The Sinner

Kenny frowned, and for a minute Bryce thought maybe, somehow, he had missed. He had his finger on the trigger again, ready to pull, when Kenny’s mouth opened and blood spilled out like liquid words.

Kenny shook his head, as if rejecting the truth, but his body knew. He began to slide to his knees. Some absurd instinct made Bryce catch him under the arms and break his fall, lowering him toward the floor, careful of crooked legs and lolling arms.

Kenny’s abdomen was pulpy, red, and sickening. Bryce looked at it only a second before training his eyes on the man’s face. Kenny’s breath was coming in small, choking spasms. He stared up at Bryce and clutched his arm, as if he needed comfort. Bryce found that he couldn’t pull away. He didn’t even try.

“Lara,” Kenny whispered, sounding, here at the end, as innocent and adoring as wide-eyed Ted from Iowa. His fingers opened and shut rhythmically on Bryce’s coat sleeve. He shut his eyes and said her name one more time, tight with agony, blood bubbling between his lips. “Lara.”

His hand fell away.

With a fierce suddenness, the sounds of the real world came rushing back into Bryce’s ears. He felt wobbly and wet, as if he had just surfaced from a deep sea dive. Still, he struggled to his feet and took a step. He must have lost a lot of blood. He felt strange, as if he were about to fall asleep, or as if he had just awakened.

He was surprised to see he still held the gun. Its warm weight was like a living thing in his hand, black and smoking, temporarily docile but always dangerous.

He fought the urge to toss the gun aside, aware that the police would want to look at it, do tests and take prints and label it as evidence. He couldn’t let the curious onlookers touch it.

He stared down at Kenny Boggs, weaving a little, casting a moving shadow across the silent body. It all seemed so bizarre. Somehow he had never believed it would come to this. He hadn’t ever really believed it would end in death.

Bryce had never shot a man before. Maybe, he thought suddenly, he should have mentioned that to Darryl before he accepted this mission. He hadn’t shot any of the criminals he’d investigated during eight years in the FBI. He hadn’t shot the thug who stole his Lexus from his apartment parking lot, or the creep he’d found in bed with his girlfriend. He hadn’t even shot his father, whom he had hated more than anyone else on earth.

But he’d shot this guy. This total stranger. He didn’t seem to be able to force that to make sense. Kenny was crazy, of course he was, as crazy as a rabid dog, but he had died with Bryce’s bullet in his stomach and Lara Lynmore’s name on his lips. Even now, that just wouldn’t make sense.

“Bryce!” Lara came running out from the wings, stumbling gracefully. Ted must have wrestled her to the ground back there, because her bloodred coat was torn, and her tight white pants had dirty circles on the knees. Her brown hair flew around her shoulders, matted and dusty, but still flattering, as if she’d just come from Makeup, where they’d transformed her into the perfect heroine in distress.

Bryce turned away, suddenly unable to bear the sight of her.

She called his name again, catching on the y subtly, so that the sound hinted at a deep, inarticulate need. He’d heard that sound before. It was exactly how she’d called out to her lost highwayman in her big death scene. Brava, Ms. Lynmore. He half expected the delighted director to appear and yell “Cut!”

When he heard her first soft sobs, he started to walk away, toward the other end of the dais, where he now saw the uniformed cops appearing.

“Bryce, come back.” But he didn’t turn around. Kenny’s bloody body lay between them, and it was a gulf he knew he would never be able to cross. Not today. Not ever.

“Bryce.”

He almost paused. She sounded so alone.

But what a joke that was. Lara Lynmore, budding starlet, was never alone. Already a dozen people were rushing past him, eager to comfort the beautiful woman who was crying so prettily, acting as if her heart would break.

Of course she was. That was what Lara Lynmore did.

She acted.

CHAPTER TWO

LARA RODE THE GLASS ELEVATOR up to her third-floor apartment, clutching her bag of new shoes as if it were the Holy Grail. It was ridiculous to be so proud of something so simple. But this was the first time she’d ventured out of her apartment alone since the shooting, and even if it was just to the Jimmy Choo store, it still felt like a victory.

Her mother had wanted to go with her. She always wanted to—not because she thought Lara still needed protection, but because she enjoyed the adventure. If none of Lara’s fans recognized her right away—which happened very rarely these days—Karla Gilbert would be sure to do something to draw a crowd.

