Chapters (65)
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty–one
- Twenty–two
- Twenty–three
- Twenty–four
- Twenty–five
- Twenty–six
- Twenty–seven
- Twenty–eight
- Twenty–nine
- Thirty
- Thirty–one
- Thirty–two
- Thirty–three
- Thirty–four
- Thirty–five
- Thirty–six
- Thirty–seven
- Thirty–eight
- Thirty–nine
- Forty
- Forty–one
- Forty–two
- Forty–three
- Forty–four
- Forty–five
- Forty–six
- Forty–seven
- Forty–eight
- Forty–nine
- Fifty
- Fifty–one
- Fifty–two
- Fifty–three
- Fifty–four
- Fifty–five
- Fifty–six
- Fifty–seven
- Author’s Note
- Acknowledgments
- Also by Becky Masterman
- About the Author
- Newsletter Sign-up
“When he came over to the house he asked to make his confession. I suspected at first that I was being conned, but there are those times when the job demands … well, at first Jerry rattled on. I could tell he thought he was being so clever, and manipulating me. But at some point, he really did start to confess. Not the whole thing. Probably not everything Hickock put in his record. But painful things I’m sure he had never admitted to anyone before. It was the first time I’d listened to a confession in more than thirty years.”
Carlo’s lips trembled, and then he started to cry. I’d never seen Carlo cry before. Was it the result of the trauma he had been through, or did he want to leave me and go back to the priesthood? I didn’t dare to try to stop him so I just hugged him at the knees and let him put his hand on the top of my head, half pulling me to him and half pushing me away. It felt like he was needing to connect with someone, but part of him didn’t want it to be me just now. Being the unwanted person hurt.
When he had finished crying, he pulled his hand back from my head and let me look up into his face. “You were going to kill him,” he said. “Or at least you were going to let him die.”
What I thought I saw there made me understand that you can kill all the people you want, to fix the world, but that doesn’t mean you’ll ever be able to control the live ones. It again occurred to me I could have blamed it on Gemma-Kate, but what good would that really do when we both already knew what I was capable of? I couldn’t win this.
So, tucking up my little protective core in preparation for whatever might come, I said, “I don’t understand why that surprises you.”
Carlo didn’t respond for a long time, and with each second I imagined the chasm between us widening. When he finally spoke, it wasn’t with the final judgment I was expecting. Not yet. “I’m different from you,” he said. “You see good and evil. All my life I’ve never seen black on black on black.”
“He’s evil,” I said.
“Is he?” Carlo said. “What about us? Are we good or are we evil?”