Garrett really wanted to kill this guy. The only thing stopping him was Lauren. She made him promise this morning not to lose it. Then Wren made him promise to follow the rules and wait for the detective to arrive. It struck Garrett that a lot of people were worried about his control.

Matthias stood at the door to Lauren’s office on the pier with some of his guys stationed outside, just in case. Garrett didn’t see Matthias stepping in unless he lost all control, and Garrett had no intention of doing that.

Bob sat at the small table, flipping one of Lauren’s pamphlets over in his hand, tapping one end then the other against the scarred wood in front of him. “What am I doing here?”

It was a fair question. Garrett had thought about bringing the police in and letting them handle it. That would have been the easier call, the smart one. But he wanted the satisfaction of seeing Bob’s face when he got caught. “Admitting your guilt would be nice.”

Bob’s hand froze in midair. “What are you talking about?”

Garrett glanced at Matthias. He hadn’t moved from his position at the door. Hadn’t shown one ounce of emotion since they reviewed the evidence less than an hour ago and filled Lauren in.

“We set up video at Lauren’s house.” Garrett kept his fingers on the laptop keyboard facing him. “You’re on it.”

“I don’t know—”

“Shut the fuck up and listen.” Matthias stepped forward as he spoke. He stopped next to Bob, standing there. Looming over him and not doing anything to hide his frustration. It even vibrated on his voice.

“We know you were in on Carl’s disappearance. You faked the financial documents to scam Lauren. You helped him fake his disappearance,” Garrett said. When Bob leaned forward and his mouth dropped open, Garrett kept going. “No, I’m still talking.”

Matthias leaned in even closer to Bob. “I’d listen to him.”

“And then last night you broke into Lauren’s house. Unfortunately for you, we were ready for you.” Wren had cleaned up the video and sent it to Garrett this morning. Bob sneaking over the neighbor’s fence and dropping into Lauren’s yard. He went right to the cracked window as if he’s been checking the place out since the murder.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Matthias let out a long angry exhale as he looked at Garrett. “It’s like he wants you to punch him.”

“It does feel that way.” Garrett spun the laptop around on the table for Bob to see the image frozen on it. “That’s you, dumbass.”

Bob was already shaking his head and shifting around in his chair. “You don’t understand.”

This should be good. “Explain it.”

Funny how fast the tough-guy façade crumbled. Garrett had seen it a million times, across many cases, and it still fascinated him. Denial would turn to “how dare you” and defensive words, then panic set in. They babbled then.

Bob spread his hands on the table. He stared at them. Looked at the wall. Even glanced out the window. It took him what felt like forever to start talking again. “This was all Carl. He used me to trick Lauren.”

So he was playing the role of victim. Interesting but not effective because Garrett did not buy it.

He leaned back in his chair and studied Bob. Maybe greed made the guy stupid. Garrett didn’t know and didn’t care so long as Lauren was safe. “Come up with a better story.”

Matthias made a show of glancing at his watch. “And I’d do it fast because Detective Cryer is on his way to arrest you.”

A screeching sound rang out in the room as Bob jumped up from his seat. The chair fell backward and he was on his feet. The darting eyes and crouched-to-run position made it clear he planned to play this the hard way.

The dumbass.

“Sit,” Matthias ordered.

Garrett was not in the mood for extra drama. He pointed at the fallen chair. “Really, sit.”

He wanted to fill Lauren in on events and then take her to dinner. After that they could spend the night, or a week or even more, in bed. He’d even celebrate the holiday if it meant being with her.

“You don’t want to—” But it was too late. In the middle of Garrett’s sentence Bob bolted. He made a run at the door and slammed into Matthias’s chest instead. He hit Matthias hard enough that Garrett could hear a thud. “Did you really think that was going to work?”

Matthias grabbed Bob’s suit jacket with one hand and picked up the chair with the other. He dropped the man into the seat without raising his voice. “I hope you’re better with money than running, though the evidence you left behind suggests otherwise.”

