Chapter 22
OLIVIA
C ravings are the worst, until I taste what I’ve been viciously longing for. Tonight, it’s a double chicken cheeseburger with a side of Parmesan fries at a small diner just outside of Ember Ridge. The waitress brings our milkshakes over. Mine is white chocolate, while Carlos went for strawberry.
He notices me staring at his glass while he uses a straw to slowly stir through the pink, milky concoction.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. It looks too pink,” I laugh.
“It’s supposed to be strawberry.”
“Still, it looks artificial.”
“Too pink,” he chuckles, shakes his head, and takes a sip. “Tastes like a strawberry milkshake to me. It’s actually pretty good. Wanna try it? ”
I shake my head and taste mine instead. “No, I’m good. Thank you for stopping. I know you have work in the morning.”
“It’s alright. I don’t mind. They make a mean bacon burger here,” he says, eagerly gazing down at his plate.
“I’m trying to make these splurges slightly less frequent,” I say.
“And we both know you’re failing miserably,” Carlos replies, holding back a laugh. “But it’s okay. You’re allowed. If the twins demand something, you have to give it to them.”
“The last thing I want is to start a battle of wills with these two straight outta the womb.”
“Then dig in.”
We talk for a while, the conversation ebbing and flowing through a series of seemingly random subjects.
The more I get to know Carlos, however, the less I like Jocelyn.
He’s a good man. Not perfect, nobody is.
But his heart is in the right place. And given how caring and honest he is, how hard he works, and how much of himself he invests in the people he cares about, Jocelyn is an absolute idiot.
Maybe, when this is all over, Chloe might have a shot. She deserves it.
“Chloe is doing better with each passing day,” I tell him at one point.
“Safety can do that to a woman,” he replies. “Plus, the fresh mountain air doesn’t hurt either. It’s nice and quiet up there. Sometimes, that’s all you need: to sit with your pain and heal.”
“She’s got plenty to heal from. ”
“I hope you’re not still blaming yourself.”
I look up, feeling his inquisitive gaze drilling into my face. “I try not to. Can’t really help it, though,” I shyly concede.
“Listen, Olivia, for what it’s worth, if her parents were looking into Marcus’s wrongdoings, then it had less to do with you and more to do with him covering his ass. The guy is clearly a psychopath. Chloe’s parents were just two more of his victims. None of this is on you.”
“The aiding and abetting part of my future indictment might contradict that statement,” I bitterly reply.
Halfway through his burger, Carlos frowns slightly and sets it down. He wipes his hands with a wet wipe, then takes another sip of his shake.
“I doubt there will be any indictment against you, Olivia. The support you’ve already given to this investigation is more than enough grounds to keep you out of any criminal proceedings,” he says.
“Besides, the guys will get you a good defense lawyer. And a good defense lawyer will argue, likely successfully, that you didn’t have criminal intentions, that you were under Marcus’s influence. You were scared of him and?—”
“Oh, I was definitely scared of him.”
“There you have it.”
“But I also did it to protect him because I believed him,” I remind Carlos.
“You were misled,” he insists. “Put that whole scenario out of your mind. As far as I’m concerned, everything you’ve been through was karmic punishment and more than enough.”
“We’re all human; we make mistakes, right? ”
“Right, and I’m telling you Chloe doesn’t blame you—at all.”
I give him a surprised look. “She told you that?”
“More than once; every time I go see her, in fact.”
“You’ve gone to see her without me?”
He chuckles nervously, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d bet there was a blush blooming in his tanned cheeks. “It is my family’s cabin, after all. And she’s a guest there. I have to make sure she has everything she needs.”
“Well, that is awfully sweet of you, Carlos.”
“I only do what I was taught to, Olivia.”
“Okay, tell me the truth,” I shoot back with a mischievous grin. “You like her.”
“Who?”
“Chloe.”
There it is. The blush is real; I didn’t imagine it. Carlos chooses to focus on his burger and fries instead, and I do the same, taking two hefty bites before I circle back around.
“You do,” I say.
“Do not. And even if I did, now is the worst time to even talk about it being a possibility,” he replies. “Chloe is recovering from a major trauma, a horrible tragedy. The last thing I want is to be the guy taking advantage of her fragile state of mind.”
“No, I get it. You’re being cautious and respectful.”
“You’re damn right.”
“And I respect that. ”
“Thank you.”
“Just so you know, it’s mutual,” I tell him.
His eyes snap up. “What?”
