The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (347 page)

“Please, Graham,” I choked. “Water.”

He seemed to decide I wasn’t much of a threat. As he turned and
went back toward the bar, I yanked my hands apart as hard as I possibly could and they came free. The twine tumbled, singed, to the floor, just as Graham turned around again. My heart hit my throat. I kept my hands behind my back and shifted so that my butt came down atop the twine. I could feel the warm, burnt ends through the fabric of my jeans.

Slowly, Graham approached me with the water in one hand, the gun in the other. He crouched in front of me and held the glass to my lips, tipping it upward. The cold liquid filled my throat and actually did make me feel a bit better. I gauged my chances of knocking the gun out of his hand and getting to it before he did, all with my feet tied together and a cast on one arm.

Answer? Not good.

But at least my hands were free. That gave me the advantage of surprise. Hopefully I had a few minutes to figure out how to use it.

His nostrils flared and he glanced around. “Do you smell something burning?”

I lifted my shoulders. “Nope. And thanks.”

Graham looked down at the half-empty glass of water and suddenly appeared to be offended by it—like it illustrated some kind of weakness. He got up and dropped it on a side table, out of my reach, sloshing some liquid over the rim.

“Don’t know why I bothered. You’re gonna be dead soon anyway,” he said callously.

“Graham,” I said, my stomach twisting into knots. “Why are you
doing this? I get Cheyenne with the crazy, but why you? I thought we were friends.”

“We could’ve been,” he said, clenching his jaw. “If it wasn’t for
him
.”

The word “him” was laced with venom.

“Josh? This is about Josh again?” I demanded.

His eyes widened incredulously. “He killed my sister!”

“He did
not
kill her!” I blurted, my heart pounding over my own recklessness. I couldn’t believe I was going to die for the two most obscure, insane reasons anyone could imagine dying for—some hundred-year-old supposed curse and the fact that a girl I never knew had dated my boyfriend two years ago, then taken her own life. “Jen killed herself. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but it’s the truth! You’re going to kill me because Jen committed suicide? Do you not realize how crazy that is?”

Graham’s mouth flattened into an angry line and I saw his jaw working, tightening and releasing, tightening and releasing. “You sound just like Sawyer,” he griped.

Sawyer. Sawyer was here somewhere. He wasn’t planning on hurting his own brother too, was he?

“Where is Sawyer, Graham?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even as I looked at the clock. It was now 12:20. “Is he okay?”

“Of course he’s okay,” Graham said with a scoff. “What do you think I’m gonna do, kill my own brother?”

He brought his hand, the one holding the gun, to his heart and pounded. Tears filled his eyes and I took a deep breath. He
was becoming unhinged, and unhinged was not going to be good for me.

“I took that stupid phone he was using to warn you and we locked him here in one of the bedrooms until we could be done with this,” Graham said. “That’s how I got you here tonight. I texted you the directions from his dummy phone.”

So it was Sawyer all along. Sawyer was MT. Of course. It all made sense. He couldn’t come to me and tell me what was going on, or go to the police, without implicating Graham, so instead he’d tried to protect me anonymously—to protect us both. And what had he gotten for his efforts? He’d ended up jailed by his own brother and crazy Cheyenne.

“I just don’t get why he doesn’t get it,” Graham rambled, pacing away from me, his heavy shoes clomping across the gleaming wood floor. The second his back was turned I withdrew my hands from behind my back and yanked at the knot around my legs. But seconds later he started to turn around again and I had to hide my fingers after getting exactly nowhere. I bit my lip in frustration and tried not to let my desperation show in my eyes. “Josh Hollis drove Jen to kill herself. She was perfectly fine before he broke her heart. If it wasn’t for him, she’d still be alive right now!”

“I know you believe that, Graham, but please, think about it,” I said. “People in their right mind don’t kill themselves over breakups. They get makeovers, they find rebound guys, they post nasty videos about the guy on YouTube. Something had to be fundamentally wrong with her if she was going to—”

“There was nothing wrong with Jen!” he screeched, storming toward me across the floorboards creaking beneath his feet. “She was my best friend! I loved her more than I loved anyone else in the world. And Josh Hollis took her away from me. So that’s why I’m going to take you away from him.”

