I squeezed my eyes shut and waited to drift out of this nightmare.

“Liv?” Ricky’s voice at my ear. “Can I explain? I know there’s no excuse, but just hear me out. Then you can go. I won’t stop you.”

I was still holding his hands, which were trembling now. When I looked, he was right there, his hazel eyes bright with panic, and I knew this wasn’t a dream.

I ran my fingertips over his knuckles and felt the scabs there. Scabs from the scrapes I’d seen Wednesday morning. After James died. They were still there, his knuckles rough.

James had been beaten. I hadn’t more than briefly noted that, because what mattered were those bruises around his neck and the symbols carved into . . .

My head jerked up. “He’d been strangled—like the other victims. And he had the marks. The ones my parents—”

“No,” he said emphatically. “Absolutely not. I didn’t do any of that.”

“But the beating,” I said. “That was you?”

He nodded and shifted his weight. “After the blowout with my dad, I went to Gabriel’s place to see you, and James was there. I just . . . I’d had enough. He was still stalking you, and I decided I was going to show him why that was a very bad idea.”

“So you called him out?”

A short, humorless laugh. “You don’t call out guys like James Morgan. They’ll walk away and phone the cops. He drove off. I followed. I decided I’d wait until he got someplace quiet, cut him off, and confront him. Except I didn’t need to. He drove to an empty building and went inside. The place was up for demolition and reconstruction. Something to do with tech, so I figured it was his project.”

“You followed him inside.”

“Followed him. Confronted him. Told him that if I caught him within five hundred feet of you, his hospital stay would be a lot longer than it had been when he mixed it up with Gabriel. He came at me. I knocked him around a little. That’s all I planned. But he . . .”

Ricky exhaled, hissing through his teeth, shifting his weight again. “I’m not used to guys who don’t fight back, Liv. I know that’s no excuse. And, yeah, he started it, but he had no idea what he was doing. What he did do, though, was talk. About you. Insulting you. Saying he was getting you back no matter what. Saying . . .” He shook his head. “I won’t repeat what he said, because words are no excuse for what I did. I’ll just say that he threatened you. And I saw red, like I did with that other guy. Except there wasn’t anyone to pull me off this time. I kept hitting him until he was out cold on the floor.”

He stepped back, lifting our hands so I could pull away without resistance. He looked down at his bruised and scabbed knuckles. “I hit him until he shut up.”

“And then?”

“I left him there, in that empty building, on the floor.”

“Did you strangle him?”

He shook his head. “But I don’t think he woke up after I knocked him out. He’d obviously been summoned there by his killer, who came in after me . . . and finished it. He never had the chance to fight. Which means even if I didn’t stop his heart from beating, I still killed him.”

I could argue, but Ricky didn’t want excuses. He had done something that led to James’s death, and he took responsibility.

I wanted to reach out for him. Hug him. Tell him I didn’t care. That no matter how horrible I felt over James’s death, whatever role Ricky played in it, I understood his intention had been only to stop whatever mad and hell-bent course James had been on.

But he wasn’t looking for absolution. He just wanted me to know what had happened.

“You’ve talked to Gabriel about this, haven’t you?” I said. “If you know the legal cause of death . . .”

He nodded. “I told Gabriel that night. I realized I’d fucked up, and I figured James would call the cops. So I drove back to the condo, and I was a block away when I saw Gabriel.”

“Saw him?”

Ricky nodded. “I think that’s one of the reasons he’s been charged. The condo security tapes must have caught him leaving the building.”

I remembered Pamela asking if I knew for certain Gabriel had been inside all night. Whoever had accused him knew he hadn’t been.

“He’d gone out for a walk,” Ricky continued. “I didn’t ask why. I was just relieved to see him. We walked and talked. I left over an hour later. Which puts it past the time of death, meaning I’m Gabriel’s alibi. I can testify, beyond a doubt, that he couldn’t have killed James. That’s what I’ll do, if these charges aren’t dropped. I can prove he’s innocent.”

“By admitting you’re the one who beat James.”

“What’s the alternative, Liv? Let him go to jail?”

I felt as if someone had nailed me in the gut. If it was anyone else, I would not want Ricky turning himself in. But this wasn’t anyone else. This was Gabriel.

My stomach heaved.

“It’s okay,” he said, pulling me into a hug. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

I pushed him away. “You absolutely should have mentioned it.”

“I mean planning to confess. I know I had to tell you what I did to James, as much as Gabriel didn’t want me to.”

“And I mean planning to turn yourself in. You need to talk to Gabriel first. We need to see how serious this is, how big the risk is, before you do anything.”