Little by little she gathered it in her hands, and when she was certain she’d pulled the last of it from the attic stairway, she hurried around the house, entering her bedroom through the window. Then she waited. It didn’t take long for her mother to wake, and as soon as Ms. McClain had staggered down the hallway, Jack opened her bedroom door. She needed her mother to hear her coming out, so that no one would figure out what she’d done.

And no one did. Not when the police arrived and took everyone’s statement. Not when they studied the stairs for signs of foul play. The man insisted that he’d been tripped, but without anything to back up his claim, the police had no reason to believe him.

He couldn’t prove it.

17 I’m Good at Taking Things

Belle inhaled slowly, her breath rattling against her ribs like a ghost shaking loose from a skeleton. Beside her, Jack was hunched over on the bunk bed, head clutched in her hands.

“You tripped that man,” Belle said, her voice soft and her head close to Jack’s ear.

“Yes.”

“That’s why you called off the murder of Raven’s stepmother. Because you almost killed a person, and it scared you to know you were capable of that.”

“No.” Jack lifted her head, her gaze steely. Unflinching. “I was shaking for days after it happened, and I could hardly eat or sleep, but I wasn’t sorry for what I did to that man. I didn’t feel guilty.” A beat, followed by a breath. “I called off the murder because I didn’t want Raven to see what was inside me. I would lose him, and I wouldn’t be able to stand it. That hasn’t changed.”

Belle swallowed, anger slipping off her the way grime slips off a body during a long, satisfying shower. The kind she would take if she ever got out of this place. “You didn’t kill Evelyn Holloway.”

A slight shake of the head. “Of course I didn’t, Belle. I’m not who you think I am.”

“Then who the hell did it? I didn’t kill her, and Lily was accounted for all night—”

“By her dad.”

Belle’s head snapped up. “What did you say?”

“Lily spent that whole night with her dad. I guess he went to visit her at the facility, and they spent hours going over the paperwork for him to get full custody.” Jack shook her head, tapping her fingers on the blanket. “If both of them were accounted for, then I don’t know—”

“Lily wasn’t with her dad.”