Page 150 of Her Last Walk Home

‘They’re in there destroying evidence. I can’t let that happen.’

She slammed the car door shut. Knowing Boyd was in no state to follow her, she took off at a run, back the way they’d walked.

She had to get inside.

105

He walked in small circles around the blackened garden, his decimated sanctuary. His shed was gone in a bomb of smoke. The petrol had done its job on his car out front too, but the next blast hadn’t been strong enough to dint the outer walls. He regretted ever learning how to make bombs with fertiliser.

‘Why can’t we just leave now?’ he said. ‘Why do you have to destroy everything?’

‘Evidence, idiot,’ she snarled. ‘If we’re to disappear again, to start over, we can’t leave clues. We’ve done it before. We can do it again.’

‘I’m tired of running. Tired of killing for you.’

‘Want me to put you out of your misery? I can easily do it.’

‘Like you did to John Morgan?’

‘He was too clever for his own good,’ she snarled. ‘He knew what he was doing with Gordon. A man with only daughters needs a surrogate son. A man who disowned his first daughter. Bastard.’

‘But why kill John?’

‘Because I couldn’t risk that he knew about me and Aneta.’

‘No one knew?—’

‘Collins knew. Morgan was in rehab where Aneta worked and he was close to Collins, ergo… Use your brain, if you have one. They had to be dealt with.’

‘You got them good and proper.’

‘Yes, but that fucker Collins survived the fire.’

‘By killing Aneta we should have ended any threat from him.’

‘You should have seen his face when I told him how I starved and abused her for a year, and he thinking she’d returned to Poland. I’ll treasure his look of incredulity for the rest of my life.’

‘What are we going to do with the others? We can’t take them with us.’

‘We will take Shannon to care for Magenta and Aaron. But I’ve something very unpleasant planned for Diana.’

‘You killed her daughter, is that not enough?’

‘Youkilled her, you fool. You couldn’t even do that right. I wanted her alive. You’re such a hindrance. Maybe you need to die too.’

He worried that he’d said too much. He thought he’d mastered the art of keeping his true thoughts suppressed in front of her. ‘You need me. You’ve always needed me.’

‘No I don’t. Since those horrible things were done to me, since he raped me when I was only sixteen years old, I’veneededno one. I have to use people to get me what I want. How else do you think I got you registered on that escort site and pointed you to those I wanted? I paid Cathy in the Right One office to allow me access to the database. I forced Irene to give you a job at Cuan so you could report back to me. I have manipulation down to a fine art.’ She paused. Her face took on the darkness that terrified him more than if she held a knife in her hand. ‘And you know what? I don’t need you any more.’

‘You need me to kill the woman.’ He turned to look at Diana trussed up like a turkey on a chair behind them.

‘I will take pleasure in watching you end her useless life. She colluded with Gordon to take my child away from me and?—’

‘You agreed to it all,’ Diana said, the tape loosened on her lips. ‘You said you didn’t want her growing up to remind you of Gordon Collins.’

‘Shut up, woman.’

‘You were going to burn her alive!’

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