She’s crying. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to make her stop crying. He wished he could take away all of her pain.

“She was my friend, not just my assistant. She had a great laugh and all these dreams. These plans. She wanted to go to art school. She wanted to paint in Paris. She wanted to fall in love.” Another hard swipe over Piper’s cheek. “Jessica thought he was a good guy, you know? I thought the same thing. How can someone be like that? How can a man fool so many people? How can he fool a lover?”

Eric put down his beer. He strode toward her and eased onto the couch at her side. “Some people are very good at lying.”

“Jessica is dead. Grady is dead. And Ben is recovering in the hospital.” She bit her lip. “I don’t think this guy is just good at lying. I think he’s good at killing.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Why? Why is Dante doing this? And why get close to Jessica if he was just going to kill her?”

“Because getting close to her allowed him access to you. She probably gave him your email password. She gave him your schedule. She told him things about you that he wanted to know.”

Her eyes opened. He could see the tears glistening in her stare.

“And he just started killing?” Piper asked softly. “Just woke up one day and decided he’d kill Jessica and my ex?”

“There could have been some sort of trigger that pushed him over the edge. Something that severed his control, and after that, he was lost. Or…” But Eric stopped.

Piper leaned toward him. “No, you don’t get to stop. You don’t get to just say ‘or’ and have your voice trail off. Tell me.”

“Or this isn’t his first time.” The option that Eric favored. “You aren’t the first woman he stalked. There is a history of behavior like this for him. If he did it before, then he got away with it before. He learned from any mistakes he made. In other words, we’re dealing with a killer who has a real taste for this sort of thing.”

Her lower lip trembled. “Ben said…it was like the guy was counting when he stabbed him.”

And Grady had been stabbed eleven times. He’d need to do a search, find out what other unsolved crimes between Atlanta and Savannah might involve a victim who’d been stabbed eleven times. Maybe he’d turn up nothing.

Or maybe not.

“Do you want some more wine?” He reached for her glass. “I’ll get you some.”

“I don’t want to get drunk. That doesn’t help. If I drink too much, I’ll just be drunk and crying, and that’s a hot mess you don’t want to face right now.”