Page 95 of The Last Dance You Saved
She’d still been able to strike. This time, it had been at her cousin, but would the next strike be at me? Had she been the one to shoot the rifle? Or had it been Adam?
My wound ached. Had it been Theresa that night in Vegas? I tried to reassemble the hazy image of the three people who’d attacked me. The two holding me had been wide shouldered and muscled. The person who’d wielded the knife had been tall and muscular as well, but it could have been an athletic woman. I’d done what every arrogant man before me had done—I’d assumed it had taken another male to bring me to my knees.
Panic wafted through me. The sea of bodies Puzo and I had hired no longer seemed nearly enough to protect our families. Adam and Theresa would just keep coming until they’d put us both in the ground. Was the simple truth that it really was Puzo and me who were putting our loved ones in danger? Was that what Puzo had really meant when he’d insinuated this was all on me last night?
Right before my eyes, the man seemed to be changing. I’d made him the villain of my story, and now every comment he’d ever made was trying to realign itself in my mind. The warnings he’d given me in the past carried so many different angles now. I’d never like the man. He’d never like me. But in some weird twist of fate, it appeared we were momentarily on the same side of the battle.
I didn’t know what bothered me more. That my years of hate had been misdirected once again or that I might have to trust my enemy to get a resolution to this entire debacle.
My desire to send Sadie and Fallon away only grew.
But did I really believe Sadie would go on her own? She’d insist on standing next to me, just like she had all week. Just like she had right now, sneaking past Parker and coming out amongst the ugliness draped over the back of a truck bed.
What would it take to send her away?
Would it take me putting on hold whatever this was blooming between us? Would it take me telling her a lie? Would I have to tell her I didn’t want or need her after I’d just demanded all her last dances from here until eternity?
I’d do whatever it took to make her go.
What. Ever. It. Took.
And then I’d beg her forgiveness after it was over. I’d lay down my heart and my life in any way she wanted. But right now, I needed her to be as far away from me as was humanly possible, and not even the other side of the country might be far enough.
Chapter Thirty-one
Sadie
SAY DON’T GO
Performed by Taylor Swift
I felt Rafe pulling farther andfarther away with every second that passed. I stood next to him while the EMTs tried and failed to revive the man I learned was the same one who’d followed me to the ranch. I was there as Sheriff Wylee arrived and questioned Rafe and his men just as he had the night before. And I watched as Rafe told the truth and yet still held something back. Every question the sheriff sent Rafe’s way, he answered curtly, keeping his responses brief and to the point.
My spine tingled as he and Lorenzo and their men all echoed the same damn responses in a polished and practiced way.
Rafe and Lorenzo had been in an intense discussion when I’d approached. What had they said that had somehow ended with them drawing some strange truce? Was it the same things Lorenzo had told me when he’d brought me a glass of champagne? Or was it something more?
The wedding party, disrupted by the sounds of the sirens, started to filter out of the marquee. When Marielle came out, she was in tears, and Lorenzo apologized profusely before the groom led her away, all the while glaring at my cousin. Already unsettled, Lorenzo’s face turned nearly ashen as he watched Nero’s body being taken away in a black bag.
Wylee had demanded the guest list, thinking anyone on it could have been a suspect, before Lorenzo explained what Nero’s last words had been. And when I heard that Adam’s girlfriend was Theresa, I’d felt my legs go weak. Adam’s hatred for Rafe took on a whole new meaning, fueled by not only the wrongs he felt the Harringtons had committed against the Hurlys, but now Theresa’s personal vendetta against Rafe for sending her twin to prison.
In the dark, it was impossible to find and follow the blood trail Nero had left behind to the original crime scene, so Wylee had crime scene tape set up and said they’d be back at first light with more men and search dogs. Then, he followed Steele to Levi’s cabin to go through the video taken by the cameras they’d set up.
When Lauren led Fallon and Maisey back to the main house with Parker trailing them, Rafe demanded I go with them, but I didn’t. I waited at his side, hoping there would be a moment when he’d let the cold, commanding Rafe I’d first met slide away, and I’d see again the man who’d laughed at me, teased me, told me he loved me.
But even hours later, when the yard was empty, except for the crime scene tape and a sheriff deputy guarding it until morning, Rafe still hadn’t let go of the wall he’d reassembled.
He’d closed every window and door, and I couldn’t get past, no matter how hard I knocked.
Instead of stopping at his room in the main house, he all but dragged me up to my bedroom on the next floor. Once we were inside, I put my arms around him, pulled him close, and rested my head on his chest. I heard the discordant beat of his heart under my ear, loud, jagged, as if he was running a mile.
I almost knew what he was going to say before he did, not only because he hadn’t put his arms around me in return but because I’d felt him drifting away over the last few hours.
“I’m asking you for another favor, Sadie. I want you to take Fallon with you tomorrow. Get her as far away from this as possible. I don’t want her near me until we find Adam and Theresa. Once I’m sure I can protect her, I’ll come and get her.”
I lifted my head, resting my chin on his chest as I looked up at him. “You’ll come and get her and then try to vanquish me from your life.”
His teeth slid over each other. The grinding sound should have been almost impossible to hear, but in the quiet of the room, it sounded like an alarm. The clanging ring of a gate slamming shut.
