Page 78 of Healing the Heart

I slid my arms around his middle and rested my temple on his chest. Maybe I had overreacted; perhaps something could come from this.

“Trust me,” John replied.

“Okay…” I nodded.

* * *

Arriving home at about ten that night, I only thought about a warm shower and bed. I was past the point of being tired. I closed the door behind me, dropped my keys on the table…then heard a gun click.

Frozen where I stood, I watched someone flicker on a light, and West emerged from the gloom holding a silver gun in one hand. My eyes flickered from the gleaming gun to his smug smirk and haughty eyes.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Sit down. We have a lot to talk about,” he said, gesturing with the gun to my couch.

As if I were a marionette and he was pulling my strings, I took three jerky steps to the couch and sat. My hand clenched on my thighs; the urge to form a fist and slug him tingled through my veins.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked. “And how did you get into my house?”

“I don’t think you’re in a position to be making demands, are you?” he asked. “Sit and open that, then press play.”

I looked where he was gesturing and saw a tablet. Taking it, I pressed the power button, and it opened to a media player. Pressing play, I watched…myself. It was John and me under the bleachers from that night, and my face flamed at seeing his hand on my crotch, pleasuring me. A dozen questions blasted through my head simultaneously, but the only one I could say was. “Why did you record us?”

“To get the last nail in Maxwell’s coffin,” he sneered. “See. Hours ago, an associate of mine was at his ranch, injecting a certain cocktail into every bag of feed and trough of water, and got to his herd with poison darts. He’s done, and so are you.”

My heart skittered to a stop. “So, you did poison those calves?”

“Me, dear, no.” he snorted. “I would never do something so plebian. If anything, it was a trial run.”

My teeth ground as I looked back to the recording and saw that it had changed. Instead of me and John kissing—as I remembered it to be—the man was peeling my jeans off and unbuckling his belt.

My jaw dropped.

I sat there, frozen in ice, watching the two—who certainly were not John and I—have sex on the wall. The actors were clever, with the man hiding his face and the lady’s hair covering hers, but anyone would think it was me and John wrapped up in illicit sex.

“You…” I couldn’t find the words. “…fucking sonofabitch.”

“I’ve been called worse.” He shrugged.

I dropped the tablet like it was a hot iron. “That was not us.”

“It wasn’t?” he cocked a brow. “Sure does look like it to me…and everyone else will think so too when I decide to leak it.”

“Every…one?” I felt horror race down my gut and bile shoot up the back of my throat.

“Well, yes, the principal at your school will see it; the investors Maxwell managed to take from me will see it and drop him like the piece of shit he is,” West replied. “I imagine his dead wife will see it from beyond the grave too.”

“Now, hold on,” I spat. “That’s crossing the line.”

“Do I look like I care?” He rolled his eyes. “But you can stop it... by packing up, leaving town, and never contacting Maxwell again.”

I ground my teeth. “That doesn’t guarantee you won’t release any of the other copies you have stashed away.”

“No…” He grinned nastily. “It won’t. You’ll have to trust me. Won’t you?”

“I’d rather stick my head in the middle of a hungry lion’s mouth,” I said. “Than trust a big snake like you.”

“Well then,” he said, reaching for his phone and clicking a number. “Get the file and start to upload it. It’ll take two minutes…good.”

I didn’t know if the man was bluffing, but I couldn’t let him see my fear. Sharks like him could smell blood in the water. He casually took the tablet, punched in something, and then turned it to me to show a countdown clock.

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