Wicked Games (Hartley Grace Featherstone Mysteries Book 3) by Gemma Halliday (books for students to read TXT) 📕

I shook my head. "I don't understand. What do you mean, a fool?"

"You know what I mean," she said, shoving the gun at me. "Tyler McGowan."

I blinked at her. "You knew about him?"

She nodded. "I didn't know his name until you talked to me at the memorial. But I knew he existed. The…how did you put it? Colleague who helped Connor."

"The kid who created the game for Connor," I spelled out.

"That phony!" She spat the word out as if it tasted bad. "That posing, lying phony. I can't believe I bought it. That all along I thought he was some genius, some prodigy, and here he was just a hack. A thief!"

"All along…so you knew about what went on at Peak Games too?" I guessed.

She nodded. "Connor told me. At the con. As soon as I arrived I could tell he was upset."

"Because Phoebe had just served him papers," I said, putting it together.

Her eyes cut to mine. "See, I knew you knew too much."

I had known that. I just had pinned the outcome on the wrong woman. "What happened?" I asked.

Sophia drew in a breath, her eyes narrowing as she relived the moment. "I asked him what was wrong."

"What did Connor say?" I asked.

"That Phoebe was suing him for the rights to the game. I told him he could fight it. I mean, clearly she had no proof he'd worked on the game while with her. But that's when he told me the truth. About everything. He said he'd already talked to Pruit, and Pruit said if the lawsuit went forward it would all come out." She shook her head. "Even his sleazy manager knew the truth. But me? He lied to me!"

"That's why you killed him?" I asked, eyes cutting to the entrance door again. Surely Chase must have heard her rising voice by now.

But Sophia scoffed. "Please, as if he's the first guy who ever lied? No. It was what he said next that did him in." The chill in her voice was icy. And menacing. And made me take an involuntary step backward.

"What did he say?" I asked, hearing my voice come out on a shaky whisper again.

"That he was going to come clean."

I hadn't expected that one. "He was?"

She nodded. "He said he'd get ahead of the whole thing by coming out to the press. Telling them that Phoebe had created everything. He was even going to give her credit for Athena's Quest."

"But she didn't create that," I pointed out.

Sophia shrugged. "Yeah, well, Connor wasn't exactly a stickler for the truth now, was he?"

I shook my head.

"But he did know how to spin PR." She sneered. "He said if he gave the strong female woman behind his games the credit she deserved, he could spin the whole thing into some step forward for feminism."

I frowned. I wasn't sure that would have totally worked, however I pictured Connor. He'd seemed young, hip, and charming. Maybe he could have pulled it off.

"I don't get it," I told her. "Why would you kill him over that?"

"Because it would come out that I was a lie!" she yelled, her voice rising again.

"You?"

"Athena!" She gestured to the poster on the wall. "I was his muse! I am the goddess!" she screamed, the gun waving wildly.

I licked my lips, taking one more small step backward until I came up against the wall.

"If everyone knew he was a fraud, what did that make me?" she yelled. "I'd be a laughingstock! A fool! My celebrity brand tainted forever as a fake. I'd be nothing. And Phoebe would suddenly be the star." She paused for a breath. "I couldn't have that happen."

"So you killed Connor." I glanced around the small room that seemed to be growing increasingly smaller and more claustrophobic by the second. "Right here."

She nodded. "He was so proud of his new plan. He didn't even care what it would do to me. You think the film companies were going to want to cast me as Athena if they knew the truth? No. No, it might have salvaged his career, but it would have killed mine. Killed my acting career just as it was getting started."

"And so you killed him," I repeated.

Her icy blue eyes locked on to mine and she nodded, very slowly and deliberately, as if she were playing the scene out in her head. "It was so easy. He turned around to pick up his phone. To call Pruit and tell him the plan. He stood right over there." Her eyes went to the door that led to the storage area where I'd seen the ketchup earlier. "And I grabbed one of his stupid game consoles and I swung." Her lips curled up into an evil smile to rival any Disney villain I'd ever seen. "Swung hard." Her eyes left the spot and pinned me again. "I work out, you know. You have to keep in shape to be a model."

I blinked at her. She was talking about bludgeoning her boyfriend to death in the same breath as her exercise routine.

"Anyway, it was all over so fast." She shrugged. "Then I went to the ladies' room. You know, to wash up." She paused for dramatic effect and scrunched her nose up. "It was a little messy."

I felt ill. She hadn't been in the bathroom when Connor was killed. She'd gone to the restroom to wash the…ketchup off of her hands after killing him. I wondered if anyone else had noticed the ketchup. I guess it all depended on how much ketchup she'd had on her. And honestly? I'd seen fake blood on several costumes at the con that weekend. I couldn't imagine anyone would have looked at her as out of the ordinary. Especially