Sierra slipped the locket off over her head and set it down on the counter positioned above the two sinks.

“You can’t risk shooting Kimberly,” she said. “Someone will hear the shot.”

“Not with the music going full blast. It’s Kimberly’s bad luck that she came back.”

“My lipstick,” Kimberly said weakly. “Look, no one is dead yet. This can end here and now.”

“No,” Larissa said. “It’s not going to end until I get my inheritance. Those weapons that my grandfather invented belong to me.”

Sierra didn’t have to look at the reflection of Larissa’s aura to pick up the instability in her energy field. The signs were evident in the unsteady pitch of her voice and her feverish eyes. Her fury was so great it dominated common sense, reason, perhaps even the instinct for self-preservation. In that moment the only thing that mattered to her was revenge.

“Griffin Chastain and Crocker Rancourt invented those devices together,” Sierra said. “Chastain intended them to be used to heal.”

“Rancourt understood the true potential of the light machines,” Larissa said. “It’s all there in his logbook. It was my grandfather who comprehended the real power of those artifacts. When Rancourt realized Chastain would never agree to weaponize the devices, he did what he had to do.”

“Congratulations,” Sierra said. “You did a nice job of hiding in plain sight while you let Delbridge Loring take all the risks. He wasn’t running the Puppets—he was one of them. So was Garraway. You were the one pulling the strings.”

“Loring and Garraway were both obsessed with the paranormal. I offered them what they could not resist—the promise of serious psychic power. They recruited the orderlies because they needed some muscle to pick up the research subjects and keep them under control at Riverview.”

“You covered your tracks well,” Sierra said. “You even left a few clues indicating that Loring was Crocker Rancourt’s long-lost grandson, the one who supposedly died in an explosion.”

“The file of obituary notices?” Larissa smiled a chilling smile. “I knew it would send North and Victor Arganbright off in the wrong direction. It’s no secret that Arganbright never believed Harlan Rancourt died in that fire.”

“The master stroke was letting Loring hide in your grandfather’s old estate on Bainbridge Island,” Sierra said. “How did you get hold of it?”

“An heir hunter found me after Stenson Rancourt and his son died in the explosion that Arganbright and Lucas Pine caused. I was Stenson’s biological daughter, but he never acknowledged me. He never paid any attention to me at all. I was the product of a one-night stand. I doubt if he even remembered my mother’s name. I’m sure he never realized that I was the one who got the full measure of Crocker Rancourt’s talent.”

“Did Harlan die in that blaze?”

Larissa shrugged. “I assume so. If he didn’t, he has certainly managed to keep a low profile all these years. It was obvious he never went after the cache of weapons my grandfather hid at the estate.”