Dead Ringer

47

"I'm done."

Clarissa, halfway through barging into my entryway, stopped in her tracks. Her head whipped toward me, her frown deepening.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm done." My voice was hoarse, but I meant what I said, and that meant I was done caring, too. "I can't do this anymore. I'm out."

She tilted her head, arms folded, and I prepared myself for an extra layer of exasperation on top of the lecture she surely had planned.

Instead, she just sighed. "Do you have any idea what I found on that damn hair clip?"

I sat up straighter, pulling my head out of my hands. So much had happened since then that I'd almost forgotten about the clip.

Something terrible. Something bad enough to lock him up for life. He deserves it.

Clarissa must have misread the tension coiling my muscles, because she held out a hand. "Maisye, I know how you feel about him—"

"No, you don't," I snapped. "And if you don't tell me you have something that'll put him away...."

She stared at me for a moment, her lips parted in surprise. "Is everything okay?"

"Just tell me what you found," I growled.

"A data transfer not long after you arrived. We're still decrypting it, but it looks promising."

I nodded once. "Good."

"It's not enough."

I raised my eyebrows, giving her a look that clearly said, Are you kidding me?

"I don't want to just nail him for national security. I want to get him for what he did to those women," she said, her mouth pressing into a thin line.

I laughed. "So what? You're just going to keep using me as bait until whatever happened to them happens to me?"

"This time is different!"

"How? Because you're watching? You've been watching the guy for five years and four women have still disappeared, not including my sister, who's dead!"

Clarissa's nostrils flared. "Five years. Three of which included watching your sister. You act like she's no one to me."

"Maybe because that's what I feel like to you."

We stared at each other in silence, and I couldn't tell if it was because she had nothing to say or if she couldn't find the words.

"We're both doing this for her," she finally said.

"Screw her!" I burst out. "Honestly. I'm living the consequences of everything she did here, and I hate it."

"Maisye...." She carefully perched herself on a chair across from me, leaning her elbows on the table. "She wasn't perfect. I know that. But she was still your sister."

And it got me nothing but a goddamn sex tape.

"Whatever she did, she still deserves justice."

I thought of Donovan kissing me, undressing me, climbing on top of me and staring straight into the camera as he made love to me.

No, not made love. Revenge-fucked would be more accurate.

"You can back out whenever you want, I'm just asking you to hang in there a little bit longer. We're so close."

I shook my head. "I can't do it."

She tilted her head, studying me for several long seconds. "I think you have a habit of underestimating yourself, Maisye," she said quietly.

I blinked, meeting her stare with a level one of my own as I tried to figure out whether she meant it, or if it was just a ploy to make me stay.