“Yes,” she answered because she heard the fury in his voice. And she shuddered, because she knew that the only one he could take it out on was her. His girlfriend was gone. Esther was gone. Now there was only Amanda O’Neal to stand in for both of them and take the heat.
He was on a roll now, speaking as if he didn’t care who was listening, because he just wanted to get the story out. It had been bottled up inside of him for months, and he’d had no one he could tell. Now he literally had a captive audience.
“Vicki thought she could get away from me, Tony Anderson. I looked all over for her, you know. I’m still looking for her. She may be hidden now. But she’s going to mess up. And when I find her, I’m going to make her sorry she left. I haven’t given up.
“But meanwhile, I figured out how to find that bitch, Esther Knight. It was supposed to be a secret who she was, but I got a line on her through the magazine. See, the letters come to them, and they send them on to Esther.” He laughed. “Simple, if you know how to figure things out.”
When he looked at her in the rearview mirror again, his eyes had narrowed to slits. “I thought it was all over when I killed her. I felt really happy. I thought she wouldn’t ruin anyone else’s life. But the columns were still being printed, and I realized that they’d been written a couple months in advance. I kept checking the mail room again, just to make sure it was all over. But it wasn’t. The letters kept coming, and I found out there was a new person writing the Esther Knight column. You,” he said, the sentence ending in a snarl.
“I’ve watched you reading letters. I’ve watched you sitting at your laptop—making up nasty answers. But your column’s never going to be finished, and it’s never going to be printed. If some fool is arrogant enough to take it over, then I’ll do to her what I’m going to do to you. And if your dear friend Beth doesn’t get the picture, then I’ll have to take care of her, too.”
Amanda sat there with her heart pounding. Unable to look at the man behind the wheel, she stared at the scenery flying past. Houses. Trees. Billboards.
She could follow the route because he wasn’t making any attempt to hide where they were going.
Either he’d made some terrible mistakes, or he didn’t expect her to lead anyone to the place where he’d taken her—because she’d be dead when their time together was finished.
A surge of black fear threatened to sweep her under, like a merciless riptide. She didn’t want to know what he had planned for her, but she suspected she was going to find out soon enough.