The Last Invitation (80)

A car pulled around to this side of the garage. The headlights moved over Darren as he bent over, screaming about how she would pay. When the car horn sounded, Darren froze then ran. He sped by the car, shutting the driver’s-side door right as it started to open. Then he was gone.

The world began to sway. Jessa dropped to her knees. She hit the cement with enough force to hear a crack. Aches started to surface. She heard voices around her and Faith yelling her name.

Jessa focused on one thing—she’d won this round, but she had to move or Darren’s family would lose the next.





Chapter Seventy

Gabby




Gabby paced. She’d been pacing for what felt like hours. After receiving the emergency SOS from Jessa and having a brief conversation about her finding some vault, all communication ceased.

In any other circumstance, Gabby could console herself, saying Jessa needed time to extricate herself from the office and call again. But between the truncated visit with Retta and Liam’s ongoing legal issues, the danger and uncertainty ratcheted up.

Gabby’s inbox had been flooded with nasty emails and requests for interviews. Some true crime podcast already jumped in and speculated she and Liam had killed Baines to get him out of the way, and now an army of social media warriors were running with the unfounded garbage. Picking through their lives. Drawing conclusions from random photos they found online.

She wanted to say, Well, at least Kennedy is out of the fray, but her school had already called. Other parents were concerned about Kennedy’s attendance. The administration didn’t know if it could keep the students from bullying Kennedy. The dean even used the phrase young women can be mean. Yeah, well, some older ones sucked, too.

In only a few weeks, every wall had come crashing down, each carefully placed brick, all the outer barricades of protection. Baines had stolen business secrets. Baines had moved money. Baines likely had killed his sister. But everyone demanded she pay the price.

She couldn’t stay here and wait. She needed to do something, even if that meant bothering Jessa.

Gabby picked up her purse and her cell and headed for the front door. She’d stake out Jessa’s house and . . . Wait. She still didn’t know where Jessa lived. That left driving around in circles, repeatedly texting Jessa in a pathetic grab for attention.

Fine. She’d do it. She’d do whatever she had to do.

A knock at the door stopped Gabby’s mental sputtering. Liam lived in a security building. People couldn’t get upstairs without being buzzed in.

“Mrs. Fielding? Open the door.” Detective Schone’s voice.

No, no, no. Gabby’s heartbeat turned to a gallop. It pounded through her, in her ears, in every muscle. A tiny warning voice in her head told her not to open that door. Not to go anywhere near Melissa Schone until Jessa called with more information.

Gabby backed away. She’d never ignored law enforcement before, but she was going to this time. The detective was here for the group, not on official business. Jessa repeated that fact in her head as she drifted down the hall, not making a sound and never breaking eye contact with that front door.

Another knock. This time louder.

Liam’s building was the type where people had live-in help. Some of his neighbors or the builders thought the assistants should use a different door than the residents. Gabby thought the whole thing was insulting. So did Liam, which was why he never used that back entrance. No one did . . . until now.

She walked through a doorway that led to the laundry on one side and a small bedroom on the other. It had been advertised as the au pair suite, and the size felt claustrophobic compared to the rest of the rooms in the spacious condo.

Liam used the area for storage. Knowing she only had a little bit of time, she locked the door to the bedroom behind her and started moving things around. She shoved an old desk aside and some boxes that Liam had probably moved from one house to another as he’d left each of his marriages. She finally unburied the back door, the so-called servants’ entrance, which she viewed as a safety hatch.

After putting her ear to it and not hearing a sound, she opened the locks and peeked outside. Detective Schone’s voice echoed down the floor. She was talking to someone and banging on the front door around the corner. Gabby ignored it all and, as quietly as possible, opened the emergency exit door and followed the stairway down to the lobby.

Three excruciating minutes later, Gabby hailed a cab, the harder transportation option for the detective to trace, or at least she hoped so, and left the neighborhood.





Chapter Seventy-One

Jessa




Twenty minutes later, Jessa still hadn’t calmed down. She called Ellie Bartholomew and her attorney and warned them. Jessa refused a call to the police or an ambulance for help because she didn’t trust either. She couldn’t afford to get trapped in a small room or hauled away to a cell that she’d never break out of again.

No, Darren being out, finding her at an address he shouldn’t have, was a message. Retta was no longer protecting her. The group was cleansing itself. They didn’t care if Darren killed her, so long as she stayed quiet.

Jessa had no idea how her life had come to this. She’d always been so careful. She hadn’t drawn attention. Sure, she’d bent the rules sometimes. She’d let others do most of the heavy lifting in law school and at work. But she didn’t deserve to die for that.