“Yes, in answer to the possibility Marco doesn’t want to raise in front of me. There’s only one reason Dad would turn around, go home and pretend he never came: if I wasn’t here when he arrived. If he wanted to protect me. The answer is yes. I wasn’t here. I’d slipped out and driven to New York to see my mother.”
My heart slams, stealing my breath. I wait for his next words, which will be that he went to see Isabella but changed his mind and turned around. Or that he saw her, but early in the evening, and she was alive when he left.
His gaze locks on mine for a split second before it drops, and he says, his voice barely above a whisper. “I’d never have let you go to jail, Lucy. Never. I wanted to turn myself in right away, but Karla insisted I wait. I’ve been battling it out with her. For now, I was just waiting to hear that you were arrested, and then I’d step forward.”
The puppy whines, and he rises and hands her to me with a murmured thanks. Then he walks to the window and looks out with his back to us.
“This should be more dramatic, shouldn’t it?” he says. “At least more drawn out. I should keep tap dancing for as long as I can, evading questions and misdirecting you. Then, when you realize it was me, I should…”
A one-armed shrug, his gaze still on the window. “In one of Dad’s movies, I’d pull a gun. At the very least, I’d tackle Marco. Or make a run for it. You asked if I like acting. I do, but that movie poster you saw was for Dad. I don’t care for action. I’m all about drama, so in my movie, I’d beg for understanding, beg you not to turn me in, maybe bribe you to take the fall, promising you won’t go to prison.”
He turns to me. “When Mom told me her plans for you two, I hopped on my motorcycle and drove to New York to talk her out of it. To convince her to leave you alone. She admitted you were reluctant to go public, and she needed to respect that. She needed to see that her scheme was all about her—assuaging her guilt and reclaiming her pride. She honestly wanted to help you, but she needed to proceed with more care, to be sure you wanted it.”
He shoves his hands into his jeans pockets. “I asked to stay and join her lunch with you. Mom was uncomfortable with that. She knew I still cared about you, and I guess she thought I was setting myself up for disappointment. We argued. I went to leave, storming out. She grabbed my arm, and I flung her off and…”
His voice catches. “Those slippers. Those stupid Beast slippers. She nearly fell down the stairs in them once. I tried to get rid of them, but they were important to her.” He swallows. “They slid on the bathroom floor and—”
He flinches, convulsively, as if seeing Isabella fall again, hearing her skull crack against the tiled step.
“And she hit her head and died.” My voice sounds strange, hollow, because I know that isn’t what happened, but he doesn’t seem to catch my tone, just nods and sinks back into his chair.
“You framed me,” I say.
“What?” His brow crinkles. “No. I would never do that, Lucy.”
“So you didn’t take your mom’s tablet? Didn’t send the texts luring me to her room that morning?”
He stares at me, confusion piercing the numb blankness. “Wait. You were lured…?” He breaks off and curses under his breath. “Of course you were. You didn’t just happen to show up that morning.”
He reaches for his phone. His fingers tremble as he thumbs through the messages. He keeps talking, his gaze on his phone. “We always call Karla when we have a problem. That’s her job. Fixing problems. But I’ll fix this, Lucy. I’ll turn myself in. Karla’s apparently on her way now. I’ve been ducking her calls, so she’s coming in person. What happened to Mom was an accident, and I should have turned myself in right away, but I called Karla and…” He shakes his head.
“Karla realized it wasn’t an accident,” Marco says. “She knew what you’d done. That’s why she covered it up. That’s why she framed Genevieve. She knew the coroner would uncover the truth.”
Jamison looks up, blinking. “Truth?”
“Your mother died of asphyxiation. She was smothered with a pillow.”
“W-what?”
Marco repeats it, but Jamison just stares, as if the words don’t compute. He goes very still, his face stark white. Seconds tick past, and we let him process it. Then he shakes his head.
“That’s a mistake,” he says, a little too lightly, and my heart cracks. It just cracks. “They’re wrong. Mom died in a fall. From hitting her head.”
