to get the hell away from you. Telling me he was going to send me to jail. That he’d called the cops, told them to get to his place…” Jonathan’s words trailed away. Sadness flickered, then vanished from his face. “My brother didn’t realize how guilty he looked. His call to the cops—I’m sure it was frantic. They didn’t understand what he was trying to say. Then when he had the accident…and Vicki’s body was found…”
Alice slid back one more step. Then another. She was almost at the cabin’s rear door.
“My brother died, and I hated that. I never wanted Hugh to die.” His eyes squeezed shut, only to fly open a moment later. “But the cops stopped looking for the Secret Admirer when he was put into the ground. I was free. So I guess things worked out for me.”