He grabbed her arm and whirled her around, trying to make her stop, and she pushed out at him with her free hand.

He huffed from the impact, but he didn’t let go, and the force of the momentum caused both of them to tumble to the cool grass in a tangle of limbs and emotion.

She kept struggling to get away from him, but he was tired—tired of all of this—and held her still with his weight.

“Damn it, Caleb,” she gasped, almost sobbing in her attempt to get away. “Are you supposed to be vindicated by this? You still knew about my father’s death and did nothing. You did nothing.”

“I know it. I know it.” His voice was rough and uncontrolled, exactly as he was feeling. Her body was soft and strong and shaking, and his body seemed to know it as well as his own. He held on to her, couldn’t let her go. “But you were wrong about me, so don’t act so victimized and self-righteous. Think about what you did yourself. You used me. You betrayed me in the deepest possible way. And then you went and fucked some other—”

“I didn’t fuck him,” she burst out, tears streaming from her eyes. She’d stopped struggling and lay on the grass beneath him, like she’d finally, finally broken. “I didn’t fuck him. I wanted to do it. To you. You would have deserved it, but I…I couldn’t. That’s what you’ve turned me into. I should hate you. I always should have hated you, and yet you made me…you made me love you anyway. How the hell do you think that makes me feel?”

His heart seemed to explode at her words, disintegrate completely, and this time it didn’t get put back together. “And why the fuck should I believe anything you tell me now, after all the lies you’ve told me?”

“You told me lies too. This last week, you knew. You knew. You knew who I was and didn’t let on. You pretended…” As she spit the words out, she seemed to put the pieces together. “The woods! You were trying to…You were torturing me on purpose!” She started to fight against him again, and this time he let her go.

She scrambled to her feet, almost strangling on her emotion. “You act like I’m the monster, but you did that horrible thing to me.”

“It’s no different from everything you ever did to me. Getting me to open up. Getting me to fall for you. When you knew all along you hated me and you were trying to prove my guilt. You can act like an outraged virgin all you want, taken advantage of by a heartless man, but we both know who’s guiltier in this scenario. I didn’t kill your father, but you treated me like I wasn’t even human.”

He was revealing too much. Far too much. But he was too far gone to stop and too far gone to even care.

“Am I supposed to say I’m sorry?” She was wiping tears away as if she were angry with herself for crying them. “You can act the victim all you want, but you’re just as guilty as me.”

He remembered what she’d said the other day about feeling like she was living in a Shakespearean tragedy. It was exactly what this was. The script was laid out, the events set in motion, and no one could alter the outcome.

Whether he was Hamlet or Claudius didn’t really matter. Everyone was destroyed in the end.

Suddenly Caleb couldn’t take any more. Not without completely falling apart.

He knew what he had to do. What he always did to tighten his grip on the world.

He took a breath and pushed the tumult of feelings into a hard little ball in his chest.

“I don’t care what you do,” he said coldly after a moment, pleased when he almost sounded in control. “I’m done with this. I’m done with you. You have your answers, so do with them whatever you want. Get out of here. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

She stared at him almost blindly.

“Get out of here,” he said, his voice rougher because he was having trouble hardening himself enough, hanging on to his control.

She wiped away the last of her tears and turned away, looking back at him once over her shoulder. “I’m not the only guilty one here.”

He knew it, but it didn’t help. Nothing could rewrite this final act. From the beginning he should have seen the end.

No love. No reconciliation. No happy future. No return to order and justice.

Just an inevitable spiral into destruction.

Kelly walked away from him without another word. She walked across the lawn and around the house, the moonlight glowing on her hair, until she disappeared from his sight.

She was gone. It was over. The life he knew might already have died if she decided to go public with her evidence and testimony.

He should probably prepare, talk to lawyers, lay the groundwork, think of some kind of plan in case that happened. She was so angry with him now, there was no reason why she would hesitate to bring everything she knew out into the open. Even without the proof of his recorded tapes, she could do a lot of damage.

She was the daughter of the victim. She’d been just a child, kneeling next to her father, who’d bled his life away in the woods.

And Caleb had done nothing—had never done anything—to address that appalling injustice. He’d been rewarded with the life he now led.

He’d been young. He’d been threatened. He hadn’t seen any option that wouldn’t hurt more than it helped. Maybe that was some sort of excuse. But at the heart of it he knew he’d made the decision back then because he’d always be Caleb Marshall. Ambitious, cold, mostly heartless. All of his softer, human impulses coiled in tightly so no one could ever hurt him again.

Chapter 10

Kelly stumbled into her apartment, too dazed and bewildered to do anything but cling to the tiniest glimmer of recognition. She couldn’t wrap her mind around everything that had happened, but she’d managed to hold on to one, only one, essential necessity.

She called Jack. Got his voicemail. Wondered if he was angry at her, if he would delete her message before he even listened to it.

She left it anyway, having absolutely no other avenue for making this happen. “Jack, it’s me. Kelly. Sorry to…” Her voice seemed to be drying up, and she couldn’t force out the apology and explanation she had planned. Instead the words spilled out in a harsh babble. “You have to stop everything, Jack. Whatever you’re working on to make things public. It has to be stopped. It’s not what we thought. Please, please, Jack. Don’t do anything about it.”

Her voice sounded unnatural and grating, and she had to hang up before she fell apart.

She didn’t know if Jack would want to help her. She didn’t know if it was already too late.

But she had to at least try, with the last ounce of reasoned control she had left.

Kelly looked around her simple apartment and hardly recognized her surroundings. Nothing here was really hers. Nothing felt real. It all felt artificial and somehow surreal.

She didn’t belong here. She felt like a stranger. And she had no idea what to do about it.

Wandering blindly over to the window, she looked out and down to the street.

Caleb hadn’t murdered her father like she’d thought he had.

Caleb had said…

She couldn’t let herself remember what he’d said.

A strange sound came out of her throat. It might have been a sob, but Kelly was barely conscious of even making it. She jerked away from the window. Stared again at the quiet room.

She couldn’t stay here.

She was afraid of what she might do.

Kelly felt blind. Felt strangled. Felt like she couldn’t stay still. So she grabbed her purse and then left her apartment again. Exited the building and turned to the right.

Started walking.

As long as she was walking, all she would have to think about was the motion of her body. Concentrating on her muscles, on the way the concrete was moving beneath her feet, helped to hold back everything else.