“Colton didn’t kill him.” I want to say it on repeat until I’m sure it’s true. “He’s being framed.”
“You’re sure about that?” He sinks onto the couch beside me and takes my shoulders in his hands. “Because I’m not anymore. I’m not sure he didn’t kill his father, and I’m not sure he didn’t almost kill you.”
“How could you?”
“I did what I had to do to protect you.” Levi reaches for me as I stand, but I scramble away from his touch. “Call me when you’re done at the station. I don’t want you to be alone.”
I cock my head. “But they’ll have Colton in custody any minute now, so if he was the one out to get me, I should be fine without your protection. Right?”
Levi squeezes his eyes shut for a beat before he looks at me. “Don’t make me out to be the bad guy here.”
“But you are. You were his best friend, and you turned him in.” I wrap my arms around myself. “You didn’t give a shit about him when I asked for your help, and you don’t give a shit about him now.”
He looks stricken. “Please, Ellie.”
“Don’t. I have to go.”
He holds up his hands. He looks tormented and heartbroken, but right now I can’t make myself care about that. “I love you. I’d do anything to protect you.”
I don’t want to hear any more, so I grab my purse and walk out to Detective Huxley’s car.
Ellie
Thursday, September 6th
The house is dark and empty, and the echo of my heels on the hardwood floors sounds like it belongs on the soundtrack to a scary movie.
My client moved out last week and asked that I walk through a couple of times a week—either while showing it or on my own. Since the commission on the listing could potentially match a third of last year’s income, the request seemed well worth it.
When I come out of the master and into the living room, there’s a lamp on. Nelson McKinley is standing by the fireplace. Hate pumps through my blood at the sight of him. I’ve always known Nelson is a bad man—nothing like the upstanding citizen everyone in this town believes him to be—but now that I know what he did to Molly, the sight of him disgusts me.
I stop two steps into the room, not wanting to be any closer to him than I have to be. “You should call your wife and let her know you’re okay. Everyone’s looking for you.”
He tilts his head to the side and studies me. “Didn’t my son tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
He grins. “That I don’t exist anymore. My boy is blackmailing me. In exchange for him not destroying my life, all I have to do is disappear. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”
Shit. I’d have thought Colton was smarter than that. Blackmailing Nelson McKinley can’t end well. “Why are you here?”
“I’m simply trying to oblige my son,” he says, lifting his hands. “Colton just doesn’t realize that I don’t like being told what to do. You see, I took off for a few days to think, and I’ve decided I’m going to give my son what he wants.”
I stare at him. I know this is the part where he wants me to ask questions, to contribute my piece to the conversation, but I’m not interested in playing his games.
“I’m going to disappear. I’m going to die, actually.” He laughs. “He would love that.”
I wrap my arms around myself. “Good. What are you waiting for?”
His glare feels like a sheet of ice coming at me. “It would be so easy for me to make it look like my son killed me.” He drops his gaze to my stomach. “I wonder what it’ll be like to raise the child of a murderer. Do you think the people in this town will treat your baby like any other when they know its father brutally murdered his own dad?”
“No one will believe that.”
He throws his head back and laughs. “Won’t they? From a man with Colton’s history? Seems pretty believable to me.”
“How do you know about my pregnancy?”
He smiles. “I have eyes in this city. I feel like you’re smart enough to understand that, even if my son’s not. I have so many people looking out for me. People who owe me favors.”
“And so many people who know you enough to stab you in the back at the first opportunity.” I’m bluffing. I have no idea if anyone but Colton has the courage to stand up to Nelson, but if I can put even a wrinkle in his confidence, it’ll be worth it.
“Given your condition, I imagine you’d like Colton to be around for your baby, whereas I’d find it rather satisfying to frame him for my death. He has everything he needs to blackmail me, and I have everything I need to frame him.” His grin is so disgustingly genuine that I want to puke. He’s enjoying this game. “Or maybe if they took Colton away, you’d just fall back on Levi. But I know things about Levi, too. Things you wouldn’t believe. How good he is with cars. How fast he can make something disappear just because I asked him to. And Levi . . . Levi was never after the money. He just wanted the thrill. I should’ve known better than to let those boys try the straight and narrow life. It was my mistake. I assumed they’d come back.”
I take a step toward the couch. There’s a lamp there with a long neck and a heavy base. If he comes at me, I can grab it. “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”
His laugh is so loud and booming that I’m sure everyone in the neighborhood must hear it. “I want what everyone wants, Ellie. I want what your white-trash self wanted when you were working for Tate Andrews. I want money.” He shrugs. “My son’s tied my hands, and now I have no choice but to get what I need from you.”
His eyes skim down my body, and my stomach lurches. “Don’t come near me.”
“I don’t want sex.”
“You want money?” In a different situation, that might make me laugh. Nelson has more money than I’ve ever had in my life. “I don’t have any. Like you said, white trash, remember?”
“You have resources.” He steadies his gaze on my hands. “You have skills.”
I shiver hard and feel myself tremble. “I don’t do that anymore.”
“You don’t have to do anything. I want what you’ve already done. I want the Bauer paintings or the money I could make by selling them.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. They were stolen.”
He arches a brow. “Don’t you? Honestly, Ellie, it doesn’t seem like much to ask in exchange for Colton’s future.”
“How much?”
“The paintings? All of them.”
“How much cash?”
“One million in cash, and I’ll leave you and my son to raise my bastard grandchild without my interference. Otherwise, you might find your baby daddy being taken away for murdering his father.”
Levi
Ellie is the last person I expect to see at my house, but when I walk in the door from the gym, there she is, sitting on my porch, wringing her hands as she waits for me.
“Ellie? Is everything okay?”
“I need help.”
I step toward her. “What happened?”
She doesn’t meet my eyes. “Colton’s in trouble.”
I freeze at the sound of his name. “I see. You wouldn’t be here to see me if it weren’t about him. I’m only allowed in your life when you need something from me.”
“I know this isn’t fair.”
Not fair? I’ve felt like someone was slowly sawing me in half since the moment I saw that ring on her finger, and now she’s here because she wants my help. Fair is nowhere in sight. “Colton is always in trouble, Ellie. Don’t you see that yet?” I shrug. “And I’m out. He’s a big boy who makes his own choices.”
She jumps off the porch chair and rushes over to me, grabbing my hand and squeezing it. “This is different. He’s going to clean up. We just need to help him one more time. You know how dangerous his father is. I can’t do this on my own.”
I yank my hand from her grasp. “Fuck that. If you want to spend your life with a man who’s going to constantly need bailing out, that’s on you. But when you’re struggling to pick yourself up again next time or the time after that, just remember that you had a choice and you chose him.”
She steps back and lifts her chin. When she looks into my eyes, the dull blade in my chest twists. “Forget I said anything,” she whispers. “I shouldn’t have come.”
Then she walks to her car, and it takes everything in me not to chase after her.