Tessa didn’t disappoint him. “I feel bad,” she confessed.
“It’s okay. I’d be worried if you didn’t.” Unlike him, Tessa was still young and naive enough to experience things like guilt. He loved that about her, her inability to accept that sometimes the ends justify the means. To Lucas, the fact that she would abandon her conscience and beliefs to follow him blindly into hell only reinforced how much she loved him in return. He would never disregard her feelings. They were too precious to destroy. “I know we promised each other that we wouldn’t. Guess it was easier said than done.”
“Yeah.”
“But you know we had no choice.”
“I know. I know.” She fisted his shirt in her hands. “It’s just—”
Lucas scowled. “Walsh.”
The damn deputy had been a thorn in his side ever since he took it upon himself to first comfort Tessa needlessly, then actually fall in love with her. He couldn't blame Walsh for that, not when he knew how easy it was himself, but everything that came after… Walsh had to pay for it.
Lucas had made sure of it himself. And it burned him that Tessa still carried so much guilt when it came to Walsh.
“I know I shouldn’t feel bad about him when he did his best to come between us—even though he never knew there was an us—but I can’t help it. He was harmless. He wasn’t standing in our way, not really. You know I would never have let him. He just wanted to help.”
Harmless. That wasn’t the word he would use to describe Mason Walsh. Conniving. Manipulative. A predator. Attracted by her vulnerability, he saw Tessa as a beautiful woman, a weak one, and he pounced. He wasn’t trying to help her—he was trying to help himself to her.
It amazed him that Tessa couldn’t see that, though it probably shouldn’t. She’d always been too innocent when it came to what the men in her life really wanted from her.
Including him.
All he wanted was her. Every last thing she had to offer, Lucas wanted it all. Furious and jealous of the attention Walsh lavished on his Tessa, he wanted to scrap the plan, start over, and make it so that there were three victims by the time they were done. It made it even worse when Tessa fought to spare him. Only her adamant promise that he meant nothing at all to her allowed Lucas to use Walsh as a fall guy instead of adding another body to his count.
He understood exactly what she meant when she said she felt bad. That Mason Walsh was in jail weighed on Tessa’s conscience. That he was still breathing weighed on Lucas.
Taking one of her tense hands, he rubbed his thumb over the top until she relaxed her fist, pressing her palm against his chest. She moved her head forward. Taking the hint, Lucas tucked her underneath his chin. Tessa leaned into him.
He rubbed her back, giving comfort and stealing it with the same caress.
“You knew there would be casualties if we wanted our happy ending. We agreed it was worth it. You gave up Sullivan. I gave up Caitlin—”
She couldn’t swallow her snort. He felt the rush of air at the base of his throat. “What a loss.”
It was a good thing Tessa had her face hidden. He didn’t want her to see the amused expression that danced across his. She would accuse him of not taking her seriously. While the opposite was true, he couldn’t help himself. That petty slap at his dead ex-wife made him grin. It meant that Tessa wasn’t completely wallowing in her guilt. Besides, he couldn’t say he blamed her for that, either.
Lucas met Jack Sullivan face to face for the first and last time when he strangled the man—and, thanks to Tessa, Sullivan was sedated. Caitlin was an ever present threat to Tessa the first six days she spent in Hamlet. The sheriff was nothing but a hassle. It was a relief to finally kill her.
Giving up Caitlin wasn’t so much a sacrifice as a necessity. Lucas was well aware he couldn’t have both women in his life. He made his choice, just like Tessa made hers.
“Are you sorry?” she asked him.
“For what? Killing your husband? Or framing the deputy?”
She didn’t flinch. She knew he was just being honest; he wasn’t trying to upset her or belittle her feelings. Tessa knew him better than anyone ever had, though Maria used to.
Until Turner, at least.
His sister always suspected he had something to do with Mack Turner’s unfortunate accident but, too afraid what it would mean if he had, she started to drift away, using his overprotective behavior as a fence between them. Tessa… she accepted the dark parts of him. Accepted them and loved him anyway.