His phone buzzes. He stares at it, as if not recognizing the sound. Then he grabs it and shoves it into his pocket.
“Karla’s here,” he says. “I’m going to talk to her. Fire her, for starters. Then we’ll call the police, and I’ll turn myself in.” He gets to his feet. “Just give me a few minutes with her alone. Please.”
Marco opens his mouth, but I put out a hand to stop him.
“We’ll be right here,” I say. “But if you’re more than fifteen minutes, we’ll call the police ourselves.”
He nods, as if barely hearing me. Then he heads straight to the door. Molly yips and tears after him, only to have the door clip her tiny snout, Jamison too distracted to notice her.
When Jamison is gone, Marco turns to me. “He murdered his mother, Lucy. I know you don’t want to believe that, but he isn’t going to confront Karla. He’s going to let her fix this problem—by getting him out of here.”
“Maybe,” I say. “But I don’t think so.”
“Karla didn’t just happen to arrive while we’re here, Gen. Jamie wasn’t surprised when you showed up. Justice must have warned him last night. Then Jamie called Karla, and she flew up here to spirit him away.”
I don’t answer that, and he continues, “Jamie knew he was safe. That’s why he admitted it so readily. Admitted to accidental death. According to him, he didn’t even shove his mother. She grabbed him, and he pulled away, and then? Those damned slippers. They killed her.”
“I remember them. Very slippery slippers.”
He shoots me a look for that. “Which he probably put on her feet afterward. The fall didn’t do the job, so he smothered her and phoned Karla, who knows the coroner will realize it wasn’t an accident. Karla framed you, but Jamie still thinks his story will set him free. Maybe the lightbulb finally flashed, and he realized he needs to run. Or maybe Karla’s going to need to kick his ass into that car. Either way, the family’s manager has another mess to clean up.”
I nod. “Go after him, please. Stay back and listen in. I…I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
He squeezes my arm, too distracted to see that my gaze is lowered. A quick kiss on my cheek, and he’s gone.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The back door to Jamison’s cabin eases open, and Karla steps inside. She shuts the door behind her and then stands just inside, listening and looking. She doesn’t see me. I’m in the back closet, door opened just enough that I can see her.
In three days, I’ve come full circle, hiding in a closet, holding my breath as I watch and listen.
Karla takes a moment and then leans to see into the front room, where I’ve left my laptop playing a TV show at low volume. She nods, satisfied, and then creeps past my hiding spot. As I watch her go, my heart sinks.
I wanted to be wrong. I so badly wanted to be wrong.
I’d reflected earlier that this is the problem with Isabella’s murder: so many suspects I don’t want to be guilty. Tiana, Jamison, Justice…Even with Colt, I’d held out hope that, for Isabella’s sake, he cared enough never to do this. I kept hoping that the killer would be a stranger. Huh, she was murdered by some screenwriter I never met, who blamed her for “ruining his vision” with her script doctoring.
Yep, that’s the solution I wanted. If it had to be someone I’ve met, then maybe Bess. No offense, Bess, but I don’t know you, and that makes it easier for you to be a killer.
Karla, though…? Karla nev
er even made it to my list of serious suspects until I heard Jamison’s story, and even then, I told myself I was wrong. She was a committed employee, who’d given her professional life to the family and sacrificed, I’m sure, most of her personal life, too. No marriage. No kids. Just the job. Always the job.
I liked you, Karla. Not in the warm way I liked Tiana and Jamison and Justice. Warm wasn’t your word, but I liked you for that, not in spite of it.
Before the scandal, I’d seen Isabella as my role model. After it, though? After it, I looked to Karla, even if I never quite realized it until now. Efficient and capable are not sexy adjectives, but they were what I needed post-scandal, and Karla embodied those traits. Her strength was not exactly warm and fuzzy, but it was kind. That’s what I remember from that night when Karla took charge. She’d been kind when I needed kindness. Not platitudes but genuine compassion.
Maybe I’m still wrong.
