No, no, wait. He couldn’t have killed Myra. Never. His head pounded with blurred memories of strangulation and ribbons and hatred and . . .

Stop! That was wrong. He’d gotten it all wrong. Mixed up dreams with what had really happened.

Right? Of course! Myra, his beautiful Myra was alive and had just been on the phone and read him the riot act for not doing as she commanded, for letting Zoe get away.

“We’ll deal with the first one later,” she had said in the awful, ever-present voice. “She can ID you and the damage is done there, but you can take care of her after the heat has died down. For now, idiot, concentrate.”

He felt his back muscles bunch. Hated it when she berated him. Even now, reviewing the conversation they’d had earlier in the day . . . or had it been another time?

“For now, just kill Chloe,” she had insisted, “so that’s one less mistake to worry about and then get the hell out of town. Leave the van. Take my car. Lie low. You still have money, right? You’ve been careful with your mother’s estate?”

He thought of his mother with her wide eyes, thinning hair, and red, red ribbon tying it back. The nursing facility had been expensive, would have eaten up all of her savings, which at the time had been substantial, so she, too, had to die.

She was a bitch anyway.

He didn’t mind helping her along, putting a little too much medication into her protein drink.

“Money’s not a problem,” he’d said aloud and wondered from her lack of response, if Myra had been listening. That was the way with her. She often didn’t reply to him and it pissed him off. “But what about you? If I kill Chloe and leave New Orleans, what about you?” He’d come back here because of Myra.

“I’ll always be with you, Jacob,” she’d cooed, soothing him, once again present. Sometimes he wondered if she even existed the way she toyed with him. “You know that.”

He smiled. She’d been angry with him, but forgiving. So he would do as she had bidden. Kill Chloe, make sure that little kicking bitch was dead, and then he’d blow town and bide his time.

He could wait for Zoe.

He was a patient man.

Bentz didn’t believe for a second that Jase Bridges was capable of murder, but as they sorted everything out in a conference room, the reporter himself came up with an outlandish theory in which he described finding out just this very afternoon that he had a twin brother he hadn’t known about, nor met. He’d only discovered the truth earlier in some kind of purging confession from his old man, who was also a drunk.