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Finley closed her eyes. Fought to regain her composure.
See, I told you the guy’s in love with you.
Derrick’s voice floated through her, and she could barely breathe.
“Houser was almost killed because of me,” she blurted, unable to hold back all the secrets and lies anymore. It had to end somewhere. “That guy in the convenience store, Billy Hughes, you saw the video. I wanted him to die.” She shrugged. “Or maybe I wanted him to kill me, but I wanted all of it over.”
Matt started to interrupt, but she stopped him with a raised hand. “I’m far from finished. The dead woman they found in the motel where Houser was shot and think is a prostitute, she was Tark Brant’s girlfriend. She killed him. I was there. She thought he and I had a thing, and maybe we did. He was there ...thatnight. He was the one who ... raped me. For months I’ve been watching him.I”—she slapped her chest with her hand—“wanted him to know I was watching him. He’s dead and I’m glad. But the woman—Whitney Lemm—shouldn’t have had to die because of what I did. Houser shouldn’t have been shot because of what I asked him to do.”
Only when she shut up did she realize she was shaking. Matt moved closer, pulled her against him, and hugged her tight. She tried to pushhim away at first. Wanted him to understand she was dead serious about his involvement. But she was tired. Tired of pretending all that mattered was getting the people responsible for what had happened.
When in truth she was the one responsible for what had happened. She was the one who got Derrick killed. She took Dempsey’s son from him, and he took Derrick from her. Fair was fair, right?
Finley couldn’t cry. Until the other night, she’d thought she had forgotten how. But now, she didn’t have any tears left inside her. She wanted ... this ... over.
She stiffened. Wait. What had Matt said?
She drew back. “What connection?” Matt’s words suddenly filtered through all the crap and sank into her brain.
Matt held up a hand, stopping her this time. “You need to give me a minute to catch up, Fin. You were there when Brant was shot?”
“The girlfriend—Lemm—said she had information about Derrick. But when I got there, she just warned me off her boyfriend—Brant. Then he showed up. Based on the fading bruises Lemm was wearing, the situation wasn’t going to end well. Apparently, she was aware, so she shot him.” Finley exhaled a big breath and said the rest. “She was going to shoot me, too, but I talked her out of it.” The whole story sounded far worse looking back. At the time it had felt like it all worked out. Not so much now.
“Does Jack know about this?”
She nodded. “Houser knows too. I told him everything.”
Finley didn’t miss the flash of hurt in her friend’s eyes. She’d told two people, but he wasn’t one of them.
“Sorry I didn’t tell you too. I wanted to protect you.”
The way he stared at her now, she could see that he wasn’t buying it.
“I had to tell Houser in order to get help for Lemm. Jack is my boss and ...” Jesus Christ, what was Jack? He’d always been like an uncle to her, but everything was different now. He was—had been—in love with her mother. Did Matt know?
She stared at Matt, was certain he wouldn’t have hidden that information from her. But she had hidden so much from him. “Jack finally told me what happened between him and the Judge,” she said. “He’s ... or was in love with her. When he fell off the wagon and walked away from his practice, he finally admitted the truth to her, and she kicked him out of her life. Our lives.” Finley shook her head. “How could we not have known that?”
A moment passed before Matt said, “Sometimes we do things for the people we care about. Things that don’t make sense later but somehow did at the time.”
Was he giving her a way out of looking like a bad friend? That was so Matt-like.
Sadly, that wasn’t Finley’s excuse. “I didn’t want you to know.” There. She’d said it.
“Know what?” He searched her eyes. “That you wanted the truth about your husband? Of course you did. Anyone would.”
“About the rest and what I had become,” she confessed, unable to meet his gaze now. “A person so bent on revenge that I ignored, twisted, the law. I’d always been above that ... but then I fell ... and I just kept falling.”
“You did what you thought you had to do,” Matt said. “The only thing I regret is that you thought you had to do it alone.”
His words tugged at her emotions. He made a damned valid point. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have ... told you.”
Something else she had ignored. She’d been so focused on her own desperation to get the men involved withthatnight she hadn’t realized she was pushing everyone else away.
“I told myself I wanted to protect you, but the truth was I felt ashamed. I understood what I was doing was wrong, but I couldn’t stop.”
“You weren’t wrong, Fin,” he said softly, too softly. “You were right all along. Dempseyisinvolved somehow.”
Wait, wait. She needed to hear all of this. “What did you find?”
