‘He’s a nice guy. Isn’t there some other way?’ she asked.

Gillian grabbed Caitlin’s arm, her fingers digging in. ‘I’ve already told you. I need some time to deal with this and this is how I get time. You know what is at stake. You don’t want your grandfather to go to prison, do you? Do you have any idea how easy it is to put unsavoury stuff on someone’s computer? It’s very easy. Just think about that.’

‘Please, don’t make me do this. You said you wouldn’t ask me to sleep with anyone else. Not after Doctor Norris.’

‘Norris needed to be brought back in line. He seemed to be under the misguided opinion that he could just stop whenever he wanted.’

‘Did you have him killed?’

‘Good lord, no. The last thing we need is a murder investigation on the premises. Now that we have one, you have to give them something else to think about.’

The girl seemed to be distressed at the suggestion, until Gillian reminded her of how much she had to lose. She was being blackmailed.

‘It’s your grandfather or the detective: you decide.’

‘What if he doesn’t want to? What if he says no?’

‘Then we make it look like he did.’

Parker saw the girl wipe her cheek. She was in a situation she couldn’t win, being forced to take part in this sick game. This was what they had planned for Abbey. His fist tightened into a ball. How many times had they done this before? It seemed to have been going on for years, judging by the things he saw on Helen Lassiter’s computer. He wondered how many people had been caught up in their game. How was this fun? What was wrong with these people? He couldn’t help but wonder what the prize was. What could possibly be worth this kind of manipulation? With every instruction Gillian Mitchell gave out, she forfeited a part of her soul, if she even had one any more. Maybe there was nothing left inside her but evil.

This whole scenario was making him so angry. What gave them the right to toy with others like this? It was the same force that gave him the right to kill them for it. Like an unspoken code, they were playing on his side of the tracks now and that was not a place you wanted to be. He would put a stop to this, not just because of what they had planned for Abbey, but because in his opinion, people like that didn’t belong in the world. It wasn’t for them, they didn’t deserve it and they didn’t really want it. They wanted their secrets and their lies, they wanted to feel smarter than the rest, they wanted to feel like gods. Parker had met people like that before and he had removed them from the game: not their game, his game. The only rule in Parker’s game was that you didn’t put yourself above others. No one should have the power to play with the rest of the world. Parker had proved this more than once. Power was not something you could own forever, you could lose it or it could be taken from you. That was why Parker believed he was here, to put those people in their place.