Garrett wasn’t smilinglike he had the first night I met him. He’d been funny that night at the bar. Charming and even handsome.
Tonight, the cruelty of his expression turned him ugly.
“Deputy Marsh,” Garrett said. “You made good time getting here. Must care a lot about your sister.”
The mention of my sister just reminded me ofhissister, Hadley, and what he’d done to her. This man was merciless. He would kill me and Stephie both. And he wouldn’t make the mistake of leaving me alive this time.
I spoke over the relentless thump of the music. “My boyfriend’s outside. Sheriff Douglas has already sent every available deputy. They’ll be here any minute. Just let us go.” There was no way Garrett could know I was lying. Yet he seemed unconcerned.
“Your boyfriend, Dean Reynolds? The one who killed Nox Woodson?”
I was still kneeling there on the floor, and Stephie was sobbing on the couch. Fury burned through me, white-hot and vicious. I kept my face blank, but inside I wanted to tearRyan Garrett apart. This man had sent people to kill his own sister because she’d defied him.
Frankly, I was surprised he hadn’t done worse to me the night he’d recognized me. He’d probably offered to buy me a drink in the first place to drug me.
“Dean’s armed and highly skilled. We already know you were the second shooter at my house three months ago, but if you let me and Stephie leave right now, this doesn’t have to go any further. You and your friends can walk away before the police get here.”
Ryan drew a gun from the back of his waistband. “I don’t think so. I think you did as your sister asked and didn’t tell anyone else. There are no cops coming.”
“Thereare,” I insisted, but he spoke over me.
“As for your boyfriend, he definitely fucked things up for me by taking out Woodson. But I figured he’d come with you tonight. I planned for him. Woodson didn’t expect Reynolds to be such a problem, but I did.”
There was a gunshot outside, which made me flinch and Stephie shriek.
Ryan Garrett smiled.
“And there it is, right on time.” He went over to turn down the volume on a small speaker, and the music got quieter. “My guys had orders to execute your boyfriend the moment you were inside. Dean Reynolds is dead. No cops are coming. It’s just us, Deputy. Time for us to have a nice, cozy chat.”
The gunshot echoed in my mind. I refused to believe that Dean was dead. There was no way he would let Garrett’s men sneak up on him.
Even if we’d both been unsuspecting when we arrived here, too caught up in the last couple of days and our own happiness to imagine that Garrett was still plotting against us, Dean was too good to go down like that.
But still, fear seized my chest as I thought of Dean being in danger.
Right now, there was nothing I could do for the man I loved. I had to focus on my sister. On getting us both out of here.
“If you want to know where Hadley is, I have no clue,” I said.
Garrett’s lip curled. “I don’t give a shit about Hadley anymore.”
“Liar. Of course you do. She’s the reason you and Woodson tried to kill me. Because you recognized me that night at the roadhouse and followed me home.”
Garrett looked down at the handgun he was holding. “All right, yes. That was my motivation. It was impulsive. I saw you sitting there at the bar and my anger got the best of me.”
“How did you recognize me? If you knew who I was and that I helped Hadley, you could’ve taken revenge on me ages before that. I haven’t seen Hadley in almost two years.”
“But I didn’t know who you were. Not exactly. I’d had somebody watching Hadley’s place back then, waiting for her to go home after I figured out she survived the beating. You showed up with her. Helped pack up her car, and you hustled her along like you knew exactly how much danger she was in. My friend took pictures. I didn’t have a clue you were a sheriff’s deputy. Not then.”
“Would you still have gone after me if you knew I was a cop?”
He shrugged. “Hell if I know. I just recognized you at the bar that night. There you were, smiling with your own sister like you didn’t have a care in the world. Meanwhile my sister and mother were gone, in the wind, like I’d meant nothing to them.”
“You stole from your mother and nearly got your sister killed. What did you expect?”
“They weremineto do whatever I wanted!” he roared. “I couldn’t find them, but I knew you had something to do with it. Even considered getting you to answer questions first about where they were. But after we got to your house and you had a gun? Figured I should just be quick about it.”
Nausea rocked me as I remembered walking into my living room and seeing masked men. Woodson and Garrett had planned to torture me for information. No wonder they’d been disguised.