Garrett was done. He’d had enough nonsense and lying. It was time the men who committed the initial scam take responsibility. They’d flipped Lauren’s life upside down. Now they could right it. Carl wasn’t there, so the least they could do was wrap his investigation up, too.

For the first few minutes Bob stayed slumped in the chair. He stared at his hands and fiddled with his watch. Garrett was about to shove the table into his midsection when Bob finally spoke up. “I went to the house to get the documents.”

The bank documents. It all came down to that initial scam. Garrett would bet Bob had carried out others since. He was trying to bury his tracks. But he’d gone too far and somewhere along the line fraud turned to murder. “This time. The last time you went and ran into Carl, and we know how that ended. Not great for Carl.”

“No, you’re wrong.” Gone was the fidgeting and lack of eye contact. Bob faced Garrett head-on as he talked. “The money stuff, yes. Carl did it and didn’t give me much of a choice but to help, but it stopped there.”

“So you’re only a certain type of criminal,” Matthias said.

“I didn’t kill Carl.” Bob turned around in his chair. He looked from Matthias to Garrett. He pleaded with his voice and with his eyes. “I helped him before, that’s true. Carl had these stories about Lauren and how terrible . . . But that’s it.”

Bob had convinced himself back then that Lauren deserved to get screwed. He didn’t admit it, but Garrett could hear the excuses now. “You’re trying to say you broke into Lauren’s house once but not twice.”

“I was looking for the bank statements. So long as Carl was supposedly dead there was no reason for Lauren to study them closely. She made it clear she needed the financial issues to be over. But with Carl being back, well, I thought Lauren might turn them in to the police this time and I couldn’t let that happen.” Bob made a strangled sound. “She’s not under a microscope. Not like the last time, though I don’t know why since the body was found in her house.”

The guy had started spiraling and Garrett had heard enough. The detective could ferret it all out. “You aren’t very convincing at pretending to be innocent.”

The door bumped into Matthias’s shoulder as it opened. A very pretty female face peeked inside. Garrett recognized her. The much younger, thoroughly involved Maryanne. Lauren might buy her story but Garrett couldn’t separate out her part in the fraud from everything else.

She frowned as she looked around the room. “I’m sorry . . .”

Her entrance had Bob blinking and snapping out of his haze. “Maryanne?”

When she saw him, her eyes widened and her grip on the edge of the door tightened into a white-knuckle grip. “I’ll come back.”

“Stop.” Matthias blocked her way, pushing her inside the room without ever touching her. That height did have its benefits.

Garrett tried to play good cop to Matthias’s pushy cop. “What do you need?”

“Lauren.” Maryanne’s gaze flicked to Bob but did not linger.

“You told them.” Anger shook Bob’s voice.

Her knees seemed to give out as she reached for the closed door. “You know it was me?”

Matthias caught her before she hit the floor or anything else. “He does. We do.”

Her vision seemed to come into focus as she looked at Garrett. “I remember you from that night. You were on the lawn with all the other police.”

“We’re investigating what happened to Carl.” Garrett decided that wasn’t exactly a lie.

“I left something out the other day.” She inhaled. “Lauren was decent and I . . . I wanted her to know all of it.”

Garrett had no idea what that meant. “Okay.”

“Jake also knew. He was in on Carl’s scam from the beginning.” The words rushed out of her so fast that they slurred together.

It took an extra second for Garrett to separate them and understand what she was saying. “He helped his brother disappear and trick Lauren?”

“Carl thought it was funny,” Bob said.

Maryanne nodded. “Carl knew Jake had a thing for Lauren. He used that to get him to play along. With Carl gone, Jake thought he had a chance with her.”

“That’s creepy as hell.” Matthias shook his head. “I mean, come on.”

Garrett had bigger worries. Matthias’s people had been tracking all of the interested parties and there was one currently unaccounted for. “Where is Jake now?”

No one answered him.

