Captivate me a dark capt.., p.20
Captivate Me: A Dark Captive Romance, page 20
Then the van Burens offered to pay my tuition. They’d never make an offer that generous unless there was something in it for them. They were buying me off, and I knew it had something to do with Hunter.
So I convinced Noelle we needed a girl’s night. Just the two of us.
We giggled in our room, watching reruns of our favorite sitcoms on her flatscreen from her bed and taking a shot every time there was a laugh track or a pun or a corny line. Noelle was hammered within the hour, but I’d dumped the vodka out of my bottle and replaced it with water. I was more sober than I’d ever been, struggling to tamper down the white-hot rage boiling inside me.
Noelle was keeping a secret from me. About Hunter.
She knew something about the night he died that she wasn’t telling me.
So I didn’t feel bad when I fed her shot after shot. Didn’t stop her when she lost track of how much she’d drunk and reached for another. I needed to get the truth out of her.
Around one a.m., her eyes were starting to fall shut. I was wide awake. I swiped open the camera on my phone because I needed to get answers from her while I had a chance.
She didn’t even notice the phone pointed in her direction. Too busy snorting at the Netflix show.
“Hey, Noelle. Why did your parents offer to pay my tuition?”
She stiffened, but even drunk, she couldn’t meet my eyes. She dropped her gaze to her hands in her lap. “Because they feel bad about your brother.”
My stomach gave a hard twist, vision already blurring. I knew it. I knew they were involved. I knew her parents were the ones actually behind the wheel that night. And they framed their employee for it.
The van Burens disgusted me.
I swallowed down the hard lump in my throat and blinked fast to keep the tears at bay. I filled in the blank: “Because they’re the ones who actually killed him.”
I didn’t expect what happened next.
Noelle burst into tears, covering her face with her hands. I ground my teeth together as I restrained myself from screaming at her.
She was sobbing over her parents’ crime? My brother died. They killed him.
And she had the audacity to cry in front of me.
She wailed something into her hands, but I couldn’t make out the words, too muffled and drunken.
“What?” I asked.
She dropped her hands from her face. “Because I did!”
My blood stopped cold.
My best friend—who had been consoling me and eating ice cream with me and sitting at his graveside with me—had been the one to put my brother in the ground.
No. That couldn’t be right. She said something else. She meant something else. Not Noelle. She wouldn’t have done this to me. Wouldn’t purposely leave my brother to die when she could’ve saved him.
The next words left her mouth in a wail. “I’m so sorry, Cassie!”
I ran from the room, knees hitting the hard, cold tile in the bathroom, and puked.
When I listened to the recording the next morning, that same chill ran down my spine when she said those three words. Because I did.
My best friend killed my brother.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THEO
Cass calls after me when I stomp toward the baseball field, but I don’t turn around. She cuts me off with a hand against my chest and it takes everything in me not to shove her hand away.
“Her parents paid off Michael to take the fall for Noelle and say he was the one behind the wheel that night.” Her eyes are wild, desperate for me to believe her. “Noelle is the one who hit Hunter. She left him there to die. And she let an innocent man take the fall for her.”
I keep my eyes on the field over her head. Coach shouts my name. “Noelle wouldn’t do something like that.”
“I didn’t want to believe it either.” Her eyes are glassy, voice wavering. “She’s my best friend. I didn’t think she’d ever do something like that to me. Even if it was an accident, she’d at least stay by his side and call for help.” She swipes at the tears on her cheeks, but they keep falling. “But she admitted it, Theo. She told me the truth herself.”
Cass pulls out her phone and plays a video. Noelle lying on her bed, giggling at the TV. Obviously hammered. My heart squeezes. I miss my friend.
In the video, Cass asks Noelle why her parents offered to pay Cass’s tuition and I freeze. I didn’t know they did that. I just assumed Cass got a scholarship or loans.
The line of questioning makes Noelle noticeably uncomfortable. Then she starts crying. Because I did!
Every inch of me goes ice-cold. Noelle admitted to being the one behind the wheel that night. She confessed to killing Hunter and leaving his body at the scene. Cass has proof.
Shit.
I swipe a shaky hand over my face, trying to figure out what the hell to do with this information. “If you’ve known this whole time, why didn’t you take this video to the police?”
Cass shakes her head, brows pulling together. “You still don’t get it. Nothing would’ve happened to her. The police would’ve shrugged it off because she was drunk. They would’ve called it a false confession or something. Or her parents would’ve paid to have it swept under the rug again.”
The date on her phone screen catches my eye. “You took this video a week before she went missing.”
Cass keeps her pink-painted mouth locked shut, brown eyes wide. A bat cracks against a ball and I step away from her.
I shouldn’t be afraid of Cass. She’s five-foot-three to my six-two. She cares about me. She’s in love with me, I know she is. She wouldn’t hurt me.
But I can’t trust that she wouldn’t hurt Noelle.
