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Lydia turned her attention back to Gabe. “What was it that gave it all away?” Her tone was more idle curiosity than anything else, and it struck PJ as so utterly at odds with what was happening.
How quickly Lydia had downshifted from the anger rolling off her in waves only a moment before when she’d been talking about Ellis. She was truly sick.
The realization shook PJ. They weren’t dealing with a stable person at all, and that scared her more than anything.
Gabe seemed to understand what Lydia was asking, but PJ felt dazed as she tried to follow their conversation.
“Got a call from the police back in Massachusetts,” Gabe said, sounding calmer than PJ felt. “It seems your mom hasn’t been answering phone calls or the door. At first, everyone assumed she was just upset, that she needed time to deal with the loss of her son. But after a couple of days, one of the neighbors finally used the key she had given him to go in and check on the house when she was out of town. Despite the fact that you cranked the air conditioning in her house, the smell when he entered gave it away.”
PJ swallowed as Gabe turned to her, his voice trying to portray calm, as though he wasn’t concerned about the situation. “Lydia fed her mother a lethal dose of valium the night of Ellis’s funeral. She put the first dose in a glass of orange juice. Did you force the rest of the pills down her throat after she was unconscious, Lydia?”
Lydia sneered again but didn’t answer.
PJ closed her eyes.This couldn’t be happening. It could not be happening. Oh god. Ellis.
She opened her eyes and stared at Lydia. “You set Ellis up. He had nothing to do with this, did he?” she asked.
“Nothing? Are you kidding? He hadeverythingto do with this. Everything. He was the one who started it all. He came into our family and changed it all. He took my parents away from me with his never-ending need for love, for validation, for attention. My dad tried to balance things out, to be sure I didn’t get lost when my mom turned all her love to Ellis, but then my dad died and I was left alone.”
Lydia had lost all semblance of calm. She was shrieking now. “And, my mom…my mom never cared about me. Never really had when I think back on it. But, she loved Ellis. God, how she loved Ellis. When she demanded I help get him this job, I knew I’d never get away from him, he’d never stop ruining everything good in my life. I finally have a career I love, that I’m good at—and when I go home and tell her what I’m doing, she says, ‘Ellis could do that with you.’”
PJ just stared. Ellis had to be interviewed the same as all of the other applicants for the job he’d held. Sure, he’d gotten the interview based on his relationship to Lydia, but he’d qualified for that job fair and square. And, he’d been good at it. He’d been a crucial part of PJ’s team in the past six months.
“Then you start in with Ellis just like my mom. Always defending him. Always sticking up for him like he was some big part of the team, like we needed him here.”
“Why now?” Gabe asked, drawing PJ from the thoughts that swirled in her head.
“Ah,” Lydia said. “That was Ellis, too. You see, he isn’t innocent in any of this at all,” she said. “Ellis was the one who stole your journal. At least the first time.”
There was a subtle shift in Gabe’s face—it was there and gone in a flash, causing PJ to wonder if she’d imagined it. Lydia was still focused on PJ and her diatribe about Ellis and showed no sign that she’d seen the shift in his expression.
“He watched you all the time. When you thought you were alone, Ellis was there. He went so far as to put a tiny spy cam in one of your bags. Did you know that? Did you know the little creep was spying on you? He saw you writing in it, and he hid to watch where you put it away. You didn’t know the little creep was that obsessed with you, did you? He stole it to see if you ever wrote about him.”
The laugh and smirk on her lips were cruel and twisted.
“He cried when he discovered your secret; that you were as bad as his slut mother who didn’t want him. I told him to put the flash drive back and forget he’d read it. You know, despite that, it still took him over a week to realize it was me when your journal was leaked to the press. He puffed up all righteous and told me I had to stop. When I reminded him he started it all, he broke down and cried, begged me to stop.”
PJ didn’t care what Ellis had done. He didn’t deserve to die for it and she had no doubt Lydia had something to do with pushing him to take his own life. Lydia continued her warped diatribe before PJ could say anything.
“It was easy to convince him I would do just that. I told him I’d stop and I’d put your journal back.” Lydia shrugged a shoulder as though what she was saying was nothing significant.
“I copied it and the next day, I slipped the USB drive and the phone into his luggage just in time for those goons you hired to get here and start searching people.”
“He killed himself,” PJ said, tears running down her face. Ellis may have been obsessed with PJ, and his spying had started all of this, but he didn’t deserve to die.
Lydia laughed and the cruelty of it cut through PJ. “I know. It was beautiful, really. I couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome. Icing on the cake, actually.”
PJ heard the crack of her hand against Lydia’s face before she realized she’d even moved. It was a stupid move with a gun in her side, but she hadn’t actually planned to do it. When she heard the laughter and the callous words coming from the woman in front of her, she reacted without thought.
And then things happened so quickly, she couldn’t really say what happened first or who moved when. Suddenly she was on the floor under Gabe and someone, maybe Justice, was tackling Lydia from behind. He’d come from the back of the bus in the split second following the slap.
But, the thing that registered most with PJ in that moment was the heat. The absolute, searing heat that ripped through her side. The pain that followed it was like nothing she’d ever felt before, and she fought to take a breath as she saw Justice and Eric secure a screeching Lydia.
Gabe’s hands scrambled over her, tearing at her shirt while the door to their tour bus opened. She caught a glimpse of Debra and the police, and someone was calling for an ambulance and Gabe’s hands pressed into her side.
“It just grazed you, Pru,” he whispered to her, as the pain shot through her. It didn’t feel like any graze to her.
What the hell did a real bullet wound feel like if this was what being grazed felt like?
