Page 9 of Dead to Rights
Sucking in a breath through her teeth, she spared Noah a short, dismissive glance. “He was perfect. I watched him for weeks. His habits, the way he moved, the things he didn’t even know about himself.” One side of her nose curled, and her lips pulled back in a sneer. “You wouldn’t understand.”
With every word, Finn’s irritation deepened into something darker, colder. “You didn’t give me a choice.”
Karleigh leaned in, eyes soft and persuasive. “Some things are too important to risk. I couldn’t let you slip away, not when you were meant to be mine.”
The silence that followed felt charged, crackling with the uncomfortable, yet undeniable, truth. He was bound to this stranger, his fate rewritten by her obsession, and nothing in her expression hinted at regret.
“He’s not yours,” Noah snapped. “And this isn’t a fucking petting zoo,” he added, batting her hand away when she reached for Finn again. “We don’t touch things that don’t belong to us.”
“He does belong to me! I love him!”
“That’s not love.” Folding his arms across his chest, Noah cocked an eyebrow at her. “It’s called stalking. And murder. Both are illegal in all fifty states.”
“I didn’t murder him,” she argued. “I gave him a better life.”
“Then how did he end up here?”
Karleigh gritted her teeth and huffed out a breath through her nose. “That was an accident.”
Finn took another step away from her, a warning growl building in his chest when she tried to follow. “Youaccidentallykilled me.”
“It was taking so long for you to wake up.” She sounded quite put out about that, as if Finn had done it purposely to annoy her. “I couldn’t stay, but I hid you really well,” she continued, her body language stressing how much she needed him to believe her. “In the barn under some hay.”
Noah looked more than a little incredulous at the details. “Then how did he die?”
“Because it’s not a barn,” Finn answered, the pieces falling into place, even if the bigger picture still looked a little messy. “It’s a stable.”
He had finished construction on it a few weeks before his death, and the skylights had been one of his favorite features. He’d also been just months away from the grand opening of his new riding center.
“I burned, didn’t I? Under the skylights.”
“I tried to make it back before sunrise,” Karleigh insisted. “It really was an accident.”
“Was there anything left?”
“I…I don’t know.” She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and glanced at the ground. “I couldn’t go back once the sun came up.”
Finn sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. In a lot of ways, it would be better if he had been reduced to ashes. At least then his ranch hands wouldn’t stumble across his charred remains.
He just hoped the stable hadn’t caught fire.
“Hold up.” Noah lifted a hand and waved it back and forth in front of him. “You hid a newly turned vampire under a glass ceiling? And it never occurred to you that it was a bad idea?” He looked at the female like she was something he’d found growing in the fridge. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I was coming back for him!”
“And how did that work out?”
“It wasn’t my fault!”
“Enough!” Finn barked, tired of their bickering.
Noah’s anger on his behalf felt good, and it would be all too easy to wallow in self-pity. He couldn’t change what had been done, though, and grieving for the past wouldn’t help him now.
“How did you get here?”
Karleigh blinked up at him, her brow knitted in confusion. “I died.”
“I understand that, and I’m sorry to hear it.” Whatever damage she had caused, at some point, she had been a victim as well. “How did you die?”
