“You surprised me by staying away at first, especially considering he was rehabbing, and you’ve got somewhat of a medical background. But I needed to put a few failsafes in place, so I orchestrated those break-ins.”
forty-three
. . .
SUTTON
Holy shit. “Those wereyou?”
“Well yes and no. I knew I needed to slowly dismantle your life. To convince Lane and that entire town you weren’t as perfect as everyone seemed to think you were. So I kept an eye on things. I had an inside man who fed me information about crimes being committed, and I waited for the perfect one to frame you with. When the Lennars made that report about the break-in and theft, I saw that as my opportunity. It didn’t hurt that you’d been there the week before, treating their daughter for, what was it? Oh yes, a dizzy spell.”
“Johns has been helping you.”
That actually made perfect sense. There was no way Addie could’ve known to target those specific houses without access to my call sheet from work. As far as I remembered, police presence hadn’t been required on any of those incidents, but as the undersheriff, no one would bat an eye at him asking for those records. He’d also be the perfect person to steer the investigation away from him and Addie and toward me.
Addie turned and flashed me a grin over her shoulder, but it was all teeth. “Hereallywants Lane’s job.”
“So he was the one committing the break-ins.”
“No, actually. We agreed that keeping our hands clean was the best course of action, but we found someone more than willing to help. To get revenge on you.”
My head wasspinning. The layers to this, the lengths she’d gone to over aman. He was, admittedly, the best man I’d ever known, but to ruin someone’s life simply to get her hands on him? When she had no guarantee he’d even want her when the dust settled?
She wasn’t just crazy. She was certifiable, padded room and straight jacket levels ofinsane.
“Who?” I whispered.
“You remember Ryan Boyd, right?” I sucked in a gasp at the name of my rapist. “Turns out, he’s got a little brother. And what do you know, Nick happens to bedatingSadie Lennar, which gave him more than enough excuses to be seen out and about Dusk Valley. The kid’s got an impressive rap sheet for someone who is barely old enough to drink, and it was all too easy to convince him I could make his recent charges go away if he trashed some houses for us. Especially when he learnedyou, the woman who destroyed his family, would take the fall for it all.”
“So he was the one who broke into my house?”
My skin broke out in goosebumps, and my stomach roiled at the thought that I’d been trapped in my home alone with the little brother of the man responsible for ruining my life. That I so easily could’ve suffered a similar fate as I had the night Ryan had raped me.
“Oh, no,” Addie said, laughing lightly. “That one was personal, Sutton. That one, I handled myself.”
Weirdly enough, that made me feel a little better, even knowing this woman wouldn’t hesitate to kill me. Hell, she’drelishit. After all, she was about to do just that.
“He was, however, following you around town. I can’t believe you never caught him watching you when you’d go out on calls.”
Though I knew it kept spinning normally, the entire world seemed to shift beneath me. While I thought a lot of the weird, freaking incidents that had happened since October could be explained by Addie—and it seemed as though I was right—Ineveranticipatedeverything, from the very beginning, could be tied to her.
My mind went back to the night of the break-in, to those tense moments before crawling out the window when the glass on my front door had broken. To footsteps creaked on my old hardwood floors.
The haunting call of my name—in a woman’s voice.
Addie had been in my home.
Addie was the cause of all that destruction, the violation of my personal space, my sanctuary.
But it went so much further and deeper than that.
Pieces rapidly began clicking into place, like the end of a digital solitaire game when you can auto complete to win. Moments from the past five months flashed through my mind, every bad, weird, creepy thing that had happened shifting further into focus, taking on a new meaning.
“I’d hoped that I could take you out that night and wipe my hands of the whole thing. Blame it on the break-in and have Johns drag his feet on the investigation, so the department never caught who was responsible. But you’re sneakier than I gave you credit for.”
I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t about sneakiness. I was a single woman living alone. I had plans in place, ways to protect myself if I ever found myself in such a situation, and it saved my life that night.
“You hate me that much?” I asked, quieter than I intended.
