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No.
My eyes narrowed. “Someone else . . . You knew it was her?” When he didn’t respond, I clenched my jaw and growled, “You knew it was her and you’ve had me looking for someone else? You brought that Lucas Holt bullshit to me, to what, get me off Jessica’s trail?”
“It makes sense for it to be him,” he argued. “And, yes, to get you off her goddamn trail. When you came back the night after you met her, asking for her address, I knew you were onto her and it scared the shit out of me.”
“If you thought she was the ghost, you should’ve told me from the beginning.”
“I love her,” he yelled, his voice booming. “And it doesn’t make sense for her to be the one to kill someone. Jess would never do that. Sneak in places? Get information? Yeah. Yeah, she’d fucking do that. But there has to be another ghost, so I wanted to focus on the other.”
I clenched my hands and slowly relaxed them. Then did it again. When I spoke, my voice was like ice. “Tell me how you knew it was her.”
“I wasn’t sure at first.” He blew out a slow breath. “You told me you thought Mickey knew it was you that’d betrayed him. Then when Mickey came asking about her mom, he kept referring to Jess as his. Said she was going to be the future of Holloway if she could finish a project for him first.”
My hands curled into fists. “She’s not his.”
A sad sounding l
augh punched from his chest. “Right. Well, next thing I know, Jess is gone. I’ve seen her every single night for a decade, and suddenly she’s gone for days at a time. And then I walked in on the two of you in your room and it was clear as fucking day that it wasn’t a one-time thing. Which means she’d allowed you to find her. And I knew right then if she’d been letting you find her and wasn’t out looking for her mom, she was helping Mickey. Only one thing he needs help with right now.”
“I heard a recording between her and Mickey,” I said and had to clear my throat before I could continue. “She said she’d been searching my room and making me fall in love with her so she could get information from me.”
Even with all Beck had already known and suspected, he looked like he didn’t know how to digest the idea that the girl he loved could do that.
I knew the feeling.
“Jessica wouldn’t do anything for him unless she felt she didn’t have a choice. But he has her mom,” I reminded him. “She would do anything for her.”
He tilted his head. “It’s not just that. Mickey said he’d get her mom help before he took her. Jess is still holding on to the hope that he might.”
I hissed a curse. More made sense with every minute. “We need to talk to her when Mickey leaves for Raleigh,” I said firmly. “We need to know what Mickey had her doing, and we need to find the other guy. Find him, and I have a feeling we end the hit on Conor and save Jessica. Then Mickey’s breaths are numbered.”
When Beck nodded, I pushed from the door and reached for the handle but stopped at my name.
I glanced back at him to find him looking tortured.
“There’s something else.”
A heavy rock settled in my stomach. Jesus Christ. The last couple days had been one clusterfuck after another.
“What?”
“I didn’t know . . . swear to God, I had no idea. But you were right.”
That rock turned to lead. “About what?”
He looked at me warily. “She’s been paying off someone else. And I know who he is.”
I was sitting against the headboard when I heard the front door shut.
That was my first clue that whoever was coming to see me wasn’t the person I wanted to see.
I stopped playing with the ends of my hair as I listened to the heavy footfalls coming down the wooden hall.
It didn’t sound like a charging bull, so I had a sinking feeling it wasn’t Conor.
With a steadying breath, I lifted my eyes and found the mob boss leaning against the doorframe, heated eyes on me.
“Where’s my mom?”
