“Bullshit. Like I said, you brought me back home for a reason. That put me in this game. If I hadn’t been living in Jackson Creek, I never would have questioned her death. Hell, I might not have even come home for the funeral.”
“It was time you came home,” he said flatly. “Besides, you had nowhere else to go.”
“You know, I desperately wanted to believe you came because you cared.” My voice rose, and a woman pushing a cart past me with a toddler sitting in the seat gave me a stern look. “But that was sixteen-year-old Harper, desperate for her father’s love.” I swallowed hard. “I know better now. If you really wanted me back, you would’ve come for me much sooner. Before my life fell apart. Hell, you wouldn’t have let me leave home for college without making sure I knew I was welcome to come back anytime.” Anger burned in my chest as I spat out, “So cut the shit, Dad.”
“If you’re going to take that disrespectful tone, then we have nothing further to talk about,” he said stiffly. “Call me back when you’ve seen reason, and I’ll coordinate a location for you to leave the file.”
He hung up.
Emotion churned in my gut, and part of me wanted to scream. I’d thought confronting him would make me feel better, but it hadn’t. It had made everything so much worse.
Tears stung my eyes.
Was I really so unlovable that my own parents had thought nothing of using me as a pawn?
No wonder I was incapable of having a healthy relationship.
James popped into my head, and I released a bitter laugh. I wasn’t sure what I had with him, but it wasn’t a relationship. It was sex and adrenaline and bad timing. We were each other’s current fucks, that was all. Nothing more. Nothing less.
But I no longer had alcohol to help convince me to believe my own bullshit.
I wouldn’t have killed that many men for a fuck buddy. He was more to me than that.
Still, this was hardly the time for me to analyze what I felt for James Malcolm, who was probably already flipping out about how long I was taking.
I needed to get back.
I got in the car and nearly drove back to the safe house, then remembered I’d promised him a steak dinner. I found a steak house and ordered at the bar, struggling not to order a whiskey to sip while I waited.
I headed outside to escape temptation and leaned against the trunk again, watching the cars whiz by. But being alone with my thoughts was dangerous right now. I was still processing my conversation with my father and fighting the urge to go back inside and get the whiskey I was dying to drink.
I needed a plan. We couldn’t afford to sit and wait anymore, not if my father was going to let Nicole know he’d talked to me. We needed to go to Little Rock.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I called Carter Hale.
“This better be an emergency,” he said, all business when he answered.
“What constitutes an emergency?” I said flippantly. Then, realizing he’d never speak to James that way, I added, “And how’d you know it was me?”
“Because Skeeter told me you took this burner phone. And an emergency would mean your life is on the line.”
“Does the fact that I’m standing outside a steak house wrestling with my demons over ordering two fingers of whiskey count as my life being on the line?”
I’d meant it to come out as a joke, but it fell flat. Carter knew I’d given up drinking. He was the one who’d gotten me the meds to help me through DTs.
“It’s gonna be a struggle, Harper,” he said sympathetically. “But you called me instead of ordering it. That means you still have control.”
“Maybe so, but it’s a sliver.”
“Maybe tell yourself a sliver is better than nothing.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “You’re a glass-half-full person, aren’t you?”
“I’ll deny it to my last breath,” he joked, “but I’m guessing that’s not why you called.”
“Nicole Knox called my father and threatened to kill him if I don’t turn over my mother’s file.”
“What does Skeeter say about that?”
