He glared at her for a long moment while he weighed things. “I’ll put the gun down,” he said finally, laying it on the wide arm of the chair. “But it stays right here with me. So don’t try anything.”
“I won’t. I just want to talk.”
“Fine. Go ahead. But don’t think you’re going to make any difference. You deserve to die just like my dad did.”
The way he said it, the way it sounded rehearsed, the lack of conviction in his words, made her relax minutely. It made her think he wasn’t really a killer. Just like his dad had had no intention of killing her. They were desperate but they weren’t murderers. She didn’t know what Scott thought he was going to accomplish by doing this, other than scaring the bejesus out of her, but she didn’t believe he was actually going to kill her.
Of course, a gun sitting right there still made her nervous.
“This is what happened.”
Keara paused in her story. Scott listened intently, although he stared across the room and not at her.
“Scott. I have to be honest with you.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “I don’t know if knowing about your mom would have changed the decision I had to make to let your dad go. I don’t know if it would have. I had to make business decisions. But I’d like to think that if I’d known, I would have done more to make sure your mom was looked after. I would have talked to your dad about options. Before that happened.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. And I will always regret that. You have no idea how sorry I am that I didn’t take more time to get to know your dad and what was going on his life.” She pleaded for understanding with her eyes. He looked away.
He sat there, silent, staring into space, shoulders slumped. She sat up a bit straighter and her fingers gripped her knees. What was he going to do?
Then he turned his eyes to her. “Is that really what happened?”
She blinked. “Yes.”
“He told you to leave and you wouldn’t go without him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She rolled her bottom lip in and let it slowly slide through her teeth as she pondered what to say to him. But Scott answered for her.
“He was going to kill himself, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t know for sure,” she said after a short pause.
Scott shook his head. “He was. You did know it. And you didn’t want to leave him there to do that.”
His image blurred as her eyes filled with tears and her chest constricted. “I wanted to help him,” she whispered. “Like I should have before I let him go.” A sob escaped her lips and she covered her mouth with shaking hands.
“So you were trying to save him,” Scott said slowly. His shoulders slumped even more. “And then the cops shot him.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen.” She twisted her fingers together and leaned forward again. “They told me after. One of the SWAT team just got overeager, or something. Adrenaline apparently can do that. They thought he was still going to kill me. But the guy in charge kept telling them not to shoot. He knew. I knew. Your dad wasn’t going to kill me. And…” she paused, “I made sure our insurance company paid out your dad’s death benefits. They weren’t going to. They thought he’d been trying to commit suicide.”
“Suicide by cop.”
“Yes.” She swallowed. “I told them he wasn’t. The money’s being used to look after your mom.”
Scott bowed his head. A hard shudder racked her body and she bent over her knees at the emotion that swamped her. She covered her face with her hands and choked on another sob.
She had tried to save Gary. And it wasn’t all her fault.
She cried. Scott was sitting there with a gun right by his hand, and all she could do was cry.
She cried for Gary. He’d been so desperate and yes, part of that was her responsibility, and she’d do anything to go back in time and change how she’d handled that, but she didn’t make him rob the bank. That was his choice.
She cried for Scott, for the sadness and desperation and vengeance that made him choose to follow her and try to get revenge for the wrongs he perceived had been done to him and his family. A misguided, desperate choice, but it was his choice.
And she cried for herself. For the guilt and misery she’d been beating herself up with. For trying to save Gary and then having him die anyway. For the mistakes she’d made.
“I’m sorry,” Scott said, sounding almost as choked up as Keara was. “I’ve been following you for weeks, trying to get up the nerve to do something.”
She lifted her head, tears wet on her cheeks and stared at him. “You’ve been following me?”
He nodded miserably. “I tried to break in here one night. Weeks ago. Then you took off.”
“How did you find me?”
“I’m pretty good on the internet. I uh…hacked into your email.”
“Oh.” She swiped her palms over her face. “Don’t tell me…please…was that you in Kilkenny? On the highway?”
He dipped his head. “Yeah.”
“Jesus, you could have killed me!”
“I just wanted to scare you!” he burst out.
“Oh, Scott. And then…in the shop…was that you that night?”
Again, he nodded. “Yeah. I hid in the storage room for a few hours. I was going to sneak up and…hell, I don’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t know that dude was gonna be there with you.”
She sucked in a long breath. Dear God. She wasn’t going crazy. She hadn’t imagined all those things. When she laughed out loud, Scott shot her a startled look.
“Are there even bullets in that gun?” she asked.
He scowled and picked it up. “Of course there are.”
A knock on her apartment door made both of them jump.
Shit.
She did not want a guy with a gun being startled like that. Who the hell was at her door? How did they get in through security?
Maybe it was the security people, having seen her being dragged at gunpoint into the elevator. Her eyes met Scott’s.
“Who is that?” he whispered, and he held the gun like he meant business with it. Again. Dammit.
“I have no idea.” She didn’t lower her voice, hoping whoever was at the door would hear them and know she was in there. Eyeing the gun, she called out, “Who is it?”
“Jesus!” Scott hissed. “Shut the fuck up!”
“Scott.” She stared him down. “You know this is done. You’re not going to shoot me.”
Another hammering on the door blasted through her apartment. “Keara! It’s Shane!”
She froze. Blinked. She must have heard that wrong. “Sh-Shane?”
“Yeah. I…uh…are you alone?”
Was she alone? What the hell did he think was going on in there? Jesus, did he think she was in there doing some guy on her couch? “Shane!” she cried. “Don’t leave!”
She looked at Scott again and tilted her head. His scowl deepened. “Don’t make this worse, okay? And I’ll try to help you with the police.”
“Cops?” His eyes widened. “That’s the cops?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
Shane pressed his ear to the door. Dammit, he could hear them talking in there, and one of them was definitely male. He sagged against the door, head dropping. Who the hell would’ve thought she’d have another guy that fast? Shit. Maeve and his parents had clearly been wrong about her feelings for him.
And he’d driven three and a half fucking hours from Kilkenny for nothing.
“Shane! Don’t leave!”
He straightened. Listened. Nothing. He knew he’d heard that. Keara. A bolt of fear lanced through him like a knife, deep into his gut. Everything coalesced in his head at once—the MVA, the intruder at the shop, the break-in at her apartment—where she was right now. With someone else in there with her. Jesus Christ.