Page 89 of The Fire Went Wild
A slam echoes through the foyer, cutting me off. I look over to see Jaxon and Sawyer standing in front of the now-shut front door. Sawyer has his arms crossed over his chest, a scowl darkening his face.
“Oh, calm down,” Edie says teasingly, and Sawyer’s scowl melts.
“Just trying to keep you safe,” he responds, and Edie beams at him. I look back and forth between the two of them, trying to comprehend exactly what I’m seeing.
She’s certainly not here as a prisoner.
“Edie.” I turn back to her. “I need to know what the hell is going on.”
“I could say the same to you.” She looks past me. “You’re Jaxon, right? We spoke on the phone once. Sawyer’s told me a lot about you.”
“Yeah. I’m Jaxon.” He steps forward. “Sawyer told me about you, too.”
But Edie turns back to me, eyes searching. “How?” she whispered. “How did you—how did you findJaxon?”
“How are you living in a beach house with Sawyer Caldwell?”
Edie’s cheeks darken. “I guess we both have a lot to tell each other.” Then she hugs me again, and it feels so damn good, knowing that she’s alive and safeand that I didn’t fail her after all.
“You can say that again.” I look past her, at Jaxon and Sawyer standing next to each other, watching us with their sharp, keen gazes. Two monsters. Two murderers.
But it’s hard to see either of them as monsters right now.
“Come on,” Edie says. “We can Doordash some breakfast.”
She grabs my hand and pulls me deeper into the house. I glance back toward Jaxon, and he gives me a small, shy smile.And my heart swells up. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to say to Edie about what Jaxon has done to me and what he’s made me do.
But I do know Jaxon brought me here. That he made the effort to prove to me she’s alive and well.
Thank you, I mouth to him, and he smiles like I’m his whole world.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHARLOTTE
The four of us have brunch in a sunroom that faces the piles of sand dunes leading down to the beach. Edie ordered it from some seafood place near their house: a big spread of crab eggs Benedict and fresh fruit and smoked salmon on thin, crispy toast. Mimosas, too, a carton of orange juice delivered with a bottle of sparkling wine that Edie and I dump into the juice before knocking the plastic flute glasses together.
It’s almost like being back in California. Almost.
“Sawyer killed Scott,” Edie tells me matter-of-factly, spearing a chunk of melon with her fork. When I blanche in surprise, she adds, “He was trying to kill me.”
Any reservations I had—and I didn’t have many—vanish. “That motherfucker,” I snap. “The military guys they found at the camp?—”
“Back up, I guess.” Edie shrugs. “Those two PIs he sent by your place were supposed to kill me when they found me. But Sawyer took care of them, too.”
The two PIs. I only met with them once, and they had asked me questions about Edie’s whereabouts and I had lied whileScott sat in the corner, scowling. Guilt tightens in my stomach. “I should have known,” I say, setting down my fork. “I should have called the cops the second they?—”
Sawyer and Jaxon look at each other, exchanging expressions I don’t fully understand, but Edie reaches across the table and lays her hand on mine. “You had no way of knowing,” she says. “It was Scott. It was all Scott. And he’s long dead now,” She settles back in her chair, her blonde hair a halo around her pretty face. “So am I.”
I can’t believe how calm she is about all of this. Howaccepting.
I wonder if she would be so accepting of what I’ve done. Doubtful. Scott was an asshole who deserved it. Oliver Raffia was a stranger.
I don’t dwell on it for long, though, because Edie starts to pepper me with questions. Jaxon doesn’t say anything, and I decide to tell her a revised version. That I’d been looking for her since November, digging into true crime sites for any clues I could find. How I connected the sigil on the street art during our last conversation to a crime scene in Beaumont. She looks pretty sheepish at that, and Sawyer gives Jaxon a death glare.
“I told you not to paint that stupid thing on my church,” he says, although he sounds like he’s teasing. Sort of.
Jaxon, though, is nonplussed. “I’m glad I did,” he says. “Otherwise Charlotte wouldn’t be here right now.”