That’s the refrain that thuds through my head as I watch her walk toward the main room. Maybe my theory is faulty and…
And Jamison murdered his mother? Shoved her during a fight, and when she was knocked out, he saw his chance to murder her?
No. I don’t care if I only knew Jamison for a few months as a child. Nothing I knew of him then and nothing anyone else has said of him since would allow him to be that person. His story makes perfect sense. He thought Isabella was dead, and he did what he’d been raised to do. Call Karla.
He called Karla, and she’s the one who saw her chance, and I don’t know why, but motive doesn’t matter at this moment. I’m watching Karla sneak into Jamison’s cottage, intent on that front room. She thinks Jamison is in there alone, and I don’t know what she plans, but she isn’t sneaking up to surprise him. She’s creeping through the house, cell phone in her hand—
She twists against the wall, and my gaze falls to her hand, and what I see there is not a cell phone.
Karla has a gun.
Holy shit. Karla has a gun.
Even as my stomach convulses, I inwardly snarl at myself for my stupidity. I’m hiding in this damned closet, waiting for her to arrive, my gut telling me she will come for him, and yet it failed to foresee that damned gun in her hand?
Did I think Karla—fifty-something Karla, who probably doesn’t even have time for spin classes—was going to confront a twenty-three-year-old action-movie star without a weapon?
I did not foresee this because I didn’t want to foresee it. I wanted to believe Karla cared enough for these kids that she only came to talk to Jamison, to persuade him.
I’d planned to step from this closet and confront her myself. Now, seeing that gun, I realize my terrible mistake. I take a deep breath and ease back into the closet. I need to warn Marco and stay here—
Molly hears Karla, then. I’d put her into the bedroom with a chew toy, and she’d been quiet, but now there is clearly someone else in the building, and she wants out. Between puppy yips, Karla’s shoes squeak as she halts.
She knows something is wrong, and if there was any doubt, it evaporates when Molly begins flinging herself against the door, yowling. Being locked in a room is foreign enough, but to have someone inside the house ignoring her? That is a mistake, and the puppy yowls her confusion and concern, telling Karla, beyond any doubt, that no one is in the front room watching TV.
I need to get out of here. Now.
I ease open the closet door and tiptoe to the back one. I twist the knob just as Karla’s shoes squeak again. She’s coming back my way.
I throw open the back door and run. I tear through the small yard, my gaze fixed on the woods twenty feet away—
“Stop, Lucy.”
In the movie version, I’d lunge for the forest and somehow reach it despite it being at least ten feet away. Or I’d dodge and weave until I was safely in the trees. In reality, I know that if I even try that, she’ll shoot me in the back.
So I turn, hands raised. Karla stands there, and I hope—I still hope—that I won’t see a gun in her hand. Maybe it really was her cell phone, or maybe she’s hiding the gun, hoping not to need to resort to that.
The gun is there. Right there. Pointing straight at me.
Karla came to kill me.
The thought barely settles, ice cold in my gut, before it’s steam-rolled by the truth, one even worse.
Karla didn’t know I was here. She couldn’t have come for me.
Karla came to kill Jamison.
“Suicide?” I say, and my voice is eerily calm.
Her brows shoot up. “You think I’m going to kill myself, Lucy?”
“Of course not. You came to shoot Jamison. You were just going to make it look like suicide. He has a history of it, after all. You’d shoot him and tell the police you came to talk to him because you knew he’d killed Isabella. You were coming to help Jamie turn himself in, and you arrived to discover he’d found another solution to his problem.”
She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. I see by the flicker of consternation that I’m right—or close enough to it.
“Where is he?” she says.
Now I’m the one lifting my brows. “You really think I’d tell you?”
“Yes, because you have a choice to make, Lucy. Two solutions to this problem. One, I can shoot you and frame him. You came to beg for his help, and—being Isabella’s actual killer—he shot you. Two, I finish this, and we say Jamie took his own life. He would eventually, anyway, especially with Isabella gone. This only speeds up the inevitable.”
Especially with Isabella gone.
