Page 39 of Her Silver Fox Firefighters
“Sorry, fellas. I really am. She’ll be at the station. I need to let Devon PD know that we have her.”
All we can do is watch helplessly as Carlos escorts Olivia out of the house and down to his squad car, its presence drawing some of the more curious neighbors to their windows and doors to see what is happening.
My stomach contracts into a hard lead ball as I try to process the situation, wondering if the Olivia we know is even real.
Fraud. Embezzlement. It just doesn’t make sense.
12
OLIVIA
I’ve no doubt this is all Marcus’s doing.
I don’t know why I’ve been lying to myself over the past month, making myself believe that I could actually be free of him, that I wouldn’t have to pay for all the things I did while I was under his grip, his influence. But Leo is right. The past always has a way of catching up with you, doesn’t it?
“I’m trying to understand what made you do all those things,” Carlos calmly says, sitting across from me, a metal interview table between us. He’s going over my file, at least half of it filled with lies, but who’s going to believe me? Carlos put the cuffs on first and asked questions later. “Your actions hurt a lot of people, Miss Fairchild.”
“You don’t understand what’s happening,” I reply. “None of this is real.”
“I’m real. I’m sitting right here, aren’t I?” he says. “This is your file, isn’t it, with charges pending, details of your criminal activity, witness testimony? Looks pretty real to me.”
“Then why are we even talking? Why isn’t Devon PD taking over? I’m sure they’re dying to get to me,” I snap.
He leans forward, a hard look drawing deep shadows across his handsome, clean-shaven face. “Because Dax, Beck, and Leo are my close friends, and I can tell that they’re into you, Miss Fairchild, really into you, more than they’ve ever been with anyone else before you, more than they ever were with Jocelyn.”
He pauses then, and I catch a tinge of regret in his voice. There’s untold history there. On any other day, I would’ve pressed him on the issue, but I’m in no position to ask such questions. Not now, not here.
“You’ve been bamboozling them, haven’t you?”
I shake my head vehemently. “Never. We’re close. I care about them. They made me feel safe. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“What did happen exactly? I mean, how’d you end up here in the first place? You were running away from Devon, obviously.”
“I didn’t run far enough, apparently,” I mumble, looking away from him.
“What did you do back there, Miss Fairchild?”
“I fell in love with the wrong man, that’s what I did, and now he’s pulling the strings, eager to get me back so he can do a hell of a lot worse than anything he did before!” I cry out, tears filling my eyes. “You’re not going to believe me anyway, so what’s the point?”
Carlos takes a deep breath and goes over my file once more. “The point is that I’m not stupid; I can read.”
“What do you mean?”
“A few things here don’t make sense. You had a clean record,” he says. “No criminal activities whatsoever despite your upbringing. You were practically raised by the streets, weren’t you? Bounced around from one foster home to another.”
“No need to remind me,” I mutter.
Because the streets are where Marcus plucked me from. I thought I’d been granted salvation. Little did I know at the time that it was merely the beginning of a different kind of nightmare. Maybe I could tell Carlos about it. He doesn’t seem as much in a hurry to ship me back to Devon. Not yet, anyway.
“But I swear to you,” I add, hoping to impress this one truth upon him, “I never meant to hurt Dax, Beck, or Leo in any way. I care about all of them, and I really thought we could make it work.”
Oh, God, I think I’m going to be sick. The queasiness unfurls in the back of my throat with an unpleasant, bitter taste. The room starts spinning, and I break into a cold sweat. I’ve never experienced anything like this before, and the way my body responds to the stress scares the crap out of me.
“Miss Fairchild, I don’t want to doubt your intentions here,” Carlos says. “I’m just trying to bridge the gap between the clean kid I see in the beginning of this file and the criminal mastermind that’s being described at the end of it.”
Maybe Carlos can be trusted after all. Ember Ridge is so far away from Devon. What are the odds that Marcus’s influence made it all the way out here? I look at him, observing his calm features. His tanned skin and soft brown eyes evoketranquility and gentleness. His jawline and stacked shoulders speak of strength and security.
No wonder he’s friends with Dax, Leo, and Beck. They must be made of the same cloth.
