As soon as she ducked in, Ethan grabbed her by the waist, pulling her into the car, wrapping his arms around her, burying her head against his chest. “Jesus, Kat.”
“I’m okay,” Kat squeaked, the pressure of his arms around her way too tight. And she had the passing thought that at least she didn’t have to worry about looking freshly fucked anymore.
“What the hell happened?” Ethan asked.
She shoved at Ethan’s chest until he loosened his grip, avoiding Stephen, though it was impossible not to feel the tension emanating off him, filling the limo that had seemed so much larger on the drive up. But Ethan wouldn’t let her go, not entirely, keeping her plastered against his side.
“Where’s Xavier,” Stephen asked, settling on her other side, his leg pressing against hers.
“Handling things,” Alex evaded as he climbed into the limo with them, slamming the door behind him. He sat across from them and Kat tried to move, knowing she’d be safer sharing the seat with him. There was no way in hell she wanted to spend the next hour sandwiched between Ethan and Stephen.
Again.
But neither would let her go. Looking out the rear window, she did her best to ignore them, but couldn’t quite keep her heart from pounding, so loud, she thought it would be impossible for them not to hear it.
It was going to be a long drive home.
“I asked you what happened, Kat,” Ethan said, his annoyance growing. But she wasn’t sure what happened. One second, she and Genevieve were wrapping things up and the next…
Jesus. As she came down from the adrenalin rush, her head began to pound, her body began to tremble. She closed her eyes, breathing deep, replaying everything, praying Genevieve really was safe.
“Somebody better fucking answer me! And I mean right fucking now.”
“Ethan!” Kat’s gaze immediately whipped toward his, shock rolling through her. Never had she heard that tone from him, even that last time, in the hospital, he hadn’t sounded this pissed.
“Don’t ‘Ethan’ me, Kat,” he growled, glaring at her, looking at her in a way he never had before. And she wondered if he knew. Or suspected. “I want to know what happened, so you’d better start explaining, or so help me God, you won’t like the consequences.”
Nice. Humiliation and rage warred inside her. First, for him to talk like that and as an added bonus, treating her like a child in front of Stephen and Alex? He sounded like…Stephen.
At least she expected it from him. But Ethan? Out of the corner of her eye, she glanced at the other two. No help there. Alex was waiting for an explanation. And Stephen…well, he looked just as pissed as Ethan, that wickedly sexy smile he’d given her in the alley long gone.
“I was meeting with Genevieve—”
“In the conference room?” Stephen cut in, his body all but vibrating with tension. She glanced up at him, unable to stop herself from entwining her fingers with his. He’d seen the whole gruesome scene. She couldn’t imagine the torment that must have caused him. He squeezed her hand, breathing a little easier.
“Yes. Two men burst into the room. She was the target, not me.”
“There was only one by the time I got there.”
“Genevieve pulled a knife, threw it at the first guy. I don’t know where she got it. The cameraman, I don’t remember his name, he swung his camera at the second man’s head. Genevieve and I…we ran. Came out in the same alley we were in,” she said to Alex, then told the three of them everything else that happened, the security guard getting shot, the showdown between the senator and Matthew. She turned to Alex again. She paused. “Were you telling the truth? Genevieve’s safe?”
“Yes. The senator’s men have her,” Alex answered. “Do you know what they wanted?” Alex asked.
“Other than to kidnap her?” Kat shook her head. “No. What about the senator?”
“He’s fine. Health wise, anyway.”
Kat breathed a sigh of relief. The senator must have dropped to the ground. Wasn’t shot, like she’d assumed. Thank God. And now that she was away from the danger, she replayed the senator and Matthew’s conversation in her head, trying to make sense of it, but Alex’s next question pulled her from her thoughts.
“You said Genevieve threw a knife?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Kat stared at Alex in horror. But wasn’t looking at her, he was looking out the sunroof, his head resting against the back of his seat. A heavy silence filled the limo until it became oppressive.
“Her aim was incredible,” Stephen finally said.
