“Only because my friends have a history of betraying me. I don’t deal well with betrayal.”
“I haven’t betrayed you!” Spittle flew from Reese’s mouth.
“You think I haven’t checked on you?” Trace demanded, body tight. “Guess who didn’t have alibis for the kills?”
His phone vibrated again.
Reese’s gaze flickered at the sound. “Maybe you should get that call, boss.”
“And maybe we should all just wait right here until the cops arrive.”
At that, Reese laughed. “Like the great Trace Weston gives a flying shit about local cops. You do what you want, when you want. You always have.”
And the mask that Reese had worn seemed to fall away. His face twisted with bitterness.
This was my friend?
“You climb out of hell, and you rise to heaven,” Reese’s voice was a grating snarl. His eyes flashed with fury. “That’s your charmed life, isn’t it?”
“My life’s never been charmed.” An alcoholic mother. A father who used his fists too frequently and forgot to even feed his son most days.
One war zone after another.
The phone stopped vibrating.
Reese shook his head. “You do have a weakness, though.” Reese smiled at him. “And I can’t believe you just left her alone…with Anna Jean.”
In that instant, Trace’s heart stopped.
“Oh, yeah, boss, it’s her. New face. New contacts. New hair. But you—you’re always so taken in by the innocent ones. The ones who look lost and scared, just like Skye.”
Skye didn’t look lost and scared. She looked like the most perfect thing in the world.
“Anna Jean came to me,” Reese told him, smug now. “She told me about what you’d done. How you’d left her and Tucker to die. I’d heard the story before, of course. You’d told me your version, but this was different.”
Anna Jean’s story was bull. “You know Anna Jean betrayed the team.”
“Like I gave a damn about that. I wasn’t on that team.” His smile stretched. “She wanted vengeance, and you know what I wanted?”
“No clue.” Every instinct in Trace’s body screamed for him to attack.
Alex still lay prone on the floor.
“I almost died for your girlfriend,” Reese snapped. “When that freak of a doctor came after her, I wound up in the hospital. Collateral damage, right? Screw that!”
“You were not—”
But Reese cut right through his words and said, “I had your back day in and day out, but I got nothing.”
Trace shook his head. “That’s not true, you—”
“You saved my ass in battle, so what? I’m supposed to be your lackey forever? I want my share! Why do you get everything? Why?”
This time, Trace didn’t try to talk. He knew Reese didn’t care what he said.
“You were going to marry her. As soon as I saw the chunk of glass on her finger, I knew I had to act. I got Anna Jean in town, and we started our plan. Skye had to die, of course.”
He f**king dared to speak so easily about her death?
“If you married Skye, then you’d change your will,” Reese said, jerking a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t let the money go to her. Not after all the time I’d put in to make sure I was the one closest to you.”
Now Trace laughed. “You idiot. I never planned to change my will.” Reese was so wrong. About so many things.
Reese blinked. “Wh-what? But…but I thought…”
“I was always going to take care of you, Reese. You were my friend.” A lying, deadly friend. “But Skye, she was the one I loved. Even if I’d never gotten back with her, the bulk of my fortune was always set to go to Skye when I died.” It had been his only way to take care of her.
Reese’s jaw dropped.
“With the ring or without it,” Trace said. “She was always mine. And I protect what’s mine.”
Trace’s head tilted. Ah, he could hear the siren now. It was time to end this.
“You didn’t protect her this time!” Reese’s body vibrated with fury. “Anna Jean killed her. Your precious Skye bled out while you were on your way here. Anna Jean killed her the instant you left the studio. Then she killed Drake and Claire. They never even saw her coming.”
Skye’s alive. Skye’s alive. He yanked out his phone.
Reese’s hand flew up. He grabbed a gun—one that he’d had hidden behind his back—and he fired.
Trace fired at the same instant. The blasts thundered through the room.
Reese’s lips moved. A weak gasp slipped from him.
Trace hadn’t aimed for his heart. The bullet had blasted right through Reese’s head.
Reese’s body thudded to the floor.
Trace’s weapon dropped. He pulled out the phone. Called back the number that had tried to reach him again and again. It wasn’t Skye’s number. It was a number he didn’t know.
“Trace!” Skye’s frantic voice shouted over the line.
She was alive.
“It’s Reese,” she told him, her voice warming him even as a chill seemed to surround his heart. “He’s the one who’s been after you.”
Sirens screamed, coming closer.
“I’m on my way to you! Be careful, Trace, be very—”
“I love you,” Trace told her as emotion rose up to choke him. “Always, you…”
“Trace?”
The phone slipped from his fingers.
Trace stared down at his chest. Reese had always been such a damn fine shot.
A good friend? No.
But a good killer.
I love you, Skye.
He just hated that he’d broken his promise to her. He’d said that he would return to her.
She’d asked for only one thing. Come back to me.
It was the one thing he couldn’t give her.
***
Skye raced toward the apartment. Her breath heaved in her lungs even as her heart thundered wildly in her chest. She’d been disconnected. Trace’s call had just ended and no matter how many times she tried, she couldn’t get him back on the line.
“Ma’am, stop!” A uniformed cop appeared in her path. “This is a crime scene, you can’t go in there!”
Police cruisers lined the street. Three ambulances—three—were there. “My fiancé is in that building! I’ve got to find him!”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but no one is getting in there now.” His face was grim but sympathetic. “Now just stand back.”