“For Caitlin,” she said simply.
He knew what she meant. Caitlin wasn’t always supposed to die. The longer Tessa stayed in Hamlet, the more it became clear to Lucas that she would have to go. Plan A was to off Jack. Plan B always involved Caitlin. Once he had a scapegoat in one of her deputies, his mind was made up.
Fueled by her obsession with Lucas and her jealousy of Tessa, she wouldn't stop until she proved Tessa was involved. She was that dogged, and too much of a liability to be left alive.
“Sullivan wouldn’t let you go so we had to make him. My marriage to Caitlin was over years ago but she still had her hooks in me. If I left her alive, I couldn’t be here right now. We wouldn’t be free.”
She was quiet as she digested his answer. “Sacrifices, Luc. Jack’s mine. Caitlin is yours. I guess I’m responsible for Mason. But what about Maria?”
A pang at the mention of his sister, one he managed not to let her see. He wouldn’t give Tessa even the smallest reason to doubt him. “What about her?”
“Are you really going to give her up, too? For me?”
He thought, by now, that Tessa understood that there wasn’t a single thing in this world he wouldn't be willing to give up for her. Maria would be the toughest, and even that was easier to do than spend another night without Tessa.
“I’ll miss Maria, but she doesn’t need me. Not like you do. She has Ophelia back, as safe as I could possibly make it, and I know she still sleeps with that bat by her bedside. Besides, Sly’ll be looking out for her. She’ll be fine.”
That was the last thing Tess expected to hear. “Sly? Deputy Collins?” When he nodded, she shook her head in surprise. “Wow. I mean… there was that one time I thought maybe, but— but I didn’t know.”
“Nobody does. They’ve hidden it very well. But I’m a big brother and, no matter what Caity used to say, a pretty good detective. I figured it out ages ago. I’m glad.” Reaching out, he caressed her cheek, letting his hand trail down the slender line of her throat. “I want her to have something even a little as special as what we have, mia cuore.”
Italian. Unlike Maria, who let the language slip regularly, she only ever heard him speak it when he tenderly called her mia cuore. My heart. The same thing he pledged to her from the start, when she was a silly little girl who wanted something she couldn't have.
Except now she had it.
To his surprise, her bottom lip started to quiver again. A second later, she pushed against his arm. “Let me up.”
“Tessa—”
“Please, Luc. I want to stand.”
Because he would give her the world if she asked it of him, he dropped his arms down so that she was free. Tessa climbed out of his lap and moved out of the living room.
He hated having even that much distance between them.
It struck him that, with Jack and Caitlin dead and gone, he didn’t have to stay away from her anymore. Pushing up off of the couch, he shadowed her. She went into the kitchen, bracing her hands against the sink. Folding his bigger body around hers, Lucas rested his chin on her shoulder, breathing in her sweet cinnamon scent.
This delicious morsel was all his. The realization staggered him. Tessa belonged to him now. It made everything he had done worth it.
If only she was as happy about that as he was. She had to be. He would make sure of it.
Lucas loved her too much to accept anything less.
“Tessa. What’s wrong? What else has you tied in knots?” She
shivered as his murmured words tickled her neck. Chills ran up and down her spine, goosebumps popping up all over her exposed skin. “Tell me. I’ll make it all better. You know I will.”
He was so distracting. Part of her wanted to just give in, let Lucas take over as he had been doing all along. She couldn’t. This was too important. Tess had to be sure.
“I just… I can’t stop thinking about it. I know why we did it. I don’t see what we could’ve done differently and maybe that makes us monsters, but I don’t care—”
“You’re no monster, mia cuore. You want to blame someone, blame me. It was my idea.”
