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Dario shook his head. “Your source was wrong. I saw her. Held her body. Unless he killed both of them, he got the wrong girl.” He pulled out his phone and flipped through the photos, his heart tightening when he got to the one he had taken of Gwen. Taking a deep breath, he held up the phone and let Hawk see the image.
At the sight of her body, his eyes flared, the famous Hawk temper emerging. His hand jerked out, latching around Dario’s throat and squeezing. The air supply cut off and Dario’s chest seized, his phone dropping to the floor and clattering across the wood. Dario reached up and wrapped his hand around Hawk’s wrist. It’d be easy to rip it free. He was ten times stronger than the old man. But he let him have this moment.
“You did this!” Hawk’s voice broke, his fury and pain mixing together in a cocktail of rage. “You and your swinging dick put my little girl—” His words broke off, and he abruptly released his grip on Dario and turned away.
Dario inhaled deeply, the spots in his vision clearing, Hawk’s blurry outline sharpening as the man stopped before the desk. “You can blame me all you want, but this is on you. You left her in that fucking Mexico shithouse to die, and you’ve been killing her ever since. This? This is just the final swing of your ax.”
“You cheated on my daughter. You—”
“I LOVED your daughter. I loved her more than you ever did. I did not cheat on Gwen. I was honest with her. We were honest with each other. Our marriage, despite what you may have thought, wasn’t sexual and it wasn’t exclusive.”
“Bullshit.” The man spit out the word. “Don’t try to make excuses to me, Capece. I gave you the world and you shit all over it, and all over your marriage.” He whirled around and pointed to Dario. “Search him.”
THE DOOMED
Through the crack in the open door, Claudia watched, her breaths short and fast, her panic and guilt escalating with each word out of Robert Hawk’s mouth.
Dario was lying. He had to be. She had shot Bell. She had to have shot Bell. She couldn’t have… she felt suddenly lightheaded and pulled away from the view, leaning against the closest wall.
Dario had shown him a photo, something that had caused Robert to react, to believe that Gwen was dead. Could she be? Could Claudia have actually … her vision tunneled and she circled her waist with her hands, frantically rubbing her clothing, pulling and stretching at the cotton without thought of why.
She had to go see Gwen. Prove the ridiculousness of this all. Prove that Dario was lying. Claudia was right. Claudia had killed BELL. She’d watched her sink to the floor. She had watched Gwen for years and Bell for weeks. She would have been able to tell the difference between the two glossy-headed brunettes. She would never have made that mistake.
She stepped away, her ankle turning, and she grabbed at the wall for balance.
She killed Gwen. It had to be a lie, but the mere possibility of it terrified her. If she killed Gwen, she might as well die now. The thought of Robert’s reaction… she made it to the end of the hall and turned left, moving past a housekeeper and quickening her steps, the back door ahead.
She had to go to Gwen. Find her. Prove that this was all a lie.
And if it wasn’t?
She pushed on the door, the night quiet, the garage just ahead, her car inside. She stopped, taking a moment to think, fear pricking at the edges of her consciousness. Her car, like all Hawk vehicles, had a tracker on it. Stepping into the shadows, out of the view of the security camera, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. Dumping it in the closest potted plant, she hugged the edge of the home until she got to the front, darting past Dario’s Rolls and through the front gate.
In case he was telling the truth.
In case Gwen was dead.
In case Claudia killed her…
In case, in case, in case, in case…
She’d have to be smart about this. She broke into a run, her hands fisting into nervous grips. If Dario was telling the truth, her life was over.
DARIO
Dario put up a half-hearted struggle, his arms held tight by the two men, their hands patting over his body. When they pulled at his shirt collar, he stilled, closing his eyes when they undid the top buttons of his shirt and exposed the small mic and wires, taped to his stomach. Hawk spotted them and began to laugh. “Oh… what a stupid, stupid man.”
Dario stayed quiet as they ripped the tape off of his chest, following the wires down to the small recorder. It didn’t matter. The wire was, always had been, a decoy—something designed to be found and used for distraction.