Lauren didn’t want any part of confronting Bob. He’d messed up so much of her life with his lies and deceit that it exhausted her to think about it. He set her up and then screwed her a second time by calling in those loans. It was a miracle he hadn’t ruined her business for good.

That’s why she was there, in the boat shed. With the paddles and boats hanging on the wall and the boat slip with the lapping water by her feet, it was one of her favorite places. She came here to think and to work. Waves caused water to splash against the slip and sometimes spill up and over the retaining wall until the enclosed space smelled like dead fish. For other people that might be a problem, not her.

She’s thought she’d stored the artificial Christmas tree in there among all the other boxes and supplies. If so, she couldn’t find it.

Giving up on the search, she opened one of the double doors and stepped into the cool December wind. The snow had passed north of them and socked in New York. They’d been lucky. At this time of year, they usually woke to a frozen ground and threats of snow and school closures. Instead, they had gray cloudy skies and a chill, but it was bearable.

She took one step and stopped suddenly. Her stomach sloshed around from the abruptness of it. Seeing Jake standing there, uncharacteristically disheveled and shaking his head, threw her off. She hadn’t expected him and he hated boats, so he rarely ventured out past the marina to this more secluded, nontouristy spot.

“What are you doing here?” When he stood there with wild eyes and stiff shoulders, not talking, she tried again. “Jake?”

“Some business guy from DC?”

The words sounded clear but they didn’t make any sense. She knew he was grieving, but this was so out of the ordinary that she started to worry he had some sort of health issue.

She reached out and put her hand on his forearm. “What are you talking about?”

He glanced down at her fingers. “I’ve given you time. Room. Then I heard about this other guy, but I convinced myself he was a client.”

She dropped her hand as her heart began to race. “You’re talking about Garrett?”

“Carl said you were cold, but I never believed him. See, I saw you first. I talked about asking you out then he came in and . . .” Jake shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

Lauren backed up until her shoes hit the door. “Maybe we should—”

“He promised he wasn’t coming back.” Jake stopped scanning the area and stared at her then. Fury filled his intense gaze. “That you were mine.”

Her stomach heaved. She had to force her body to remain still as she swallowed. “I’m not yours, Jake. You know that. What are you saying?”

“He ran through all the money and Maryanne got needy. He hated needy women.”

He was talking about some of the people who’d made her life hell. Jake mentioned them as if he’d sat around the table and planned it all with them. Then it hit her . . . he had. She’d been blaming Bob, and that made sense. But Jake was a part of this, too. He was the person Carl ran to when he got back to town. He’s the one Carl would have bragged to about Maryanne back then.

Her heartbeat thundered in her ears and her legs shook so hard she was surprised she could still stand. She fought it all back, the waves of panic and the numbing fear, and stayed focused.

She thought about her phone and tried to remember where she’d put it. She could scream but between the wind and her distance from the marina and office, no one would ever hear her. That left fighting and running, and she was prepared to do both.

First, she tried to calm him. “Jake. Let’s go to the diner and talk about this.”

“So you can run to your new boyfriend? That’s not going to happen.”

The comment made sense. No matter what was happening in his head, he wasn’t too far gone. Reason didn’t work but more drastic means might. “What do you think is going to happen between us?”

“You need to fix this.”

She nudged the door open behind her. If she could slip inside then she could grab a weapon. She calculated the chances of that choice versus just bolting. In his mood, she had no idea what Jake would do or if he had any weapons on him. She couldn’t see any, but his thick jacket could hide a lot of scary things.

“I killed Carl for you.” He delivered the rage-filled words through clenched teeth.

They punched into her brain and sat there. She felt dizzy and sick. The need to throw up almost overtook her this time. “Jake, please.”

“He was going to step in and ruin your life again. I tried to talk him out of it but he just laughed.”

“What did you do?”

“Carl had to leave. The documents, the money . . . I know it hurt for a while. But you rebuilt everything. You made the business more successful than it ever was.” A smile broke across his face. “I was so proud of how hard you worked. I couldn’t let Carl come in and rip it apart.”

