Chapter Thirty-Four
Jack had caught up with her. Again.
She’d known he would, hadn’t she? She’d known he would that night she ran off with his rental car, too. He was never more than one step behind her, and now he had Carson with him, who was bleeding and crying a little bit and shaking, and Jack’s eyes burned when they met her gaze.
“Ava,” he said. “I can explain.”
“Jack,” she said bitterly. “No the fuck you can’t.”
“I can,” he said. “And you’re right to be angry with me, you are. But first, I can help you. With them.”
“Why?” she snapped. “So you can kill me after? Who hired you to do that? Who wanted me out of the way, Jack?”
Jack shoved Carson forward. “He did,” he said. There was a hard look to him, a set in his jaw that said there was no way Carson was walking away from this.
Jack had worn that look on his face when Ava had been kidnapped. He had worn that look when he was standing over Devin’s body, gun still outstretched in his hand.
“He wanted his brother dead,” Jack told her. “And he hired me to do that. And then you brought them some spectacularly bad press, so he asked me to get rid of you, too. That’s why—”
“Shut up,” Ava told him. “Shut up.”
She couldn’t hear this, couldn’t let him back in. Couldn’t get her hopes up, again. Not when he’d done this to her.
The three Jacobson siblings were watching them with expressions that varied from keen interest (Clara) to horror (Carson). Cale was crying quietly, twisting his hands together.
He had scooted farther down the rock wall, as far from Carson as he could.
“Did you?” he asked his brother finally. “Did you hire this man to kill me?”
“Take off your beard,” Ava told Jack irritably.
If he was going to be such an asshole, if he was going to be such a liar, he could at least still be worth looking at.
“Really?” Jack stared at her. “Right now?”
“Well, you got up here, didn’t you? What do you need your disguise for at this point?” She’d taken off her disguise, flung that stupid wig into the wind because she wanted Cale Jacobson to know that an unemployed ex-librarian from Iowa was the reason he was going to stop breathing today.
Jack looked as if he couldn’t quite believe she cared about something like this right now, of all times, but Ava was going to die soon, or at the very least go to prison for the rest of her life. So she might as well enjoy the little things. Like Jack’s stupid face.
“Cale was just about to confess,” she said, lifting the phone Cale had discarded. She held it up to him, using his face ID to get into the phone. “Weren’t you, Cale?”
“I was,” Cale said, his eyes darting to his brother again. “But, uh, wouldn’t it be better if he confessed? Since he’s been—you know, plotting my death?”
“I don’t care about that,” Ava said. “I’m literally pointing a gun at you. It’s what you did that I want to talk about.”
She opened his social media account, something on a video-based app where he had a blue check mark next to his name.
He had a verified account with about thirty thousand people following—following him just because he was wealthy, for fuck’s sake.
She started a Live, holding up the phone in one hand and the gun in the other.
“Tell everyone what you did, Cale.”
Cale began to tremble.
Jack stepped toward Ava, so she swung the gun and pointed it at him.
“Ava,” he said.
“Cale, talk,” Ava said.
Social media would take this video down, but with as many followers as he had, someone out there was probably screen-recording—or they’d start as soon as they realized what they were seeing.
Someone was always watching, always recording, always seeing. Jack had taught her that much.
“I’m—I’m Cale Jacobson,” Cale said into the camera.
“Cale,” Clara said warningly.
Ava turned the gun back toward Clara, who promptly shut up.
“I’m the CEO of Jacobson Health,” Cale said. “And I—I’m guilty. I—I did do it. I know there have been rumors swirling since the investigation started, but I did it. I made deals I shouldn’t have, with information I had, and I’m sorry—”
“Not that, you dumbass.” Ava cut him off. “I don’t give a fuck about the insider trading. Do you think any of us do? I want you to talk about the people you’ve hurt. The people you’ve killed.”
Cale stared at her, open-mouthed. “I—I don’t know what you mean.”
He should. He should know that he’d hurt people. He should know that when his company refused to pay for the care people needed, he was killing them. He was ripping apart families.
He had ripped apart Ava’s whole world.
