“Then he ran off like a coward dog. He’s been absolutely eaten up with guilt ever since. It makes him so fun to play with.” She paused. “It’s the only thing interesting about him, you know.”

Lacey leaned in, her eyebrows raised. “Do you want to know what’s even better?” There was that giddy, dreamy quality to her voice again. “He saw me, outside, before you did. He thinks I’ve been keeping his secret for all this time.”

She giggled then, and somehow the girlish pleasure in it was worse than the rusted wind chimes.

Something Cash said on the pier came back to Mia. “You made him think your father was contacting you again. The nightmares.”

Lacey grinned, that Cheshire cat smugness making her features hard, ugly. “Can you imagine? If he’d gone off to find my father? Who, by the way, is a rotting vegetable. But Cash would find a little present there, just enough evidence to cement his belief that dear old Daddy Bell killed my beloved mother.”

Mia’s nails dug into her palms where her fingers had curled into fists as Lacey laughed again.

“He’d finally have something to do with all that exquisite guilt,” Lacey continued. “He’s quite slow on the uptake, but I was finally making headway with him. The nightmares really sold it, I will say.”

Playthings. That’s how Lacey saw people, not as humans but as dolls to be used for her enjoyment. Appealing to her humanity would be pointless here.

“Really,” Lacey continued, “it was the only thing keeping me entertained in this joke of a place.”

The disdain dripped from the words. “Why did you come back here, then?”

Rage rippled across her face, before it smoothed out again. “Daddy Bell isn’t as dumb as he looks sometimes.”

“He cut you off,” Mia guessed. The Bell mansion was deeded to Lacey, but the rest of her life would have been funded by her parents. The punishment of banishment was perfectly cruel for the little sociopath.

Lacey pouted. “I should have solved the problem before he discovered my games. I would have inherited millions. But he gave the money away. To charity.” She practically spit the last word. “The only thing that was left was enough for that shitty little house he’s rotting in and his medical care. I can’t get to that trust he set up.”

“That must have really pissed you off, huh,” Mia said, goading. She wanted Lacey as angry and sloppy as possible by the time Izzy got there.

But instead of sinking further into her rage, Lacey smiled, all sunshine again. “That’s where Cash came in. My little guilty white knight, trying to save the day.”

Mia sighed and shifted tactics. “Izzy’s not going to believe you, you know.”