Chapter 26
The question was blunt, raw, and full of too many emotions that he’d forced himself to keep hidden from Remington for years.
Coming back to the bungalow to find her willing and ready to give herself to him, body and soul, was like walking into the fantasies he’d never let play out in his mind.
But it wasn’t a dream or a mirage. The second she’d dropped her towel, he’d lost all restraint.
Pressing her body against the shower wall as he found his home inside her.
The rain had deepened from a drizzling mist to a steady fall, scattering cool drops across their bodies as her moans ascended to the heavens.
I never loved Bobby like that. Like a wife should.
Like she’d loved Everett. Maybe still loved him.
He knew without a doubt that he had her back after all these years, even if he shouldn’t. But damn if that wasn’t enough for him.
That nagging voice in his head pointed out that something wasn’t right. This new reality didn’t make sense. The puzzle pieces didn’t just not fit together. They weren’t part of a matching set.
A woman who killed her husband in a crime of passion had to love him in ways so deep that his betrayal of cheating caused her to snap. A fury that explosive to stab him and the woman she’d probably caught him fucking in their bed had to be rooted in a devoted love.
That’s why Remington’s words and her actions didn’t align. They were out of sync. The question was, which was the lie?
He hated that it mattered. That he had to know.
And he damn sure hadn’t been prepared for what she said next.
“I’m not lying.” Remington crossed her arms tightly around her chest, hugging herself as she leaned against the dresser.
They were on opposite sides of the bedroom.
He stood near the door to the outdoor shower, propped against the doorframe.
His gaze slid down the body he’d ravished not minutes before.
She’d changed into a black maxi-dress that covered her entire body but couldn’t hide those curves.
Her hazel eyes pleaded with him as she waited for a reaction he couldn’t give. Not yet.
“I told you I didn’t kill some woman because there was no woman in the house to kill. It was just Bobby and me.” She insisted for the dozenth time. “Yes, I killed my husband. But I’m not some scorned, jilted wife who snapped. That’s not why it happened. You have to believe me.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe.” He stroked his throbbing temples.
That was true.
Nothing about this conversation, or where it would lead, changed a damn thing for him.
He was still going to get Remington away from the Palmchat Islands, set her up with a new life far away from here, and live the rest of his life by her side in whatever way she allowed him.
Bringing this up should’ve been pointless.
Except being inside her, feeling her climax around him, and the look in her eyes as she moaned his name, had indeed proven that everything between them had changed …
like she’d said. He couldn’t let another second pass without knowing the truth and how it reconciled with everything she’d done.
And more importantly, everything she’d said about her feelings for him.
What happened that night between Remington and Bobby? Why had she stabbed him fourteen times? And what was the story with the dead mistress?
“It matters to me.” Remington dropped her arms and took a step toward him. “You are about to walk away from a good life for me, Everett. So, yes, it fucking matters that you trust me and know that I would never lie to you. Especially not about this. Do you believe me or not?”
She didn’t know what she was asking of him.
The man who loved her could do what she wanted. Believe her in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary and never feel a twinge of unease about it.
But that’s not who she wanted to believe her.
She wanted the private investigator, and worse, the former DEA special agent, to tell her that she was innocent of the second crime the cops were accusing her of.
That was a hell of a lot harder for him to do.
His love for her compelled him to at least try. He prayed she wouldn’t be disappointed with the results.
He dragged his hands down his face, then said, “I need more details before I can honestly answer that question.”
“Ask me anything.” Her response was quick, but the panic behind her hazel eyes told him a different story. There were parts of what happened that night with Bobby she’d freely share, and others, she wasn’t so sure about. Those were the parts he had to know.
“Here’s what you don’t seem to get,” he began, hating the brutal harshness in his tone but knowing it was necessary. The man who loved her couldn’t do this. Couldn’t interrogate her. But the former special agent could.
She swallowed hard, gripping the edge of the dresser as she waited for him to continue.
“The St. Basil P.D. has built a strong case against you. One that doesn’t need the machete to send you to Tiverton for the rest of your life.”
She blanched at his bluntness. He kept going.
“There are saved texts proving Bobby’s infidelity for the entire time of your marriage on your phone, which is in police custody. You caught him in a foursome at his office days before he died. The cameras outside the building caught you looking devastated as you left.”
Her gaze dropped away from his. All the intel so far was true.
“Then on the night you killed Bobby, you parked your car on the dirt road used by the groundskeepers and sneaked into your own home.”
She wrung her hands, and he noticed for the first time that she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. Did she have it on when they escaped her home in The Bluffs before the cops arrived? When had she stopped wearing it?
