Luke grunts in response.
I drop my voice. “If we got rid of him…”
I watch Luke’s expression. Will he go for it? In the experiment from Milgram, more than half of the subjects administered the 450 V electric shock—a dose of electricity which would have proven fatal if it had been real. They didn’t want to do it, but they did it. All because they were told to do it.
He lifts his face from his hands. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting.”
“I think you do.” I pause meaningfully. “It’s our only choice, Luke.”
“It’s not. It’s really not.”
“As long as he’s alive, he’s going to hold this over us,” I say. “You don’t want that, do you? There’s only one way to make sure he can’t destroy us.”
“No. No way.”
“Think about it. What else can we do?”
Luke looks ill. “Please stop.”
“It’s our only choice.”
He slams his palms against the table so hard that all the dishes shake. “I’m not fucking killing anyone, Adrienne, okay?”
I flinch in my seat. I’ve been dating Luke for four months, and I’ve never heard him raise his voice like that before. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this upset, but I can’t say he doesn’t have a right to be.
He pushes back his chair, the legs scraping against the floor. His face is bright red and there’s a blood vessel bulging in his temple. He won’t even look at me. “I need to get out of here.”
“Luke…”
I try to reach for him, but he shakes me off roughly. He makes a beeline for my front door, and the whole house trembles as he slams it closed. I run to the door just in time to hear the engine of his car revving up. I crack the door open and watch his tail beams disappear into the distance.
That’s it. He could forgive me for asking him to break into EJ’s computer, but he won’t forgive me for this. I saw it in his eyes—I pushed him too far. I’m not sure I’ll ever see him again. I can’t even blame him.
I’ve lost him. The first guy I ever loved, and I’ve screwed it all up.
I shut my front door and lean back against it. I let the tears run down my face, cursing the moment I laid eyes on EJ. I should have told his mother no. I knew he was trouble. I knew it from the second I saw him.
I’ve ruined my relationship with Luke, but I will not let him be a casualty of this monster. I’m going to take care of this problem. And I’m going to take care of it myself.
Chapter 42
TRICIA
Present Day
A more skilled liar may have been able to deny it. But this man is not a skilled liar. I can tell by the way the creases on his face deepen and what little color he had in his cheeks completely vanishes. I hit the nail on the head. This man is the same person I heard on the tape. The one who wanted to kiss Adrienne Hale.
“You’re the boyfriend?” Ethan shakes the knife in his fist. “You’re the one who killed that shrink?”
The man, Luke, shakes his head vigorously. “No, I… I mean, yes, fine, Adrienne was my girlfriend. But I didn’t kill her. I loved her. I would never…”
Ethan narrows his eyes. “So tell me what you’re doing here.”
He rubs his hands on his blue jeans. “It’s what I said. I don’t have a place to go and this house was empty, so I’ve been staying here.”
“Why don’t you have a place to go?”
“Because my life completely went to shit after the newspapers called me a murderer.” He lifts his eyes—I hadn’t realized how bloodshot they look. “They dragged my name through the mud. Over nothing. I didn’t kill her. But my company let me go, and I couldn’t find anything else. And my family wouldn’t help me either. Even they thought that I…” His voice breaks. “So I’m unemployed and broke. That’s my story.”
Ethan stares at the other man, his lips twisted into a frown. “I don’t believe you.”
Luke drops his arms. “You don’t believe me? What do you think I—”
“Hands up in the air.”
Luke freezes in the middle of a sentence. There’s something in Ethan’s voice, and he quickly puts his hands back in the air. “Fine. Sorry. But I’m telling you the truth.”
“Or maybe…” A vein pulses in Ethan’s temple. “Maybe you came here last night with a purpose. Maybe when you found out the house went up for sale, you knew you had to get rid of Adrienne Hale’s body before somebody found it.”