For a moment she was on the love seat again, clinging to Ari’s hoodie. She was standing on her porch alone, reading the approval letter from the insurance company the day of Ari’s funeral. A tear slipped down her face, and she swiped it away with the back of her gun hand.
Jack winced—probably at her absolutely rampant disregard for gun safety—and she settled the barrel in the direction of Cale again.
“Ava, please,” Jack said again. “We can still go. We can still get out of this.”
“I’m sorry,” Cale babbled. “I don’t know who I hurt. I don’t know what you mean.”
“You should,” Ava snarled. “You should know that a denial is as good as a death sentence. But you don’t know that, so I have to teach you. You killed my wife. And now I’m going to kill you, Cale Jacobson.”
The app glitched, the Live ending abruptly. Enough people had reported it, probably.
“Ava, we need to go,” Jack said.
“I’ll triple your payment.” Carson stood, hands up, advancing slowly toward Jack. “Kill her, and kill Cale, and I’ll triple your payment.”
“Carson.” Cale’s eyes widened, another tear trickling down his pale face. “Why?”
“Because he wants your job,” Ava said, but Jack hadn’t responded to Carson’s offer, and Ava was suddenly aware of just how little she could do to stop Jack if he decided that now was the time to kill her. “Or some other stupid reason. Cale, stand up.”
“Do we have a deal?” Carson’s face was also deathly pale, but he was advancing, oh so slowly, toward Jack.
Jack hadn’t moved. His face was an unreadable mask, not a speck of emotion visible. “We have a deal,” he said, and Ava’s heart cracked in two for the second time. “But I want half of that payment now, and I want that helicopter to take me out of this country.”
Carson nodded, moving slowly to pick up his phone.
“Jack,” Ava snarled. “You fucking liar. You asshole. You—”
Every word out of his fucking mouth was a lie.
Carson had his phone, had his bank app open, was showing Jack.
She could kill Carson, but in that time, Jack would snatch her gun. It would only take seconds—she’d seen him in action enough times to know how good he was. And if she wanted Cale dead, that wouldn’t work.
He was ruining everything.
She wanted to put both hands on his chest and shove him hard, prove again to herself how immovable he was. She wanted him to grab her hands and stop her and use that low, gravelly voice of his to tell her things would be all right. She wanted this version of him not to be true.
And that was when Clara slammed into her, taking Ava to the ground.
They scrambled for the gun, rolling over each other across the hard concrete, Clara’s hands clawing at Ava’s, and the gun went off, a bang louder than anything Ava had ever heard, and then—and then—
The gun was knocked across the floor and Cale picked it up, leveled it at his brother, and fired. Just once.
Carson crumpled to the rooftop and lay there, eyes open, staring at the sky.
Cale dropped the gun with a clatter, his eyes wide.
Ava and Clara were still on the ground, frozen at the sight.
Jack stood above them, his gun still in his hand, his face a mask.
“Ava,” he said. “Get up.”
Clara rolled away, snatching the gun off the ground and leveling it at Jack. “No,” she said. “Get it done.”
Jack startled, something shifting in his face, as if things, at last, made sense.
“You,” he said softly. “Not Carson. You.” Almost to himself, he murmured, “A generous sentiment. I knew you sounded familiar.”
Cale’s eyes widened, and then his gaze fell on Carson’s body, his open, staring eyes. “No,” he said. “It—I thought it was Carson? Wasn’t it Carson? Wasn’t it Carson?”
“You’re an idiot,” Clara told him coldly. Her eyes were fixed on Jack.
Clara, Clara was the dangerous one and Ava hadn’t seen it.
Cale was trembling now. “Why was he making deals? Why was he—”
“Shut up,” Clara said. “Our brother was trying to save his own skin. Something you’ve never been smart enough to do.”
“But I didn’t do anything,” Cale insisted shakily.
And Ava had heard enough.
She staggered to her feet. She had no gun, no hope, no plan. No future, either. It was time to end this, for Ari, for herself, for everyone Cale and his family had hurt. She charged at Cale, her body slamming into him, carrying him backward toward the edge of the building.
He opened his mouth to scream no, and then he hit the railing and went over it, Ava toppling with him.