Chapter 6
Ivy
The town car we’re in winds its way toward the prison where Nicole is locked up. Butterflies ricochet in my belly at the thought of coming face to face with the woman who made my life a living hell.
Rogue twines his fingers with mine. “Are you okay?”
“The doctor said I was fine,” I remind him.
He had our personal doctor waiting on the tarmac when we touched down in L.A.
before the sun this morning. She’d checked each of us over, taking our vitals and checking for symptoms that might mean something serious was wrong.
She’d told us beside a few bruises we had been very lucky and chastised us for not calling emergency responders.
And then we’d waited… with my nerves growing more taught by the minute.
“That’s not what I meant.” He presses a gentle kiss to the scar on my wrist. It’s achy and I must have been absentmindedly rubbing it like I sometimes do when I’m anxious. “You haven’t seen her in almost two months. Not since she was denied bail.”
With Alec in the wind, the judge had deemed her too much of a flight risk. She’s to stay in custody until her case is ready to be heard. How long that might take is anyone’s guess at this point.
I hate that it might be a long time before she’s sentenced. She murdered my father. Embezzled from my inheritance. Emotionally and physically abused me my entire life. But with her behind bars I thought I’d be able to feel safe.
She shouldn’t have been able to reach me, but even though she obviously can, there’s nothing I have that she can possibly take.
All the money my father left is set up in a trust to be used to help people.
But she seems determined to ruin my happiness and the feeling of safety I’ve worked so hard for.
“I prayed I’d never have to see her again. ”
“One last time before the trial.” Rogue squeezes my hand. “And only for a few minutes. We get in and we get out. Then the next time you face her it will be to watch her be sentenced to life in prison.”
“I hate that I’m giving her what she wants by coming here.” Attention. Room in my head. The ability to rattle me. I swore she wouldn’t get that chance again.
“Can we get breakfast?” Dizzy asks.
Rogue and I both glance at her when her belly rumbles.
“What?” She raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t get to eat dinner last night.”
“You had your tongue in that agent’s mouth before the food was brought out,” Rogue says. “Care to elaborate?”
“Well… I… It was because…” Dizzy looks at me with desperation, “because he was sexy.”
Now that I know she killed Alec, her odd behavior makes more sense. But only a little. Kissing the FBI agent seems like a strange choice if she doesn’t want to be noticed. And the way her nose wrinkles like she thought it was gross tells me that whatever it was it was all about West.
Rogue suppresses a chuckle. “Fine. Don’t tell us.”
“All right. I won’t.” Dizzy turns her face to the window, acting like her attention is caught on the car next to us. “But the least you could do is get a girl something from the dollar menu.”
Rogue snorts. He leans forward to speak to Davis and the driver. “Let’s make a detour to the closest drive-thru.”
“Thank you.” I make myself comfortable in the crook of his arm.
Even though I am not in the least bit hungry and couldn’t fathom eating something with my stomach all tied up in knots, the way he looks after my sister like she’s his family means the world to me.
I just hope that doesn’t change when he finds out her part in Alec’s death.
I’m going to have to tell him once this is all over and the wedding is a blissful memory. The cherry on top of the craziness that has been this weekend.
We stop to get breakfast muffins, hash browns, and frappes.
Dizzy gets a strawberry shake that she holds between her knees while she sandwiches two breakfast muffins around a hashbrown.
She practically has to unhinge her jaw to fit in a bite, and the moment she does she starts bouncing and wiggling like her world has changed for the better.
I nibble one corner of the hashbrown and then discard it. Even that sits heavy and greasy on top of my apprehension.
Pressing my palm to my lower belly while I sip iced caffeine through a straw, I stare at the passing scenery.
Tomorrow, we get married. Either at the ranch like we planned, or in Vegas.
Nicole can’t stop it. She can’t. She would need to have hired Davis to do her dirty work and that’s not possible.
He was with us when we were run off the road.
“We’re about ten minutes out,” Davis says as though he was aware I was thinking about him.
“Thanks.” I discard the rest of my frappe, my nerves trying to come up my throat. Nicole isn’t a free woman. She isn’t running around the prison like it’s home. She’s behind bars. When we see her, she’ll be accompanied by guards. It’s going to be okay.
