Page 121 of After All The Wreckage
I swallowed hard at how she’d read my mind.
Tears hit my eyes as relief overwhelmed me again. She’d made it. I’d been so certain when I’d left Cherry Bay that I’d be okay, but I hadn’t been so sure about her. I pulled her to me for a moment, resting my face in the curve of her neck, breathing her in. Allowing myself to acknowledge that she was still there.
I wanted to yell at her for coming on her own.
But even more, I wanted to tell her I loved her.
And I would. Just not now in the middle of a crime scene with blood surrounding us.
Instead, I lifted my head, pushed the button, and called my brother.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Rory
LOVE YOU THIS WAY
Performed by Aly & AJ
As Gage helpedhis mom into the back of an ambulance parked at the warehouse loading dock, my emotions bounced around erratically. Relief should have filled me at knowing the people who’d done this to Mom would answer for it, but instead my chest burned with anger, and my mind swam with unanswered questions.
While I was damn glad Gage had Demi back, it was also a brutal reminder that I was never going to hold my mom again. She was gone. They’d taken her away in a body bag just hours ago, and the guilt of that still hung heavy on me. I fought another influx of tears.
I felt eyes on me and turned to find Dad and Sheila shooting looks in my direction as they talked. A bitter taste coated my tongue. If they’d trusted me, maybe tonight would have endeddifferently. I made my way over to them and handed my gun to Sheila, and she accepted it with a gloved hand.
Then I turned to my dad and demanded, “How long did you know Chanel was behind Mom’s accident?”
“Only for a couple of months,” my dad said.
“Only!” Frustration welled.
“Your mom called me the day of the crash. She knew Dunn was my client and wanted to give me a heads-up about her suspicions that he and West were tied to the Lovatos. So, when I saw the police photos and the tire marks, I knew what had happened wasn’t an accident.”
“Your dad called me, and I hooked us up with a multi-agency task force that’s been working on taking down the Lovatos. That’s where G came in. We’ve been following West and Dunn for a while now,” Sheila said.
“Why did you put Chanel’s file where I’d see it once I signed into your system?” I asked.
Dad’s lips twitched upward. “You logged in?”
I nodded. This seemed to make him happy in a way I would never have suspected.
“Two months ago, one of the task force members took a picture of Chanel talking to West at a coffee shop. They were just waiting in line to order, and it might simply have been a coincidence?—”
“But there are no such things as coincidences when working a case,” I finished with Mom’s words burning through me and pricking at the back of my eyes.
G sauntered up to us with the tablet Chanel had dropped in her hands. “We’ll get this over to the task force and see if we can unwind the last things she did. But we really needed her alive.”
G glared at my dad.
“She had a gun aimed at my daughter,” he said as if that was the end of the discussion.
“You didn’t have to kill her!”
There was something beneath the words, and I realized G had her suspicions about my dad. Dunn was his client, which meant he’d been a breath away from working with the Lovatos himself. Maybe she thought he was working both sides.
“Chanel said she removed any trail to her boss and instead was pointing everything at my dad,” I told them, not knowing if that would make things better or worse but unable to just sit back and let Dad get blamed for this.
“She knew I was on to her,” he said. “That’s why I left you those photos with the encoded number. In case something happened to me too, I knew you’d find them.”
