“On a scale of one to ten, how favourable toward the Calder family is Sheriff Daniels? He made ‘clamping down on heinous criminals like Eddie Calder’ a key promise in his election campaign, and he wasn’t even involved in your dad’s case.”
“They went to school together,” Nolan admitted. “I think there was some bad blood. But the state police…”
“Sure, yes, let’s call them. I’ll have the Cleaners fish the body out of the morgue, and the cops can tear the house apart. I’ll skate on any charges, seeing as I was unconscious when she died, and you can spend the rest of the year being investigated. What a fantastic idea.”
“Alexa…”
“We both know you acted out of necessity, but cops are both dumb and corrupt, if my Uncle Porter is anything to go by, so there’s a fifty percent chance they’ll fuck everything up. Hey, maybe the California AG could do a deal with Washington and you could share a cell with your dad? A big old family reunion?”
“I’m gonna puke.”
“You already did that last night, so I doubt there’s much left to come up. Look, we took care of everything—all you have to do is stick to the story that Marielle swung by yesterday to pick up the last of her stuff, and she said she was planning to take a trip. We’re laying a trail from here to Mexico, and the authorities will assume she disappeared across the border.”
“You almost sound as if you’ve done this before.”
“I’ll neither confirm nor deny.”
Nolan didn’t like the idea of a cover-up, but what choice did he have? Alexa was right; Sheriff Daniels was a jackass, and he was also friendly with Roy Leland. The media circus surrounding his dad tore Nolan’s life apart and drove his mom to suicide. And later, the Blackstone House investigation had been a hellish mix of sleepless nights, prying reporters, legal threats, and hoping he didn’t get arrested even though he knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. More than once, he’d counted out pills, wondering if it would be easier to just swallow them and get the whole thing over with. Ruby was dead, Alexa had disappeared, his boss let him go because he didn’t “want all that negative publicity,” and the cops had taken half of his belongings into evidence. Picking himself up was hard. Thanks to the Sykes family, half the world thought he was a murderer, and he was shuffling debt on credit cards to eat. He’d been teetering on the edge of a dark, dark pit when Grandpa Calder’s attorney called to say he’d inherited the estate that had been in the family for generations.
He wasn’t sure he could go through that for a third time.
The intrusion.
The anxiety.
People glancing sideways at him in the street.
But he did feel the darkness again.
Only now, it was more like a warm embrace, a comfort, and he knew why.
The darkness was coming from Alexa.
She’d always been morally grey, but today there was a murkiness about her, a nebulous energy he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Even as her blue eyes shone, the inky pupils hid her secrets.
And still he loved her.
He stood on the edge of that caliginous pit, heart racing, and he jumped.
“When I picked up that knife, I turned into my father,” he whispered.
A monster. A genetic aberration.
“No, you didn’t. You acted out of fear, and he hunted women for fun.” Alexa brushed her lips across Nolan’s. “One of us was going to die last night, and I’m just glad it was her and not you or me.”
“So am I.”
As bad as seeing Marielle’s river of blood had been, watching the life drain from Alexa would have been a thousand times worse.
“We’ll take the secret to the grave,” she promised. “You just have to hold yourself together.”
He leaned his forehead against hers and took a cleansing breath. Tried to release the ghosts of his father’s victims and of the woman he knew as Marielle. Alexa was everything to him. Everything.
“Tell me what to do.”
CHAPTER 34
ALEXA
