Page 168 of Untouchable
“You told me lies too. This last week, you knew. Youknew. You knew who I was and didn’t let on. You pretended…” As she spit the words out, she seemed to put the pieces together. “The woods! You were trying to… You were torturing me on purpose!” She started to fight against him again, and this time he let her go.
She scrambled to her feet, almost strangling on her emotion. “You act like I’m the monster, but you did that horrible thing to me.”
“It’s no different from everything you ever did to me. Getting me to open up. Getting me to fall for you. When you knew all along you hated me and you were trying to prove my guilt. You can act like an outraged virgin all you want, taken advantage of by a heartless man, but we both know who’s guiltier in this scenario. I didn’t kill your father, but you treated me like I wasn’t even human.”
He was revealing too much. Far too much. But he was too far gone to stop and too far gone to even care.
“Am I supposed to say I’m sorry?” She was wiping tears away as if she was angry with herself for crying them. “You can act the victim all you want, but you’re just as guilty as me.”
He remembered what she’d said the other day about feeling like she was living in a Shakespearean tragedy. It was exactly what this was. The script was laid out, the events set in motion, and no one could alter the outcome.
Whether he was Hamlet or Claudius didn’t really matter. Everyone was destroyed in the end.
Suddenly Caleb couldn’t take any more. Not without completely falling apart.
He knew what he had to do. What he always did to tighten his grip on the world.
He took a breath and pushed the tumult of feelings into a hard little ball in his chest.
“I don’t care what you do,” he said coldly after a moment, pleased when he almost sounded in control. “I’m done with this. I’m done withyou. You have your answers, so do with them whatever you want. Get out of here. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
She stared at him almost blindly.
“Get out of here,” he said, his voice rougher because he was having trouble hardening himself enough, hanging on to his control.
She wiped away the last of her tears and turned away, looking back at him once over her shoulder. “I’m not the only guilty one here.”
He knew it, but it didn’t help. Nothing could rewrite this final act. From the beginning he should have seen the end.
No love. No reconciliation. No happy future. No return to order and justice.
Just an inevitable spiral into destruction.
Kelly walked away from him without another word. She walked across the lawn and around the house, the moonlight glowing on her hair, until she disappeared from his sight.
She was gone. It was over. The life he knew might already have died if she decided to go public with her evidence and testimony.
He should probably prepare, talk to lawyers, lay the groundwork, think of some kind of plan in case that happened. She was so angry with him now that there was no reason she would hesitate to bring everything she knew out into the open. Even without the proof of his recordings, she could do a lot of damage.
She was the daughter of the victim. She’d been only a child, kneeling next to her father, who’d bled his life away in the woods.
And Caleb had done nothing—had never done a single thing—to address that appalling injustice. He’d been rewarded with the life he now led.
He’d been young. He’d been threatened. He hadn’t seen any option that wouldn’t hurt more than it helped. He’d felt loyalty to his family, even a family willing to betray him. Maybe that was some sort of excuse.
But at the heart of it he knew he’d made the decision back then because he’d always be Caleb Marshall. Ambitious, cold, mostly heartless. All his softer, human impulses coiled in tight so no one could ever hurt him again.
36
Kelly stumbled into her apartment,too dazed and bewildered to do anything but cling to the tiniest glimmer of recognition. She couldn’t wrap her mind around everything that had happened, but she’d managed to hold on to one, only one, essential necessity.
She called Jack. Got his voicemail. Wondered if he was angry at her, if he would delete her message before he even listened to it.
She left it anyway, having absolutely no other avenue for making this happen. “Jack, it’s me. Kelly. Sorry to…” Her voice seemed to be drying up, and she couldn’t force out the apology and explanation she had planned. Instead, the words spilled out in a harsh babble. “You have to stop everything, Jack. Whatever you’re working on to make things public. It has to be stopped. It’s not what we thought. Please, please, Jack. Don’t do anything about it.”
Her voice sounded unnatural and grating, and she had to hang up before she fell apart.
She didn’t know if Jack would want to help her. She didn’t know if it was already too late.