Having finished her breakfast, Dizzy has taken to watching the signs that indicate where we’re going. She plays with a lock of her hair, running it across her upper lip repeatedly.
It almost makes me smile. We were supposed to have car trips like this when we were kids. Family vacations. Christmas with the grandparents. Summers at the beach. Not trauma that turned one of us invisible, and the other into a killer.
Now we have time for those trips. With the people we love, who are our family. Later with our own children who will never need to know what we went through. God, is that possible for Dizzy?
The way she was talking last night... there are more skeletons in her closet than I’m ready to learn about.
What happened to her to make her that way? We’ve led such different lives at the hands of the Hawthornes. It’s hard to imagine what she must have gone through living under the roof of the man who held our mother prisoner for seventeen years.
A tall chain link fence comes into view. Along the top, a warning and promise is spelled out in rolled barbed wire. A guard tower sits high above the low concrete buildings. A couple of prison guards watch from up top as our driver pulls up.
Dizzy fusses with her dress. It’s creased from travelling, but the way she stares at the building in front of us.
.. What is she more afraid of? Coming face to face with another Hawthorne?
Or walking in and never coming out? Does she think she belongs in a place like this for the crimes she’s committed?
“Orange is not my color,” she murmurs. “Do you think I could order a pink jump suit?”
The last one then?
Rogue shakes his head as he climbs out of the car. He reaches back to help me out. “Your sister might want to watch what she says here. They might take her seriously.”
“I’ll warn her.” I try not to let the fact that I’m aware she is serious show.
A man in a suit waits at the gate. Rogue managed to get us visitation where it will only be the three of us, Nicole, and the guards.
Rogue squeezes my hand before moving to greet the well-dressed man. They exchange pleasantries.
I reach for Dizzy’s hand.
She flinches but then her fingers curl with mine. I’m stronger with her next to me. I hope she feels that way too.
“Do I need to tell you to be careful?” I whisper.
“It isn’t my first time behind enemy lines,” she says.
I’m not sure what she means by that. Whether she’s visited a prison before, been locked up, or is just talking about growing up a Hawthorne.
“We’re going to go in and see Nicole with our own eyes,” I tell her, though it’s less for her benefit than it is mine.
Saying it out loud will hopefully make it less daunting.
“We’re going to find out what the hell she wants so badly that she keeps threatening me from behind bars.
And then we’re going to leave and never look back. ”
“We need to bring up the goat,” Dizzy says.
I bite my lip, feel the sting in my chest. When we were run off the road Rogue had told me about the goat, with Dizzy filling in the details like she was telling a horror story.
They hadn’t wanted to alarm me, or any of our guests, until they’d worked out who was behind it and dealt with them, but after our scary ride had ended up with the car flipping several times it had come out.
It’s most likely not Nicole.
There’s a good chance the poor goat lost its life in a bid to scare Summer off Heart Ranch and back to L.A.
But there’s still a chance that it could be a part of Nicole’s plan to get me here. A way of grabbing other people’s attention, only Dizzy was the one to find it. And West, Rogue, and Rebel decided it was better to keep it under wraps.
I steel my spine and lift my chin. Nicole may have gotten me to come all this way here, but I’m more determined than ever to marry my man. I won’t let her… or anything she pulls… stand in our way.
We will work out who is helping her, and we’ll make sure they’re dealt with.
I will walk down the aisle to the Etta James song that Rogue and I chose.
I will stand in front of the man I love and say the words that have been in my heart since the moment I fell in love with him. “I’d like to see Nicole now.”
“Follow me,” the man says.
We’re led through a checkpoint where they view our identification and make sure we’re not carrying anything prohibited. I hold my breath when they take Dizzy aside for closer inspection.
Rogue talks to the man in the tweed suit jacket while they wait for us. Their voices are too low to carry, and they stop when we join them.
“Ready?” Rogue asks.
“Yes.”
“This way.” The man and a guard escort us to the visitor’s area where we’re told to wait at one of the tables.
Rogue sits beside me while Dizzy prowls the edge of the room. Arms hugged around her middle. There’s a wild look in her eyes. She’s unsettled like always, but it’s different. Quiet. The kind of quiet that makes other people jumpy.
“I’ve never seen her subdued like this,” Rogue says in a hushed tone.
“She has her reasons,” I say. This isn’t the place nor the time to go into them.