Chapter 58 Kate

58 KATE

NOW

Kate feels the air around her sharpen with a terrible understanding.

Darcy is the one who sent the roses, and not just this time around.

She has been sending them from the very beginning, each and every year. She has been watching Kate, enjoying how each delivery of six roses on the anniversary of the massacre poured salt in that gaping wound all over again. Kate can’t fathom it, the notion that her friend, with whom she has shared the most intimate parts of her grief, is the one to have played such a cruel, depraved game.

The one who wanted her to suffer for twenty-two years.

“You killed them,” she tells Darcy, and her voice sounds far away. “All six of them.”

Darcy’s eyes flicker over each of the women in turn. Her posture has changed, her feet planted wide and her shoulders square. “So what if I did?” she says.

A harrowing scream rings out, a cry so piercing that Kate whips around, certain that someone has been wounded.

The source of the scream is Camilla, and she is not wounded. But she is lunging at Darcy, her hands stretched out as though to claw her face. Kate grabs her, holding her back.

“You bitch!” Camilla screams, her countenance contorted with rage. “ You killed Cameron! You…”

The tears come, then, a sudden slam of sorrow removing the fire of Camilla’s anger. She drops to her knees on the rug, breaking into gulping, wordless sobs.

Kate watches Darcy as she gazes blankly at Camilla on the floor before her, dispassionate as granite.

“Rob did nothing,” Jade says, her voice shrill with outrage. “He did nothing!”

“Are you joking?” Darcy scoffs. “Did nothing? He tried to kill you.”

“But he didn’t kill those people,” Jade cries. “You did!”

“You killed Antoni, too,” Kate says. “Didn’t you?”

Darcy shrugs, the carelessness in her manner making Kate wonder if this is actually Darcy, or if she didn’t hear the question, or if she’s on drugs.

“Why?” she hears herself say. “Why, Darcy?”

“Because I could,” Darcy says with a prim smile. As though Kate has asked her about a cake recipe or a cleaning tip instead of murder.

Kate recoils at the strangeness of the woman in front of her. It’s as though someone has scooped Darcy out of her body and replaced her with someone—or something—else. Even her posture is different, both legs straight and wide, her head held high. As though she’s proud of herself.

“Did… did you care?” Kate asks, tripping over her words. She can’t process it, can’t bring the two facts together. The killings, and Darcy. How can those two things be related? “You saw us cry about the people we loved. Cameron. Professor Berry. You saw Salvador crying about his uncle. How could you do it, Darcy? How could you?”

With a sickening realization, she sees just how muted Darcy’s reaction is. How the corners of her lips have turned in a snarl, the lines of her face seemingly sharper, craven. Jade and Camilla are looking on, all of them drawn in by this pulling back of the curtain, revealing a sole performer. Darcy Levitt, visibly basking in the spotlight of their horror.

“No,” Darcy says flatly. “I really didn’t give a shit.”

Kate watches Jade’s face fall, then Camilla’s. With a sinking feeling in her chest, she suspects that this is a moment of triumph for Darcy. It makes no sense, but there it is—like a tiger emerging from camouflage, revealing itself in all its fearsome, savage glory. Oh God. She sees it now: Darcy wants this moment, has craved it for some time. She has been waiting for the perfect moment to show them what she has done. What she is capable of.

A noise at the door interrupts Darcy’s glory. Through the shadows a bloodied figure emerges, a flash of metal, an arm held out to one side.

Rob.