Erin pinned him with a dark glare. “It’s not my fault. Roy said he’d had a vasectomy.”
“He told every woman that,” Vera argued. “He just preferred riding bareback. You were supposed to be on birth control.”
“It makes me bloat before my period! I can’t be naked on camera if I’m bloated.”
“Well, now you’re going to be bloated for another six months,” Vera said with satisfaction. “Congratulations.”
I was starting to feel dizzy from the rapid-fire conversation. I needed to redirect the participants. “Why did you kill Roy?”
“Because he lied,” Erin shot back. “He knocked me up after he said it wasn’t possible. When I told him, he said that I couldn’t be in the movies any longer because no one wants to see a fat girl in porn.”
“He really was a pig,” I groused.
“Totally,” Vera agreed.
“I suggested we try pregnancy porn, but he said he couldn’t agree to that because he needed to feel inspired before a shoot and the very idea grossed him out,” Erin explained. “I was trying to talk to him outside the restaurant when he told me that the money was going to stop coming in because he had his eye on someone new. I think it was one of your cousins. He said that I would have to raise the baby with Bobby because he had no money to give me.
“I couldn’t live with that.” Her voice had gone shrill. “He dragged me into this whole mess. Bobby might be an idiot, but he knows we didn’t have sex in the last three months. He’d never believe this baby is his. I needed that freaking money to convince Bobby to stay.”
Things finally slipped into place. “You tried to blackmail Roy in the parking lot, but he had nothing to offer. So you stabbed him.”
Erin didn’t look sorry in the least. “I stabbed him and then I had to drag him out of the truck. He was still alive when I started hauling him out, but he didn’t last long.
“I saw you upstairs that morning,” she continued. “You were at the window. I was certain you saw me.”
“I didn’t.”
“I had to be sure. You were acting strange when you started asking questions at the real estate office the next day. I was certain you were playing a game.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Erin did absolutely everything wrong that day,” Barry explained. “She should’ve left Roy’s truck and taken off on foot, but she didn’t think that far ahead. She panicked and drove to the real estate office, where Vera and I met her. By that time, the police had already been alerted. We couldn’t very well drive the truck back.”
“No,” I agreed. “It was too late.”
“I watched you,” Barry explained. “I was out there every night watching you. I saw you and your cousin snooping around the storage shed one night.”
We were hiding a Ouija board because we’d freaked each other out while drunk. “And last night? Which one of you tried to get into my apartment last night?”
“That was me again,” Barry said. “I was going to make it quick. Really, if you had just minded your own business. I thought that if we took you out of the equation Hunter would turn his attention to that investigation and forget about Roy. There would be no reason for him to look at me because I have no ties to you.”
“Hunter isn’t an idiot,” I pointed out. “Two murders in essentially the same spot would have to be tied together.”
“Not necessarily.”
Oh, geez. They were all idiots. All three of them. “And what happens now?” I demanded. “Are you going to split Roy’s life insurance three ways and live forever?”
“We’re going to do what we have to do,” Vera replied, matter-of-fact. “We may not like each other sometimes — most of the time when it comes to Erin — but we’re tied together in blood now. Unfortunately, some of that blood will be yours.”
My heart began slamming against my rib cage. “If you kill us, Hunter will never stop chasing you.”
“He won’t know it was us,” Barry replied. “We’ll set it up to look like a murder-suicide. Most people will believe that Sebastian has been pining for you since high school and once word got out that you might get back together with Hunter he snapped. It’s fairly straightforward.”
“I really am sorry,” Vera said. “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I have nothing against either of you. It’s just ... I can’t go to prison. This is the only way to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
“You could’ve stopped short of covering up a murder,” Sebastian shot back. “That’s one way to avoid prison.”
“It’s far too late for that.” She turned to Barry. “Shoot them.”
He scowled. “Why do I have to shoot them? Why can’t you shoot them?”
“I don’t think you guys have thought this through,” Erin said to nobody in particular, her eyes on us. “I mean ... I’m pretty sure this guy is gay.”
“Who says I’m gay?” Sebastian practically exploded.
“This is not the time,” I hissed, pinning him with a look. “It doesn’t matter what they think. What matters is that we get out of this.”
“Fine, but I’m not gay.” He smoothed the front of his shirt and huffed.
“Later,” I gritted out, my eyes going to the door behind Erin. That seemed our best bet. “We need to make a break for it. We’ll get only one chance.”
He nodded. “Let’s go.”
Vera and Barry were still arguing, so I figured we were okay to move. We’d barely made it two steps before Erin started flapping her arms.
“They’re running! Shoot them!”
I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw Barry reaching into his pocket, Erin’s words serving as a verbal cattle prod.
Things started happening in slow motion after that. I shoved Sebastian as hard as I could even as the strange bubbling sensation I’d felt the night I burned Monica’s eyebrows off started again. It was as if I could no longer hear in real time. Voices were drawn out, and unnaturally deep.
