“Where did you get the list, Luisa?”

Research, she wrote. We have an excellent library here.

“Research?” Whitney had reached the limits of her patience- which, admittedly, was never a distant boundary. “With your palsied hands? If there’s a computer on the premises, it’s a cinch you don’t know how to use it.”

It was a great advantage, refusing to speak. Luisa simply stared at Whitney. The partial paralysis of her face made it particularly difficult to read. The stroke had left her with an Elvis-like sneer.

Tess turned to Whitney and mouthed, Leave. Whitney shook her head at first, but something in Tess’s face convinced her to go. She, too, stomped out to the hallway, shutting the door behind her.

Tess crouched by the bed, so she could speak as quietly as possible and still be heard. “Luisa. I kept your secret. It’s been over two years, and I’ve never told anyone how Seamon O’Neal arranged for Jonathan Ross to be killed.”

Her letters were not as careful now. I was never sure, she wrote, that he intended for him to die. The revisionism stunned Tess. Here was Luisa O’Neal on what appeared to be her deathbed, and she could not quite admit that anyone in her family was capable of wrongdoing.

“Why resist the truth, Luisa? Your husband is dead, beyond justice for the things he did, even if those things could be proven. Your son remains in the institution where you had him committed. The man who took credit for your son’s crimes has been executed for his own. No one mourns him, no one feels sorry for him. All your scores are settled, everyone you love is safe. Why can’t you afford me the same privilege?”

Luisa began to turn another page in her sketchbook but wrote instead at the bottom of the sullied page, I never wanted anything to do with you. I had hoped never to see you again. I am only a go-between.

“Whose?”

Still on the same page. I must not say.

“Why? What are you scared of?”

Quickly, fiercely, as if she were carving the words into Tess’s flesh:

Not death. I want to die.

“Great, good for you. You’re much braver than the rest of us. So what does this person have on you?”

Luisa placed her shaking hand on a silver frame at her bedside. A young woman, a woman who resembled the Luisa that Tess had once known, with luminous eyes and soft dark hair. She was with a handsome if beefy man and a chubby baby boy. The daughter, Tess recalled. Luisa had a daughter in Chicago.

Luisa wrote, He will kill her. I am sure of that.

Her own eyes were still beautiful, once you got past their withered casings, the faded brows and lashes. Deep in the damaged face, the eyes were as blue as ever, almost robin’s-egg blue. Tess remembered that Luisa Julia O’Neal had been known as Ellie Jay. She had been one of the city’s best female tennis players, strong and vigorous, albeit in a ladylike way. Now she was dying by inches. What disease had not taken from her, fear would. Fear was exacting a greater toll on her body now than all her medical problems.

“Luisa, I’ll do my best to protect you and your daughter. But I have to know something. If you won’t tell me who this man is, you must at least tell me what he wants.”

Luisa turned a page and wrote in large block letters that took the entire sheet:

You.

She should have been more shocked. But the moment the answer came, she realized she had known it all along. It was the gnat in the ear, the buzzing that had bothered her so many times. What did all these people have in common? Tess Monaghan.

I am the link. Not geography or cause of death. The five were not connected to one another until I came along.

The list had been the lure, leading her toward something, to someone. She needed to know who, she needed to know why. But Luisa O’Neal had already refused to tell her either, and who could blame her? Killing her daughter would be nothing to this man. He had killed Julie Carter just to remind Tess that he was not done.

She unfolded from her crouch, listening to her knees crack. She was happy to have her legs at all, instead of the atrophied appendages beneath the blanket in Luisa’s bed. She was happy to be alive and wondered how much longer she would be. She heard a furious scratching sound and looked up to see Luisa writing hurriedly. Her handwriting was almost indecipherable now.

You must not tell anyone. No one. No police.

“But-”

My daughter, Luisa wrote. MY DAUGHTER. He will kill my daughter if you go to the police. And if you send the police here, I will deny everything.

With that, she ripped the pages from the tablet and shredded them as best she could. Her hands may have been shaky, but they still had some strength.

“But he wants to kill me, Luisa. Right? So are you saying your daughter’s life is more important than mine?”

Not necessarily, she wrote-and promptly tore it up.

“Are you disputing my first premise or the second?”

Both. This note, too, was torn up. Then: Go.

Tess did, feeling as she always had when she faced someone from the O’Neal family-defeated, crushed, decreased. But when she reached the door, a voice called after her. It was a sad voice, slurry and soft, unable to make consonants, but a voice all the same.

“Nushingish ran’um.”

“What?”

“Nushing… nushing.” Tess could hear the fury in Luisa’s voice, could see how she loathed her imperfections. Her face was flushed from emotion and effort as she held up a hand, spreading her fingers the best she could. Her fingers curved, slicing the words into the air.

“Fi-” she said. “Fi-”

“Five? Five what?”

But she gave up, returning to her pad.

Tiffani Gunts Lucy Fancher Julie Carter Hazel Ligetti Michael Shaw

Five names. Five homicides. And nothing was random. Absolutely nothing.

CHAPTER 28

As soon as they signed out of the Keswick Home for Incurables, Tess called Crow on her cell phone and told him to bring her case files to their local coffee shop, the Daily Grind.

She also asked for her Smith amp; Wesson.

“You’re going to strap your gun on here in the Grind?” Whitney asked, sliding into the back booth with a large coffee and a pumpkin muffin. Tess had no appetite.

“Luisa O’Neal just told me that a serial killer-a man who has killed three, maybe five, people-wants me. I’d call having my gun nothing more than prudent.”

Whitney fussed with her coffee, adding three packets of sugar and half-and-half until was more lait au café than café au lait. “What is it between you and Luisa? Why did you ask me to leave the room?”

Tess hesitated. Part of her mind told her all bets were off. Luisa had helped this man lay a trap. The fact that she had done it out of fear for herself and her daughter was not a wholly satisfying excuse, although it was an understandable one. She had set this plan in motion, indifferent to the fact that Tess was a killer’s quarry.

But seeing her old nemesis so reduced had changed the nature of their relationship. Where once Luisa had made Tess feel inconsequential and helpless, Luisa was now the helpless one. Tess, who once kept Luisa’s secrets out of fear, continued to keep them out of habit.

Besides, she had never wanted to test Whitney’s loyalties. Whitney loved Tess, but she also had a fierce loyalty to what Mrs. Talbot would call, without irony, “our kind of people.”

Whitney, mistaking her silence for out-and-out refusal, said, “I bet you told Crow.”

Tess nodded. He was the one person she had told.

“I can keep a secret too, Tesser.”

Her use of the old nickname was strategic, a reminder of how long they had known each other.

“It wasn’t just about keeping secrets,” Tess replied. “I didn’t think you’d believe me if I told you the O’Neal family was capable of murder. But yes, after Crow and I began dating, I told him. I needed to tell someone.”