Lily crept in, cautious. She counted her footsteps. Reaching in the darkness for the knife block, she unerringly withdrew the one she wanted.

She turned and walked again. Ten steps. Eight. Six. All the time eyeing the stairs for Jesse's return, then past them to focus on Claire Vincent.

Risking one quick, confirming glance at the body on the floor, she recognized Wyatt. Her heart raced when she saw the wound on his shoulder, the blood on the back of his head. But she also saw his chest moving as he breathed. Not dead. Yet she couldn't help him until she eliminated both threats.

She'd reached the danger zone. No way to see if Boyd was coming down, no way to hide from Claire's gaze. Steeling her will and gripping the knife, she flew forward, aided by the element of surprise, and had the knife under the lawyer's throat before the other woman could even gasp.

The lawyer's eyes rounded with shock. "You…"

"I'm finished with my shower," she whispered.

Lily looked up and saw nothing. Jesse was apparently still standing in her bedroom, trying to grow a big enough set of balls to burst into the bathroom and kill her. Or figure out how to turn the damn gun safety off.

Claire opened her mouth as if to scream.

"Don't or I'll slit your throat. I swear to God I would take pleasure in doing it."

The woman whimpered. She appeared dazed, in pain, and, judging by the amount of blood at her feet, badly wounded. Yet she'd still managed to orchestrate Lily's murder, to cock her weapon-Jesse-aim it, and send it up the stairs to finish the job.

Lily should have shoved the woman down, grabbed Wyatt, and dragged him out of here. But he was badly hurt. The steps down to the driveway were long, to the beach even longer, and Jesse had Wyatt's gun. He could catch up with them and shoot them down easily. So instead, she grabbed Claire by the front of her shirt and pulled her, hard, to the floor. She reached for the phone, which sat on the closest table, lifted the receiver, and heard nothing but dead air. The cut cord on the back of it explained why.

"Thanks. I can use that," she snarled, yanking the longer part of the cord out of the wall. Moving quickly, she wound it around Claire's hands, binding her tightly.

A quick glance up the stairs confirmed Jesse's continued indecision. Lily took the opportunity to check on Wyatt. His shoulder gaped open-she could see the bone-but the blood loss wasn't critical yet. A quick check of the bloody lump on his head led her to believe he'd been struck, not shot.

"You're going to be okay," she whispered. "This will all be over with in a couple of minutes." She considered rooting through his pockets to look for his cell phone, but didn't want to risk moving him, and also didn't want to keep her back to the stairs any longer. "I'll take care of Boyd, then get you some help." She reached down to gently brush his dark hair off his brow. "I love you."

Returning to the base of the stairs, the knife in her hands, Lily crouched and listened for any sounds from above. When Jesse pounded down those stairs, he was going to get one heck of a surprise.

"I need an ambulance," Claire whispered weakly.

"Fuck you."

"I mean it. I'll die. It was never personal, you know, never against you."

Lily ignored her, unable to believe the gall of the woman who'd come here to kill her.

"Roger called me for help that night," she whispered. "Me, of all people, I was the one he turned to. I'd loved him all those years and he was finally turning to me."

Okay, the woman was obviously sick.

"I didn't know about you, or that other agent. He just told me he'd gotten in trouble and needed help getting rid of the van. I knew nothing else until I saw the news the next day. He'd made me an accessory after the fact to murder and I had no idea."

"Poor you, now shut up." Lily cocked her head, listening, still no sound from upstairs. What the hell was Jesse doing, taking a nap on her bed?

Claire continued speaking, her whisper weak and pathetic. "I tried to talk to him all week, then finally ended up following him. He went to the old shack on the beach."

Her whole body recoiling, Lily finally gave the woman her full attention. "And you saw me?" Saw me and did nothing?

The woman nodded. Her eyes held no apology, only anger. "We argued."

The unknown woman. Had Lily heard Claire and mistaken her for the ghostly voice of her twin sister?

"I told him to kill you, but he refused. He was keeping you. He wanted you for himself." Claire sniffed, as if heartbroken. "There was always someone else. Why were you so special?"

"I wasn't exactly thrilled about it," Lily snarled.

"He told me we'd talk later, that we had to act normal. That night, after dinner, I snuck into his house and confronted him. Asked him why. Why everyone else? Why Judith, why children, why you? Why not me anymore?"

The very twisted nature of the question-why did he want children and not her?-didn't seem to occur to the woman. Nothing did. Claire Vincent was crazy. Maybe it wasn't the technical term, but as far as Lily was concerned, the woman was just fucking nuts.

"I told him I would satisfy him more than anyone else if he'd only let me." Her eyes narrowed and for the first time, she began to show some sign of normal emotion. Anger toward the man who'd caused all of this.

"What did he say?" Lily asked, drawn almost against her will into the woman's story.

"He told me he'd used me. That my own brother had been a better lay than I was."

God in heaven.

"I don't much like Philip anymore, but I did when he was a little boy. And when Roger told me what he'd done, I just lost it. I picked up the wine opener, stabbed him with it, shot him with compressed air. I guess it hit a vein and an air bubble went to his heart."

Lily didn't follow, but she didn't need to. The woman had just confessed to killing Roger Underwood. It was the first thing she'd said that actually made Lily's opinion toward her go up a notch.

"I went back to the beach to finish you off, sure you'd seen me or heard me that afternoon, but you were gone. I've been waiting ever since for you to show back up."

"Which is why you started killing those other men, hoping to make me look like a killer."

The woman shuddered, her eyes closing as she whispered, "Yes. And because those other men were all just like him, and killing Roger only once hadn't been good enough. He raped my baby brother. And he broke my heart."

None of the rest of the evil things he'd done seemed to matter to this woman, who let out a guttural groan as she appeared to drift into unconsciousness.

"Hey! Ms. Vincent? You there?" a voice called from above. "She's gone-the screen's inside the bathroom- she musta climbed out the window and run down to the beach!"

Thankful Jesse hadn't grown a brain since she'd last seen him, Lily tensed and prepared to attack. Jesse's footsteps pounded as he came down the stairs, and Lily, the small knife in her hand, knew she had to disarm him the minute he came into view. She could take the bastard, but not if he kept the gun.

"Ms. Vincent?" His foot appeared.

Now.

She launched, hoping to either stab him in the arm or else surprise him into dropping the weapon, but she wasn't that lucky. The swipe of her knife missed him by no more than the width of a single hair. He was bulkier than she'd remembered, but his reactions were faster than she'd expected, and he spun out of her reach. Lily followed, throwing herself at him before he could bring the gun up and aim it.

They both fell to the floor; she landed right on top of him. Jesse drew back his arm to punch her off his chest, but Lily curled in a ball and rolled off by herself, kicking with all her might as she avoided his fist.

He grunted in pain. "Bitch," he snapped, out of breath from the foot she'd just jabbed into one of his lungs. But instead of fighting back, he slid forward, his fingertips finding the gun he'd dropped. He snatched it up and swung it around toward her before she could get at him. And for the second time in her life, Lily found herself literally staring down the barrel of a gun.