Page 93 of Mine

For once, I prayed, let me be wrong about Landry Carter.

I swallowed hard, frozen there, and my stomach twisted into a knot with sharp edges and thorns.

“Trevan!” He shrieked my name, high and wailing as he flung his arms out to me, for me.

I ran.

“Ohmygod, I knew you’d come.” He sucked in his breath as I grabbed him and hugged him and kissed his face, his eyes, his nose, his cheeks, and then his mouth. I slanted my mouth down over his, the kiss demanding and deep, tasting him, devouring him. He was shivering in my arms when I stopped sucking on his bottom lip and leaned back to look at his face.

“Baby.” My voice broke as I choked on the words. “I know you blame me, but please don’t send me away. I’m so—”

“Blame you?” he almost shrieked at me, hands on my hoodie, holding tight, not letting me go. “Why in the hell would I blame you? I wanted to stay, and even if it hadn’t been today or now, that crazy fuck Brendan was going to get me.”

I took his beautiful face in my hands and stared into the eyes I adored, that were everything when he looked at me. “You still want me? You’re not sending me away?”

“What the fuck?” He scowled at me. “You came right back the second you knew I was gone, and I’ll bet that somehow you saved me. I don’t know how yet, but I know that’s true. I know if you hadn’t come, I’d be dead.”

My knees almost buckled at his faith as doctors and nurses streamed into the room.

“I love you. I will always love you. Don’t ever fuckin’ leave me.”

“No,” I promised him, holding his hand tight even as medical staff tried to move me away, push me back. “Never.”

And he took a breath as the deluge began.

“THOSE two guys getting shot,” Detective Baylor said after the second hour of us all being in Landry’s room. “That’s what broke this case. Mr. Carter lost it when he heard about that. I shudder to think what might have happened had they not been killed.”

My eyes flicked to Conrad’s.

“And it’s such a waste that they had to die, but when you involve yourself in crime, eventually you will pay for it.”

Conrad grunted.

“You disagree, Mr. Moss?” Baylor asked him.

“I do, detective. I think if people were as choosy with their friends as they were about their cars, a lot less criminals would ever be caught. You have to be smart.”

“Are you speaking from experience?”

“I’m speaking common sense,” Conrad told him. “How many cases like this one have you seen cracked because someone was stupid?”

He shrugged before turning to me. “You know, Trevan, you and Mr. Moss would have passed right by those two men on your way to the Carter home. Are you sure you don’t remember spotting anything out of the ordinary, seeing a car stopped on the side of the freeway?”

“I wasn’t looking,” I assured him. “The only thing I was thinking about was getting to Landry.”

He nodded. “Understandable.”

“You told Mr. Carter they were killed by a small caliber bullet.”

“Yes. Putting it all together now from e-mails and phone records, we know that those two were friends of Brendan’s from school. After Mr. Carter told Brendan that you were returning, Trevan, Brendan sent them to intercept you, but the information from Mr. Carter must have been faulty, since they never even saw you.”

“So my father had talked to Brendan earlier today?” Scott asked him.

“Probably sometime last night before he left for the cabin with Landry, but that’s why, we think, he was so horrified when he heard that they had been killed. Mr. Carter felt that he sent them into the path of whoever killed them by notifying Brendan. He felt responsible.”

“And who do you think killed them?” Chris asked him.

“Right now we have no suspects, but whoever did it, it was a clean, professional hit. Someone was very precise, and that just doesn’t happen for no good reason. They were dirty beyond trying to intercept you two,” he said to Conrad and me. “We just don’t know from what yet or who they pissed off.”