Page 53 of Jett in Jeopardy

Still, being here, back with Grier and Sawyer, felt good, peaceful, and as close to coming home as I could remember.

“Does anyone else want coffee?” Sawyer asked, nodding to the kitchen.

“Oh my god, yes,” I said. I’d had coffee with my powdered eggs and limp toast for breakfast this morning, but it had tasted like watered-down mud.

“I’ll have one, too,” Grier called out.

Sawyer nodded, then shifted his gaze to me. “Stretch out on the sofa and relax. You look tired.”

“I will,” I told him before he turned and headed to the kitchen. I just needed to replenish a little of my energy that the trip here had drained from me.

It didn’t help that I was exhausted. I never slept well when sleeping in a bed other than my own—Brody’s having been the exception—and the thin blanket and flat hospital pillow really hadn’t helped in that regard.

I finally managed to lift my legs onto the sofa, propping my back against one of Oliver Mackenzie’s many rust-colored throw pillows and the arm of the couch. Sawyer returned to the living room, awkwardly holding three steaming mugs of coffee, giving Grier, who had settled in the nearby armchair, his first before passing a mug to me.

I gripped the mug as best I could with one hand, the splinted fingers on my left making it all but useless for now. Sawyer shoved the coffee table closer to the couch, so I could set the cup down and pick it up without having to get up before he dropped onto the empty cushion at the opposite end of the sofa.

Silence fell over all three of us as if we didn’t know what to say to the other. I knew they had questions, and after everything that had happened over the past five months because of me, I owed them an explanation.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out instead.

Grier frowned. “For what?”

“For bringing Simon into your lives—our lives.”

Grier’s cast was gone, his weekly trips to physiotherapy all that remained of his fall down the stairs, but I still remembered what he’d looked like afterward. The memory made my stomach churn sickly.

“Noneof this was your fault,” Grier said, quickly. “You know that, right?”

I wanted to tell Grier that I did know that. Hell, when he looked at me with those earnest, puppy dog eyes, I wanted to give him whatever he asked for, but the truth was, Simon would never have bothered him or Alistair or even Sawyer if it hadn’t been for me.

“Sure.” I sounded about as convincing as I felt.

“How did you know this guy?” Sawyer asked. “Why did he target you?”

Thatwas the question I’d been dreading. I didn’t like to talk about what happened with Gregg Hargood when I was feeling my best, and I definitely wasn’t feeling my best. Still, I had to tell them about Gregg, what he’d tried to do to me, going to the police and the others who had come forward, and Gregg going to jail. I told them both everything.

“Simon was probably around fourteen when his father went to prison. I think he blames me for what happened to his father.” I lifted my coffee and drank deeply, doing my best to ignore the way my hands were shaking.

Grier’s expression had turned unusually stony. “He blames you because his father is a disgusting pervert? That’s makes sense.”

I smirked a little. It was rare to see Grier so fired up. Normally, he was the voice of reason among the rest of us.

“He probably focused on you because you were the first one to come forward,” Sawyer said. His expression had darkened considerably.

“Probably.” It made about as much sense as anything else. I took another drink of coffee from my mug so I could avoid making eye contact. “I never thought anything that happened back then could have been connected to the fire or the break-ins. If had, I would have said something sooner.”

“Why would you have thought one had anything to do with the other?” Grier asked. “Do you think he went to Bayside because heknewyou went there?”

“He didn’t say, but it would have been a strange coincidence if it had happened by accident.” Cold wrapped around me like an icy blanket, and I swallowed hard to dislodge the knot forming in my throat. Just how long had he been watching me, tracking me?

Grier leaned closer, resting his elbows on his knees. “Why did you agree to meet him alone? We would have gone with you.”

I snorted and instantly regretted it. Pain gripped my nose and shot up to my forehead. I winced and waited a moment for the agony to ease. “I didn’t want you guys anywherenearhim. Besides, I was there to get him to confess and record it with my phone. Otherwise, if I went to the police without proof that he’d been the one fucking with us for the past five months, it would have been my word against his.”

Sawyer leaned back against the couch, propped his sock-clad feet on the coffee table, and shot me a wry smirk. “At least if the police can’t tie him to the fire and everything else he did, they’ll get him for assault.”

“When I met him in the cafeteria, I’d been trying to get him to admit to stalking me, starting the fire and breaking into the house, so I could record him, but he saw right through me and wouldn’t say anything to incriminate himself. Then when he blindsided me in the parking lot, he’d been furious I’d even tried, like it was an insult to his intelligence or something. But the recording app on my phone was voice-activated, so when he lost his shit and started yelling at me, he triggered the app, and it recorded everything he said—he admitted to everything.”

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