Chapter 25
BECK
W ith one eye on my phone, checking for updates from Leo and Dax, I sit beside Carlos as he fades in and out of consciousness over the course of a few hours.
The warrant for Marcus’s arrest has just gone nationwide, making it twice as hard for him to move around without getting picked up somewhere along the way.
I listen to the steady beeping of the heart monitor, watching Carlos’s chest rise and fall beneath a pale blue hospital gown.
There’s a nasty-looking black and blue bruise stretching along the left side of his face.
Small, white bandage strips cover his nose—the airbag did a number on his septum, by the looks of it.
His lip is split and slightly swollen, though healing.
It’s the subdural hematoma on his brain that has the doctors concerned.
Finally, he comes around.
“Hey, buddy,” I say with a gentle smile. “Take it easy. Slow breaths. ”
“I woke up before, didn’t I?” he manages to say, his voice raspy.
I help him drink some water through a long straw and give him a moment to clear his throat while the cool liquid soothes the irritation. “You woke up, yeah,” I reply. “You’ve been in and out for the past few hours.”
“The car,” Carlos says, frowning as he turns his head to look at me. “We were coming back to Ember Ridge.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“My head hurts.”
“It’s going to hurt for a while. You banged your head pretty good, and the doctors are keeping a close eye on you. You have a subdural hematoma that’s concerning them, and they’re trying to treat it with IV medication before they consider other, more invasive measures.”
He closes his eyes, and I think he might be out again, but then he starts to talk. “Olivia was alive,” Carlos says. “We were run off the road.”
“We figured as much when we found you in the car last night.”
“Last night? How long have I been out?”
I check my watch. “About sixteen hours.”
“Fuck. I need to be out there, looking for her,” Carlos says, and moves with the intent to get up. He quickly gives up, realizing he’s in no condition to even turn his head too quickly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”
“Brother, calm down. There’s a lot of people out there looking for her already, Dax and Leo included,” I say. “But I need you to tell me anything you can remember, anything at all. The smallest detail could help.”
Carlos closes his eyes for a moment, groaning from the pain.
“Alright. There’s not much to tell, though.
We were coming back from the cabin. I took the south road.
Out of nowhere, a car rams into us. Once, twice.
I tried to get ahead. Olivia was going to call you, but we got jostled and she dropped her phone. ”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, talk about bad luck,” he mumbles.
“The third bump knocked us off the road and we slammed into a tree. The airbags deployed and caught me off guard. I could hear Olivia screaming, but I couldn’t see her anymore.
She kept saying, ‘Marcus, please, don’t.
’” He pauses and gives me a devastated look. “Fucking hell, Beck. He’s got her.”
I shake my head slowly. “Not for long, he doesn’t,” I say. “We got the sheriff’s department involved. Wilkes has been a huge help. Got us an arrest warrant for that fucker. The search is ongoing, Carlos. We’re going to find her.”
“Marcus Bennett is a fucking psychopath. Those fires?—”
“We know. We’re still trying to figure out his purpose, his endgame.
Most importantly, we’re trying to figure out where he’s got her and how he plans on leaving the state.
There are roadblocks everywhere. Wilkes is bringing in the state troopers to assist. There’s a DA coming out of New York to handle the legal process. ”
“Not Jocelyn?” Carlos seems confused.
“Nope. She’s been AWOL since last night, right after we told her what happened. Something was off about her. Is there anything we might’ve missed? ”
He shakes his head. “Not a clue, though I’m not thinking too straight right now. I’m not sure I’m as reliable a witness as I’d like to be. Dammit, Beck, I let you all down.”
“No, Carlos. Marcus came for Olivia because he was determined to get her back. There’s nothing you could have done.
” I try to soothe his nerves with an uncomfortable truth that I’m still trying to deal with myself.
“He’s been in Ember Ridge for quite a while.
He picked last night to pounce for a reason. ”
“Still, I?—”
“You did everything you could, man. Nobody is blaming you, I promise. Look at the state you’re in. You damn near got yourself killed to protect her.”
Carlos takes a deep breath, wincing from the pain. “Shit. I cracked a couple of ribs in the crash, didn’t I?”
“Doc said you’ll have to go easy while they heal. Small breaks, semi-fractures, I think he called them.”
“Still hurts like a mother?—”
“I know, brother. I had my share in Kandahar. I was decommissioned for more than a month. I was crawling the walls, drenched in my own sweat and misery. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone,” I say.
The sound of approaching footsteps is loud and familiar enough to draw my attention to the open door. Carlos follows my gaze, and we both watch Jocelyn as she warily comes into the room, narrowly escaping a brush with a couple of rushing nurses while a code blue blares somewhere down the hallway .
I pick up on the accelerating beeps of Carlos’s heart monitor as Jocelyn approaches the foot of his bed.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” she tells him, tears filling her tired eyes. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit,” he bluntly replies.
“Where the hell have you been?” I ask her. “There’s a DA coming in from New York.”
Jocelyn scoffs and closes her eyes for a second, letting the tears flow down her pale cheeks.
“I’m going to get disbarred for this. I’ll probably go to jail, as well.
Maybe I’ll get time served, if I’m lucky.
But I don’t think I’m that lucky since the bastard went the extra mile to frame me,” she says.
Carlos and I are equally confused. “What the hell are you talking about?”
As soon as Jocelyn starts talking, we’re faced with a deluge of revelations, a stream of chaotic confessions tying her to Marcus Bennett in the most sinister way.