I willed myself to keep it together, but it was too late to stop what was about to happen. Instinctively, I recognized that. Still, I wanted to protect Sebastian. “Get. Down.” Even my voice sounded alien.
Sebastian didn’t argue with the order. Perhaps he sensed something big was about to happen, too. He’d barely dropped to the floor when a light formed out of nowhere. It reminded me of what had happened the previous night as I waited for Hunter to arrive. This time, the explosion that accompanied the wave of sunny light was deafening.
If you asked me where the origin point was, I wouldn’t be able to say. All I know is that we were surrounded by a cloud of light. When the explosion came, it shook the funeral home.
Erin screamed.
Barry yelled.
Vera ran for the door.
Before any of them could take more than two steps, the barrage of magic ripped free and slammed into them, rocking them backward. The blow knocked me back, and my head just missed an end table as I smacked against the floor.
The noise ceased.
Erin’s scream was cut off.
Barry’s bellow of warning ceased after the second word.
Vera never made it to the door.
As the world started spinning at normal speed again, I took stock from my position on the floor. I saw three bodies on the floor, none of them moving. They were either dead or unconscious. I wasn’t sure which was better.
Sebastian stirred. Still breathless, he rolled over to look directly into my eyes. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, disbelief over what had just happened causing my heart to continue galloping, even as my ears began to clear. “Yeah. Are you?”
“Yeah.”
I looked back toward the bodies, uncertainty tapping out a new rhythm via my heart. “What do we do?”
“We call Hunter,” he replied. “And then, girlfriend, when it’s just you and me, we’re going to have a really long talk.”
I swallowed hard. I wasn’t looking forward to the conversation.
29
Twenty-Nine
“What happened?”
Hunter’s face was red with worry when he charged through the door several minutes later. He zeroed in on me immediately.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Sebastian offered drolly. “Not that you care or anything.”
Hunter didn’t bother giving him side eye, instead brushing my hair out of my face as he knelt in front of me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I reassured him, although I was feeling anything but fine. “You should check on them.” I indicated the three bodies on the floor.
He stared at me for another second and then nodded, moving toward Barry first. He kicked the gun that was near his hand to the far side of the room and then pressed his fingers to the man’s neck. I was almost afraid of what he would find. “His pulse seems strong.”
I let out a shaky breath and darted a glance toward Sebastian. He looked more curious than worried.
“What happened?” Hunter asked, moving to check on Vera.
I hadn’t given much thought to what I was going to say. How was I going to explain a magical explosion that knocked out three people while leaving Sebastian and me unscathed? “Um ... .”
Sebastian grabbed my arm and gave me an almost imperceptible shake of his head before answering. “I don’t know what it was. There was a loud ... bang. It was almost like an explosion. I have no idea where it came from.”
“An explosion?” Hunter jerked up his chin and looked around the room. “Some of the furniture looks as if it’s been moved. Do you think it could’ve been an earthquake?”
“Maybe.” Sebastian held out his hands and shrugged. “I was so frightened that I didn’t pay much attention. I thought they somehow managed it until ... well ... now. I’m really jittery, man. This is the freakiest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“You look okay,” Hunter offered, his eyes traveling back to me. “But you look as if you’re about to throw up.”
He wasn’t far off with his observation. “I feel a little shaky,” I admitted.
“Neither of us has ever been threatened by crazy people before,” Sebastian supplied. “I think she needs a hug to feel better.” He immediately moved closer to me and slid his arm around my back. “They were going to kill us.”
“That’s what you said on the phone,” Hunter acknowledged. “You didn’t say why, though.”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
“I appear to have time.” Hunter moved to Erin and checked her pulse. “They’re all alive. I see no wounds. I’ll call for the paramedics.”
“You might want to check Erin for a gun,” I said as he yanked out his phone. “She was acting like she had one.”
His eyebrows knitting, Hunter felt around the young woman’s clothing, grimacing when he came back with a small handgun. “You two wait right there. I’m calling this in, cuffing Barry, and then I’ll be right over.”
“Take your time,” I offered lamely.
Sebastian shot me a look. “You need to start acting like a normal person,” he whispered, keeping as close to me as humanly possible as he navigated me toward one of the settees. “If you don’t get it together, he’ll figure out something is going on.”
That was the most ludicrous thing I’d heard all day ... and given what we’d gone through, that was saying something. “You don’t think he’ll figure it out anyway? There’s no way to explain this.”
“Then we don’t explain it.” Sebastian’s voice was low but firm. “He doesn’t need to know it was you ... at least not right now.”
“But ... .”
“No.” His eyes were deadly serious. “You need to keep it quiet, at least until we can break things down. When we get a chance — and it probably won’t happen today — you and I will have a long talk. I wasn’t kidding about that. For now, keep your trap shut. I know that’s basically unheard of in your family, but you need to start learning about discretion.”
