He smiled at me and nodded. “Virgil set me up, even after he was dead. He’d sent information to some of the criminals who hired him that I was a liability to their identity being linked to the cases. I knew they would be after me and if they found me, I would end up dead. But if the police found me, they would at least give me a chance to think up how to get out of the mess. I just needed time to figure it out. I was on my way to you when the FBI caught me.”
“To me?”
“Yes. Who wanted the Handkerchief Murderer more than you? No one.”
“So everything was fabricated. We thought we caught you, but you came straight to us.”
“And it worked. You’re protecting me, aren’t you?”
“You sound so smug.”
“It was not exactly easy, you know. Not everything was a lie. I was scared when the FBI brought me to that facility. I was scared to die.”
“Does it change your mind about killing now?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Are you trying to get me to say that I’ll never kill again?”
“That would be nice, yes.”
“I’ll kill anyone who threatens you. Or me. But I guess yes, now I see I can’t go around bumping off people all willy-nilly.”
“Governor Roffe got you out, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“What are we going to do about him?” I asked. “He needs to go to prison for what he did.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no? He killed your mother and tried to kill you. You were just two years old, for god’s sake.”
“I’ve killed. Do you think I need to go to prison?”
I swallowed hard, then glared at him. He knew I would always think differently when he was the subject.
“Why would you want Roffe to walk free?”
“It’s not that I want him to walk free, but how would you explain I left his name off Virgil’s list? How would you explain how you found out about all this without implicating me? And if we do turn him in, he’ll do the same to me.”
“So he gets away with it.”
He stroked the side of my face and smiled. “Something tells me he’ll get what’s coming to him real soon.”
“Cosmo, are you planning to do something?”
He leaned forward and captured my lips with his. I moaned as his tongue slid into my mouth and stroked alongside mine.
“Do you need to know anything else?”
“Yes, if you could control Virgil, why did you let him treat you the way he did? Restricting your food, manipulating your life.”
“I didn’t have a choice. It was the only way I knew how to live, and there was no one else to show me how to do things differently. Until you.”
He made to kiss me again, but I turned my head. “Cosmo—”
“Hmm?” He nibbled on my neck.
“I don’t want you to take any more risks. I can’t lose you. The FBI has the cases under control now. All we need to do is keep our heads down and stay alive for the upcoming trials.”