Page 76 of Dark ’N’ Deadly

She didn’t hesitate. “They used an online app to locate Jesse’s phone in New Jersey. Even though you kept it turned off most of the time, it was on long enough that they were able to track it to the Newark federal courthouse. After that, you gave the phone back to him in case they called to ask why he didn’t show up at the original meet location. Eventually, they traced him to Flemington, but I turned the phone off. I don’t think they tracked him to your house.”

He clenched his jaw, barely able to hold himself in check. “You can’t track a phone that way unless you’re the account holder.”

“I know.” She swallowed, drawing his attention to where she still clutched the rose quartz.

“Who’s the account holder?” he demanded, already knowing, but needing her to say it.

When she didn’t answer right away, a violent rage bubbled up inside him. He leaned over and grabbed the armrests of her chair. “Tell me,” he gritted out. “Say. His. Name.”

Closing her eyes, she swallowed audibly, then whispered the one name that could bring on a killing rage inside him like nothing else could. “Harley Gant.”

As much as it sucked, he knew what came next would be far worse.

“The day you showed up here, I asked you and your brother if you knew Gant. Both of you said you didn’t know him.” He paused to try and calm his racing heartbeat. “So how do you know who the account holder is?”

“Because I lied to you,” she cried. “I do know Harley Gant.” Her body began to shake. Tears streaked down her face, leaving long track marks on her pale cheeks. Ironically, he wondered how he could want someone so badly when they were about to say something that would shatter his world. “He’s my stepfather.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

“I’m sorry,” Tess whispered, her heart constricting as she looked up into the glacial blue of Eric’s eyes.

Only inches separated them as he towered over her, but he might as well have been standing on the far side of the earth, so great was the emotional distance between them.

A chill raced up her spine, and her body began to tremble. The room had gone cold, frigid even, and she had the answer to her question. Any chance that he might have loved her someday was gone. The name she’d spoken had obliterated any possibility of that happening.

Harley Gant.

The satanic bane of her entire godforsaken life.

Slowly, Eric released the armrests and stood. The derisive look he gave her said it all. He hates me. She squeezed her eyes shut, not blaming him one bit and despising herself more for deceiving him.

His voice was low and controlled, yet there was no doubt from his rigid posture that he was angry. Beyond angry.

“You knew how important Gant was to me. He murdered my friends in cold blood. I watched them die, and when it was over there wasn’t a scrap of flesh left on their bones that wasn’t burned to a crisp.” He shut his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath, clearly struggling for control.

Her heart went out to him, but there was nothing she could do to ease his pain. Gant had killed his friends and severely injured him. He might have recovered from his physical wounds, but her stepfather had inflicted lasting emotional pain. Now—years later—her actions were hurting Eric deeply as well. He wanted revenge on Gant, and she may very well have denied him the opportunity to make things right.

“If you’ve withheld anything else critical to this investigation,” he continued in a cool tone, “you can be charged with obstruction of justice.”

“What?” She jumped to her feet, barely able to contain her outrage. “Don’t you see? This is exactly why I didn’t tell you the truth about who my stepfather is. You’re looking at me as if I’m the lowest piece of garbage on the planet. Because I had the misfortune to wind up with him as my stepfather, you assume that I condone who and what he is, and that I know something about the bomb that I’m not telling you. I don’t, and neither does Jesse.” She ran her hands through her hair. How in the world can he think that of us?

“My brother is a pawn in all of this,” she continued. “He’s no more violent than a butterfly, but you’ve already tried and convicted us. If we’d told the truth earlier, you would have sent Jesse directly to jail without asking a single question. He would have been guilty no matter how much we helped you, and you damn well know it.”

With her chest heaving, she stared at him, desperately hoping for some indication that she’d gotten through to him, but his handsome face was dispassionate, as if he’d pulled a sheet over his head. She didn’t know the man standing before her. This one had cut off all human emotion.

This was her worst nightmare coming true with painful clarity.

Physically, she might have left Harley, Pritchard, and every other aspect of her life in Alabama a decade ago, but she’d never faced those horrible monsters and defeated them. She’d been an idiot, a fool for thinking she could ever break free of her past. It would always be there, like a cancer that had gone into remission, biding its time before rearing its ugly head again.

Exhausted, she sat back on the chair, staring at a tiny smudge on the dark gray carpet. Gone were her tears, dried up by the fiery anger with which she’d delivered her speech. One that had clearly fallen on deaf ears.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like,” she said without looking up, “to have a past that so completely defines your future that no matter how much you strive to change it, or how hard and fast you run from it, it follows you everywhere?”

Several moments of silence followed, then Eric sat in the chair opposite her.

“Why exactly did you leave Alabama?” he asked. “And if it was so horrible, why didn’t you take your brother with you?” He eyed her with mild curiosity, the way a scientist observes a rat stumbling through a maze.

Why not? Outing more lovely bits of her and Jesse’s childhoods couldn’t possibly do more damage than Harley had already.