I shut my mouth and nodded. What he said made sense. Still, it was Hunter. I couldn’t keep this secret from him forever. But as I glanced back at the bodies strewn about the room, I realized Sebastian was right. For now, claiming we didn’t know what had happened was the only reasonable solution to our predicament.
“Okay.” Hunter slapped the cuffs on Barry and moved in our direction. “The paramedics are on their way. Tell me what happened.”
Sebastian launched into the tale, leaving nothing out but my magical intervention, and when he was finished Hunter looked stunned.
“I can’t believe it.” He scrubbed his cheek and shook his head. “I knew something weird was going on in Roy’s garage, but ... porn.” The horrified expression on his face would’ve made me laugh under different circumstances. “I can’t believe this.”
“Well, believe it.” Sebastian had recovered most of his bravado and was relishing being the center of attention. “Erin is supposedly pregnant by Roy because he lied about having a vasectomy. You might want to inform the paramedics about that little detail.”
“I will.” Hunter seemed baffled by the information we’d laid out. The disheveled room added to his unease. “It must have been an earthquake, right?”
“I don’t know,” Sebastian replied. “Whatever it was, it knocked Stormy and me down. We both covered our heads. It probably wasn’t smart because they had guns, but ... it was freaky, man.”
Hunter’s eyes sought — and found — mine. “You’re really okay?”
I nodded. “I’m okay. Just really shaky.”
“I don’t blame you.” He cracked a slight smile. “I’ll have the paramedics check you over, too. After that, I’ll get you home. It’ll be morning before these three are ready for questioning.”
Home. For once, the word wasn’t frightening. “I can live with that.”
IT WAS ALMOST TEN BEFORE HUNTER could leave the funeral home. I offered to call my grandfather to pick me up, but he insisted I wait. He wanted to take me home, and because I didn’t want to deal with myriad invasive questions I was willing to hang out and watch the emergency responders work.
“These locks are new,” I said dumbly when we got to the back door of my apartment. “Grandpa must’ve changed the locks and not given me a key.”
“I changed the locks,” Hunter reminded me, his voice weary. He sounded as if he was ready to pass out on his feet. “I put copies on your keyring.”
“Oh.” I rummaged in my pocket until I came up with my keys. “I guess it was a waste for you to spend half your day upgrading my security system. Turns out it wasn’t necessary.”
“It was necessary.” He held open the door so I could step inside and followed me after turning the bolt to lock us in. “Now I don’t have to worry about you.”
“I’ll pay you back for the security system just as soon as I can,” I promised. “I don’t know how much it cost, but I bet it was plenty.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he repeated, trudging up the stairs behind me. “You’re safe. That’s the most important thing.”
“Yeah, well ... .” I found the correct key for the new lock on my apartment door, and when I stepped inside I was surprised that Hunter remained on the other side of the threshold. “Are you coming in?”
He didn’t immediately answer, instead biting his lower lip.
Here it comes. He’s going to let me down easy now. He’s going to tell me that he was here only to keep me safe and now he wants to put distance between us. I should’ve seen this coming.
“Monica and I are over,” he stated after a moment. I could tell he was trying to arrange his thoughts. He had a certain look about him when mired in deep thought. “She wasn’t happy. In fact, she kind of begged me to change my mind. She had a lot of not-so-nice things to say about you when I told her it was over. She might go after you again.”
“I’m sure she will.” That was a worr
y for another day. After what had happened in the funeral home, Monica didn’t frighten me in the least.
“I tried to tell her that it wasn’t your fault, that you had nothing to do with it, but she could see it was a lie.”
Was I supposed to say something here?
“It was a lie,” he said softly. “She and I were never going to make it, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing between us. I didn’t want to still have these feelings for you. More than anything, I didn’t want to try to survive having my heart broken again.”
“I don’t want to break your heart again.” My voice caught. “I don’t want my heart broken again either.”
“We’re both leery of certain things. Pretending there’s nothing here will be bad for both of us, though. I don’t think we’ll be able to stay away from one another.”
“Probably not.” I offered a half smile. “There is something chemical that happens to me whenever I see you. I have no idea what it is, but ... it leaves me feeling warm all over and kind of like an idiot.”
He grinned. “Well, at least we’re in the same boat there.”
“So, what do we do?” It was an honest question. I felt stranded in the ocean with no rescue boat in sight.
“We date.”
“Date?” That seemed too simple of an answer for feelings as complex as the ones roiling inside me.
He nodded, his grin widening. “In two weeks.”
“Two weeks? You’re putting us on a schedule?”
That made him laugh. “I have to clean up this case, and the town will be in an uproar over what happened at the funeral home. That’s on top of the fact that they were already buzzing about you and I spending the night together.”
“Nothing happened!”
He snorted. “Something happened. I came to a realization. I don’t want to pretend that you don’t make my head fuzzy ... or my heart race ... or my shoulders feel lighter just by being close to me.”
That was possibly the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to me. My mouth went dry. “I ... .”
Sinfully Delicious Page 28
