Chapter 21
The words landed on her like a blow, and for a minute Jewel couldn’t move.
I didn’t kill her.
Her eyes shifted to the door. Three steps. She had noted it when she entered, as she always did, and she observed it again now, gauging the distance with the automatic part of her brain that had kicked into a higher gear the moment those words left his mouth.
Trevor appeared to read exactly what was on her face. He leaned back, intentionally creating distance between them, and lifted both hands from the table in a small, open gesture that clearly communicated, I am not a threat to you.
He left his hands where they were for a moment and then lowered them slowly. “I’m sorry. That was a bad way to start. I just needed you to know that before I said anything else.”
She forced herself to breathe. Made herself look at his face, and at the open, tired expression on it, and the lack of anything that looked like danger. “Okay, so tell me what you meant.”
He recited his story flatly, without drama, the way you said something you’d had a long time to think about and finally got a chance to tell.
“Viv staged it all. Everything—the disappearance, his horse, all of it. She planned everything and pulled it off. She wanted people to think Cole had harmed her. She was furious at him, and she had been for a long time. He wouldn’t marry her or commit to her the way she wanted, and when she threatened to leave, he said he’d fight for the kid.
Something in her just snapped, and she was determined to destroy him.
It wasn’t just about leaving anymore—she wanted to make him pay. ”
She held his eyes. “And you helped her.”
“Yeah, kind of. I helped her leave anyway. To be honest, I knew she was trying to frame him, but at that time, I didn’t care.
We’d just reconnected, and I was still in love with her.
She told me he was treating her badly, not the way a man should treat the woman he loves.
I thought she deserved better, so I told her to leave the kid, and we’d run off together and live happily ever after. ”
He’d told her to leave the kid. “Is that what happened?”
He shrugged. “We drove down to Tennessee and found a place to stay outside of Nashville. For a while, it was good. Really good.” He looked at her directly, his eyes almost pleading.
“You have to understand that she’s not a bad person.
It’s just that she’s never had to worry about anything or anyone but herself.
Vivian has always been the most important thing in Vivian’s world, and she just naturally expects everyone else to revolve around her, whether they want to or not. ”
“How long did you stay together after you ran off?”
“A few months. Things were fine at first. We were settling in, traveling around a little. I was improving, and we were reconnecting and having fun trying to figure out what came next.” He paused for a long moment.
“But she never stopped talking about Cole. She was obsessed with finding ways to learn what was happening back home. I felt like every time we talked, the conversation kept circling back to him. What he was doing, whether anyone suspected him, and if they were investigating him. It got old really fast. I didn’t sign up to spend my life helping her ruin his. ”
“Did she ever go back to Otter Creek?”
“Yeah. About four months after we first left, we both did. She said she wanted to see the kid, and I believed her. I felt bad about telling her to leave him, and it made sense that she’d want to make sure he was okay.
I kind of hoped that maybe seeing her son would remind her of what really mattered, and she’d finally give up the crazy vendetta she had against her ex.
I hoped she’d come clean to everyone and let the guy go on with his life so we could get on with ours.
But the kid wasn’t the reason she came back. ”
“What was it?”
He leaned back and exhaled. “At first, I think she really just wanted to see the damage she’d done. See how bad it looked for him, and whether anyone suspected him. But then she saw you and found out you were taking care of the kid and looking into what really happened. She got really mad.”
The trailer was very still around them, and blood rushed to her ears.
“She didn’t like that I was there?”
He let out a bitter laugh. “That’s putting it mildly.
She lost her mind over it. She’d left him, walked out on her son, and tried to fake her own death.
She put a lot of time and planning into making Cole Blackwell look like a murderer.
Then some woman shows up, and she couldn’t stand it.
Even if she didn’t want him anymore, she wasn’t about to let anyone else move in on him. ”
He drained the last of his water and kept going.
“That’s when she got serious about everything. She found a motel outside of town—nothing anyone could link to her—and stayed there. She rented a car under a fake name and avoided main roads whenever possible. Sometimes I’d drive it when she needed eyes on something and couldn’t get close herself.”
“Was it a dark sedan?”
“Yeah. You saw it?”
She nodded. “More than once.”
“She had me sit on the road and watch for when you were coming and going. She wanted me to report your schedule, who you were with, and where you went. I’m not proud of it, but I did it.
However, she watched her ex on her own, and I don’t think he ever knew.
Viv knew the area and those trails better than anyone.
She’d grown up riding them, and she knew every corner of his property.
She could easily move through those woods without being seen, and she did. ”
Jewel remembered seeing the figure in the trees the night she and Cole went for a ride. The feeling she’d experienced more than once of being watched on the trail, of eyes on her back in the dark.
“So she was watching us? On the property and in the woods?”
“Probably more than you realized. I told her she was losing herself to this obsession, that it was going too far. But by then, she wasn’t really even listening to me. She didn’t care about anything except making him suffer.”
He crushed his empty water bottle between his fists.
“She really wanted to get rid of you. Scare you off. She even planted some evidence, hoping you’d find it and convince yourself he’d hidden it there after he killed her.
At the time, I didn’t realize it, but I think it was a bracelet she made me get back for her.