“The cops believe Bobby’s death was premeditated. You found out that he was cheating on you at your home, and you went there to kill him and his mistress.”
She rubbed her neck and stared at the ceiling. “It’s a compelling story, but it’s not the truth. Well, not all of it is true.”
“What part is wrong?”
“I didn’t go home to hurt Bobby. I went there to try to save him.”
“Save him? From what?”
“The PC-5. Despite having proof that Bobby had lied to me for years about his involvement with the gang, I still wanted to warn him. Give him a chance to get away and avoid being killed. But that was before I knew the depths of all the damage he’d done.
” Her voice was lethal and cold, unlike anything he’d ever heard from her before.
The sound of a woman who could kill and feel no regret.
“I can’t say I’m surprised. We all suspected that Bobby still had one foot in Stingray and the other with the island cartel. It was almost an unspoken agreement that none of us would look into it any deeper. Let Bobby be … Bobby.”
“Being a hacker and a spy for the Marengos was the tip of the iceberg for the deplorable things he’d done in his life. Things that I couldn’t get past?—”
“Wait … how did you find out he was connected to the Marengos? That means he was part of Terranova,” Everett said, almost to himself.
It was a logical family for Bobby to be aligned with.
The Terranovas, more than any other PC-5 family, would benefit most from his exceptional IT hacking skills.
As the legal arm of the cartel, they were always in a position to need intel on their enemies and ways to discover or eliminate evidence against gang members who got caught by the cops.
“They were at the house when I got home. That’s why I didn’t go through the main entrance.
I wasn’t sure if I was already too late.
So, I parked along the service road and took the trail to the back patio …
” Her words faltered, and her gaze grew distant as if she was reliving the moment in real time.
“I heard them talking about how they wouldn’t save him from this fate … again.”
“Again. He was an arrogant and reckless bastard. Testing the patience of a dangerous cartel, putting your life in danger, and for what? More money. A little power.” His hands curled into fists at his side as he tempered his anger. “He didn’t deserve you.”
“Oh, it gets better,” her laugh held no humor. “The last time he was at risk for getting voted onto the death list was four years ago.”
“Four years?” Ice slithered through Everett’s veins.
His last DEA operation in Jamaica was obliterated four years ago.
Willful ineptitude of his superiors, including that ass Cedric Pedersen, had led the Jamaican cartel to uncover that he was an undercover agent.
He barely got out alive. Remington had fared far worse.
Their child had been murdered. Their future as a family utterly destroyed.
Everett’s chest tightened, muscles tensed for what she would say next. The bomb that he knew was coming.
She took a deep breath, then ripped the bandage off. “Bobby was the one who blew your cover with the Jamaican cartel.”
“What did you say?” He already knew. He’d heard every word.
But his mouth needed time to catch up with what his mind was doing, which was tearing through the years of grief and rage and blame …
some of it aimed at Cedric Pedersen, most of it aimed at himself, none of it, until this moment, aimed at Bobby Zaniewski.
He looked at Remington, the woman he loved. The woman Bobby had also destroyed with that single action. He understood why she’d done it. How uncontrollable rage had taken over and led her to stab Bobby to death.
His hands hung useless at his sides while every muscle screamed for motion, violent, bone-snapping motion, but there was no target left.
Bobby was in the St. Basil morgue. The bastard had knocked over the one domino that destroyed Everett’s entire life and his future with Remington.
She almost died because of Bobby. Their baby had died because of him.
And what was left of the love they’d shared had been scorched in the process.
“Remington …” He wanted to go to her, but couldn’t get his body to move. The quicksand of his mind held him still. None of it had to happen. He hadn’t made a misstep. The DEA hadn’t botched the op. He spent the last several years living alone, without the woman he loved, because of Bobby.
A single tear slid down her face.
Remington’s voice had gone reed-thin. “Bobby destroyed our child, our perfect life, our future. He didn’t care about hurting you, but he felt guilty about what happened to me.”
The thought came cold and certain. Bobby got what he deserved. He hated that he wasn’t the one to do it.
“So guilty that he came up with a disgusting plan to save me from my shattered life. He pretended to be the one man who would stand by me, the one I could count on to support me without asking for anything in return. All the while hiding that it was his fucking fault that my life burned to ashes in the first place.” She raked her hands through her hair.
“I was grateful that he married me. He built a safe home for us and was content with companionship instead of a real marriage. I thought he loved me that much. It was all lies.”
She stepped forward, one bare foot after another across the teak floors. When she reached him, the faint scent of her coconut soap enveloped him. She stroked a hand along his face.
“That’s why I did it,” she whispered. “And there was no mistress in our home when I ended his miserable life.”