“She likes you, too,” I laugh.
“It doesn’t really matter,” he grumbles, “not right now, anyway, not with what we’re dealing with.”
I stare at him for a while. I can almost hear the wheels turning in his head.
Maybe he’s going over the moments he’s had with her, lingering gazes, near touches, words that carry more meaning now that he knows she likes him.
It’s sweet. And it reminds me of how I felt when it became clear that Dax, Leo, and Beck were serious about me.
All I want is for Chloe to experience that same kind of heat, that same kind of joy. A love like that is hard to come by. And it’s worth every sacrifice to keep.
“Okay, maybe it does matter,” Carlos concedes with a half smile. “It’s nice to know it’s reciprocated, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything about it, not until we take Marcus down.”
His phone pings. He frowns as he opens the message. “Wait, that can’t be right,” he says, scrolling through something that unsettles him more and more with each passing second.
“What is it?”
“I got a match for that fingerprint the guys sent me from today’s arson,” he mutters. “I thought it was odd that they wanted me to check public servants and law enforcement personnel databases, but it makes sense now. Shit.”
“What, Carlos? ”
The concern in his dark eyes is palpable. The humor and the lightness from earlier is all but gone. Something tells me our conversation is about to delve into an unsettling depth.
“The fingerprint they found on an internal part of the incendiary device belongs to Marcus Bennett,” Carlos says.
“No.”
The air leaves my lungs with a whoosh as the implications of his statement crash into me, like icy waves against the cliffs. Shivers run down my spine, the proximity of deadly danger suddenly strong enough to put the literal fear of God in me as I sit back and try to take a deep breath.
“Are you telling me that Marcus is your arsonist? The guy who’s been setting deadly fires across Ember Ridge for the past few months?” I manage.
“I’m going to have to check the partials collected from the previous arson scenes and compare them to this to confirm,” he replies. “But it looks like it, yes.”
“Oh, God. Then that means Marcus has been in Ember Ridge this whole time. I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. I’ll have to figure out a way to track his movements since you first arrived in Ember Ridge, Olivia. If he’s been around since you have?—”
“Then he knows where I am, what I’m doing, who I’m with.”
“Exactly.”
“And he’s just, what, setting fires and killing innocent people for kicks? I truly don’t understand,” I repeat as tears viciously prick my eyes .
I blink them back, desperate to keep my composure and my mind focused, because what we’ve just learned changes everything. I was never safe in Ember Ridge, not even with three valiant men like Dax, Leo, and Beck by my side, not even with Carlos’s support or my abundance of caution, for that matter.
“Maybe he’s biding his time,” Carlos surmises. “Working up to something worse.”
“Worse than killing innocent people in horrific fires?”
“He had no qualms about murdering Chloe’s parents. The sky’s the limit with this guy.”
That doesn’t make me feel any better. On the contrary, it sends my anxiety skyrocketing, which dampens my mood and pushes me into a dark place in my mind. I need to be more careful, especially now that I’m carrying two babies inside me. I need to be mindful of how I respond to external stressors.
But how the hell can I do that when I am now painfully aware that Marcus could be around every corner?
Watching. Waiting.
“I need to tell the guys,” Carlos says, then proceeds to forward the results to their phones. “And I need to get you back to them, safe and sound.”
“What if he’s watching us right now?” I whisper.
He glances out the window. It’s dark, except for the distant streetlights and the neon beams above the diner’s sign. We see a few parked cars, including ours, but nothing out of the ordinary. Marcus could be out there. Hell, he could be anywhere .
“We’ll take another route into town,” Carlos decrees, “just to be safe.”
“Nowhere is safe anymore,” I sigh.
“I’m still armed and trained to deal with this stuff, Olivia. I need you to take a deep breath and calm down for me. We’ve got this.”
I hope he’s right.
I want to believe him, I really do. But looking back, I’m starting to think that my original idea to leave Ember Ridge wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
Marcus is here because of me. He’s hurting people because of me. And he’s not going to stop until he has me back under his control.
Or worse, until I’m dead. Because if Marcus can’t have me, no one else can.
The rest of the drive back to Ember Ridge is quiet, rife with tension.
Carlos doesn’t need to tell me that he’s worried, I can feel it. I can feel it deep in my bones, on top of my own fear. Nothing feels safe anymore, regardless of what he says, despite his reassurances.
“Take another deep breath,” he tells me, both hands firmly gripping the wheel.