The back porch light, which had always been on, turned off. A moment later, Lauren opened the door just enough to poke her head through.
She looked heartbroken over him being there.
“Hey Santi, tonight’s not a good time. I was just heading to bed. Maybe we can have breakfast in the morning instead.”
“I know it’s been a long day, but you promised me cake. Put it in a to-go container.” He smiled. “You know me, Ms. Green, I’m not leaving this house until I get what I want. I’ll tell you about my interrogation with the mayor as a thank you. He’ll be going to prison no doubt about it.”
She looked at something to her right, more like someone.
Sighing in frustration she opened the door wide enough for him to see the gun pointed toward her temple.
Entering the house, Santiago nodded in greeting at the man he had an all-points bulletin out on.
“Tommy, I thought you’d be long gone by now,” he said casually.
“We had to tie up loose ends, Sheriff. Couldn’t leave before my job was done. If I do that, I don’t get paid.”
“Where is she?” Santiago asked looking down the hall where St. James lay on the floor, unconscious, blood pooling around his head. He hadn’t made it fully out of the laundry room. “He dead?”
Tommy took a step closer to Lauren and pressed the gun firmly against her temple before looking over his shoulder.
A familiar scent floated through the air.
Footsteps echoed from the top of the stairs and Santiago looked up.
I said it was a deer...dear.
“You were always too observant; too smart for your own good. I told Alden this,” Veronica Archer said as she slowly descended the stairs. “But in a rare moment of self-determination, he made you interim sheriff when Benedict retired. That was one of Alden’s last independent actions before his stroke. My recommendation was that he promote Loyd Peters.”
She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and motioned her hand toward St. James’s body. That’s when Santiago saw the pistol she held.
“What’s this?” she asked Tommy.
“He came in through the open window in the laundry room. I busted his head wide open. City boys have no idea how hard it is to sneak up on a natural hunter.”
Veronica shrugged, dismissing St. James to his fate.
“I knew my husband’s decision to hire you would bite me in the behind one day, I just didn’t imagine you’d take such a large chunk, Stillwater,” she chuckled.
“Bitch, you don’t have an ass to bite,” Lauren huffed. “What you have is bone and gristle.”
Veronica’s face flushed, her grip on the pistol tightened.
Damn this woman’s mouth, Santiago thought. If they both survived this, he was going to give Lauren some very real and very physical consequences for her fucking recklessness.
“Why are you here, Veronica?” Santiago asked, drawing Veronica’s attention back toward him. “Being upset you and your son were arrested is understandable, but Lauren isn’t responsible for your actions or the consequences.”
He knew the arrests weren’t the real reason Veronica was here, but he wanted her talking instead of shooting.
“Well, since neither of you will live to tell the tale, it only seems fair you know the reason you have to die.”
“Oh, I know the reason—” Lauren began.
“Shut. Up,” he snarled and thank fucking Jesus she did.
“She does actually know the reason, Sheriff. Which is why I’m here. I’m not meant to live a basic life. I was born to power. I thought I married a man who coveted it as much as I did. When Alden and I moved to Shrouded Lake, I thought we were going to build our own personal empire. I didn’t understand that he had a true devotion to this place. To these people. He was willing to lose a little so they could have a better future, as if anyone born in Shrouded Lake could know what it means to live more than a few steps above squalor,” she snapped.
“Because of some of his altruistic decisions, our funds slowly began to deteriorate. I was able to influence him where I could, especially once he became mayor, but I couldn’t completely cull him from the tendency to zig after I told him to zag.”
