Nari smiled, but her lips wobbled, so she stopped. “True, but times have changed. He wouldn’t be able to take two deaths like that.”

Lassiter slowly shook his head. “I know my friend better than you do. He was obsessed with finding me before, and once I cut you up, piece by piece, he’ll have no choice but to continue the game.”

Nari’s mother made a distressed sound behind her, and Nari straightened. “He won’t continue any sort of game with you. I promise.”

Lassiter flattened his hand over his thigh and rubbed it. “Angus will be so proud of how I’ve overcome all those bullets.”

Proud? The nutjob wanted Angus to be proud? “He’d admire you more if you let us go,” Nari said. “In fact, it’d make him wonder more about you. About figuring you out, because that’d be a shock to him.”

Lassiter smiled. “You’re a smart one. Figures. My Angus would only like an intelligent woman.” He sighed. “Well, friendships are two-way streets, no? I should have my needs met, too. If I eat the heart of the woman he loves, I’ll always have a part of him, too.”

Nari’s mom gagged.

“While that’s interesting logic,” Nari said, “I think you should intrigue him instead. Throw him a curveball. Let us go and make him worry about why.” She was grasping at straws, but it was all she had right now. The stun guns mounted on the wall behind the two chairs promised there wouldn’t be any sort of a fair fight here.

“I do like your line of thinking, but I don’t have the time required to play a long game with you. The rest of the team will have to do, and it’ll be lovely watching them witness Angus’s descent into that dark place only I have been able to take him.” Lassiter pressed his fingers together, watching his narrow hands. “It has to be you, Nari. Your mama is just a bonus.” His smile revealed a flash of the evil inside him.

How was she going to get her mother out of this? Nari looked around the room. How many women had he butchered here? “Why are you under a time constraint?”

“It’s a long story.” He picked off a piece of lint from his pants leg.

There was only one solution. Nari took a deep breath. “Let my mom go. Seeing her fear and stress after you kill me will only torture Angus more.”

“No.” Her mom pushed her to the side. “Take me. Let her go.”

Lassiter’s blue gaze narrowed. “So that’s what a mother’s love really looks like.” He tilted his head to the side. “I wonder if I’ll feel such sweet warmth when I eat your heart.”