Those words thunder in my ears. She says them offhandedly, stating a simple fact. As if Jamison’s mother died of some tragic accident or natural cause.
“You murdered Isabella,” I say, barely able to force the words out. “She trusted you and—”
“Isabella never trusted me. She tolerated me, for Colt’s sake. I spent my life working for that man, and who did he turn to? Who did he rely on? A woman too wrapped up in herself and her career to take proper care of him. That summer, he was having a midlife crisis, and she barely noticed. All she cared about was her silly show.”
The hairs on my neck rise. “Is Colt actually correct? That someone set him up that summer? With me?” I step toward her. “You hired me. You didn’t stop the scandal because you didn’t want to. You wanted Colt’s name in the papers again, and you wanted Isabella gone, and you thought that would do it.”
“Long-suffering Isabella,” Karla says. “That’s the only decent role she ever played. But she couldn’t even stick with that one. Hooks up with a musician half her age and intends to divorce Colt to marry him. That was bad enough. Then she brings you to New York and plans to drag Colt down by reopening the past.”
“Going public with me,” I murmur. “You didn’t plan to kill Isabella, but when Jamie called you after the accident, you saw an opportunity. Kill her. Put Jamie in your debt. Frame me to reignite that old scandal and remind the world just how irresistible Colt Gordon is. Fourteen years later, I’m still so obsessed with him that I murder my so-called rival. Except you knew, even with the planted evidence, it was hardly an airtight case. So you hired a guy to stalk me.” I meet her gaze. “You hired him to kill me.”
Her lips stretch in a humorless smile. “You have quite the imagination there. Perhaps you could have been a screenwriter after all. If someone was following you, Lucy, might I suggest it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the fact that you are a wanted fugitive.”
“Possibly. That would certainly explain why you think you can get away with killing me or framing Jamie, as if there’s no one else here but the three of us.”
She hesitates. It’s only a flicker behind her eyes, but I catch it.
“I didn’t come alone,” I say. “You should know that, though, if you hired the man who held a gun to me yesterday. I mean, he’d have told you, r
ight? Told you that his attempted abduction was foiled by my private eye, who also took his gun.”
I purse my lips. “Unless he failed to disclose that the last time you spoke. Kind of embarrassing, I guess. My hired guy disarming your hired guy in broad daylight. Tricking him with a fake tourist routine. If he is your guy, you deserve a refund.”
Her expression answers for her. It is completely impassive, ice-cold with rage. Then her hand moves. I see it out of the corner of my eye, just the slightest move.
My brain doesn’t even have time to tell me to dive. It screams a warning, and I twist so fast, I stumble, and the gun fires. I don’t know if it’s the twist or the stumble, but one of them saves my life. The bullet whizzes past, and I’m doing another awkward move, half-scrambling, half-diving for the forest. The whoosh of another silenced shot just as I hit the ground.
“Gen!”
Marco’s shout comes from somewhere in the forest, and Karla wheels, gun raised. I scream a warning, my heart hammering as I lunge in Marco’s direction.
A streak of motion flies from the other side of the house. Karla is looking the other way, scanning the forest. At the last second, she hears the sound behind her, and my mouth opens to call another warning, but Jamison is already in flight, knocking her flying. He pins her gun hand, his other hand at her throat.
“You murdering bitch,” he snarls.
A strangled gurgling from Karla, cut short by Jamison.
“Is this what you did to her, Karla? Is this what you did to my mother?”
I race over to them. Jamison has shoved the gun aside, and he has his knee on Karla’s chest, his hands around her throat as she writhes and wheezes.
“Did you think I was too stupid to figure it out?” he asks. “Or too weak to do anything about it? Too sensitive.”
He leans his weight onto her. “Am I stronger than you expected? You’re the one who insisted I do that movie with Dad. Maybe you’re regretting that now. Maybe you’re regretting a lot of things now.”
“Jamie,” I say.
He startles. Guilt and shame flood his face just like when he was a boy and I caught him destroying that script in his room.
Every Step She Takes Page 27
