Dani looked down at Jason. His eyes were now fully open but he remained listless. She looked back up to Ethan. She’d already prepared herself for the face of the person who would step forwards next to him.

But how wrong she was.

The figure came into view.

Not Steven Grant at all, but his wife, Mary.

Chapter Sixty-One

Mary stepped forward in front of her son.

‘What the fuck is going on here?’ Jason slurred, finally coming around to the reality of the situation.

Mary looked from Dani and down to him.

‘Did Dani not fill you in?’ she said. ‘And I thought you two were playing so nicely together.’

‘You?’ was the only word that came out of Dani’s lips.

Mary raised an eyebrow and shook her head. ‘Wow, you must have thought long and hard about that one.’

‘I… I don’t get it,’ Dani said.

‘Well of course you don’t, Detective. That’s why you’re sitting on the floor like that, and why I’m not.’

Dani again looked down at Jason. He was shaking his head in confusion, but at least he appeared more lucid now. Jason was their only hope of getting out alive.

‘Does Steven know what you’re going to do to me?’ Dani asked.

Steven Grant. Dani had been certain that it would be him making the grand entrance. After all, he had a morbid interest in murderers. He had a direct connection to Jessica Bradford, which he’d lied to Dani about. He had first-hand experience of being at the mercy of a killer. Did he know what Mary was?

‘Steven?’ Mary said, a little perturbed. ‘You’re on first name terms with my husband now? Does DI Barnes know you’ve developed something of a crush on the professor? Or was it not my husband, but the subject of death that pulled you in?’

Dani again thought back to her conversations with Grant. What makes a killer? Nature or nurture. The answer was complex. Impossible to test. Yet Dani saw a slim window of opportunity.

She knew what she had to do.

‘Ethan,’ Dani said. ‘Don’t let her do this. Don’t follow her path.’

‘I know you didn’t mean to kill Natalya. It was a mistake.’

Dani saw Ethan clenching his jaw. She was right. ‘She was your first, wasn’t she? What happened, Ethan? Did you get scared? Did you panic and give her the opportunity to escape?’

Mary turned to Ethan who gave his mother a sheepish look. He held his tongue.

‘You had no choice but to kill her in the open. And then Reeve? Were you trying to cover your tracks? Hoping the police would link the deaths and put them down to gang violence? Why? Was Reeve getting too close to the truth?’ The flinch on Ethan’s face suggested perhaps that was the answer. ‘What about Harland? Did he know too?’