Page 108 of Every Step She Takes
I put my arms around him, and he falls against my shoulder. When Karla tries to rise, I slam my foot onto her throat.
“Don’t give me an excuse,” I say. “I won’t let Jamie kill you, but I’m happy to do it myself.”
Marco walks over, still quiet, his gaze still on Karla, making sure she’s subdued.
“Would you call 911 for us, please?” I ask.
“Already have. They’re on their way.”
I look at Jamison. “Is that okay? Are you ready for…?”
“Ready to confess?” He meets my gaze. “I’ve been ready since Sunday night, Lucy. I just want this to be over. For all of us.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
A week later, I’m out for lunch with Tiana. Real lunch, in public – or, at least, a private dining room in a very exclusive restaurant. It’s a relief not to be a fugitive, but that doesn’t mean I can walk around New York just yet. If anything, I’m a bigger story now.
When Jamison and I were taken into custody, Tiana hired separate lawyers for us. Marco worked with mine, and I spent a day in lockup before they sorted everything and decided not to pursue charges. Yes, I’d tampered with the scene of Isabella’s murder, but everyone seemed to decide that, under the circumstances, the optics might be better if the DA’s office overlooked my panicked mistake.
Jamison is also free. Like me, he didn’t do anything except make questionable choices. Looking back, though, I’m not sure either of us could have done anything different without a crystal ball to guide us.
Jamison had thought his mother was dead, so he’d brought in the person he counted on to help. At that point, realizing Isabella was alive, Karla should have called 911. Instead, she’d committed an unbelievable act of betrayal. There will be a lifetime of “what-ifs” for Jamison, but the police and DA’s office were quick to see that he wasn’t a killer.
Proving Karla’s guilt was trickier. She admitted she was in the hotel suite that night and confessed to framing me. As for the murder weapon, she’d taken the pillowcase and shoved the insert into a closet – she could hardly walk around the hotel with a pillow under her arm. A hair on the insert matched hers, but that trivial piece of evidence wouldn’t have stood up in court.
That’s when the police found her accomplice. It was the private eye she’d originally set on my trail in Rome at Isabella’s behest. Then she used him to plant the evidence in my hotel room and later to stalk and threaten me. Yes, threaten me. That’d been her order. Not to kill me, but to scare the crap out of me so I’d flee. She knew the evidence wouldn’t hold up, but if the police were chasing me, they wouldn’t be looking for other suspects. Of course, she hadn’t admitted to the private eye that she’d killed Isabella herself. She pretended to be protecting Jamison. That was, after all, her job. Fixer to the stars.
No, fixer to one particular star. The only one who counted. Colt. Marco says that the DA wants to paint Karla as an obsessed middle-aged woman who couldn’t get the man she loved. As much as I despise Karla, I’m almost insulted on her behalf. Just because she was a woman – and he was an attractive man – didn’t make this a case of sexual obsession. He was her client. Her golden goose. The center of her career universe, which was the only universe she had.
Now her universe will be a prison cell, and I’m free, sitting across from Tiana. That’s all that matters to me.
“Dad wants to see you before you leave New York,” Tiana says as she cuts into a steak.
I laugh.
“I take it that’s a no,” she murmurs.
“I have neither the need nor the desire to see your father,” I say. “This isn’t his story. It never was.”
She tilts her head, puzzled, before nodding. “True. Not for lack of trying on his part, though. Did you hear he’s now claiming Karla set up his scandal with you?”
“I hate to give your dad any credit, but I’m not sure he’s wrong.”
“Really?” Tiana says. “Huh. Well, he says she gave him the champagne you drank. She handed him the open bottle and told him you were with Justice, and she was worried because she heard Justice was a player. She suggested Dad should rescue you with a drink.”
“That actuallywashis excuse for taking me from Justice, who’d done absolutely nothing untoward.”
“Dad claims Karla drugged you both.”
When I don’t answer, she says, “Dad didn’t drink the champagne, did he?”
“He had a few sips and then put his glass aside. But I’m not reading anything into that. Yes, Karla wanted to get your mom out of your dad’s life. She also wanted to revitalize his career, and one way to do it was to give him a scandal. One that would get his name plastered everywhere as a guy who made a mistake that, quite frankly, a lot of his fansexpectedhim to make. At worst, they’d forgive him for it, and at best, it’d be a show of action-star virility.”
“Whether Karla set it up or not, though, she didn’tmakehim do it.”
“No one made me do it, either,” I remind her.
Tiana leans back, shaking her head. “I don’t know what I’ll do with him. Sometimes I almost hope he’ll screw up so badly that I can write him off completely. Cut him out of my life.”
