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His rapidly cooling corpse was spread-eagled in the center of the living room floor, a gun in his hand, the source of the gunshot wound at his temple.
A tape recorder lay on his other side.
Chapter Seventy-Three
GARRETT
“Consider this my confession.”
Fletcher’s voice sounded thin and tinny on the cheap device.
Everyone but Elias was back downstairs, dressed in civilian gear once more, their weapons and everything related to their raid removed by Juan Carlos and his men before they called the police to come for the body.
“By the time you get this, I’ll be long gone to a place you’ll never find me,” the recording continued. “But I wanted you to know that I never meant for this to happen. None of it—I still don’t know how it all went wrong.”
There was a pause in the recording, long enough for Ian to growl. “By being a cowardlyasshole.”
Rainer grunted his assent, but Garrett kept staring at the recording as Fletcher’s voice kept on making excuses and apologizing before getting back to what he wanted to hear.
“As you might have guessed, Emma’s phone had a text I didn’t want you to see.”
Fletcher sighed. “It wasn’t what you think. All I did was offer her a ride. She usually said no, but I guess she was in a hurry that night. I didn’t know it was because she planned on meeting up with you. Thatwasn’t on my radar at all. When I picked her up, I assumed what any guy my age would. I thought we were on a date. But it all went wrong…”
There was a long silence and Garrett thought that was all the explanation he was going to get, but Fletcher continued.
“I didn’t doanything. I just went for a kiss and she acted like I was attacking her. But I wasn’t. I would have kept driving her to the party.She’sthe one who stormed out of the car.”
Another pause. “I didn’t mean for her to get hurt. I don’t even know how she did. One minute she was in front of the car and the next she wasn’t.”
Because the fucker ran her down!
He’d known this was what had happened when Fletcher took the damn phone. But hearing it out loud was like a punch to the gut.
Fletcher’s lucky he is already dead…
“I swear I only grazed her,” Fletcher said, contradicting his earlier claim of ignorance. “She must have assumed I was trying to hit her—she’s the one who jumped down that damn ravine. But I wasn’t aiming for her. I was just trying to get out of there, maybe kick up a little dust to get her dirty. That was all.”
The static of the recording was the only thing they heard for another long beat. “I swear I had no idea Emma had been hurt that bad. I expected her to show up at the party later that night—you even asked me who I was looking for, remember?”
Garrett didn’t but that mattered fuck all. Mentally his hands were wrapped around Fletcher’s throat.
“You gotta believe I never knew you were together. If I had, I swear I would have said something. But when she turned up working in our building of all places and didn’t remember either of us… well, there was no need to confess.”
There was a scraping noise as if Fletcher had wiped the recorder on his shirtfront. “Yeah, I know how fucked up that was, but it was like I had a get out of jail free card. You would have done the same thing.”
The hell he would have.
“I’m not going to lie. Having Emma around freaked theshit out of me. And you kept getting closer and closer to her. So I did my best to make sure she didn’t stick around. But that blew up in my face.”
He and Rainer frowned at each other. What had Fletcher done, besides be an asshole to Emma?
“Then you told me the sheriff was going to send you the phone. I knew I had to get rid of it. Emma was supposed to be at the zoo. You said everyone was going.”
“Him attacking Em was your fucking fault?” Rainer scoffed. “Jesus, he’s lucky he’s dead.”
From the looks on Elias and Ian’s faces, that was a common sentiment.
Fletcher’s high strained voice continued. “I keep going back to that night. I would change everything if I could, but I do stand by what I said to Emma at the office. If she’d gone to business school like she wanted after college, you wouldnotbe married. The Emma from high school would have left if you got in the way of her goals. But because of the accident, she’s different now. More content.”