“And I was with you all the way, Luc. I still am. I love you. I don’t regret a damn thing that happened but… Jesus Christ, what if they believe him? We both gave up so much to have a chance at this, at us. I want it to be worth it, but someone might figure it all out. He can’t give any details, right? Someone might wonder if he’s really as innocent as he claims.”
Because, of course, Mason Walsh was innocent. And while there were only three people in the whole world who knew for a fact that he was innocent of the murders, what if someone else figured it out? What if he could convince someone?
Lucas thought her worries were charming. Ridiculous yet cute at the same time. When he went along with her idea to frame Walsh rather than give him an “accident” like Turner, he did everything he had to to ensure that no one would ever think that the deputy was anything except what Lucas wanted them to believe.
From the moment the Sullivans arrived in Hamlet, he’d been one step ahead of everyone. It really was the perfect crime. No one would ever guess that the respected doctor had anything to do with the murders. And while they might always suspect the outsider, he’d been careful to shield Tessa. This was all for her, after all. He couldn’t stop Caitlin from interrogating his sweet Tessa. He’d never allow anyone else the chance.
Everything he’d done, he’d done for her. For them.
Every little detail and interaction was thought up in advance, planned perfectly and executed flawlessly. Tessa’s airtight alibi. Acting like they never met before, even going so far as to play out their “first” meetings in front of an audience. The threatening note Lucas slipped into her borrowed room without any advance warning so that her reaction would be genuine.
Of course, he remembered with a scowl, he never expected Tessa would run right into Walsh which just goes to show that even the best laid plans could have a kink or two in them.
Like when he got shot. Now that was a kink. He’d provided Tessa with the pair of guns he lifted from Caity’s place, instructed her on how to rig them to give the impression that she’d been shot at while in the good doctor’s company. No one in Hamlet would doubt his word as witness. But their aim was erratic at best and Lucas was lucky he was only grazed.
It worked better than he guessed, though. It was tangible proof that even the sheriff couldn’t ignore. The queen of conspiracy theories never once suspected he engineered his own injury. No sane man would ever consider it a plus to be shot.
Then again, he figured he left the last of his sanity far behind the first time a double murder seemed like a viable option for him to get what he wanted.
As for Walsh, being wrongfully imprisoned for crimes he didn’t commit was a better fate than what Lucas wanted for him. The foolish deputy could insist he was innocent until he was blue in the face. It wouldn’t do him any good. Lucas buried him in so much circumstantial evidence, Walsh would eventually collapse under the weight of it. He wasn’t dead, but he would wish he was.
And that was good enough for Lucas. Served him right. Six weeks later and he was still touchy that Walsh dared to kiss his Tessa.
Massaging her shoulders, he dug his fingers in her flesh in an attempt to banish some of the tension that lingered there.
“We have nothing to worry about,” he promised. “I made sure of that when I planted some of the rope in his garage.”
Lucas was always so amazed by how stupidly trustworthy other people were. No one locked their doors in Hamlet. People like Caitlin and Walsh were just begging to be set up. Was it so terrible that he obliged them?
Nuzzling her neck, he added, “And then I used his gun to kill Caity after you set him up, egging him on that last night.”
He pointedly didn’t mention Tessa’s change of heart that night, or how she tried to stop Lucas from turning on his ex and the deputy. She really had run off to Caitlin’s in a panic, towing poor Maria along, only to serve as a witness when Lucas pulled the trigger from a distance.
After that, she realized they had no choice but to continue in the plan to frame Walsh. When the alternative was targeting him next, Tessa let it go. He insisted.
It was imperative that she let the past go so that they could start their future.
“No one will look past that. How can they? It’s his gun. So let Walsh cry that he didn’t do it. No one will believe him. We’re home free. You said it before. We did it.”
She turned into him, wrapping her arms around his waist. Bright eyes, golden eyes stared up at him in utter worship. “You sure, Luc? Really?”
He looped his arms around her, pulling her close until her cheek was pressed to his chest. He gently kissed the top of her hair. “I’m positive,” Lucas assured her.