This is too much of a coincidence. She takes a video of Noelle confessing to her brother’s murder, and a week later, Noelle disappears. Cass has been playing the role of the worried best friend, posting countless videos asking the public to help find her best friend, claiming she knew Noelle wouldn’t run away or kill herself, crying over Noelle possibly being held hostage and tortured somewhere. She let me and Piper and Addison investigate the van Burens, tried to frame them for their own daughter’s disappearance so she could get revenge on them too. For shoving their daughter’s crime under the rug. For helping her get away with it.
Then she pursued me. Another pawn in her revenge game. To steal away Noelle’s boyfriend as one final way to hurt her.
“You know where she is, don’t you? You know what happened to her. You think she killed your brother, so now you . . .” I can’t bring myself to finish the thought out loud. Bile churns in my stomach.
She reaches for me, but I recoil. “I didn’t hurt her,” she pleads. “But I . . . I made a mistake. I got someone else involved. If we can just follow him—”
“I wish I could believe you.” My throat bobs and I retreat another step. “But I don’t know how to believe anything you say anymore. Goodbye, Cassie.”
At her full name, her face falls.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
BEAU
Three grocery stores later and I finally find fucking marshmallows. But my princess wants marshmallows, she’s getting marshmallows.
The front door squeaks when I walk in and Noelle jumps. I chuckle. She still hasn’t learned that I’m the only one who will ever come in or out of this house. That as long as I’m around, no one else is going to touch her. I drop the grocery bag on the kitchen island. “Your marshmallows, princess.”
But she doesn’t move from her spot in the middle of the kitchen. She just stares at me with those big blue eyes. “Cassie hired you to kill me?”
How the hell did she find out? When I spot my phone on the island, I have my answer. “Offered me a lot of money to get the job done too,” I tell her.
“How much?”
“Three hundred thousand.”
She swallows, nodding. “The money my parents gave her for tuition.”
More like hush money. She collapses on a stool at the island, white as bone. “How did she find out?”
She asks it more to herself than to me, but I give her an answer anyway. “That little video she recorded.”
Noelle’s gaze darts to mine. “What video?”
“The one where you’re drunk out of your mind and admit to hitting that asshole with your car.”
She claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh my god.” Her eyes glisten. “She was never supposed to find out. She was already so hurt about Hunter. I knew if she found out the truth, it would crush her.”
“He was a predator,” I remind her. “He preyed on girls. He preyed on you. You did the world a favor.”
“I know,” she whispers. “But not Cassie. She loved him. She refused to see that side of him. I never wanted to hurt her like this.”
“So why’d you leave the scene?” I finally get to ask the question that’s intrigued me from the start.
I didn’t totally buy the confession when Cassie showed me the video. Noelle was too drunk to be wholly reliable. Maybe still covering for her parents or her jerkoff boyfriend. But now she’s sober, and she’s not denying any of it.
“I shouldn’t have, I know.” Her gaze falls to her hands in her lap, like I’m in any position to judge her. She’s taken one life—I’ve taken five. “I panicked. I was terrified about what would happen to me. It was so, so stupid.”
A princess whose whole life revolved around being perfect. She couldn’t stomach the thought of being the opposite.
“And Michael?” My nostrils flare now. That’s the one crime she still hasn’t owned up to. Apologized for. “You let an innocent man go to prison for you?”
Noelle slips off the stool, shaking her head. “I told my parents what happened, and they said they would take care of it. A few weeks later, the news got out that Michael confessed. I had no idea they were going to bribe him into taking the fall for me. If I did, I would’ve just gone straight to the police. I never, ever wanted anyone to take the fall for me, and I didn’t ask my parents to cover it up.” She takes a deep breath. “The night you kidnapped me, I was going to turn myself in. I was heading to the police station. I was going to confess to the whole thing, get Michael out of prison, come clean to Cassie. I couldn’t live with the guilt anymore. I know you probably don’t believe me—”
“I believe you.”
I knew it. I knew deep down, she wasn’t this cold, heartless rich bitch who’d let an innocent man take the rap for her. She doesn’t just feel guilty for what she did to the Sinclair kid or her best friend—she feels guilty for what she did to Michael.
I knew there was more to her than meets the eye. I knew she was nothing like my mother. I knew it.
“Can I ask you something?”
I lean my elbows on the island. “You can ask me anything, princess.”
“Why were you willing to do Cassie’s dirty work? You work for bail bond agents and hunt down sexual predators. I know what I did is awful, trust me. But a hit-and-run seems a little . . . tame for you. To warrant adding me to your souvenir collection.” She nods at the tattoos on my knuckles.
I straighten. “Yeah, well, let’s just say your little friend can give me a run for my money when it comes to stalking.” Noelle tilts her head and waits for me to go on. “She came to me for a reason. Figured I had a stake in her revenge plot when she found out Michael’s my father.”
Noelle’s eyes bulge and she claps a hand over her mouth. “Michael is your father?” Her mind’s scrambling, putting all the pieces of this puzzle together. “Oh my god. You finally found your father, and I took him away from you. That’s why you wanted to kill me.”
“That, and I thought you killed an innocent guy and got away with it. Typical rich bitch ruining everyone else’s lives and not suffering consequences for any of it.”
