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He sat. And her heart was more his than ever. His and shattering at the same time.
“I’m sorry for...” Everything. So, so sorry. “My mood,” she finished lamely. She wasn’t ready. How did one prepare to obliterate someone’s faith in them?
She had no plan. As hard as she’d tried to figure out the best way to do this, the right way to handle the quagmire her life had become, she’d come up empty. It was the case of her life and she had no winning argument.
It didn’t matter how she attempted to explain herself, hearing the words in her mind, they just sounded like excuses.
He sat a mere foot away from her. She could smell his musky cologne and wondered if he’d put it on just for her.
“You said you have something to tell me.”
Yes. And she still didn’t have the words. The way. She didn’t know how to minimize his pain. How to make things right.
* * *
A PHONE RANG in the distance.
“That’s my cell,” Addy said, setting down her glass as she jumped up. “I have to get it.”
At ten o’clock at night? The call lasted less than five minutes. One look at Addy’s face as she came back outside and he knew that something had gone wrong.
Really wrong.
* * *
WILL HAD RECEIVED another threat. She’d called Greg Richards once and hung up, letting him know that Susan Farley had not met Montford’s entrance standards. She hadn’t expected to hear back from him.
Hadn’t even known it was him when she’d heard her prepaid cell phone ring. She’d never had a call on the thing.
She hadn’t recognized the number on the caller display when she’d run inside to get the phone.
But she’d answered because only Will and the sheriff knew the number.
Greg had purchased a prepaid cell, as well. Just in case.
The latest letter had arrived at Will’s home. In his personal mail. There was no return address. It had a Phoenix postmark and was typed on the same generic letterhead. It, too, stated that Will should be liquefying his assets as he’d soon be ordered to pay a large sum of money.
Who the orders would be coming from was unclear. Ordered by an extortionist? Or by the courts?
The new letter had arrived on the same day Addy had met with Greg and turned over the list of names she’d compiled. As though the person behind it knew she was closing in. To hear that there’d been another letter had been upsetting enough. But that hadn’t been the worst of Greg Richards’s news. He’d read to her the dates of all three letters, asking her to check them against the spreadsheets she’d compiled that afternoon—just in case anything popped.
Something had.
The date of the first letter coincided with the week Mark Heber had accepted Montford’s offer of admission.
She hadn’t shared the news with Greg Richards. Not tonight. Tomorrow was soon enough. And she hadn’t told the sheriff about the ten other people who’d been granted entrance into the university without qualifying to be there. He knew about Susan. That was all.
“I won’t be leaving this weekend,” she said, picking up her glass of wine as she took her seat next to Mark.
But he might be. Oh, not that weekend. But before the semester was out. Unless Addy could figure out a way to stop that from happening.
“You got a call about school this late at night?”
Another mistake. “I... Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“Yes.” She tried to look away from the intensity in his gaze but didn’t have the strength. Or the will.
He’d once told her that emotions messing with thought was the cause behind poor choices. He’d said it one time when they’d been talking about Ella. Until now, Addy’s emotions had been so firmly under wrap that they’d never had the opportunity to interfere with her thought processes.
