Page 43 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

They will just take your friends.

Come out. Come out. Wherever you are.

X

These are the threats Thatcher was receiving just before May died.

The words are written in identical penmanship, down to the extra cross on the letterT. We’d all assumed the copycat killer had sent these as a game, a way to test Thatcher, to toy with him.

So, that would make the Imitator—

“Easton?”

I tighten my grip on the paper, crunching it in my hands as I slowly stand up. I meet his gaze with unbridled anger. He killed May. He’d been the one to frame Thatcher. Had been the reason I almost lost him.

My mouth waters for a taste of revenge.

Easton Sinclair is a top-tier douche, but a killer? I hadn’t given him that credit.

Blond hair whips in the wind, pushing out of his face and exposing his blue eyes filled with contempt. It would seem the feeling between us is mutual. The idea of tossing him off the side of this building and watching him get impaled by sharp rocks is becoming more and more appealing.

But if he’s responsible for this, I want to make his death a slow one.

A cut for every single person in my life he’d hurt.

“Get a job as a mailman, Sinclair?” I cross my arms in front of my chest, yanking at the puzzle pieces in my mind, trying to get them to fit. “Is cutting up women and scattering their body parts not keeping you busy enough?”

I’ve known Easton since elementary school. The sense of entitlement he wore had been fitted at a young age. Forever the golden boy, the apple of Ponderosa Springs’ eye since before he understood what the word “reputation” meant.

Had the heart of a killer been living in the boy who’d cried in third grade when he skinned his knee? Existing beneath the surface while everything else had just been a well-crafted mask all this time?

His jaw twitches, and even now, as intimidating as he tries to be, I can’t bring myself to believe he’s capable of killing someone, let alone multiple. I can’t see him being intelligent enough to pull something like this off, but what else could I think? When all the arrows point right at him?

What better way to throw us off the Halo’s trail than frame one of us for murder? I suppose that plot was left up to his father, and everyone knows what dearest daddy wants, Easton gives.

“Unlike your boyfriend, jail isn’t on my five-year plan,” he snarks, grinning to show those porcelain-capped teeth.

We’ve been dancing around each other since the moment we witnessed the boys kill someone in the Ponderosa Springs forest. Easton knew what we did, and we knew he was interwoven in the Halo, but it was a matter of who could prove it first.

This has been the closest we’ve been to admitting our involvement, and something about it doesn’t sit right.

“You still plan on running for office with that face?”

The scarred skin on his jaw ripples as he scowls. Mangled, stretched white skin to remind him every single morning what happens when you push Rook Van Doren a little too far.

Calmy, he scoops down, grabbing his things from the floor before readjusting the strap of his book bag. Easton still believes he’s untouchable—why wouldn’t he? When his father has fixed and handled every single part of his life since he was born. Of course he’s unfazed.

“Careful where you step, Lyra.” He hums in the back of his throat, winking at me. “You already know what happens when you get a little too close to me, don’tcha?”

Flashes of red flicker behind my eyes. The inability to breathe, smothered by gallons of pigs’ blood. I swallow the memory, shoving it deep into the back of my mind.

“Did they tell you what I left behind for you?” I smile widely, thinking about the knives I’d driven into his pawn’s eyes for touching me.

The gleam in his eyes flickers just enough for me to notice.

“If you wanted to frame someone,” I accuse, “why not Rook? Get a little skin back that you’d lost. Did your daddy think it was too obvious?”

Whether it’s him or not doesn’t matter because he knows.

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