She preferred his yelling. The smile scared the hell out of her. “You were at my house?”

“I followed him there.” He sounded so logical now. The words came out clear, as if he were explaining a simple math problem and not a horrific crime. “He planned to be there when you got home, force the issue.”

She wedged her heel in the opening of the door and kept it there. “So, you killed him.”

“It was a fight, Lauren. You get that, right? An accident.” Jake shook his head. “He wouldn’t stop. You know how this sort of thing happens.”

The familiar tone convinced her to move. She kicked the door open and ducked inside, only to panic when she couldn’t make her fingers work fast enough to find the lock and use it. Adrenaline surged through her as her hands fumbled on the metal lock and her gaze scanned the low-lit area in a frantic search for her phone. She didn’t see it, but she almost had the lock.

Without warning the door slammed into her, pushing her back. She turned to see Jake standing there. He didn’t have a frying pan this time. He carried a knife and wore a blank expression, a sort of resignation to what he had to do next.

She put up her hands, knowing she couldn’t fend off a blade. “It’s okay.”

“You still don’t get it.” He pointed the tip of the knife at her then at his own chest. “We make sense together. We have more in common than you ever did with Carl. He took you for granted but I wouldn’t. I have been waiting for you. Been patient.”

All of the blood drained from her head. She fought to stay coherent. “Absolutely.”

“Don’t patronize me, Lauren. I’m not deranged or evil. This—us—we just make sense. My idiot brother didn’t get it. He schemed and planned and tricked and that got him things, but only for a short time. You deserved more.”

The keys. His familiarity with her house from having been in it so many times. The way she welcomed him into her office and her life. And all along he’d been planning.

When he took a step toward her, she moved. A scream tore from her throat as she lunged to the side, grabbing for the wall. Her hands slammed against tools and a paddle, sending the equipment falling and making it rattle. Her fingers blindly searched as she backed up and watched him. So many things happening at once.

Her hand closed over the end of a paddle. She ripped it from the wall, knowing she would only have one shot at this. Refusing to hesitate, she acted. Her battle cry rang out as she yanked the makeshift weapon off the hooks. Put all her energy and strength behind it and swung.

The paddle skimmed the air. A smooth motion sent it sailing. She held on, bellowing her enraged scream and not letting go as the paddle end slammed into his shoulder, right by his neck. It was like running headfirst into a wall. The force shook her entire body.

She closed her eyes for a second, so brief. She opened them in time to see Jake drop to his knees. He listed to one side but he didn’t go down. The knife waved in his hand, through the air.

Her muscles froze. She watched the blood soak through his jacket. Saw him struggle to stand up.

“Jake, no,” she begged as she tried to tighten her hands on the paddle again, but her fingers refused to move.

The room whirled around and her vision started to blur. She hadn’t been hurt but her body was giving in. The adrenaline high burned out.

He had one foot on the ground and started to rise as a voice shouted in her head to move. She tried to get past him to the door but he fell against her. A hand latched on to her leg with a surprisingly strong grip. She kicked and yelled and tried to fling her body to the side.

Just as she lifted the paddle again, hoping to gather the strength from somewhere deep inside her, the door slammed open. Garrett and Matthias rushed to fill the space.

Garrett took the first step. He rammed his foot into Jake’s arm, sending the knife flying. The second shot nailed Jake in the back. He dropped in an unmoving sprawl.

Men poured into the room then. Ones she remembered from her house, Matthias’s men. Then the detective. She couldn’t figure out where they came from or what was happening. Her mind refused to focus and her brain kept misfiring.

Her body started to drop and Garrett was right there. He slid across the floor on his knees and caught her. Wrapped his strong arms around her. “I’ve got you.”

He did. He was there and protecting her. Not running away. “Garrett?”

The room exploded into activity around them. Jake’s eyes were closed and Matthias had him pinned down. She watched as the detective put handcuffs on him.

“Lauren, are you okay?” Concern sounded in Garrett’s voice.

She could only think about one thing. “I knew you’d come.”