Page 117 of Break My Fall

Gray looked away from Faith and caught her eye. His smile sent warmth flooding through her.

Carlos pointed his water bottle in Gray’s direction. “He’s one of the good guys too.”

“I know.” She didn’t know Carlos, but she’d been wanting to talk to him, and now was as good a time as any. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For the warning to run.”

“Ah.”

“How did you know they were coming for me?”

“Once upon a time, I would have said it was luck. Now? I think it must have been from God. I was in the right place at the right time and realized they’d decided to grab you.”

He rested his elbows on the porch rail. “I had a bad feeling from the time Johnstone told us he wouldn’t be at the wedding. Johnstone left town plenty of times before. The man likes the finer things in life, and he likes to see the world. But he’d never announced his absence before. Most of the time, no one knew he’d been gone until he was back. It screamed setup to me. But I didn’t know how it would play out.”

He took a sip of water and when he spoke again, the intensity of his tone sent a chill racing over Meredith’s skin. “What I did know was that if they got their hands on you, Johnstone would have tortured you until you told him where Amara was, and then he would have killed you.”

Carlos sucked in a breath and blew it out hard. “I owe you anapology, though. I didn’t realize how many pieces were moving on the chessboard. I thought if you hid in the woods for a bit, it would all blow over. I didn’t expect Johnstone to use the opportunity to clean house.”

It had taken several days to sort it all out, but eventually the pieces had clicked. The men who’d been coming after her were Johnstone’s men. They’d stolen her car and sabotaged Gray’s. If she and Gray had tried to leave in his car, they would only have made it a mile or so before they would have been on the side of the road and easily accessible. That had been the original plan, but Gray’s refusal to take his car had scuttled that.

The men hiding out in the hut had been the Atlanta drug dealers. Johnstone had been none too happy about the way they’d killed the women who were brought to them. So Johnstone planned to get payback by using them as cover. Johnstone’s people planned to plant evidence that showed the Atlanta drug dealers had captured and killed Meredith and Gray, and then blown themselves up cooking meth.

It would have been a pitiful story anywhere else, but Johnstone had Kirby in his pocket. And the arrogance to believe he could get away with it.

Johnstone’s crew timed the explosions to go off during the reception, not knowing that Meredith and Gray would be in the woods. They’d had no way to predict that anyone would be there to see and hear the fight, and later to find the bodies.

And neither Johnstone nor Ledbetter had anticipated that blowing up the hut would have the unintended consequence of dislodging so many corpses. It probably wouldn’t have happened in dry conditions, but the explosion had triggered a small slide, and once the bones were visible, it was like opening Pandora’s box. Chaos had ensued.

“Do you think it’s over?” Meredith voiced the question that had haunted her for weeks. “Really over?”

Carlos held his hands out. “I think it’s over for Johnstone and Kirby. And for Ledbetter. As for the drugs and trafficking? That’s never really over. The Atlanta gangs will find someone else to help them move their product. But I don’t think it will be in Neeson. At least, not on the scale it has been.”

“So for you, does it feel like a success?”

“It feels like we won a battle, but the war rages on.” Carlos patted her hand where it rested on the porch rail. “But for the people of Neeson, I think it was a success. They’ll have new oversight, new law enforcement, new structures. Some of them will go to jail for their involvement. Most, hopefully, will take the opportunity to start fresh.” He shoved away from the railing. “As for me, my fresh start begins with a bowl of that chili, some of those brownies, and an evening with people who don’t want to shoot me.”

Meredith grinned. “By all means, don’t let me stop you.”

Two minutes later, Faith joined her on the porch. “I’m going to be nosy. Is Carlos okay?”

Meredith waved her hand back and forth. “According to him, he is not. But I think he will be.” This must be her day for thank-yous. “I haven’t had a chance to say thank you yet, but I hope you know how much I appreciate what you did for Neeson.”

“I did my job.” Faith sipped a Cherry Coke and looked around them. “Did you hear the latest theory about Kirby and Johnstone?”

“No.”

“There’s a rumor going around that the thing that tied them together was a criminal act from fifty years ago. Something about a friend of theirs who took a beating and never recovered.”

“I know that story.”

“The rumor is that at some point, Kirby found out who didit, killed the men, and hid the bodies. Then, like an idiot, he told Johnstone, thinking Johnstone would be thrilled.”

Meredith frowned. “He wasn’t?”

“Oh, he was, but not in the way Kirby expected. He used the knowledge to blackmail Kirby, and that started the chain of events that led us to today.”

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