Deadly Lies (Deadly #3)(76)

Puppet master. Who? Who was he?

And where was the bastard?


Beth ran up the stairs, her heart racing. “Quinlan?” Dammit, he was back earlier than she’d expected. His car had been sitting out front when she pulled into the driveway.

This better not mess up her timeline. She’d targeted the attacks while he was supposed to be in the office with those FBI pricks. She’d given him the perfect alibi. No more suspicion, and no more jerkoff stepbrother standing between Quinlan and her money.

“Quinlan, where are you?” She shoved open his bedroom door. Empty. “Quinlan?” She hurried down the hallway. Where was everybody? Two maids were scheduled to work today but she hadn’t seen them.

A thud came from Frank’s room. The crash of breaking glass. Beth ran forward, grabbed the door handle, and shoved open the door. “What the—”

The room was a wreck. Furniture overturned. Mirrors shattered. Pictures broken on the floor. In the middle of the mess, Quinlan stood with his shoulders bowed.

Beth sucked in a deep breath. “Quinlan, what are you doing?” Not a breakdown, not now. That was the last thing she needed. Once they were settled, and she had a ring on her finger, then the guy could go nuts. Not now.

He bent and picked up one of the long glass shards from what had once been an antique mirror.

“I have the worst luck,” he said, his voice so low that she had to strain to hear him.

“What are you talking about?” If the guy wanted to compare piss luck stories—

No. She’d never told Quinlan about her parents. She’d given him just the briefest of details about her past.

“My mom walked out when I was four. She left me with that prick who didn’t give a damn about me, and she never looked back,” Quinlan said as he turned the shard of glass over in his hand. The point was sharp, like a knife, and the light hit the gleaming tip. “When I was fifteen, he finally called me home from that prison of a boarding school, and why? To introduce me to her. The low budget whore he’d decided to marry!”

At least he didn’t shove his hand up your pants every damn day. Her own shoulders straightened, and Beth shut the door behind her with a soft click, suddenly very, very grateful that no one else was around. She couldn’t afford to let anyone see him this way.

“Quinlan, you need to calm down, honey.” Deliberately, Beth pitched her voice nice and low in an attempt to soothe. “You’ve been through a lot. You’re stressed, but this—this isn’t helping.” Yeah, that sounded like she cared, right? Poor little rich boy. Cry her a damn river.

A bitter laugh broke from his lips. “He never had a space for me in his life, but he had room for her. Her and her ex-con son.”

What?

At her quick breath, Quinlan’s head lifted, and his gaze settled on her face. “You didn’t know, did you? Max killed a man. Beat him to death with a baseball bat.” His eyes glittered with a feverish intensity. “And my old man still thought he was the golden child. Always comparing me to him, always telling me how good old Max was bustin’ ass to make a name for himself—hell, yeah, he was, with my father’s money.”

Max had killed a man? She hadn’t seen that one coming.

“And when the whore finally got sick, I found out the truth.”

“Have you been drinking?” Beth asked him. This wasn’t like Quinlan. Sure, he bitched and moaned, but he’d never called Katie a whore.

“Not booze. Pills.” He raked a hand over his face. “So sick of seeing his f-face. Took more of the pills that damn shrink gave me.”

Her tongue swiped over her lower lip. Ah, drugs. She’d used enough of them to keep Frank in line. “We need to get you in bed. All this—” She motioned to the chaos in the room with a wave of her hand. “You could have hurt yourself.” He had hurt himself. Blood seeped through the white fabric over his abdomen. He must have broken open some of the stitches.

“You know he wanted to give his money to charity? When she was dying…” Quinlan acted like Beth hadn’t spoken, and his gaze fell to the mirror shard one more time. “I found out that he wanted to give all the money to the cancer society. Can you believe that?”

Yes. Because even though Frank had been screwing her, the old bastard had actually seemed to love Katie.

“I stopped that. Stopped him.” The fingers of his right hand curled tightly around the glass. Too tightly. A drop of blood fell onto the floor. “Worst f*cking luck.”

Beth climbed over the broken drawers from Frank’s chest. She needed to get that glass away from him. The way he was acting, there was no telling what he’d do. And if the rich boy went and sliced his wrists, what would she do then? And what would she get? Nothing.

“Then this kidnapping…” His left hand rose. “My dad, my dad—I see him…”

Her hand curled around his. “It’s okay.”

“No.” He pinned her with his wild gaze. “It’ll never be okay again.”


A swirl of red and blue lights lit the scene. While firefighters circled the still smoldering wreckage of the Jeep, cops and FBI agents swarmed the street.

“I think it was a cell phone-activated bomb,” Samantha said as she stood beside Max. The EMT had finished checking her out after trying to get her in the ambulance, but she’d refused his order. “I heard the ring, and I-I just knew.”