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Every ounce of worry and fear drained out of her, replaced with a rage ocean–deep and mountain–wide, with only one target. Palming a wrench, Natalie slid it up the sleeve of her sweater and straightened.
Her first instinct was the strike out immediately, but she knew she couldn’t. If she had any hope of taking Joni out, she had to time it just right.
She kept her hand close to her thigh and continued forward. “Does Carl know?”
“That idiot? Of course not.” The emotionless cold in Joni’s voice added an extra bit of creepy to the whole fucked–up situation. “When he got out on bail after running your sister off the road, I bailed him out, got him drunk and kept him that way so he missed his court appearance. And while he was passed out, I made sure things started going wrong here. Now, I never expected him to shoot himself after I spiked his morning whiskey with PCP, but the unexpected happens and you have to deal with it.”
“You set him up,” Natalie prompted, leading Joni farther away from Sean.
“A nice little bit of irony there, wasn’t it? Of course, I didn’t expect law enforcement to be so dead set against actually investigating the accidents.” She jabbed the revolver into Natalie’s back. “That’s far enough.”
Swallowing her fear, Natalie put everything she had into remaining calm. “Carl’s in jail, you won’t be able to blame him for this.”
“True, but the sheriff’s deputies aren’t much interested in investigating the goings on at the Sweet Salvation Brewery, are they? They’ll tie the explosion to a gas leak and it’ll be just another horrible accident at a poorly run craft brewery that resulted in two people’s deaths.” Joni took a step back. “Too bad for you it had to end like this.”
Using every trick and tip she’d ever learned from Dr. Kenning, Natalie marshaled all of her focus and intent into this moment.
She inhaled a deep breath and let the wrench drop into her palm.
Tightening her grip around the metal hidden behind her back, she centered her weight on the balls of her feet.
The ominous sound of a safety being pulled back sounded.
“No.” Natalie spun on her heel, bringing the wrench up at the same time.
The move startled Joni and she fired, but the sit went wide.
Natalie brought the wrench down with all her strength.
It cracked against the other woman’s shoulder.
The gun fell and clattered against the floor, skittering into the shadows toward Sean.
Before Natalie could even make a play for the weapon, Joni screamed like a woman possessed and came at her.
A shot cracked.
Joni went down in a crumpled heap to the ground, howling, “You shot me in the ass.”
Behind Joni, Sean stood with the gun. “Are you okay?”
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he collapsed to the ground, blood streaming down his arm.
Three hours later, the hospital was a mad house. TV crews and tabloid reporters had swarmed the Salvation County Medical Complex like a plague of locusts. The news had gone viral when Rupert Crowley had breathlessly reported on the shooting at the brewery on the country’s highest–rated cable news program. Everyone from the doctors to the sheriff’s deputies working crowd control were talking about how Sean O’Dell was really Hollywood heartthrob Sean Duvin, who’d disappeared six years ago moments after accepting his Oscar, never to be heard from again until now.
Really, it was the best piece of gossip Salvation had whispered about in decades.
And Natalie didn’t give a rat’s ass. She needed to lay eyes on Sean and confirm what the paramedics had said about his condition. A concussion and minor gunshot wound were serious, but they were a helluva lot better than getting blown sky–high in a gas explosion, as Joni had planned.
Fresh from a mind–numbing interrogation by law enforcement, Natalie and Miranda elbowed their way through the crowd to the hospital’s front doors.
“There she is,” someone hollered. “It’s Natalie Sweet.”
A platoon of cameras turned in her direction. Reporters rushed forward en masse, shoving microphones in her face and yelling questions at her.
“Are you sleeping with Sean Duvin?”
“Did Sean save your life?”