Kat glanced between the two men. “You can’t possibly believe…” She couldn’t even say the words.
“Why not?” Alex sighed. “Maybe she hated Emma. She worked with her. God knows, that alone would probably give her motive.”
But there was no way in hell Genevieve Harrington killed Karen Young thirty-six years ago. Doesn’t mean Genevieve didn’t know how Karen Young died, she thought. Which would have meant she knew about the case. Would Genevieve kill somebody to protect another?
“Who’s Matthew?”
“Matthew Harrington?” Ethan asked. “He was an undercover NYPD officer. He died years ago, in a meth lab explosion.”
“He didn’t,” Alex corrected. “Though he went to extreme lengths to make it look like he did.”
“You’re kidding,” Ethan said slowly. “Did the senator know?”
Alex looked at Kat. “Matthew is Genevieve’s brother? But…Matthew was using his own sister as protection, was trying to kidnap her? Were those men in the conference room working with him? Why?”
“Not sure yet,” Alex shrugged. “Back to the senator. Did he seem surprised his son was alive?”
Kat closed her eyes, replaying the scene in her head. “I believe so. The senator started running toward him, but Matthew fired off a shot.” They were all silent while Kat struggled to remember more. “The senator called him ‘son.’ Matthew said, ‘I am not your son.’ Emphasizing the word not. Then Matthew started talking about revenge. Said there’s no better revenge.”
“No better revenge for what?” Stephen asked.
“I don’t—for cutting him off? The senator wanted him clean. No wait! After that, Matthew said that isn’t what this is about.” She studied Alex, looking for any light to go off, but his face remained expressionless. “Nothing?”
He ignored her question, instead asking, “What about Genevieve Harrington?”
“She was crying, scared. She didn’t say a word.”
“Despite my warnings, Emma was about to blow the scandal wide open,” Alex said, surprising the hell out of her. He was actually going to share information? “We don’t think it’s a coincidence that she was killed at the senator’s party. One theory,” he stressed, “is that Matthew Harrington killed Emma to keep her from airing the story that he was alive. But maybe Genevieve did it for him. We also believe Emma was cozying up to Mark Prescott to get an inside connection to the senator. If either of them found out, both Mark Prescott and Senator Harrington had motive as well. And although our intel pointed toward the senator not knowing his son was alive, we couldn’t verify that with one hundred percent accuracy. So if we’re to believe the senator didn’t know, it kind of shoots down his motive.”
“And Mark Prescott’s.”
“And Mark Prescott’s,” Alex agreed.
Which left Genevieve or Matthew. Fishing, Kat asked, “What’s the connection between Senator Harrington and Jessica Adams?”
Alex clenched his jaw. “There isn’t one.”
“Mark Prescott and Jessica Adams?”
“Again, no connection.”
“Bullshit,” Kat shot back. “Mark Prescott was at the hospital the other day. And guess whose room he went into?”
Alex glared at her. “When were you going to tell us this?”
“I just did.”
“Kat,” Stephen growled, squeezing her fingers a little too hard.
“I didn’t remember who he was. N
ot until I saw him again tonight.” And she tried to figure out if it tied their two cases together, but other than the stabbings being the same, she still couldn’t find the connection. Only Jessica Adams, but Alex refused to tell her what it was. “You’re not going to tell me?”
Apparently not. Alex fell silent, staring out the sunroof again, lost in his own head.
“Why you were meeting with Genevieve?” Stephen asked.
“She was helping me with something.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It has nothing to do with the case,” she said softly, silently pleading with him to drop it. And he must have seen something in her expression through the dimness of the limo, because he finally relented with a single nod of his head.
They drove the rest of way in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Kat struggled to stay awake, suddenly exhausted, but didn’t want to wake up leaning against either man if she fell asleep. She glanced down at her leg, pressed against Ethan’s.
Stephen tried to take her with him when they pulled into Alex’s main house. Slowly she shook her head, praying he’d understand that she wanted to talk to Ethan first. It was the right thing to do. But as the warmth in his expression was replaced with nothing, she knew he didn’t get it.
