“Your mother . . . I tried to let her go. I didn’t think she’d tell anyone about me, and who would believe her? I mean, she was so strung out.”

Play with me, Mommy. Play!

But . . . she hadn’t. He fucking remembered that—now.

“I set that house on fire. Put your father’s body inside. She ran back in. Just ran in there . . . hell, I didn’t know why she was doing that. I left her.”

Sarah grabbed the table. “You left her to burn?”

Again, he shrugged. “She’s the one who went into the fire. Didn’t realize . . . not until I heard the screams . . . that the kid was in there, too.”

Jax’s skin felt ice cold.

“In the closet . . . that’s where they’d put you.”

“Stop talking, Dad!” Sarah yelled at him. “Just stop!”

Silence.

Jax stepped forward. Murphy tilted back his head as he gazed up at Jax.

“You really think  . . .” Jax rasped, “I’ll believe your lies?”

“I think you need to get away from Sarah. I think Sarah now knows exactly what you are  . . .”

“Sarah has always known what I am.” And she didn’t care.

Murphy gave a sad shake of his head. “Did he seek you out, Sarah? Start showing an interest after he learned just who you are?”

“Jax hasn’t—” she began, her voice furious.

“If the man after you has been using fire in his attacks, then you should certainly be looking at the fellow right beside you. Though perhaps he should be more grateful to me. I mean, I am the one who got him out of the fire. His mother didn’t make it, but I got him and—”

“No!” Jax roared, and he shoved Sarah out of the way as he leapt across that table. Because suddenly, he could feel flames against his skin. He could hear himself crying out.

Mommy! Mommy! And he could see smoke, coming beneath the closet door.

He tackled Murphy. They hit the ground and he put his hands around the bastard’s throat. He squeezed, his fingers tightening and cutting off Murphy’s air supply, and Murphy was just smiling, smiling—

“Stop!” Sarah’s scream. She was yanking on Jax. So were the guards. It took three guards to pull Jax off Murphy.

Then Murphy growled out, “She sees you now . . .”

Jax’s breath heaved out. His head whipped up and he saw Sarah—staring at him with horror in her eyes.

“Come on, buddy,” one of the guards said as he pulled Jax to the door. “Don’t let him fuck with you any longer.”

Jax glared at Murphy. “Bastard, I will be seeing you again.”

“Stay away from Sarah,” Murphy fired back. Two guards were pulling him toward the other exit. “She’s not for you!”

A red-haired guard had Jax in the hall. “Calm down, man,” he said. “Hell, we probably should have let you kill him. Would have saved us all some pain . . .”

He killed my parents. That bastard just confessed—

“He’s a sick sonofabitch,” the guard muttered.

Jax stared down at his hands.

And he wanted to kill.

“STOP,” SARAH WHISPERED.

The guards didn’t hear her.

“Stop!” she yelled.

Her father looked back at her. The guards stilled, but they didn’t loosen their grip on him.

“You . . . you never killed two people at once.”

He shrugged. “Didn’t mean to kill the mother. Charlene shouldn’t have run back to the fire.”

Charlene.

“You’re a liar, Dad.”

“No, sweetheart. He is. That man out there . . . he’s as dark and twisted on the inside as I am. You need to stay away from him.”

“How’d you know his last name was Fontaine?”

“Figured . . . had to be . . . I got the kid out and I left him with Mitch Fontaine. The guy was a mechanic—worked with the boy’s father—I figured leaving the kid with him would be better than nothing.”

“He hurt him, Dad. That man abused Jax.”

His eyes hardened.

Sarah swallowed to ease the lump in her throat. “And I don’t think Charlene died that night.” Jax had told her that a woman named Charlene raised him. That she’d even been there to help him get rid of the body years later.

Jax’s mother had never gone looking for him because she’d been there with him, the whole time.

“Why would you lie and tell him that?” Sarah asked.

The guards were staring at Murphy and Sarah with a kind of sick curiosity. She got that. She felt rather sick herself.

“I watched,” Murphy said simply. “I watched her. The woman she’d been died that night. She became someone new. I killed what she’d been.”

Sarah was trying to make sense of this madness. Trying to look through her father’s lies and riddles and understand the truth. “She ran away with Jax because she was scared of you. You didn’t give Jax to that man—Mitch. She took Jax and went to him, didn’t she?”

His eyes crinkled at the corners, as if he were fighting a smile. Was he proud because she’d caught his lie? His twist on the truth? “I guess she thought the mechanic would keep her safe from me,” he murmured.

“But you were never going after her.”

“Maybe, maybe not . . .”

She walked closer to him. The guards stiffened.

“Why?” Sarah asked him, hurt and desperate. “Why did you tell Jax all of this?” He’d destroyed Jax in that room, and she’d been helpless to stop Jax’s pain.

“A man with blond hair . . . a man with blue eyes . . . a man who wants vengeance . . . sweetheart, didn’t you see he was right in front of you? And he used fire . . . fire.” He shook his head. “I was pushing him because you needed to see past the mask he was showing you. He’s the one messing with your head. He’s the one trying to kill you.”

“No, he was there with me when Molly Guthrie vanished. He was—”

“He knew I didn’t kill his mother. He knew it. Think about it. He lived with her his whole life. She told him about me. And he found out about you. Now he’s trying to get his payback. He wants to hurt you, he wants to wreck you because of what I did.” His shackled hands lifted, as if he’d touch her. “But you’re my one good thing. Even I . . . I couldn’t destroy you. I couldn’t make you . . . like me.”

He was still lying about Jax. He had to be lying.

“Run from him. Get away fast. Because that man out there, he will shatter you. And when you’re gone, he knows that I’ll be . . .” His words trailed away. “There will be nothing for me then.”

His hands were between then. Once, she’d always linked her fingers with his. He’d tucked her in. He’d hugged her when she was scared.

“Nobody hurts my baby girl,” he said, his expression hard. “I knew when I saw him . . . he’s the one . . . I have to protect you from him.”

Sarah backed away from him.

His hands fell.

And Sarah became very, very cold.

“I need a name,” Sarah told him. “If you really killed Jax’s biological father, then tell me his name.” So she could check out this story. Find out if it was bullshit or the truth.

Her father’s head cocked to the right as he studied her. “Carl Winston.”

The guards led him away. The clang of that door shutting behind her father seemed incredibly loud. Sarah reached down for her phone, but then she remembered it was gone. She’d had to turn in her phone and keys and everything else she carried when she entered the prison. She couldn’t call Gabe or Victoria right then, but, God, she needed them.

Because for the first time in years, Sarah was lost.

Chapter 15

HE WAS WAITING FOR SARAH OUTSIDE THE prison. Jax had been pacing, anger pumping through his blood, but when he saw Sarah, he stopped.

She hesitated, just for an instant, then she came toward him. Her steps were slow, almost hesitant.

“Did you know?” Jax demanded. Everywhere he looked, Jax could have sworn that he saw red. He couldn’t breathe because the rage was choking him. For so long, he’d thought he hadn’t been wanted, but now . . .