“This is your house on Baker, Eden. This is where you lived. If you look closely, you can even see the house number. 415. So why don’t you tell me how it happened? Was Rudy in the house with you when Katie came to deliver the pizza? Did she see both of you together? She would have recognized you. You were practically a household name at that point. You were on all the talk shows. Katie had read your book. She would have gone on and on about how excited she was to meet you. Did she ask what you were working on? Did she want to be introduced to Rudy Cutter? You must have been panicking. You couldn’t let her leave, could you? She would have told everybody about seeing you.”
Eden summoned up a fake smile. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to weep and confess?”
“You can do whatever you want. I already know the truth. I only want to know one thing. Who actually killed Katie? Who actually used the knife? Was it Rudy? Or was it you?”
Eden took a deep breath. He could see her weighing her options. Trying to figure out how to get out of the maze.
“Here’s what I want to know, Frost,” she said. “Do you think I’m stupid? I know a bluff when I hear it. A pizza receipt? A coincidence about a delivery address? Good luck with that. You don’t have any proof.”
“Actually, you already proved it yourself, Eden.”
“And just how did I do that?”
“In your new book.”
He saw her hesitate. “What do you mean?”
“I know what kind of writer you are. And I know the kind of odd little detail you can’t resist.”
“Like what?”
“Like a girl in San Francisco wearing flowers in her hair,” Frost said.
Eden couldn’t hide the concern on her face. She realized that she’d made a mistake. She just didn’t know why.
“I read the chapter you wrote about Katie to see if you mentioned the flower tiara she was wearing when she was killed,” Frost went on. “And sure enough, you did.”
“What difference does that make?” Eden asked. “I saw the crime scene photos.”
“You should have looked more closely at them. The tiara isn’t in the photos. I took Katie’s tiara with me when I found the body. I’ve had it ever since. That’s my secret. Nobody knew Katie was wearing it. Nobody except me and the two people who killed her. Rudy Cutter and you.”
Eden laughed.
It was a cruel, bitter laugh. A laugh of self-disgust. A laugh of giving up. He should have been ready for what she did next, but his emotions had overrun him. He was too consumed with his own rage and grief to stop her. She was fast, and he wasn’t fast enough. Her hand grabbed a plastic jar of chili spice on the counter, which she’d been planning to use in the eggs, and she threw the contents at him. He didn’t even have time to blink. The powder struck his open eyes like a thousand knives. He was instantly blind and in agony, and his hands flew to his face. All he felt was a searing burn as he squinted and tried to see. He staggered backward, and Eden grabbed the frying pan from the stovetop and swung it toward his head. It connected violently, causing a hot explosion that ricocheted inside his skull. She stepped forward and shoved hard on his chest with both hands, and he tumbled backward onto the floor.
He tried to get up, but his brain was a carnival ride, dizzying him, making him sick. Through his scorched eyes, Eden was a blur. She stood over him, but he couldn’t stop her body from whirling in and out of focus. She knelt on top of him, pressing her knees heavily into his chest. He swung a fist at her, but he missed. Eden bent forward. She had a kitchen knife in her hand now, and she lay the edge against his neck. She pressed it in so far that he could feel his skin tearing and the liquid warmth of blood.
“Since you’re so curious, Frost,” she told him, “it was me.”
He struggled to right his mind and clear his eyes. All he needed was a few seconds.
“Rudy said I’d never understand what it was like to kill someone until I used the knife myself, and he was right. If I was going to write about it, I couldn’t just watch. I had to do it. And you know what? It was exhilarating. Life and death was right there in the palm of my hand. The feeling was so strong it scared me. That’s why I ran back to Australia. I had to get away from what I’d done.”
Frost kept blinking, and the fire in his eyes eased as tears worked their way down his face. The spinning world began to drift to a stop. He could feel pain popping like fireworks inside his head, but he could see Eden clearly now, leaning over him. Her curls draped forward. The scar on her neck wriggled as she talked. She had one hand propped on the floor and one holding the blade to his throat.
“It’s a shame I can’t write about this part,” Eden went on. “Because this is a hell of an ending.”
He saw the muscles in her hand squeezing tightly around the handle of the knife. Their eyes met, lover to lover, killer to victim. This woman was about to cut his throat and watch him die.
And then something happened.
Frost heard a noise unlike anything he’d heard in his life. An animal noise, primal and savage, enough to run gooseflesh up a human’s skin, the noise you would hear from a leopard preying in the nighttime jungle. Eden heard it, too, and she froze in confusion. Frost heard thunder on the floor. He saw a lightning flash of motion in black and white.
It was Shack.
The cat flew across the room. He leaped, landing squarely on Eden’s head, his front paws on her cheekbones. With claws fully extended almost an inch deep, he ripped eight deep gashes up her face and sliced through her eyeballs. Eden reared back with a guttural wail of anguish. Blood sprayed. The knife vanished from Frost’s neck as her arms flailed. With a wild lunge of her torso, Eden dislodged Shack like a rodeo rider, but simultaneously, Frost slammed a fist into her head and knocked her sideways. He was free.
He tried to stand, but the room spun, and his knees buckled beneath him. He crashed down again. Eden slashed at him with the knife, and the blade cut a deep, red laceration across the bare skin of his calf. His foot shot out; his heel booted her chin and kicked her backward. She toppled against a pedestal lamp, which fell, and the knife spilled from her hand.
Frost half crawled, half dragged himself across the room. The dining room table was a few feet away. His gun was on the table.
Behind him, Eden was on her feet again.
She had the knife.
He groped around the smooth wooden surface of the table. Papers flew. His laptop skidded off and dropped. Then he felt it. The metal barrel. His fingers spun the gun around until the grip nestled in his palm. He scooped it up and cocked it; then he collapsed onto his back and pointed the gun across the room.
“Stop!”
Eden charged with the knife high over her head. Her face was streaked with ribbons of skin; her eyes dripped blood like the ruby eyes of a devil. Frost aimed straight up at the ceiling and fired once, cascading plaster dust over the room.
“Eden, stop!” he shouted again.
But she came and came.
He heard the voice of Rudy Cutter.
If I gave you the chance right now, would you put a bullet in the head of the person who cut your sister’s throat?
Eden jumped. Her arm swung down; the knife hurtled toward his chest. He rolled away from the blade, but as he did, he fired twice more at point-blank range at the body cascading toward him.
One shot passed through her neck. The other shot drilled into her forehead.
She was dead as she hit the ground.
49
It was two weeks before Frost had any semblance of his life back. He was in the hospital. He was on television. He was in the interview room at headquarters, grilled by the review board that dealt with officer-involved shootings. By the end, he didn’t even know if he wanted his old life back, but finally, Captain Hayden gave him the all clear and told him he was a free man.