Page 79 of Face Her Fear

“That is not proof!” Sandrine cried.

“Not by the standard of a court of law, maybe,” Nicola answered. “They couldn’t make a case out of it but the officers who were there that day never forgot it. Since they could never make a case, he gave it to me. He thought it came off during some sort of struggle between you and Delilah and that after you pushed her and my father, Ben, off the cliff, you hid it. You told them that Delilah slipped and fell, and he tried to save her and they both went over. But if that was the case, how did you get her ring?”

“No one can prove any of this,” Sandrine said. “No one knows what happened that day except me! I was there!”

“If you didn’t kill them, then why didn’t you take custody of me after they died?” Nicola shot back. “Child services wanted you to take me in. You were my next of kin. You had enough money from the estate that you could have managed but you rejected me. A two-year-old child. My dad’s cousin wanted to take me, but he was single and back then, the court didn’t want to award custody of a little girl to a single man who traveled a lot for work. So I went to strangers.”

“And you were lucky!” Sandrine screeched suddenly, making everyone in the room startle. Spittle flew from her mouth. “You were lucky! I did you a favor! All of you! Do you think Delilah Stowe had changed so much by the time you came around that she wasn’t capable of evil? Nicola, do you think that she would have stayed with your father and raised you? She was an evil, heartless psychopath with more than one personality disorder. I saved you!”

“No, you didn’t!” Nicola shot back. “I went to a childless couple who had their own baby after they had already adopted me. She was their little miracle and then when I was seven and she was five, we were out front of our house playing and the ice cream man came and he took her. He took her instead of me and they blamed me after that. Until the day I left their home, I lived with their blame and their hatred. My mother—my adopted mother—actually said, ‘why didn’t they take you instead of our little miracle?’”

The words were a punch to Josie’s gut as she imagined innocent little Nicola growing up in such a sad and cruel environment. Even Alice recoiled.

Sandrine threw her hands into the air. “You were still lucky. You have no idea how evil Delilah was—I’m telling you, I did you a favor!”

Brian lurched to his feet. The vape pen was still in his hand. He looked past Josie to Nicola. “I told you we were never going to get a confession out of this bitch.”

“Sandrine,” Alice whispered. “You killed your mother and stepfather?”

Sandrine ignored the question, shrinking down inside her jacket, trying to make herself smaller.

Alice’s eyes flicked from Brian to Nicola and back. “That’s why the three of you planted the cameras that Josie found. To get her confession on tape?”

Nicola said, “We wanted the world to know what she had done.”

“Your recordings would not have been admissible,” Josie said. “Because of the laws here.”

“So?” said Brian. His fingers were still wrapped around the vape pen. With his thumbnail, he dug under the edge of it where the cartridge normally slid in and out. “We could still blast it over the internet and ruin her life.”

“You’d be guilty of a felony here,” Josie said.

Brian laughed. “So we didn’t check the laws in Pennsylvania. So what? It doesn’t even matter now because she’s never going to confess.”

An expression of horror stretched across Alice’s face. “You did all of this for a confession you can’t even use? You killed Meg and Taryn for this? Two murders to get another killer to confess?”

Nicola frowned. “What? We didn’t kill anyone! The only killer on this mountain is Sandrine!”

Sandrine stomped her foot. “I didn’t kill anyone! I didn’t!”

Nicola shook her head. “Then who did? I know the cop and the nurse didn’t do it. I know Brian didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. You murdered two people in cold blood. You had the opportunity. Meg and Taryn trusted you. It would have been easy for you to get close to them and murder them. I don’t know why you killed poor Meg, but I’m assuming that Taryn told you who we were and so you killed her to shut her up. Where is her body, Sandrine?”

Sandrine’s hands shook at her sides, but she didn’t respond. Josie glanced at Alice. Tears slid down her cheeks. She hugged herself. Brian’s thumbnail still worked the edge of the vape pen. The small white cap suddenly flipped off and sailed across the room. It landed at Nicola’s feet.

She shot him a look of disdain. “Will you stop playing with that stupid thing?”

Brian took a couple of steps, stopping in front of Josie, and leaned over to pick up the cap. A bunch of small black squares spilled out of the hollow of the vape pen.

“What the hell is that?” Alice asked as he knelt to quickly scoop up the squares.

No, not squares. Micro SD cards. Josie took a closer look at the pen, now gripped loosely in Brian’s hand. It wasn’t broken. It was fake. He’d been using it to store the recordings they’d taken that week. As he loaded the minuscule cards back into the hollow, his thumb pressed against the metal rim of the pen. Josie was close enough to see the imprint it left in the pad of his thumb.

A small, thin line only half an inch long with a curve at the end. Just like the cut Josie had found on Meg’s cheek.

Nicola turned back to Sandrine. “What did you do with Taryn? We deserve to know that, at least.”

Sandrine put her trembling hands to her heart. “I did not kill Taryn—or Meg.”

Josie couldn’t take her eyes off the vape pen. Brian picked up the cap and pressed it back on. It was still in his hand when he noticed Josie staring at him. Their eyes met. He looked down at his thumb where the mark was now fading. Josie raised the lid, resting it on her left shoulder, ready to swing.

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