Ethan was silent as Alex and Stephen got out of the car, his gaze focused outside the window. Only the music playing softly in the background broke the silence, but it wasn’t enough to cover the rising tension emanating from him. Kat inched away, intending to sit on the bench seat across from him, but she wasn’t fast enough.
Ethan grabbed her, pulling her onto his lap before he crushed her against him, burying his face in her neck. He breathed in deep, tangling his hands in her hair. “Tell me I didn’t lose you tonight.”
She couldn’t, despite the excruciating pain in his voice that pierced her heart. Couldn’t force herself to say the words.
“Look at me, Kat,” Ethan demanded softly, shifting his hands, forcing her to look up at him. “Tell me I didn’t lose you.”
“I can’t,” she whispered, hoping he didn’t hear the pain in her own voice. The pain he’d mistake for hope.
“Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want me?”
Kat was saved from responding as the car door flew open. Kat gasped, heart racing, only to see the driver standing outside the door, her house behind him. She hadn’t even realized they’d stopped. She scrambled out of Ethan’s arms, taking the driver’s hand when he offered it.
“Thank you,” she said politely as she stepped out of the car, wincing when she stepped on the stones in her bare feet, her shoes forever lost in a parking garage. Ethan scooped her up as the driver got back in the car and pulled away, holding her there for long moments without moving. “Put me down. I can walk.”
And she didn’t want Ethan carrying her over the threshold like a groom carries his bride. But Ethan ignored her, every muscle suddenly tense. With a roar of pain unlike she’d ever heard, Ethan lowered her feet to the ground and rushed toward her door.
A second later, he hurled something through the air, but even as Kat saw what it was, confusion still bubbled through her.
The vase smashed against the tree, shattering in a million pieces, blue and white flowers littering the ground at the base. And it was then she noticed the balloon as it floated up toward the heavens, the metallic surface glinting in the moonlight.
Congratulations! It’s a boy!
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Fuuuuck!” Ethan roared as his fist went through the sheetrock in the foyer, not once, but twice before he leaned his forehead against the ruined wall, a litany of expletives falling from his mouth.
Kat’s heart pounded in her chest as she backed further away, at a complete loss of what to do. But Ethan was so out of control, she didn’t think he realized she was there. She wasn’t sure if speaking to him would enrage him further or calm him down.
And as she watched him deal with a torture she could only imagine, she felt tears prick her eyes, wishing she could run to him, ease the excruciating pain he was trying to cope with even as an impossible truth slammed into her.
Emma Anderson had been pregnant.
With Ethan’s baby.
And it explained so much. Why Ethan hadn’t been around these past few weeks. Not because she’d been blackmailing him like he’d said. And it cut. Deep. And confused the hell out of her, everything that happened between them these past few days. What if Emma hadn’t been killed? Would Ethan have still said and done all those things? To what end? Had a child with Emma, abandoned it to be with her? Or stay with Emma and his child, and…what? Keep her on the side? Or maybe he never would have said anything to her.
Pushing her speculations aside, she backed up into the dining room she’d never furnished and headed toward the kitchen, searching her cabinets for alcohol, only finding the Chartreuse Ethan had left on the table days ago. Days that now seemed like a lifetime.
She wasn’t sure if it would dull Ethan’s pain, but it was better than nothing. Foregoing a glass, she grabbed the bottle and brought it back into the foyer, the sight of Ethan sitting on the floor with his back leaning against the door nearly her undoing. He brought a bottle up to his mouth, taking a few healthy gulps. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. When he looked up at her, the sheen of unshed tears in his eyes nearly broke her.
“At least they left something useful,” Ethan said as he held up the scotch.
Jesus, was there anything more heartbreaking than the sight of a grown man with tears in his eyes? Slowly, Kat walked over to him, unresisting when he grabbed her hand and brought her down, settling her between his legs with her back to his chest. She rested her head against his shoulder, trying to tamp down her own heartache in light of his.
