have been more surprised to see Elise Hunt walk in. She had a gun and she aimed it right at Lucy.
Chapter Fifty-one
“Hello!” Elise said with false cheerfulness. Or maybe it was real. Lucy wasn’t sure.
Jonathan said, “This is a private conversation, Ms. Hunt.”
Didn’t he see the gun in her hand?
Why wasn’t he surprised to see Elise?
Lucy was missing something.
“First, this is just so rich to have you both here. I gotta tell you, Lucy, he really, really, really hates Sean. Maybe even more than my daddy and my daddy really hated Sean, too. Sometimes, I think my daddy hated Sean more for stealing our money than he hated Kane for killing my brother.”
“Put the gun down, Elise, and we can have a conversation,” Lucy said. She spoke distinctly, hoping the FBI who were listening to this conversation would realize that they were in a volatile situation. Elise was not someone who could be reasoned with.
“Right … put it down. Sure.” She rolled her eyes. “I hate you,” she said to Lucy.
Then she turned to Jonathan. “But I hate you more. You killed my daddy. You know how I know? Because it’s all on tape. I knew something was wrong when I got here, but couldn’t figure it out. Maybe because you were being all nice to me. Maybe because you kept asking me what I thought of her.” She waved her gun toward Lucy. “And then about your arrangement with Daddy, and I remembered my conversation yesterday. And how he promised to let me kill her once we got everything settled down. Then I saw all the cameras and the security and your guy seemed … just off. Like he couldn’t quite look at me. I thought he might kill me, but he didn’t seem to have it in him. He seemed more … sad. So I started looking around and found the security room. You actually have a camera in here.” She looked around and then grinned. “There, right? I know from the angle because I saw you stab my daddy in the stomach, you fucking prick. Why? Didn’t want to pay him what you owed him?”
“What did you do to Colton, Ms. Hunt?”
Jonathan sounded so calm, didn’t he see that Elise was extremely volatile?
“‘What did you do to Colton, Ms. Hunt?’” she mimicked. “I didn’t do anything. You’re the one who told him to give me the car.”
“What does that mean, Elise?” Lucy asked.
“You can read my mind,” Elise said. “You tell me.”
Lucy didn’t have control of this situation, and Elise was angry and … lost. She didn’t know what to do, Lucy realized. She had depended her entire life on first Tobias then Jimmy telling her what to do. She certainly played her own games—like torturing Brad when she was supposed to kill him—but she always went back to her family.
And now she had no one.
“I think you left Colton unconscious in the garage,” Lucy said. She hadn’t shot him because Jonathan had too many people around. They would have heard, alerted him.
“See? You can read my mind. Fuck, how the hell do you do that?”
“Educated guess.”
“No, you did it in court. And when we were talking. You, like, know me and, like, don’t and it freaks me the fuck out.”
“Elise, I know Jonathan hired you to frame Sean for murder. Why Mona Hill?”
“You know why.”
“Because she left you behind.”
“She abandoned me when I needed her the most. And you know why? Because your husband told her to leave. He told her to leave me. And why is that? Because he blackmailed her. Prick. Then I get arrested and that sucked. It totally screwed with our plans.”
Was that enough? Did the FBI believe based on what Elise said that she had been the one to kill Mona, not Sean?
It won’t matter if Sean is dead!
Elise said to Jonathan, “You owed my dad a quarter of a million. You were going to give me a fucking thousand? Nope. I want the money we were promised. Then I’ll get out of your hair.”
“All right. I will have Colton transfer it to you.”
“Really? Transfer it? You’re a fucking joke. Like I would trust you to transfer me the money. Like, tonight? Next week? Never? I’m not an idiot. What do you have in your safe? I know a guy like you will have money in your safe.”
She waved the gun around.
Jonathan rose and headed over to a picture embedded in one of the bookshelves.