I drove her to Blackwell Creek and waited on a dirt road while she slipped in.
” He looked up defensively. “But I never set foot on his property.”
“How did you get the bracelet? Ashley said she had it.”
“Yeah. Viv told me that Ashley had borrowed it just before we took off, and she wanted it back. She said Ashley didn’t deserve to have it, that she’d proven she wasn’t a true friend.
She told me that Ashley probably had stashed it in a drawer and wouldn’t miss it anyway.
I let myself into Ashley’s place while she was out and found it right where Viv said it would be.
” He paused to take a deep breath. “I swear I didn’t know what she was going to do with it.
Thinking back on it, I probably should’ve figured she’d use it to try to set him up, though. ”
He shook his head, got up, and grabbed another water.
“It wasn’t until later, after we’d left, that she told me what she did. That was the moment I knew I was finished. I broke into someone’s house to get her prized possession, and she’d used it to try to frame an innocent man. I was out.”
“Did Vivian ever tell Ashley she was back? That she was okay and alive?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.
Viv didn’t trust her. She said that Ashley talked too much and she’d never be able to keep it quiet.
She was watching her, too. She saw you and Ashley spending time together and convinced herself she was switching sides.
That she was cozying up to the woman who was moving in on her son and her man. ”
Jewel looked at him and saw the suffering on his face. If nothing else, she believed that Trevor Montgomery really had loved Vivan. “I thought you were her man?”
He let out a derisive snort. “So did I. But I finally realized she cared more about getting back at him than about building a life with me. Who knows, maybe she did love me at first. Or maybe she was just using me the whole time. It doesn’t matter anymore anyway.
After I found out what she did that night, I told her I was finished.
That whatever she was doing, she’d have to do it without me, because I was out and I meant it. ”
“Because she planted her bracelet?”
His fists clenched tightly around the water bottle. “Because she had me break into Ashley’s house and then lied to me about what she wanted it for. I gave her that bracelet when we were teenagers. Spent a month’s worth of winnings on it. I thought it meant something to her.”
“I’m sorry.” She looked away, not knowing what else to say.
When she looked again, the half-smile had reappeared, quieter than it had been outside in the noise of the venue.
“I left her, went back on the circuit, and met Karen. She’s not like Viv, but she’s honest, uncomplicated.
Good. She doesn’t need to see someone suffer so she can feel good about herself. ”
“Do you know where Vivian is now?”
He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out his phone, scrolled for a moment, then turned the screen toward her.
It was a picture, and there was no mistaking Vivian Hayes, standing in front of what appeared to be a rodeo arena under bright western sunlight.
Her red hair was loose, her arm was around a tall man wearing an announcer’s vest, and her face was open and laughing with the natural ease of someone exactly where she wanted to be.
“I think it was taken last week. She’s out in Nevada with Cody.
He’s an announcer on the western circuit.
” He took the phone back, looked her in the eye, and his next words were said with quiet emphasis.
“Vivian is fine. She’s healthy. And she’s not coming back.
She got what she wanted out of Otter Creek.
She hated it there, so she burned it down and walked away.
She’s busy building something new, and she won’t look back. That’s just who Vivian Hayes is.”
Despite the warm, stuffy trailer, she felt cold goose bumps prickle her arms. “What about her son? What about Beckett?”
His expression shifted, and he looked like she’d finally asked a question that genuinely troubled him.
“Yeah, that part bugs me, too. She’d talk about the kid sometimes.
But not the way a mother talks about a kid she misses.
It was more like how some people talk about a pet they had to rehome.
In that kind of fond, distant way. Like he was a sweet thing she once took care of, but he was in the past.” His face became grim.
“I have a niece about his age. I couldn’t imagine never seeing her again.
But Viv just moved on. Just walked away.
I don’t think she ever truly understood he was a real, whole person who would grow up, remember her, and wonder where she went. ”
She thought about Beckett sitting on Cole’s lap at the birthday table, chocolate frosting at the corner of his mouth, leaning back against his father’s chest. She remembered his face when he blew out his candles.
She recalled his arms around her neck in the yard after the snake, shaking but brave and completely trusting.
Then she thought about Vivian in that photograph in Nevada, laughing in the sun with a rodeo announcer, not looking back.
She picked up her water bottle, found it empty, and set it down again. “I’m going to need those pictures and anything else you can find. Dates, locations, anything that shows she was anywhere other than at the bottom of a ravine somewhere at Otter Creek.”
He nodded without hesitation and picked up his phone again. “I figured you would. I’ve got more than that one. I’ve been keeping them, just in case. I always figured someone would eventually come asking. I just didn’t think it would take this long.”
“You could’ve come forward on your own.”
He looked down at the phone in his hand.
“I could have. And I probably should have. But I stole a mother away from her kid, helped her fake her own death, and then let an innocent man get looked at sideways for almost a year.” He set the phone face up on the table between them.
“I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to have this conversation. ”
She looked down at the phone, at the photographs waiting on it, at the clear, simple, devastating evidence that Vivian Hayes was alive and well, completely uninterested in the life or the son she’d left behind.
Outside, the announcer’s voice suddenly rolled through the walls of the trailer, bright and carrying, calling for the next event.
She reached for the phone.