Seductive Suspect - Page 34

“You’re crazy,” Adam said. “I didn’t kill anyone.” He dropped my arm and rubbed at his temples, his voice growing quiet. “But if you think I don’t feel guilty every single day, you’re wrong.”

The presence of the gun unsettled me, but I needed to know how we all wound up in this situation. “Isabel, what happened? Please, tell me.”

“My sister—my smart, beautiful, amazing sister—planned her whole life around the future he promised her.” A muscle in her cheek twitched. “And then, when he tossed her asidelike yesterday’s trash, she didn’t think life was worth living anymore.”

“It wasn’t like that!” He clawed at his hair again, clearly agitated. “Mia was sick. I wanted to help her, or get her help, or dosomethingto save her. But nothing worked.”

Isabel rolled her eyes. “So, you took the easy way out.”

Palm to his forehead, he paced in tight circles in front of me. “You have no idea what we went through. She’d claim I was the only bright spot in her life, but then she kept dragging me down into her darkness. I never knew how she’d react to whatever I said or did. Some days, I couldn’t even go to work in the morning without her accusing me of abandoning her or hurting her.” He stopped moving, his hand shielding his eyes. “I thought she’d be better off without me in the long run,” he mumbled.

“Well, that was quite the error in judgment.” She crossed her arms, fingers still wrapped around the gun. While it wasn’t aimed directly at us, I had no doubt she could fire off a quick shot if we made a wrong move.

Adam faced her, glaring. “What about you? You were never around! You were studying abroad. You weren’t even on the same continent as us, but somehow, this is all my fault?”

“She didn’t want me to worry! She wanted me to stay in school so I’d have a better life than her.” Her eyes glistened with unfallen tears. “I didn’t know how bad things had gotten until after you’d left, but by then, it was too late.” She wiped her face with her sleeve and straightened. “Regardless,youwere the catalyst. You were the one who destroyed her, made her feel worthless.”

“If it wasn’t me, it would have been something else. Like I said, she couldn’t think rationally anymore.”

She snorted. “Easy for you to say now.”

Although she hadn’t spoken any direct threats, I needed to diffuse the friction somehow. “Explain this to me, since I’m stillkind of confused,” I said. “You think Adam is responsible for your sister’s death, so you gathered a group of people here and killed them one by one because…?”

Her jaw relaxed a little. “I wanted him to feel helpless, to be teetering on the line between life and death and not able to do a damn thing about it.” A cruel smile spread across her face. “I got lucky with the bad weather. I thought I’d have to carry out my plans within a day or two, but since we were stuck here, I decided to take my time and really draw out his suffering.”

I recognized we were not dealing with a sane person here, but if she kept talking, she wasn’t aiming the gun at us. “What about the others, though? Did you invite random people to be your victims?”

“Oh, no. Of course not.” Isabel chuckled. “Everyone here shared a common trait. They all used and abused people, and they finally got what they deserved.”

Adam raised his eyebrows. “What, you think they were somehow responsible for causing deaths, like you’ve convinced yourself I am?”

She shook her head. “Not necessarily. More of a general disregard for other people’s feelings and livelihood. They didn’t care about anyone but themselves, so I don’t think the world will suffer from their losses.”

I tried to reconcile her statements with the companions I’d met at the lodge. “All of them? I mean, we didn’t get to know some of them very well, but Paul and Laura seemed nice enough.”

“Paul stole pills and other drugs from the hospital where he worked and sold them to anyone willing to pay for a fix.” She clicked her tongue. “Doesn’t sound very nice to me.”

I blinked twice. “And Laura?”

“When she wasn’t working at the library, she had a very lucrative side gig as an internet cam girl. There’s nothing wrongwith that, but, by my last count, she’d told fifteen different men they were her one true love and reaped the financial rewards of their affections.” Tapping her fingers on the counter beside her, she continued rattling off her list. “Dylan helped hack women who he thought interfered with his games and published their personal information online. Mary embezzled money from the non-profit she worked at. And Jeremy ditched his parents in a crappy nursing home after they supported him through all sorts of failed business ventures.” She let out a dramatic sigh. “And the sad part is, if they hadn’t accepted their invitations, I had a long list of other selfish, nasty people I’d found ready to take their place.”

The indifference with which she spoke disturbed me. So did a new realization. “Wait a minute. My sister was supposed to come here, not me. Why did you invite her?”

“You don’t think she falls into the same category?” she asked in a snide tone. “Flitting around from one guy to the next, leaving a trail of broken hearts in her wake. Fun for her, I’m sure, but not so much for the men she hurts.”

I couldn’t deny Isabel’s accusations, but I grew angry on Trina’s behalf. “Okay, my sister might be a total flake, but it doesn’t mean she deserves to be killed for it!”

“You’ve covered all the other guests,” Adam said. “But what about the staff? What did they do to incur your bizarre sense of justice?”

She shrugged. “Collateral damage.”

I gaped at her in horror. “That’s terrible.”

“Oh, please. Do you really think that airhead would find a cure for the common cold whenever she went back to her college classes?” She flicked her wrist in a dismissive gesture. “And I’m sure if we did enough digging, we might find some skeletons in the others’ closets.”

Isabel’s words repulsed me, yet my attempts at stalling wereworking so far. Maybe help would arrive in time after all, or a method of escape would present itself. “How were you able to plan the murders? Shooting and stabbing seem simple enough, but how did you know about things like the fountain or the statues?”

She glared at me with derision. “Aside from something called the internet, where the company coordinating these weekends has a website with all sorts of pictures, the law firm where I work handled a personal injury case where some idiot tripped on the steps and tried to sue.” An exasperated noise left her lips. “A stupid lawsuit, but I had access to all the files. Everything I wanted to know about the lodge and its events, from the layout, to schedules, and so on, was right there at my fingertips.”