Page 78 of Taking

“Ciarra!”

“Addilyn? What the hell? Where are you? I’ve been desperate to get ahold of you. Holy hell, woman!”

“I’m fine…everything’s good.” My voice shook, and I laughed over the tension releasing in my stomach.

“Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with this, Addilyn. Seriously. It’s fucked up. Shit like this doesn’t happen around here!”

Anxiety clenched my insides again. “What are you talking about?”

“The news! It’s all over every major headline, on every station.”

“What happened?”

“Devon. He strangled Jenny. Says he doesn’t remember doing it…”

Ciarra went on and on while I stared at the fire, processing the only lines I’d heard from her mouth.

Devon strangled Jenny.

He didn’t remember doing it.

Gideon.

I swallowed hard, my eyes stinging.

We hadn’t made any plans for revenge for either of them. He’d set something in place for the sheriff and his father. That was it.

If anyone wanted revenge on Jenny, it would have been me…I was the one she’d betrayed by sharing the story I’d told her about the night after Gideon had beat Devon to a bloody pulp.

“Jesus,” I whispered past the nausea in my belly, my response shutting Ciarra up.

“Where are you? Tell me you’re innocent in all this.”

“I am. Swear to God,” I managed to croak out. “I-I’m not anywhere near Anchorage.”

But Gideon doubtless was. “What happened again?” I asked, hoping my cringe didn’t come through in my voice.

Ciarra repeated what she’d already spewed, telling me about the run-down motel where the owner had found Devon passed out on top of Jenny. She’d been tied up. Gagged and blindfolded.

Both of them naked with evidence of a fuckfest Devon Bradshaw wouldn’t ever be able to deny, no matter how much he screamed about his innocence while being dragged away in handcuffs from the scene.

One newscaster even got his fiancée on video, splotchy-faced from crying, stating about Jenny being Devon’s ex-girlfriend who she’d had to get a restraining order against.

She didn’t understand. Was heartbroken.

“Is Gideon with you?” Ciarra asked.

“Yes,” I didn’t hesitate to lie to my best friend, even though doing so turned my insides out.

I’d been burned once before by the very whore who never woke up from her night with Devon—and probably Gideon if I had to guess.

I couldn’t trust someone with the truth in such a way ever again. Doing so put more than my own well-being in danger.

She let out a heavy breath. “Seriously, this is fucked up.”

“You’re telling me.”

Twenty minutes later, after assuring Ciarra for the third time that I was fine, I hung up and sat in stifling silence.

---