He pointed the gun at my head and cocked it. My heart stopped beating. His hand shook and his eyes welled. At any moment that thing could go off. At any moment my brains could be splattered all over the wall behind me. If there was ever a time to make a move, it was now.

“Think about Sawyer, Graham. If you kill me, he’ll never forgive you,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “And then you’ll have lost your brother
and
your sister.”

“Shut up!” he said, bending and straightening his elbow, bringing the gun even closer to my skull. I wanted to reach out and grab it, but what if doing that made it go off? What if one flinch caused him to pull the trigger?

“You’re better than this, Graham,” I said, frantically rubbing my ankles together to try to free them from the twine. “Think about your father. Think about your brother. Think about your girlfriend.”

I tasted bile as I thought about Missy. Thought about how happy she would be once she heard I was gone.

Graham’s eyes narrowed. “You know, maybe I’ll just end you right now.”

At that moment the door opened. I prayed it was the police, but then I saw the shiny black boots in the doorway.

“Graham! You promised you wouldn’t do it without me!” Cheyenne whined.

Graham lowered the gun and started to turn. I used the moment of distraction to grab the stun gun out of my waistband with my right hand. Cheyenne’s eyes went wide, but she was too late. I lunged for Graham and hit the button, shocking him right in the lower leg. He went down, hard, and the gun went off. The shot was so loud my ears instantly began to ring. For a second the whole world went black as fear overtook every inch of my body, but then I realized I wasn’t hit.

And Cheyenne was on the floor.

“You bitch!” she screeched, holding on to her shin. Blood seeped between her fingers even as she tried to shimmy on her side toward the gun. My legs still bound, I crawled toward the gun on my one good hand and my knees, snaking past a twitching Graham Hathaway. Cheyenne reached out one blood-covered hand, just as my own fingers clasped around the gun’s handle. I trained it right on her face and braced my cast against the back of the couch, struggling my way to my feet.

“Don’t. Move,” I said through my teeth.

Cheyenne gaped at me for a moment, like she couldn’t believe I was standing there alive. Like she couldn’t believe she had lost. Then she curled into a ball and started to cry.

At that moment Sawyer and Noelle came bursting into the room, out of breath but very much alive, with half a dozen cops at their backs. I looked at them as they took in the scene: Graham on his back, drooling out the side of his mouth; Cheyenne mewling and
bleeding all over the floor; and me clutching a gun I had no clue how to use, precariously leaned against the back of the couch with my ankles tied together.

“Thanks, guys,” I said. “But this time I saved myself.”

“Every time something like this happens to you, I think there’s no way anything like this can possibly happen to you again, because what are the chances?” Noelle said, leaning against a stone planter at the front of Cheyenne’s house as the evil walking-dead girl herself was loaded into an ambulance. “But then—”

“It always happens again,” I finished for her.

She nodded, narrowing her eyes. “Have you ever thought about getting a gun? You looked pretty badass back there, holding that thing over Cheyenne. And if anyone I knew ever needed one . . . ”

I mentally scrolled through all my near-death experiences: Ariana on the Billings roof; Sabine at Kiran’s birthday party; pretty much all of St. Barths; and now this. “I’m anti guns, but you do make an interesting point,” I conceded.

Noelle lifted an arm and laid it around my shoulder, pulling me
to her side. “We have met more than our fair share of bat-shit crazy people over the past two years, haven’t we?”

We both watched as a pair of uniformed police officers dragged Graham past us, his hands cuffed behind him, and practically tossed him into a police car. My heart felt sick and heavy and withered, like it was being bathed in battery acid. Graham Hathaway. I never would have thought he had it in him.

“Yes,” I replied, holding my cast against my chest and pushing my other hand into the pocket of my jacket, which had been returned to me by Detective Hauer. He was now standing about thirty yards away, taking statements from Taylor, Kiran, and Ivy. I had already called Josh to thank him for phoning in my backup, but he’d said that when he’d called, the police were already on their way. Apparently, Sawyer had dialed 911 right after texting me to run. I guess his phone call had been more convincing than mine. In any case I was practically itching to get home to Josh for a nice, long hug. “Yes, we have.”

“Do you think it’ll be better at Yale?” Noelle pondered, tipping her face up toward the now clearing sky.

