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Back We Were Killers Once Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty–one
  25. Twenty–two
  26. Twenty–three
  27. Twenty–four
  28. Twenty–five
  29. Twenty–six
  30. Twenty–seven
  31. Twenty–eight
  32. Twenty–nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty–one
  35. Thirty–two
  36. Thirty–three
  37. Thirty–four
  38. Thirty–five
  39. Thirty–six
  40. Thirty–seven
  41. Thirty–eight
  42. Thirty–nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty–one
  45. Forty–two
  46. Forty–three
  47. Forty–four
  48. Forty–five
  49. Forty–six
  50. Forty–seven
  51. Forty–eight
  52. Forty–nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty–one
  55. Fifty–two
  56. Fifty–three
  57. Fifty–four
  58. Fifty–five
  59. Fifty–six
  60. Fifty–seven
  61. Author’s Note
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. Also by Becky Masterman
  64. About the Author
  65. Newsletter Sign-up

Now. Where are the days when you could find a landline in a house? None there, and neither Gloria’s nor Jerry’s cell phone was in sight. With another caution to Carlo—Beaufort’s screams had subsided and he was only moaning—I ran out of the house and to the car to call Gemma-Kate, where she sat under the shadeless tree with her own cell phone, waiting for the results of her experiment.

“Is Uncle Carlo alive?” she asked first.

“Yes,” I said. “I thought you were just putting the hydrochloric acid in the bag. You didn’t tell me about putting it in the spray bottle.”

“I thought you might object to it,” Gemma-Kate said.

“You idiot, you could have killed me.”

There was a pause and then she said, “Nobody hurts Uncle Carlo.”

I looked at the time on my phone and figured I couldn’t wait any longer for Beaufort to die and not look like I was doing it on purpose. I told Gemma-Kate to call nine-one-one with the address and emergency situation. I also instructed her to tell the emergency services to call Deputy Sheriff Max Coyote, and give him my name.

I thought of Gloria. I told Gemma-Kate to say it involved a homicide.

When I got back into the house, Carlo had gotten a pot of water from the kitchen and was pouring it over Beaufort’s body. Looked like a baptism. I hoped if there was anything to it, it didn’t work this time, that Beaufort would spend eternity burning.

Was that acid on the cuff of Carlo’s pants or was it only because they were frayed? When he refused to move away from Beaufort I found a spaghetti pot in one of the cabinets and filled it with water from the tub in the bathroom, then carried it back into the living room to pour it over Carlo’s leg without asking permission, without asking whether his leg was burning. Then he looked at me, and something in his dull stranger gaze made me back away with the empty pot.

Did he force himself to look at me? We stared at each other across a room that felt like a chasm. With all the carnage around us, I found my thoughts going back to the time when I was certain he would leave me because he knew in theory what I could do. This was worse. This time he had both seen me in action, and read the satisfaction that I couldn’t hide. We knew all of one another’s secrets now.

Maybe this time Carlo had been burned after all. Maybe I had burned him beyond repair.

Fifty–seven