“Like I said, I have an idea, but we have to be careful.”
“Maybe you can meet me at the dock tonight,” she said.
“Babe, I can’t leave right now. It has to be after midnight.” He paused. “You know, maybe you shouldn’t come back tonight. I can slip out easier on my own.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“It’s for your own protection, Audrey. We need to be extra cautious right now. You do what you need to do, and don’t call me again, just in case they’re listening in.”
“They can’t, not without a warrant, and Franklin is on top of it—oryou know what.” That’s why she had kept Franklin alive, to get them inside information. She was relieved that she hadn’t made a mistake not killing him yesterday.
“This is to protect you, Audrey,” he said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. But, Garrett—”
“I’ll find a way to call you later, once I get out of here. Okay?”
“Fine,” she said.
She reluctantly ended the call as she passed the first Jacksonville exit. “Bye, Garrett. I’ll be back soon,” she said out loud to herself.
Maybe.
She didn’t like the way he sounded on the phone. He seemed worried and depressed, and he should never be worried about anything. And he sounded... different. Was he going to leave her?
No, he wouldn’t. That was silly. He loved her.
First things first. A two-hour drive. Two bullets in the stupid blonde, Kara, and two bullets in the asshole FBI agent, Matt. Then drive to the coast, get the boat, and go to her love.
Before Garrett, she was lost. With Garrett, she’d found her purpose. She hoped he wasn’t mad at her. He sounded mad. She didn’t like it when people criticized her. If he was mad, he thought she had done something wrong. She hadn’t. She had done everything they had planned, it wasotherswho messed it all up.
Yeah, maybe she should have killed the cops at the beginning, but what fun was that?
Garrett would see it, too.
Before she met Garrett, Audrey was Clara Dolan. The only child to two brilliant college professors who never expected to have kids until, after fifteen years of marriage, her thirty-nine-year-old mother became pregnant.
When Clara proved to be average academically, they were sorely disappointed. They had her tested repeatedly, sent her to the best schools, expected her to suddenly do well in school, write brilliant essays, and understand advanced math. After all, she was the prodigy of Gerald and Piper Dolan, of the genius IQ.
But Clara was average in every way except one: her looks.
Clara had been told she was beautiful from before she knew what beautiful meant. Strangers would go up to her mother and say, “Oh, your daughter is beautiful!” or “Those eyes! She’s going to be a knockout” or “I’ve never seen such a beautiful child.”
When Clara was six, she wanted to be a model. Her parents said no. They had a bunch of reasons, but Clara thought it was primarily because her mother was jealous of her beauty and didn’t want Clara to get the attention she clearly deserved. Also, they’d have to hire someone to take her to auditions and photo shoots and if Clara had a photo shoot, it might put adamper on their social life. When Clara was nine, she wanted to be an actress. Her parents, perhaps because they realized she was never going to be a rocket scientist, relented and let her take acting lessons. Clara overheard her father tell her mother, “Acting isn’t about intelligence, it may be a good fit for her. She is a pretty girl.”
But three years later, Clara overheard her instructor tell her parents that she had no talent. They offered to pay him more to keep working with her—he declined. They sent her to camp that summer and never discussed it, never told her why she was dropped. But she knew the truth and saw the disappointment in their eyes.
They thought she was so stupid she couldn’t even act.
Clara realized at a young age that her parents didn’t value her looks, but everyone else did. Her parents wanted a smart child, and Clara tried. But she wasn’t like them. She didn’t care about school, and it was hard. She was always a disappointment, and she didn’t like being made to feel stupid.Sheknew that she was smart, just not in the same way as her parents.
When she was twelve, Clara overheard her mother telling her book club that she thought Clara had been switched at birth with her real daughter, and she secretly had a DNA test done. And, unfortunately, Clara was in fact her daughter.
That’s when Clara just stopped tryingorcaring. She wasn’t book smart, so what? She wasn’tdumb. She wasn’tan idiot. She was hardlystupid. She just didn’t get math—who the fuck cared? She didn’t like reading, was that a crime? And why did it matter if she knew anything about history or art or why gravity worked? She just didn’t care about any of it.
She was beautiful. She was the most beautiful girl in school. Everyone said so, so Clara focused on her natural talent: using her looks to get her everything that she wanted.
In high school she learned that men would do anything a pretty girl asked. That took her far. She also learned that womenresented her simply because she was beautiful. It’s why Emily Masters thwarted Clara and stopped her from getting a promotion, because Emily resented Clara’s good looks and charm and wealth.
