Page 117 of Sunburned

“You were only with me because of him,” he snapped, jabbing the gun in her direction. “Tyson was always telling me you must want something from me.” He threw his head back. “God, it kills me that he was right.”

His spittle landed on Jennifer where she cowered on the floor, looking up at him fearfully. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “I love you.”

“All of it was fake,” he cried. “I had a ring. A fucking ring!”

Fear shot through me. He was volatile, infuriated, and—I was sure now—a killer. I had to do something before he hurt her again. “Tyson was an asshole,” I said, forcing my voice through my dry throat.

He looked at me as though just registering my presence, his eyes dark with rage.

“You were the smart one,” I said gently. “The kind one. He was nothing but a thief and a bully.”

“I went to prison for you,” he growled.

“For which I will be forever grateful.”

“Fucking prison! Do you have any idea what that was like?”

The anguish in his face was both heartbreaking and terrifying. “I’m so sorry, Cody.”

“Audrey—” I could tell Jennifer was trying to warn me with her eyes that he wasn’t in his right mind, but that was what I was banking on. Yes, there was a harrowing chance he might shoot us in this state,but there was at least an equal chance that he might confess, and if I could induce him to do the latter, all of this would be over.

“All these years I’d thought it was Ian who turned me in,” he lamented, wiping his tear-streaked face with the bottom of his shirt as he paced the floor. “And he paid with his life. For nothing!”

I swallowed my horror and glanced at Jennifer, who gaped at him with a look of shock and outrage as that sank in. Would she still claim to love Cody now that he’d admitted to killing the father of her child? She was smart enough to hold her tongue, for the moment at least.

From the beginning, my gut had told me Tyson and Cody had lied about Ian’s death being an accident, but I’d always assumed it was Tyson who pushed him, not Cody. Though in context, it made sense that Cody would have been angry enough with Ian for turning him in to inflict harm on him. “But Tyson finally confessed to turning you in?” I asked.

“He didn’t even have the decency to tell me in person,” he groaned, more to himself than anyone else.

Dread settled heavy in my bones. “So, how did you find out?” I asked, though I had a bad feeling that I knew.

“My arrest report.”

My heart stopped. It was my fault Tyson was dead.

“Samira gave it to me the morning after La Petite Plage.”

I could hardly control my voice. “Samira…”

“Because he was too much of a fucking coward to tell me himself,” Cody spat.

That much was true, at least.

“I saw her hand you that envelope,” Jennifer interjected. “I don’t think she even knew what it was. She just said it was yours.”

“Did you ask her about it?” I asked, trying to follow.

He shook his head. “I didn’t need to. There it was, in black and white…” His voice trailed off.

“There what was?” Jennifer pressed.

“The date of the video submitted as evidence against me wasn’t July fourth, so it wasn’t Ian’s video.”

So he’d come to the same conclusion I had.

“It was dated August second,” Cody went on, focusing on me, “the day after you caught Tyson cheating on you, which he blamed me for. Tyson turned me in, not Ian.” He bunched his free hand into a fist as he paced back and forth, agitated. “If we’d ever gone to trial, it would have come out in court, but I copped a plea, so I was never the wiser.”

“But why tell you now, after all this time?” Jennifer asked.