After all the shit she’d put me and Lane through recently, IhatedAddie, without a doubt. But I had a good reason for it. On the other hand,shehad no legitimate reason for her seemingly deep-seated hatred of me. It all boiled down to one thing: Lane. She hated me because I had something she thought she was entitled to. Instead of acting like a normal person, accepting a relationship beyond professional would never be in the cards for them and moving on, she’d taken it personally.
She’d taken it out on me.
And now, I was being driven to my death because she thought I was standing in her way.
“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth. “I was willing to do whatever I could to get you away from him. I thought you were smarter than that, Sutton. I figured you’d realized the reason all of these bad things kept happening was because you were with him.”
“How do you explain the break-in then?”
“I wanted you to leave. I figured you’d go stay with your brother. Thelastthing I expected was for you to run right to Lane when, for as long as I’ve known him, you’ve always been persona non grata.”
To be fair, she wasn’t entirely off the mark. Lane and I both had made it our mission over the years to avoid each other at all costs. When we couldn’t, the animosity between us was high. But I knew we’d always loved each other and had been lashing out only because we thought our feelings were unreciprocated.
All at once, a deep, overwhelming wave of sadness and pity consumed me.
I was headed for my death, and I feltbadfor this woman.
“Lane was supposed to be my second chance, you know? He’ssomuch like my late husband, but…I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, but he’s justbetter. And we work together seamlessly. We’re the perfect match.”
“If you were the perfect match, don’t you think he would’ve come to that same conclusion at least once over the last ten years? You shouldn’t have to force things, Addie.”
As if she didn’t want to confront that, couldn’t admit I was right and still live within the delusion she’d constructed around herself, she forged ahead.
“Showing up at that tailgate party wasn’t by accident either, you know. Thanks to my clone of Lane’s phone, I had access to all of his Find My Friends data. I noticed Birdie was in Boise and staged a run-in.”
“Why?”
“Because I guessed you’d be there, and I wanted to tell you to stay away from Lane in person. Iwarnedyou, Sutton,” she said, her brown eyes colliding with mine in the rearview. “Itoldyou that you wouldn’t like what happened if you didn’t stay away from him. You really fucked around and found out, didn’t you?”
I wanted to laugh.Understatement of the century.
“I needed to give you enough rope to hang yourself with, so after showing up at the game, I made myself scarce.”
“Oh, you didn’t make yourself scarce because Lane told you to stay away from him and his family?”
She ignored me and forged ahead.
“Plus, I needed time to make sure everything was perfect. And to fabricate all of those text messages.”
“What exactly is Johns’ role in all of this?” I asked, trying to tamp down on the despair clawing at my throat. I was going to die, and I would do so without having any idea what the last thing I’d said to Lane was. Did he know how much I loved him? How much he helped me heal? How badly I wanted the future he’d dreamed about for us?
And now, we’d never have it.
“Simple: he wants Lane’s job.”
“Yeah, you said that. But what does he think is going to happen exactly? The sheriff is an elected position. And Lane isn’t going anywhere.”
“Lane will be joining the Bureau,” she said matter-of-factly, as though it was a foregone conclusion instead of a career move I knew Lane didn’t want.
This was the problem with people like Addie, people with an over-inflated sense of self-importance. I’d known Lane a long time, a hell of a lot longer than she had, and I knew there was no place he wanted to be more than Dusk Valley. No offer could ever be enticing enough to convince him to leave.
Addie had hinged her entire livelihood on the fact that Lane would ultimately fall for her andwantto move to the FBI for her.
But I knew better.
When I was gone, Lane would dedicate his life to finding out what happened to me, and once that goal was achieved, he wouldnevermove on. That wasn’t wishful thinking on my part, either. We’d already lost each other once. If the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t survive without him, and I knew he felt the same.
“Plus, look at all the wonderful things Johns has done for Dusk Valley!” Addie crowed. “He was integral in getting a highly dangerous woman off the streets and putting her behind bars. After all, you’ve been terrorizing the town with all those break-ins,andyou assaulted a decorated FBI agent.”