Admittedly, I let my emotions get the better of me. She’s right—I probably could’ve overlooked a standard hit-and-run, let local law enforcement deal with it. I had far worse predators to hunt down.
But then Michael agreed to serve a two-year prison sentence for a crime he didn’t commit because his employers bribed him with money they knew he didn’t have. Money he needed. Money he wanted to get me out of my line of work. So he wouldn’t lose his son after he’d finally found me, twenty-five years later.
He was the only person I had in this world, and she got him locked up.
So yeah. I salivated at the thought of killing her.
But once I learned what kind of guy she’d put in the ground, I couldn’t bring myself to draw that knife across her throat. Michael didn’t want me getting involved, wanted to keep his deal with the van Burens and collect. Didn’t want Noelle’s future ruined. He was willing to take her punishment. A better man than I’ve ever been.
“You weren’t wrong.” Noelle wrings her hands together, and her words come out small. “I deserve to suffer the consequences for what I did. I’m so, so sorry, Beau. I never meant to hurt Michael, or you.”
I wrap her in my arms. “I know, princess.” I pull back and smirk. “I kidnapped you, tied you to a chair, and threatened to kill you. You haven’t exactly gotten off scot-free.”
She takes a steadying breath, mind still scrambling. “So what do we do about Cassie?”
“What about her?”
“Do we go to the police?”
I nod. “That’s a great idea. Let’s tell them all about how your best friend hired me to kill you and I took the money, but I changed my mind about the whole murder part once I got your pussy in my mouth.”
She gives my arm a playful smack. “We could leave you out of it.”
“If that’s really what you want to do, I’ll take you there.”
Her brows knit together. “You don’t think I should do anything? She tried to have me killed.”
“And you killed her brother. She could’ve turned that video over to the police. You could be locked up somewhere else right now. Maybe you should finally tell her the truth to her face. Sober. Tell her what kind of person her brother was.”
Noelle shakes her head quickly. “No, I don’t want to hurt her more. She loved him so much—I don’t want to ruin the memories she has of him. He’s already gone; he can’t hurt anyone anymore. Nothing good would come from telling her the truth.”
“You should still tell her the truth about that night.”
“What if she tries to kill me?” Noelle whispers.
I circle my arms around her waist. “Princess, while I’m around, no one will lay a finger on you but me.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CASSIE
On the bench beside the pond, I’m hiding my tears behind my hair when I spot Beau Grayson strolling along the sidewalk in his security uniform and leather jacket.
I swipe the tears from my eyes, grab my bag, and follow him.
Everything is going to shit. Addison and Piper suspect Theo. The police know about our relationship. And now Theo doesn’t trust me.
He shouldn’t. I did a terrible, awful thing. But if Noelle is still alive, if she comes back, everything will be okay again. I’ll go to prison for hiring a hitman, but at least Noelle will be home.
We would’ve found her body by now if he’d killed her. The plan was for him to plant her body somewhere she’d be easy to find, stage it to look like a suicide. Then I’d release the video to the police, so everyone would know the guilt over what she’d done drove her to her own demise.
But with every day that’s passed since, the guilt over what I did to her has been eating me alive, Theo the only bright spot in the dark world Noelle and I both created.
Now that I don’t have him, I’m surrounded by nothing but darkness.
There’s still a chance I can make things right. I just need to figure out where Beau Grayson has her.
I keep a safe distance between us as I trail him around campus.
He strolls casually past buildings and students, acting like he’s actually here to keep anyone safe. I pretend I’m looking down at my phone while keeping him in my peripheral vision. When he veers around the corner of the library, I follow.
A hand wraps around my arm in an iron grip, shoving me up against the wall, my phone falling to the pavement with a crack.
“Why the fuck are you following me?” he growls.
My hands are already trembling, but I will bravery into my voice. “Did you kill her?”
His steely gray eyes narrow, but he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t remove the hand holding me so hard, my bone is on the verge of splintering.
Over Beau’s shoulder, I catch a glimpse of a familiar face hurrying down the sidewalk until he comes to an abrupt halt.
Theo.
His gaze darts between me and the back of Beau’s head, but he doesn’t make a move to get closer. Probably making all of the wrong assumptions about us.
Then he’s gone.
Every time he walks away from me, my heart breaks all over again.
“Where do you have her locked away?” I hiss.
Beau stares at me, unblinking, unwavering. Until he drops my arm, shoving me back into the wall. Pain lashes through my skull.
He walks away without a word.
As soon as he’s out of sight and I can breathe again, I take off after Theo, certain he’s heading for the parking lot now that his coach told him to take a break from baseball until everything quiets down.
So much has been taken away from him, and he’s been nothing but good to me and Noelle. He doesn’t deserve any of this.
I spot his tall frame heading for his Audi, the lights flashing when he unlocks it.
“Theo!”
He turns, but once he sees me, he climbs into the driver’s seat.
I keep running, even as he backs out of the parking spot and heads for the exit.
I jump in front of his car, his bumper nearly clipping me before he slams to a halt.