“Look, Lara,” she’d say loudly enough for everyone standing nearby to hear, “it’s just like the scarf you wore in The Highwayman.” It was childish, but Lara had learned not to mind. Her mother’s vicarious pleasure had always been by far the most uncomplicated reward of this strange and exhausting career.

Today, though, Lara just hadn’t been up to all the fuss. Today had been a test, to see if she could shake off the depression and anxiety that had been smothering her for the past eight weeks.

And she had passed the test. She leaned against the cool elevator walls and closed her eyes, squeezing the Jimmy Choo bag to her chest.

Now if only she could pass this next test, too. She thought of the long yellow packet, the letter from Moresville College, that lay at the bottom of her purse, like a bomb waiting to explode, and shivered slightly. This test would be so much harder.

But she couldn’t wait any longer. She’d agonized over this, she’d worried and prayed and dreamed, until she had thought she’d go crazy. But the time for fretting and planning was over. Now that she knew she was strong enough to face the world on her own, it was time for action.

Today was the day.

The first day of the rest of her life. She almost smiled, thinking how perfectly that old cliché fit the moment. A small squeeze of excitement tightened her chest, but it was brief. Almost immediately the anxiety returned.

She caught a watery reflection of herself in the elevator’s glass cage, pale and incomplete, broken by the green ferns of the three-story atrium that slid down as she ascended. Who was this plain young woman? Without makeup, without the elaborate hairstyling, without the expensive wardrobe, she looked just like any other woman. Nothing special. Not even as pretty as the ladies who sold shoes in the Jimmy Choo store, or the stylish professional women who moved through the elegant foyer below.

Certainly not the kind of woman men died for. If only Kenny Boggs had seen her like this, maybe none of the horror would have happened. A vision of his bleeding body superimposed itself onto her reflection, and she closed her eyes, suddenly sick.

How could he be dead? How was it possible that a human being had died merely so that she could live? Who was she? What made her life more valuable than his?

Logically, she understood that there were rational answers. Kenny Boggs had tried to kill her. People had a right to protect themselves. But the emotional truth was more complicated, like a dark, twisted knot inside her heart. The questions remained, ghosts that followed her around, pale and quiet in the daytime, stronger and louder at night.

But she repeated the mantra she’d used every sleepless night for the past eight weeks. Kenny was dead. She couldn’t go back and change the past.

Now all that was left was to change the future, if she was brave enough to do it.

The elevator finally stopped. She walked to her own door, took a deep breath and put her key into the lock. She was ready, her speech prepared, her shoulders squared—so why were her knees suddenly just a little too soft? She wasn’t afraid of her own mother, was she? Surely, after the initial shock wore off, her mother would—

But this was just more worrying. More procrastination.

She turned the key. The rest of her life lay, green and shining, like Oz, just across the long bridge of this one conversation. She couldn’t afford to lose her nerve now.

“Mom? I need to talk to—”

But for a second, as the door to her apartment swung open, she froze. Had she opened the wrong door?

She didn’t recognize anything in this room.

Except her mother. Karla rushed over, cupping Lara’s chin in her hand and kissing her on both cheeks, an affectation she had picked up recently, as if they were from Italy instead of Mobile, Alabama.

“Oh, good, Lara, you’re here! Ignore the mess in the living room. Remember, it’s a work in progress. It’s going to be magnificent! Maxim, she’s here! Show Lara the plans!”

Lara touched her mother’s hand. “Plans?”

Her mother adjusted a strand of platinum-blond hair behind her delicate ear and knitted her freshly waxed eyebrows. “The decorating, darling. Remember? I told you last week.”

Lara shook her head slowly. She didn’t remember anything about decorating. And besides…this was decorating? The living room looked as if it had been ransacked.

Her mother laughed merrily. “Oh, Lara, you never listen to me. I must have talked to you about it ten times, and you said it was fine. You’ve been needing to do something with this place, and now that you’re—”

Maxim came over, wearing an olive-green suit with gold braids at the shoulders. He had redecorated Karla’s apartment last year, while Lara was in England filming The Highwayman. Lara had met him once or twice on visits home, and he’d scared her to death. With his black eyes and black moustache, he looked like some sadistic headmaster at a horror-movie military school.