The man never got a shot off.
Wildcard Rose had already pulled her trigger.
Chapter Twenty-One
Everyone thought Damon had fled the hospital, but to their utter surprise, he had only gone as far as the next room. Wynonna apologized profusely on his behalf.
“I saw that man in the lobby when I was downstairs,” she told Rose, describing the reporter to a tee. “I recognized him. I never knew his name but he visited the house around the time Derrick passed away. Him and Lloyd got into a big yelling match. I never heard what they said but I remembered Damon left with him. It was actually the last time I saw Damon until now.”
After seeing him, Wynonna had pieced together the same conclusion Rose had. Someone else had to have been pressuring her brother and Damon. She hadn’t known all of the facts but that feeling, coupled with impressive speed, had gotten her to take Damon to the only safety she could reach. Deputy Cameron had come in during the brief moment between her coming in and the reporter showing up. He too had gotten a bad feeling from the man, and when Cameron had asked to see his hands, the reporter had attacked. Cameron hadn’t been shot but knocked around good enough that he’d gotten a broken nose and a concussion.
Not too bad considering the man who had attacked him had died on the roof no more than ten minutes later.
That man remained nameless for one more week until finally Damon was able to talk.
And talk he did. To Rose first, of all people.
“His name was Paul Martinez. He hired me and Lloyd to copy and then disrupt the Camden Pharmaceuticals drug trial data. Paul was getting paid by Camden’s competitors and was paying us a lot to help. We needed the money to clear some debt and, since the drug only treats insomnia, we decided it was the lesser of evils if we botched it instead of some of the other Camden drugs that help treat sicknesses.” Damon had quieted. Rose had given him the space to get to the hard part of his confession. “The day of the storm, the generator didn’t work, and the backup power cycled wrong. Instead of everything being shut down, they actually got some of the power back for the computers before they left on the bus. Lloyd said that’s how Derrick saw the encrypted message he had been trying to send out before. It was highly incriminating for Lloyd. And me.”
His eyes had grown red at that.
“Derrick was always smart, but I don’t know why he chose to confront Lloyd on the bus. Not when it was already dangerous. Maybe…maybe he was really upset and afraid and it just came out. But no matter the reason why, he confronted Lloyd on the bus. And well, you were the only person who saw what happened next.”
Damon had said that was when their faux reporter Paul had stepped in.
“Lloyd said that there was no way you heard what they were fighting about, but Paul was never one to lethis money be in danger. He thought you might know something and when he saw how angry I was at you…he played on that anger to try and get you out of the way. Just like us, who had made too much trouble in his book. He wanted all three of us to go out at once. And what better way to have that happen without anyone looking too deep into it?”
“Your revenge against me,” Rose had guessed.
Damon had nodded.
“When he realized I couldn’t get you myself, he told us how to stage our deaths and, if we didn’t listen, he threatened Wynonna.”
Paul had given Damon and Lloyd proof that men were watching the young woman. Men they couldn’t protect her from.
It had scared them enough to accept their final scene together.
The betrayal Damon had told Rose about referred to Paul’s betrayal of them, not Lloyd’s betrayal of him.
“No matter what we went through in this life, we never turned on each other,” Damon had said, choking up a bit as he did so. “Lloyd was my person and Wynonna wasourperson. Even when we didn’t agree with each other’s decisions, we never lost sight of each other.”
That was why they had accepted what they believed to be their only option left.
Their lives for Wynonna’s.
But to Damon’s surprise, when it came to killing Rose in the end, both men had decided, without even speaking, to give her a fighting chance.
Damon was good at tying knots but had left hers loose in case Lloyd had thrown her in. Lloyd hadwatched Damon go over the edge of the dock but had left Rose alone.
“I think Paul would have left you alone had we both died, especially if you didn’t go after him or bring up anything about Camden. But you saved me.”
Damon had looked at her then with an expression that she couldn’t decipher.
Unlike Paul, he didn’t ask her why.
Rose had been glad for that. She decided she was over talking about heroes.
Everyone involved had simply made choices.
