Page 32 of A Secret In The Garden

“Did you kill them?” I blurted, my voice hardly louder than a whisper. I was so confused about the letter, the ghost...and Jasper.

Jasper blinked once. No outrage. Just flashed a slow, cruel smile of white teeth before clearing the little space that was between us and towering over me until there was only a few inches between our faces, the hand not balancing the gun on his shoulder moving to the rock by my face as he bracketed me in.

“Does it matter?” His warm breath curled around my ear and neck, and I had to pinch my eyes closed and force my knees to not buckle.

My heart pounded in my chest like angry, rhythmic thunder. This should have terrified me. It did. But in spite of all of that, every inch of my skin tingled with excitement. His powerful thigh pressed against mine, sending an awareness through my lower body that started to ache in sync with my heartbeat. The heat from his body pressed through the fabric of my clothes and into my sensitive skin, causing a shiver that only made me want to press closer to him.

His thumb moved from the rock and ghosted across the corner of my jaw. Down my neck. “You think I’m a monster.”

“I think you want me to,” I answered. My eyes moved to the gun, then to the tattoos covering his hand.

He licked his lips. I could feel the pressure of his eyes on my own lips. “Then why are you still here?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I told him the truth. “Because I want to believe you didn’t.”

He leaned in, his mouth at my throat. As he spoke, I felt the light touches of his lips against my skin. “But you’re still afraid I did. That’s what makes this so fucking hot, isn’t it?”

I didn’t move. I didn’t even swallow. My whole body pulsed—with guilt and longing. It was out now, the unspoken bits between us.

Something caught my eye over his shoulder. A stifled gasp ripped from my throat as I grabbed Jasper’s arm. In the glass behind him, the ghost stared at me. Jasper snapped his head around, putting off the same vibe of a dog looking for a fight. He looked back at me, and I could tell from the confusion on his face that he hadn’t seen anything. When I looked again, she was gone. I was saved from questions by more movement on the other side of us.

There was a bang at the side door. It was John, apparently attempting to be heroic as he shouted something. Jasper turned his head back to me, his eyes alight with humor as he grinned and cocked his head toward the door, took a step backward, and put his hand on the small of my back, urging me to go toward the door.

“Come on. Let’s see how good your aim is.”

We left the conservatory to find a red-faced, irritated John. There was a haunting eeriness out there, near the edge of the cliff, that seemed to somehow pull at my spirit. I was terrified of heights—I could barely even climb a ladder. I’d hardly been able to look in the cliff’s direction while working in the conservatory, despite how beautiful the view probably was, but this was different. This was where Jasper’s parents fell off the edge to their deaths—if they were, in fact, dead. Where something awful had happened and he’d walked away covered in blood, a fact that made me wonder what exactly he had done to have so much blood on him.

We continued out to the open grass, closer to the cliff. A few of his male staff had gathered by a large machine; a few loitered in the back, as if there was about to be a show. One, Luke, I think his name was, stepped out and handed us all flat-looking black headphones.

“Ear protection. You’ll still be able to talk; it adjusts for voices. It just blocks out the sound of the gunshots,” he added before handing John a pair and running back to the other staff. Jasper didn’t have a pair, and I was about to say something when I saw him put small black earbuds in. Jasper stepped away from us, toward the drop over the cliff. With a graceful motion, he dropped the barrel of the gun to the ground, pulled a long green cylinder from his pocket, and popped it into the gun.

“Pull,” he commanded in a low voice, snapping the barrel of the shotgun closed and raising it quickly into place at his shoulder. He fired into the sky, hitting something with a small clap before opening the gun again and repeating the practiced action. A bit of smoke rolled out of the barrel, and the shell flew out and landed a few feet away. His movements were so practiced and smooth, it was almost like he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing, like muscle memory had taken over. He repeated the graceful motion a few more times, hitting a target every time.

Had the excitement of the evening and the alcohol not been so potent at blurring my senses, I couldn’t have been so close to where the edge was, but as it was, my eyes were glued to Jasper and my body seemingly hell-bent on reacting to him.

He waved us over after one of the valets moved to stand on a wide, flat pedal of sorts attached by a long cord to some sort of machine. He was still a good forty feet from the edge, but it was horrifying to be even this close. Had that been what happened to Hester and Darius? Did they all shoot? Was there just an accident of sorts while they were all out by the ledge? I couldn’t decide as I watched the man in black deftly load the shotgun again.

My thoughts swirled back to the letter I had found from Hester in Jasper’s room. She couldn’t have written that if she were dead, and I felt sure the ghost was her...so the letter couldn’t be real. Was it just some elaborate cover-up by Jasper, or did he really think she was still alive? Was the letter fake? It had to be...right?

John tried to look casual at my side, but you could see how truly rattled he was as well, and understandably so; the calm danger that poured off Jasper was terrifying—and unbelievably attractive. With his dark, dangerous gaze and hand wrapped under the butt of the shotgun as the barrel rested against the fine black fabric of his suited shoulder, he looked like a rugged, masculine hit man fronting as a suited-up CEO…and fucking making it work.

“You see this little part that surrounds the trigger, John?” Jasper asked before lifting the gun back up against his face, only diverting his eyes from the other man at the last second. His movements were smooth and confident as he aimed at something in the sky that had whipped out of a nearby machine flinging discs.

He pulled the trigger and hit his neon orange target effortlessly. It was like the firearm was a part of him, nothing more than an extension of his body, like an arm or leg.

“It’s called a trigger guard. It’s made of reinforced polymer to improve strength and reduce weight. That’s where JV Plastics would’ve been used.” Another two shots, each hitting their mark seemingly without effort. He pulled on some piece of the smoking gun, and empty green shells flew onto the ground with a soft sound. I adjusted the headphones on my ears, wondering how they were capable of only blocking out the sound of the gunshot and not the voices. I could hear the valets in the back talking about how precise Jasper’s shots had been.

“Would’ve been used?” John asked, looking sweaty and flustered.

“Eliza, darling, can I interest you in shooting something?” His dark eyes glittered wildly against the setting sun. “Let’s start with a clay pigeon.” He kept his eyes on John for an uncomfortably long moment, only removing his gaze when John shifted nervously.

The two men had been agreeable at dinner; what in god’s name happened between the two of them? Was this all really because Jasper had…grown jealous?

A minuscule part of me was relieved and comforted to know that Jasper had obviously been feeling the chemistry too, that it wasn’t just some ridiculous notion in my mind. Of course, at dinner, I hadn’t missed his broody glares and bitten-off comments, but aside from the barely blanketed innuendos, I had just assumed that was how he behaved around everyone—everyone except those of us at the manor, like Sowerby, Katya, Leah, and…well, me. He seemed to be a bit more comfortable with the people who were around him at the manor all day long. A flush of adrenaline coursed through my veins at the surprising thought that maybe I was more on the inside with him than I had thought.

And he called me “darling.”

The wine sizzled in my system, making for an easy decision. I smiled wide, feeling the chill of air hit my teeth. I stepped up to him, ready for instructions. His now smiling eyes locked with mine in silent approval as he placed the heavy shotgun in my hands.