I sit and quietly listen, stunned, and wondering how long before the rage takes over, how long before I snap her head clean off her body for what she did.
“You have to understand, Marcus Bennett reached out to me not long after the second fire. He only wanted to keep an eye on Olivia at first, to monitor her movements, to find the most discreet way to extricate her from your hold,” she says.
“He knew you wouldn’t give up on her. He also knew that you had enough dirt on me to keep me away. ”
“What did you do, Jocelyn?” Carlos asks, his voice trembling with anger .
When our eyes meet again, I see the guilt, the all-consuming devastation as she breaks down, sobbing and struggling to stand as she leans on the hospital bed.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. He… he set those fires for fucking kicks,” she says. “He wanted to keep the three of you busy, to test your response times, to watch each deployment leave Olivia vulnerable. My God, Beck, Marcus Bennett is a fucking monster. I’m so sorry.”
“Jocelyn, what the fuck did you do?” I reply, repeating Carlos’s question.
“I gave him tips, intel. I told him where she’d be, where you’d be. The other day, I noticed Carlos with his cabin keys?—”
Carlos cuts her off, recalling the moment. “You asked me about it.”
“Yeah, and I followed you. I watched you pick Olivia up,” she sighs.
“Did you follow us to the cabin, too?”
She nods slowly. “Yes, I knew the girl was staying there alone.”
“Did you tell Marcus about her?” I ask, my blood running cold.
Jocelyn looks at me, thoughts processing in real time as she shakes her head. “No, I didn’t see the point. He only wanted to know where Olivia was. That’s it. I put a tracking app on Carlos’s phone a few weeks back?—”
“For fuck’s sake,” he groans, about to pinch the bridge of his nose before he realizes how much it’s going to hurt .
“I know. I was desperate to get Olivia out of Ember Ridge, to get rid of her. Forgive me, I had no idea what kind of monster I was dealing with,” she says.
“Marcus was tracking us,” Carlos concludes. “He tailed us.”
“He picked up your signal,” Jocelyn replies. “You know the rest.”
“Where is he now? Where’s Olivia?” I demand.
“She’s alive. He wants her alive, at least for now.”
“For now ?”
“I don’t know, Beck. He’s off his fucking rocker. I thought it was just part of his personality or something. But once I saw the evidence and you were able to tie him to the arson fires, things clicked in my mind, and I started putting two and two together.”
I exhale sharply. I’m torn between outrage and holding back bitter laughter as she tries to explain her reasoning. Yet no matter how she turns the issue over, I can’t make heads or tails of it. I cannot find any sense in a jealous woman who just doesn’t know when to fucking quit.
And it’s her jealousy that put Olivia back under Marcus’s control.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” I ask her. “Do you have any fucking clue how much danger Olivia is in? And for what, Jocelyn? What in the world possessed you to think that Olivia’s absence would lead to us getting back together?”
“It was stupid, selfish. I’ll pay for it, I know.”
“You’re damn right you’re going to fucking pay for it, but hear me out,” I say, standing up and glowering down at her.
“ If anything happens to Olivia or our unborn children, I swear to God, Jocelyn, I will spend the rest of my life making yours fucking miserable. You’re going to beg me to kill you by the time I’m done with you. ”
“I can help you,” she says, despair taking over.
“I know where he’s keeping her and how he plans to get out.
He asked for my help and blackmailed me into submission.
But I’d rather rot in fucking prison than help him again, not after he set those fires and killed those people.
I can’t. I told him I’d help, but I’m here instead, okay? I’m here, talking to you.”
“Don’t expect a medal, Jocelyn. Don’t expect mercy either,” I bitterly reply.
“I’m not expecting anything. I’m just trying to help, to stop him before it’s too late.
If Marcus has his way, he’s going to roll back into Devon and into an armed lockdown situation.
It’ll be worse than anything you’ve ever seen.
The man is ready to burn everything, himself and Olivia included.
He’ll kill anybody who gets in his way, anybody who tries to get close to them. ”
“He is off his rocker,” Carlos mutters. “Completely out of control.”
“Yes, he’s unhinged. And you need to get to him before he leaves the county,” Jocelyn says. “You have to stop him.”
Fully aware that she’s past redemption and nowhere near close to the mere concept of forgiveness, Jocelyn does the smart thing and takes a deep breath, nodding slowly as she comes to terms with the shitstorm she just brought upon herself.
For the first time, I sense a bit of accountability .
“You need to tell us everything you know about Marcus, his movements and his intentions,” I say.
Carlos gives me a hard look. “Dax and Leo need to be here for this.”
“I can call them,” I tell him.
“No, I need to deputize them. If Marcus is half as bad as he seems to be, our deputies won’t be enough to take him out. We need real boots on the ground, and I’ll take my chances with former Marines any day.”
I see the sense in Carlos’s request. Slowly but surely, a plan begins to form in the back of my head as I shift my focus back to Jocelyn.
“You. Start talking. Now.”
In the meantime, my thumbs move quickly across the screen of my phone as I text the guys and explain the importance of meeting us here with Carlos and Jocelyn. My blood is boiling. My heart beats faster with each passing moment.
There’s a chance we’ll be able to get Olivia back, safe and in one piece. But there is still the possibility of failure, too, of losing the woman we love, the mother of our children, the love of our lives. And I refuse to accept that possibility.
I would rather fucking burn a thousand times in the fires of hell than lose Olivia.