And then he smiled into the loose curls.
“Trust me.”
A Note From Jessica
I want to thank you for taking the time to read Don’t Trust Me. Now that you’ve reached the end, I would be honored if you would leave a review of your honest opinion. Just some small token that might entice other readers to discover the hidden path into Hamlet. Hopefully, you might want to return there some day yourself!
In fact, I’ve included a sneak peek at the next full-length Hamlet novel—read on to get a glimpse of I’ll Never Stop today.
xoxo,
Jessica
I’ll Never Stop
Tommy Mathers had charm, he had looks, and he had money. He was also intelligent in a way that scared her to her bones. He knew what to say and how to say it, acting remorseful in one moment and demanding in the next.
The first time she tried to break it off, he bought her a diamond necklace and begged her to give him one more try. She fell for it, and found herself locked in the bedroom of his penthouse apartment after she gave in and spent the night.
Tommy was gone—with her tucked safely in his home, he left to take care of business—and he had two goons guarding the door in case she tried to run. Which she absolutely attempted the minute she accepted that, despite his promises, he was never going to change.
It took three days, as well as giving the damn diamond to a housekeeper in exchange for helping her escape, before Grace realized that if she wanted Tommy to leave her alone, she was going to have to make him. Trapping her in his apartment was the last straw. She finally understood that his so-called love was nothing but an unhealthy obsession with her and this crackpot idea that she was destined to marry him.
Taking nothing but a suitcase of clothes—and stopping only long enough to clean out her savings account—Grace took off running. She was sure, once she was out of his reach, Tommy would let her go.
She was wrong.
So wrong.
He’ll never stop.
Her shoulders hunched under the weight of her certainty. She moved—twice. Tommy always found her, even after she registered for the address confidentiality program. He had Boone disable her old car, slicing three tires and removing the engine so that she couldn’t leave town the last time they met. She abandoned it, buying a used car with her dwindling savings, and started parking away from her new place, in case he was watching.
It didn’t matter that her new number was unlisted, or that it was blocked from appearing on other statements the rare times she called home. The speed with which Tommy always got it again made her give up on getting it changed. What was the point? He didn’t need her mother to pass it along, tho
ugh Grace was certain she had on more than one occasion. His genius when it came to computers and the way he thought laws only applied to other people meant that he didn’t take him much effort to find it on his own.
The only way she could fight back was with the little things. So she deadbolted her apartment, she made sure she lived on the sixth floor, and she always parked in a well-lit area that was far enough from her place that she could only hope he couldn’t find her.
Again.
She was forever aware of her surroundings, too. Even as she carried all of her shopping bags at once so that she didn’t have to risk a second trip to the car, Grace’s eyes were darting around. She’d learned to trust her gut, no matter what. If she felt like she was being watched, it usually meant somebody was watching.
It was a Saturday evening, still early enough that the sun was out. The parking lot was more empty than not, a handful of cars scattered around the space. She weaved around them, searching for the sleek, shiny black finish of Tommy’s luxury Jaguar. As ostentatious as it was expensive, she’d never seen him drive around in any other car. If he was close by, she would spot him first.
Considering the speed of the car, the head’s up would never be enough of a warning, but she refused to think like that. Her caution and her care had kept her one step ahead of Tommy Mathers for seven months now.
At the last lot, Grace held her breath and turned the corner. She exhaled in relief when no one was waiting for her. Hefting her bags high, she stepped up on the curb and turned toward the front of the apartments.
Strawberry Village was made up of eighteen different apartment buildings. Each structure was eight floors high, with three apartments on each floor. She lived in the last building, on the sixth floor. In order to get inside, a tenant needed a passcode to enter the front door to each individual building, use the same passcode to operate the elevator (or take the stairs), and then use a key to open a specific apartment. That first step was what had her taking the two-room apartment. It would make it that much harder for Tommy to find his way in.
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