Page 70 of Everyone Is Lying to You

I glance behind me, curious if she knows which room I just came out of, hoping she doesn’t. I don’t want her to know where Katie is, where Alice is.

“What a night,” she says, then sighs and rubs her temples. “That didn’t go as I planned.”

I manage a strangled laugh, but a chill runs down my spine as our eyes lock.

“I really wanted to spend some time with you tonight, Lizzie. I was hoping we could talk more.”

“Maybe tomorrow.” I glance nervously around her. I want to leave.

“I’ll be here. I’ll find you.”

I have no doubt about that.

“See you then.” I’m walking away, running almost, but suddenly she’s right there at my heels. I can feel her breathing down my neck.

“I need to tell you something, Lizzie. I read your story. And it’s terrible what Gray did to his wife, how he treated her all those years. I’ve watched it. Grayson Sommers was a true son of a bitch and he deserved everything he got.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Rebecca

I can’t control myself any longer. I reach over and grab the wheel, yank it as hard as I can to the right, sending us flying off the road and into the soft dirt shoulder. Marsden’s elbow crashes into my lip.

“You’ll pay for that.”

He slams the brakes so hard I can hear the bones in the back of my neck crack when my head whips forward.

Marsden opens the driver’s-side door and runs over to me, but I have just enough time to do what I need to do. I reach into my back pocket for the burner phone Olivia bought me at Walmart, and without taking it out, I press the button that will dial the last number I called.

Kiki.

I keep it open and tuck it smoothly in the back of my underwear, sliding it down as far as it will go in the hopes he won’t see it. I only need a minute, maybe less. It’s the only way I can tell anyone what’s happening to me.

Before I know what he’s doing I’m being dragged out of the car.

“Where the hell are we going? Are you taking me home to the ranch? Marsden, answer me.”

Those were the only three things I needed to reveal before the phone fell into the dirt and I kicked it under the truck.

My hands are pinned behind my back with a zip tie. Marsden shoves me back into the passenger seat and binds my ankles and then replaces my seat belt. I don’t know why he didn’t just throw me in the bed of his truck, other than I think he wants to toy with me as we continue the drive.

When we’re back on the road he can’t stop talking.

“Your children deserve a mother who can truly take care of them. It’s clear that you can’t do it. It has been for some time. Gray knew it, I think. He prayed about it. The whole church was praying about it. Your children need role models who are strong in their faith, strong in their morals. You’ve never been strong. Veronica is a strong woman. That’s where your children will be. My wife will keep them safe. She knows how to raise morally sound children of God. Thank god Gray chose Veronica and me as their godparents. It will make all of this so much easier.”

“Oh my god.” I gasp, my thoughts running in panicked circles. He’s right. I’d fought Gray on that decision years ago, but I also didn’t have a good substitute for his best friend and his best friend’s wife. I had no family, no friends I was in touch with. I’d agreed, thinking it was such a long shot. Both of us wouldn’t go at the same time. It wasn’t possible. But I had planned to switch it. I had the new document all drawn up and ready. It said that the kids would go to Kiki and Juan Carlos if anything were to ever happen to us.

I’d planned to make Gray sign it using the confessions I’d hoped to get out of him. But obviously that didn’t happen and the document remains unsigned. Mars and Veronica will get our children if something terrible happens to me tonight.

“It’s so fitting,” he says. “I’ll get to raise all of my children under one roof. It’s what the Lord always intended. We just didn’t know it at the time. But he works in mysterious ways and he always provides exactly what we need. They’ll miss you, I’m sure. But they’ll forget. Kids do. And Veronica will be such a wonderful mother. The mother they deserve.”

What does Veronica know about any of this? Was she complicit in Marsden offering my husband his sperm? As a mother, I can’t believe she could let me go through what I did. I bite down hard on my lip to keep myself from screaming because I can’t have him hit me again. I need to be as present as possible, as strong as possible, to deal with whatever comes next, because the only way this man is taking my children from me is over my dead body and I won’t let that happen.

I have to control myself. I know that, but somehow the words slip out. Maybe they’ll catch him off guard. “I’m surprised you feel that way after what happened with her and Gray.”

He nearly drives off the road then. I knew it would screw with him. It did that night in the barn, the night when he murdered his best friend in cold blood. When I watched him kill Gray, when my plan led to my husband’s murder.

It was my fault. I put the two of them together in the barn that night. I needed their confessions. I needed them on tape. The emails weren’t enough. Emails can be faked. Words can’t.

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