Page 143 of Vacation Friends

“I can come forward with the company,” he pleaded. “Say that you rightfully deserve to be the CEO. There are other ways to go about this.”

“You and I both know that’s never going to happen. You can say it all you want now, but as soon as you’re off of this cliff, you’re calling the police and telling them everything I just said.” She paused, something hardening in her gaze. “So walk.”

“What if I don’t push him?” Maddie asked. “Are you going to shoot both of us? Because it’s going to kind of be hard to pin all of this on me if I have a gunshot wound.”

“Unless I make it look as if it was self-inflicted.”

She really had thought this through. “You don’t have to do this.”

“But I do.” A grin curled across her lips. “You know what? I said I’d only killed three people. But it’s actually four.”

Adrienne smirked. She’d waited to share this part, hadn’t she? She was getting a kick out of it. But why?

“Who else did you kill?” Maddie’s voice trembled as she asked the question.

“I actually went to talk to Josh’s father once I found out that he was my father too,” Adrienne said. “He could care less about the fact I was his daughter. In fact, he dismissed me. That made me very angry.”

Maddie’s gaze swung back to Josh. His eyes widened as he stared at the gun in Adrienne’s hands.

“I watched our father die,” she continued. “I was there as the life drained from his eyes. Then I left, and I waited for his assistant to find him in the morning. Do you know what else? I didn’t even feel bad about it.”

“You little . . .” Josh began to lunge at her.

As he did, Adrienne stepped forward.

Before Maddie realized what was happening, Adrienne’s hands hit Josh’s shoulders.

He screamed as he flew backward. Then he disappeared on the other side of the cliff.

CHAPTER

SIXTY-FIVE

Maddie screamed as she watched Josh disappear.

Then, in an instant, Adrienne turned toward her, gun raised. The malice still remained in her eyes.

“Now to take care of you.” Adrienne reached into her pocket and pulled out something.

A needle.

No doubt full of drugs of some sort.

“You don’t want to do this.” Maddie took a step back, careful to head away from the cliff.

“But I do.” Adrienne smiled, her eyes gleaming with hatred. “Haven’t I made myself clear yet?”

“Adrienne . . . there are better ways.”

“Not everyone is a Goody Two-shoes like you are,” she said. “And look where it’s gotten you? Nowhere. You’re the laughingstock of everyone here. At first they thought you were a prude. Now they think you’re a killer.”

Maddie tried to glance over the cliff. She expected to hear Josh hitting the rocks below.

She hadn’t.

What if he had caught onto a branch or a ledge? What if there was still a chance he was alive?

Maddie stared at Adrienne’s gun. Then at the needle.

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