A surge of annoyance overtook Gabrielle as she glared at Brad. His views of Sebastian were blatantly wrong. Sebastian wasn’t faking his feelings for her to get at her trust fund. “I thought you only knew what you’d observed.”
“I’m protective of you. Sue me. I had the guys dig into his background after you hired him to be your bodyguard. He’s qualified, but that doesn’t make him the right choice. I’m going with my gut, Gabrielle. Before you trust this guy with your heart, you might want to find out what skeletons he’s hiding in his closet. Find out his real motive behind this devotion he has for you.”
“Are you done?”
Brad shrugged and gave her a sympathetic smile, then closed the door behind him.
Alone in the hotel suite, she turned around to face the flowers. Crossing the room, she reached into the vase and pulled out the rectangular card.
Pulling the card from the inside, she opened it.
The card fell from her shaking hand.
The message written in jagged black strokes was clear.
You will always be mine
Chapter36
“Obviously, I was wrong,” Gabrielle threw her hands in the air. “Sebastian didn’t send me those flowers.”
After finding the third ominous message, she’d raced out of her hotel suite, catching Brad before he entered the elevators. He’d gone pale when she told him. Frowns creased his face as his blue eyes darkened. The stalker getting a message past his legion of guards had rattled him. Uniformed officers swarmed the suite as she gave her statement to Brad in the hallway. Hours had passed, and the place was still crawling with police. But Brad had returned with an entirely new line of questioning for her. One she couldn’t fathom.
“Hannah Ellerby corroborated your original statement that the flowers were sent to you by Sebastian Luttrell.” Brad glared at her. “Why are you trying to protect him?”
Gabrielle took a deep breath. She clenched the armrests of the brocaded chair, trying to stop her body from shaking with rage. “I’ll explain it again since you refuse to believe me. Hannah brought the flowers into my hotel suite. Not Sebastian. Did she tell you that?”
“Yes, that was part of her statement. But she said you immediately recognized the flowers as being from Sebastian—”
“It was a fucking assumption! I didn’t know for sure. I thought they were from him, but clearly, they weren’t. Sebastian wouldn’t send me flowers and include a note with those words. The same words on the card in my purse with the snakes. The same words written in blood on the walls of my beach cottage. The same horrible words that bastard Damian Hester wrote on a notepad and shoved at me before he died!”
“What did you say?” Brad frowned, then leaned forward. “What did Damian do?”
Gabrielle covered her face with her hands. The jagged letters scratched on the small square paper slammed through her mind. “You know we were at the hospital when Damian died.”
“Yeah, but I never heard anything about him giving you a note. I thought he was unconscious and then coded.”
“He woke up while I was in his room,” Gabrielle looked away. “He saw me. That’s what triggered everything. He couldn’t speak, but he wrote a note to me. Marvin gave it to me after he was pronounced dead. He’d written ’you will always be mine’ on the notepad.”
“And you didn’t think this was something I needed to know as I investigated these threatening messages?”
“There was no point in bringing it up. The note would’ve made you think that Damian was behind the new threats, which you already believed. It didn’t matter,” Gabrielle insisted.
“It matters more than you know,” Brad said, his face turning grave. “I need you to confirm one thing.”
“What is it?”
“Was Sebastian Luttrell in the hospital room with you, Marvin, and Damian that night? Did he see Damian’s message on the notepad?”
“Yes, he was there. He saw everything.”
Brad glanced at the two uniformed officers in the corner, then nodded. The men understood the silent message from the detective and exited the hotel suite.
“What’s going on, Brad? Where are they going?”
“To find Sebastian and bring him in for questioning,” Brad said.
“Questioning for what?” Gabrielle asked.
