“Do you even understand this, Deirdre?” His voice was anguished. “Caroline led me on. She made me think we would get back together again, if I helped her out with this. I did everything she asked. And she was dumping me. Again.”

I was as horrified by his self-pity as much as his words. “What did you do?”

“I grabbed her, okay? I was upset, and I wanted her to come to her senses. But when I let go, she fell back. She hit her head. She was dazed for a minute, but she got up again, Deirdre. She was fine!”

“She was anything but fine.” My heart fluttered in my throat like it was trying to escape. “The cops showed me all the video footage. They figured she fell on the steps because of her heart. But she’d already hit her head. She was disoriented. That’s why she fell. That’s why she died.”

“I told you, she got up! She was fine!” Ben shouted.

The despair I felt in that moment was like a knife wound. Caro was dead and I couldn’t bring her back. It had been brutal to hear she’d had a heart problem she kept secret. But it was only one factor in her death. The first time I’d gone to see Villaverde at the police station, he’d told me the combination of her heart problem and the concussion had ended her life.

“You killed her,” I whispered. “You killed my sister.”

If there was ever a time I expected rage to course through me, it was then. But all I felt was broken and exhausted. Hitting Ben wouldn’t be enough. He needed to be arrested. He had to admit his guilt to the world.

At a cracking sound, my body lit up as if it were on fire. I was on the ground in a second, gasping for breath but unable to draw air.

“Don’t deal with an animal without a Taser,” Ben said over the buzzing in my head.

He dragged me up by the shoulders and propelled me to the open window. My eyes were still rolling in my head, but they settled on the New York Public Library in the distance.

“Tudor City’s had plenty of suicides, people jumping from windows,” Ben said. “You’ll just be another one.”

He shoved my quivering body out the window headfirst. I managed to widen my legs enough to keep from falling out, even though the rest of me was dangling in midair.

“You just had to be difficult,” Ben said.

He shot me with the Taser again, and I lost control of my body. For a split second, I was hurtling through the air, and then I was gone.

CHAPTER 42 THEO

CHAPTER 42

THEO