“Like shit,” he bluntly replies.
“Where the hell have you been?” I ask her. “There’s a DA coming in from New York.”
Jocelyn scoffs and closes her eyes for a second, letting the tears flow down her pale cheeks. “I’m going to get disbarred for this. I’ll probably go to jail, as well. Maybe I’ll get time served, if I’m lucky. But I don’t think I’m that lucky since the bastard went the extra mile to frame me,” she says.
Carlos and I are equally confused. “What the hell are you talking about?”
As soon as Jocelyn starts talking, we’re faced with a deluge of revelations, a stream of chaotic confessions tying her to Marcus Bennett in the most sinister way. I sit and quietly listen, stunned, and wondering how long before the rage takes over, how long before I snap her head clean off her body for what she did.
“You have to understand, Marcus Bennett reached out to me not long after the second fire. He only wanted to keep an eye on Olivia at first, to monitor her movements, to find the most discreet way to extricate her from your hold,” she says. “He knew you wouldn’t give up on her. He also knew that you had enough dirt on me to keep me away.”
“What did you do, Jocelyn?” Carlos asks, his voice trembling with anger.
When our eyes meet again, I see the guilt, the all-consuming devastation as she breaks down, sobbing and struggling to stand as she leans on the hospital bed.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. He… he set those fires for fucking kicks,” she says. “He wanted to keep the three of you busy, to test your response times, to watch each deployment leave Olivia vulnerable. My God, Beck, Marcus Bennett is a fucking monster. I’m so sorry.”
“Jocelyn, what the fuck did you do?” I reply, repeating Carlos’s question.
“I gave him tips, intel. I told him where she’d be, where you’d be. The other day, I noticed Carlos with his cabin keys?—”
Carlos cuts her off, recalling the moment. “You asked me about it.”
“Yeah, and I followed you. I watched you pick Olivia up,” she sighs.
“Did you follow us to the cabin, too?”
She nods slowly. “Yes, I knew the girl was staying there alone.”
“Did you tell Marcus about her?” I ask, my blood running cold.
Jocelyn looks at me, thoughts processing in real time as she shakes her head. “No, I didn’t see the point. He only wanted to know where Olivia was. That’s it. I put a tracking app on Carlos’s phone a few weeks back?—”
“For fuck’s sake,” he groans, about to pinch the bridge of his nose before he realizes how much it’s going to hurt.
“I know. I was desperate to get Olivia out of Ember Ridge, to get rid of her. Forgive me, I had no idea what kind of monster I was dealing with,” she says.
“Marcus was tracking us,” Carlos concludes. “He tailed us.”
“He picked up your signal,” Jocelyn replies. “You know the rest.”
“Where is he now? Where’s Olivia?” I demand.
“She’s alive. He wants her alive, at least for now.”
“Fornow?”
“I don’t know, Beck. He’s off his fucking rocker. I thought it was just part of his personality or something. But once I saw the evidence and you were able to tie him to the arson fires, things clicked in my mind, and I started putting two and two together.”
I exhale sharply. I’m torn between outrage and holding back bitter laughter as she tries to explain her reasoning. Yet no matter how she turns the issue over, I can’t make heads or tails of it. I cannot find any sense in a jealous woman who just doesn’t know when to fucking quit.
And it’s her jealousy that put Olivia back under Marcus’s control.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” I ask her. “Do you have any fucking clue how much danger Olivia is in? And for what, Jocelyn? What in the world possessed you to think that Olivia’s absence would lead to us getting back together?”
“It was stupid, selfish. I’ll pay for it, I know.”
“You’re damn right you’re going to fucking pay for it, but hear me out,” I say, standing up and glowering down at her. “If anything happens to Olivia or our unborn children, I swear to God, Jocelyn, I will spend the rest of my life making yours fucking miserable. You’re going to beg me to kill you by the time I’m done with you.”