“I don’t even know if he was mine,” Ethan said eventually, his voice gravelly, filled with grief. “When she told me, I thought it was just another way to trap me. Because the blackmailing attempt hadn’t worked. But at some point in the next couple weeks, when I began playing the last time we’d been together in my head…”
“Fuck,” he mumbled again, taking another swig of the scotch. “One more time, she said. This was back in March. She was waiting for me when I got home from work. It wasn’t until after that I realized something was off. When she started talking about a future I didn’t want. Slowly, it dawned on me how deep her feelings ran. She’d never let on until then. I thought she was okay with a fling. I would never have touched her otherwise, wouldn’t have hurt her that way.”
He laughed without humor. “I got her out of there as fast as I could, repeatedly telling her there was no future between us, knowing I’d just royally fucked up, though I never expected the ramifications to involve a baby. It wasn’t like I’d been unprotected.” He took another swallow and offered her the bottle, but Kat shook her head.
“I made her go to the doctor with me. Mine, or at least one I chose. Imagine my shock when I found out the timing fit. How stupid I was. So unbelievably stupid. She refused to get an amniocentesis. I’m not sure if was due to the risks of a miscarriage or to keep me hanging for the next six months.”
Kat closed her eyes, shutting out all the questions that were exploding through her head even as the pain exploded in her heart. Since when did they have secrets between each other? Since when did Ethan lie to her? Would he have ever told her?
But those, they were the easy questions. The harder ones, like what the hell was he going to do? Live with Emma in a loveless marriage? Or Jesus, abandon them both? No…
“I don’t know,” Ethan whispered, as if reading her mind. He tightened his arm around her waist. “All I could think about was losing you. But if the baby was mine…Jesus, I didn’t know which way to turn.”
Kat wasn’t sure how long they sat on the floor as Ethan drank half a bottle of scotch and poured out his heart and soul until his words began to slur. Eventually, she moved them upstairs. Ethan passed out befo
re his head hit the pillow, still in his tuxedo. She took off his bowtie and opened the first two buttons on his shirt, so he wouldn’t suffocate.
And then, with the weight of the world on her shoulders and her heart broken in two, she finally gave in, crying for the first time in weeks, deep heart-wracking sobs she could no longer fight until sleep finally, blissfully claimed her.
***
She wasn’t sure what had woken her. Maybe Ethan’s arm around her, or his breath ruffling her hair. Or maybe the fact that it was the wrong man’s around her. It was way too early to get up and her eyes were swollen, her entire body sleep deprived, the stress of the last few days taking their toll. She slipped out of bed while Ethan slept, her heart hurting as everything came back to her.
She used the bathroom in the hallway, not wanting Ethan to awaken. It was still the dead of night, still pitch-black outside. She washed her hands, refusing to look at herself in the mirror, knowing she’d see red, burning eyes and dark circles. She was so exhausted, but knew if she tried to go back to sleep, she’d just be staring at the ceiling. A drink, she decided. Or three.
She was nearing the top of the stairs when she froze, realizing for the first time what had awakened her. A sick feeling embedded itself in the pit of her stomach as she heard the front door softly close. She ran down the stairs so fast she nearly tripped, crashing into the front door, swinging it open, but she was too late.
Stephen’s taillights flashed in the darkness, two glowing red lights that had dread running through her. She ran as fast as she could, hoping he’d see her in the darkness, hoping he was looking in his rearview mirror, praying to see his brake lights, but they never blinked and the next sound she heard was his engine revving, the squealing of his tires as peeled out onto the highway.
And if she hadn’t been sure before, she would be right now. Because the thought of him walking away, the thought of never seeing him again, of him turning his back on her kept her paralyzed, stealing her breath, her voice. Her heart already felt like it had been ripped out her chest and at the thought of him leaving…Jesus, the agony was unbearable. Like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
Betrayal (Secrets, Lies, and Deception Book 2) Page 24