This is Why We Lied (Will Trent, #12)

by Karin Slaughter

The killer hadn’t just stabbed Mercy in the chest. He’d attacked her from behind, driving the knife into her back with such force that the handle had snapped off. The blade was still embedded inside Mercy’s chest. Will had impaled his hand on the broken knife.

He’d just turned thirty-five years old and he looked closer to eighty.

As usual, Bitty didn’t smile until she saw Dave, then her face lit up like Elvis had carried Jesus Christ through the door.

Testified in front of a judge that she deserved prison time. Told another judge she was mentally ill. Told a third judge she was unfit to be a mother. She saw him now with a sudden, startling clarity. Papa wasn’t angry about what he had lost in the bike accident. He was angry about what Mercy had gained.

Their fear gave Mercy a sense of power she had never felt in her life. She could see them considering the threats, weighing the odds.

His need was the bottomless hole in the quicksand.

“Is that what Bitty told you?” “It’s what I’ve fucking seen!” Spit flew out of his mouth. “Look at how pathetic you are. You’re not trying to protect me. You’re running to that cop because you can’t accept that I found somebody who makes me happy. Who cares about me. Who loves only me.” He sounded so much like Dave that it nearly took her breath away.

That bottomless pit, that never-ending quicksand. Her own child had been running alongside her all this time and Mercy hadn’t bothered to notice.

“She’s a predator,” Mercy said. “This is what she does to boys. She gets in their heads and she fucks them up so bad—” “Shut up.” “She’s a monster,” Mercy said. “Why do you think your daddy’s so fucked up? It wasn’t just what happened to him in Atlanta.” “Shut up.”

What she’s doing to you is the exact same thing that she did to Dave.” He was on her before she knew what was happening. His hands snaked out, wrapping around her neck. “Shut your fucking mouth.” Mercy gasped for air. She grabbed his wrists, tried to pull away his hands. He was too strong. She dug her fingernails into Jon’s chest, tried to kick out with her feet. She felt her eyelids start to flutter. He was so much stronger than Dave. He was squeezing too hard.

He was going to burn the evidence. He was going to burn Mercy.

Her soul was leaving her body. There was none of the expected calmness, the sense of letting go. There was only a cold darkness that worked its way from the edges, the way the lake froze in the winter.

Mercy knew that she was close to death, that there was nothing that was going to stop it. She didn’t see her life flash before her eyes. She saw Jon’s life.

She had to suck in a breath before she could push out the words, telling Will, “F-forgive him.” He nodded his head. “Okay—”

She looked at the beautiful, perfect moon. She felt the waves pulling at her body. Washing away her sins. Washing away her life. The calmness finally came, and with it, a powerful sense of peace. For the first time in her life, Mercy felt safe.

On the video, Jon said, “I blacked out. I don’t remember what happened next. I just knew she would go back to him. She always went back to him. She always left me.”

“Who did she leave you with?” Jon shook his head. He still would not implicate his grandmother, even though she was dead. Bitty had swallowed a bottle of morphine before they could arrest her.

“Dave McAlpine is not going to suddenly become a better man. He will never be the father that Jon needs. There is not a piece of logic, or a sage bit of advice, or a life lesson, or any amount of love, that will turn him around. He lives the way he does because he chooses to. He knows exactly who he is. He embraces it. He won’t change because he doesn’t want to change.”