“God, it better be,” I replied.

And somehow, we both managed to laugh.

A familiar figure appeared at the door of the house. Sawyer. He locked eyes with me and I could feel all the sorrow and fear pouring off of him. I stood up straight as he approached, his steps tentative, like if I made any sudden movements he was ready to bolt. I tried to smile. Sawyer, of all people, had nothing to fear from me.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

Noelle looked back and forth between the two of us and tugged out her phone. “I think I’m gonna call Dash.”

Then she moved a few feet away, giving us room to talk.

“I am so,
so
sorry, Reed,” Sawyer began, reaching toward me, but then letting his hand fall, like he didn’t know what to do with it. “I knew Graham was trying to sabotage Billings, but I had no clue he was going to try to hurt you, I swear.”

“I know,” I said.

“You do?” Sawyer asked, dubious.

“Sawyer, I know you. If you knew he was going to hurt me, you would have told someone,” I said, walking up a couple of steps to sit down on a flat portion of the wide stair wall. The rain had stopped, but the concrete was cold and still wet. I thought about moving, but decided I was too exhausted to care.

“I only just figured it out last night. I walked in on him Skyping with Cheyenne, talking about him stealing my father’s gun,” Sawyer said, sitting next to me, his shoulders hunched. “When I confronted him about it, he said it was all a joke and then he kind of tricked me into coming here. I was able to send you that one text about not going to the banquet tonight before they locked me up and took my phones. I managed to lift mine off of him when he came in to check on me just before you guys got here. That’s how I sent that warning text and called the police. I’m just sorry it took so long.”

I nodded, trying to process everything. “So with the Billings stuff, you were trying to help me, but still protect your brother.”

“Yeah. I’m such an idiot.” He looked over as the sirens whooped to life and the ambulance carrying Cheyenne zoomed off, followed by two police cars. “Like he needed so much protecting.”

His eyes filled with tears and his bottom lip quivered. I put my arm around him and squeezed, my heart filling and swelling and breaking for him. First he’d lost his mother, then his sister, and now Graham. I couldn’t imagine what this was doing to him.

“Sawyer?”

We both flinched, and I let go of him. Mr. Hathaway jogged toward us, his tan trench coat billowing out behind him, a haggard look on his face. I saw his car idling at the curb as he swooped in on Sawyer and wrapped him up in a hug.

“What happened, son?” he asked. “What happened?”

Sawyer just started to bawl. He cried all over his father’s sweater, clutching on to him for dear life. I stood up slowly as his dad whispered into his hair. Now it was my turn to tactfully walk away. A few yards off, Graham stared out from the back window of the police car—staring at the family he’d destroyed. Can’t say I didn’t warn him.

At the bottom of the steps, Ivy, Taylor, Kiran, and Noelle had all gathered. I joined them slowly, feeling more broken and tired with each step.

“So,” Noelle said.

“So,” Ivy echoed.

“Detective Hauer told us they arrested Daniel Ryan at the airport,” Taylor said. “He was the one who tried to kidnap you tonight, and the second he realized Trey might have seen his car, he bolted.”

“Okay, I don’t know who has the more effed-up DNA, the Kane-Martins or the Ryans,” Kiran said, splaying her fingers.

“It’s a toss-up,” I replied.

“Do you think we could maybe get together one time without any cops involved?” Taylor asked.

I snorted a laugh, but it was a short-lived one. “There’s still one thing I don’t get. How did Graham get hooked up with Cheyenne in the first place?”

“My money’s on Paige,” Noelle replied instantly, shaking her still drying hair back from her face. “We already know she was buddy-buddy with the alums who tried to kill you guys on your birthday, so clearly she bought into all that curse crap too. She’s probably known all this time that Cheyenne was alive, and when Cheyenne decided she wanted to come after you, she needed eyes at Easton—”

“And Paige knows all about Josh and Jen’s history, so it wasn’t the biggest leap to make, thinking Graham would help her,” Taylor finished.

“In a disgusting, twisted way, that actually makes sense,” Ivy said, shaking her head.

“Holy crap. Ivy Slade just agreed with me,” Noelle said jokingly. “Does anyone have a pen so we can write this down? I need witnesses.”