CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Inside job. Inside job. Inside job.

The words echoed in Jake’s head. They’d been echoing all night long. Unless the psycho they were dealing with was Lizzie herself or Gayle or Felicia or Holly, Jake couldn’t see how the person had managed half of what he or she had accomplished.

Had Holly attacked herself in the park? Had Flea struck herself with a brick-sized stone? Had Gayle—

Nothing terrible had happened to Gayle. Her car had been keyed weeks ago, and her boss had received that vile letter about her, but she could have done both herself to include herself among the victims.

Lizzie, Holly, and Felicia had all been viciously attacked.

Gayle was the only one who had not.

But Gayle was one of Lizzie’s best friends. Granted, Jake didn’t know her all that well, but his gut refused to believe what was going around in circles in his head.

She’s not the one, his cop’s instinct seemed to say.

Then who, dammit!

He got out of bed, took a fast shower and threw on clothes. He had to talk to Holly. Had to talk out this Gayle theory, no matter how distasteful.

Perhaps she was secretly in love with Dylan.

You’ve got it wrong, every fiber of his being screamed. You’re barking up the wrong tree.

As he grabbed his keys and headed for the front door, he knew that there was something he wasn’t thinking of, something he couldn’t focus his thoughts on. The culprit was right under his nose, that much he knew for sure.

So if not Gayle, then who?

He unlocked the door, but it wouldn’t open.

That’s weird, he thought, yanking on the doorknob. The door wouldn’t open.

He grabbed his telephone. It was dead. That was weird. His cell phone was also dead, despite the fact that he’d charged it last night.

What the hell?

Panic rose. Six flights up, there was no way out except through the door. And someone had made sure he couldn’t get through it—or call anyone.

 

“Not too pretty now, are you?” Flea asked Lizzie, cutting another clump of her beautiful blond curls. “You are hideous. Now you’re the kind of girl who’d get invited to a dance as a dare.”

“Fle—Felicia,” Holly said, her knees trembling. “You—”

“Holly,” Flea said, holding a point of the scissors to Lizzie’s throat. “If you keep talking, if you say one more word, in fact, I will jam this into your ugly cousin’s throat.”

Oh, God, Holly thought, her mind racing. What can I do? I have to do something. Out-think her. Think, Holly, think!

Lizzie looked absolutely terrified. She was crying and shaking.

“Poor, poor, ugly Lizzie,” Flea said. “Too bad Dylan won’t want to marry you now. Not when he sees you like this.” Flea’s eyes seemed to light with an idea. Then she began slowly unraveling the black scarf from her neck. Holly hadn’t realized how long the scarf was—there seemed to be yards of material.

Flea’s bare neck was just visible in the dim light. Holly had never before seen the scars on Flea’s neck. They were large patches from skin grafts.

Lost in her own world, Flea put down the scissors and ran her fingers over the scarf. She moved behind Lizzie and wrapped the scarf around Lizzie’s neck.

Oh, God, Flea, Holly thought. Please don’t let her hurt Lizzie. Please!

Flea continued wrapping.

Now, Holly ordered herself. Now was the time. When Flea was lost in her own world. Act now!

Her eyes on the scissors and knife on the table, Holly realized she had this one opportunity to save Lizzie’s—and her own—life.

She lunged.

But Flea was too fast. In the blink of an eye she had the knife in one hand and the scissors in the other. Flea raised the knife high in the air and turned in one motion to strike at Lizzie’s neck.

“No!” Holly screamed.

The sound of gunfire split the air, and Flea fell to the ground.

Dazed, Holly looked up to the stairs, and there were Jake and Dylan behind two uniformed police officers, their guns drawn.

“Noooo!” Flea screamed. She coughed, blood sputtering out her mouth. “Don’t let Dylan see me this way.” She brought her hands up to her neck and tried to use her hair to shield her scars. “He’ll never want me if he sees me like this! I’ll be as ugly to him as ever! As ugly as Lizzie is now! I tried to stop the wedding, Dylan. I tried to stop her from ruining your life. I even hired some thug to hurl a stone at me through the bridal salon’s window, but—” She stopped talking and gasped for air. The sounds of approaching sirens filled the silence of the room. “I can still get rid of her and we can be together—”

The cops rushed forward to assist her, to try to stop the bleeding, but Flea was already gone. One of the officers closed her eyes.

Dylan flew to Lizzie and untied her. And Holly, on the verge of collapse, fell seconds before Jake caught her in his arms.

“How did you know?” Holly managed to whisper.

“I just kept remembering what we spoke about—that it had to be an inside job. And when I let myself focus on Lizzie’s side, I finally hit on Felicia and everything clicked—how she was able to accomplish her attacks. I wasn’t sure, but I called Dylan and the police and rushed over here. I had to break down my door first, thanks to Felicia, but it’s amazing what adrenaline does to a person. Felicia also managed to turn off my phone service.”

“If you’d come a minute later—” Holly said. “Oh, Jake.”

“I’m here now. And you’re safe. Lizzie’s safe. Everything is going to be okay now, Holly.”

She closed her eyes and breathed in his scent, relaxed against his strong arms. Don’t let me go, she said silently, but she wasn’t sure if she’d said it aloud.

 

The police had found a duffel bag full of empty prescription medication bottles—antipsychotic drugs—hidden away in a closet in Flea’s bedroom. Apparently, she had been under psychiatric care since the fire when she was fourteen.

“How could we not have known?” Holly asked.

Holly, Lizzie, Gayle, and Dylan were seated in Lizzie’s living room. It had been five hours since that morning’s ordeal. Lizzie, rejuvenated by the knowledge that it was over, truly over, was doing better than anyone expected.

Lizzie and Gayle shook their heads. Lizzie leaned back against her living room couch with a sigh; Gayle’s eyes pooled with fresh tears.

According to the police, Felicia Harvey had been seeing a psychiatrist in private practice an hour away from Troutville from the ages of fourteen to eighteen. When she became a legal adult, she switched doctors a few times.

“I don’t even know how to process this,” Lizzie said. “The attacks, Flea’s death, the Dunhills—How am I supposed to go on with the wedding when nothing in my life makes any sense? One of my best friends has hated me for over a decade—”

A knock on the door interrupted Lizzie, and Holly went to answer it. Jake stood outside, his expression grim.

“I’ve just come from the precinct. Felicia is now at the morgue.”

Lizzie swallowed. “Now that I know it was Flea all along it does make sense. She locked herself in the basement—even, or especially because she was always terrified of basements. She bashed herself in the forehead with the stone. Who would ever suspect her? She had complete access to me, my house, to Holly and Gayle.”

“And during all our conversations about that—the access the culprit had—it never even occurred to me that it could be Flea,” Holly said, shaking her head.

“That’s not a bad thing, Holly,” Jake said. “Why would you suspect your own friend? Your childhood friend?”

“But all the evidence—if I would have opened my eyes, I might have seen it.”

“And I saw it almost too late,” Jake said. “I’m trained to be objective—and I thought I was being objective. I learned a serious lesson on this case.”

“I think we all did,” Holly said.