I was bad for you. They had another plan. Colton was going to frame me for a major cyber breach—then confess that he helped me with the crime. And the crime was something he and I had talked about in college. Something we had wanted to do … and he had a record of our planning. He was willing to lie because Paxton asked him to … and because Colton hated me so much he wanted to hurt me. And this was how to hurt me. To destroy me in your eyes.”
His voice cracked. He couldn’t bear to think about what might have happened if he didn’t have family and friends. If Paxton had killed him first, set him up later. If Lucy believed the lies … the frame … because it was so well done.
“I will always believe you, Sean. Always. Paxton was obsessed with me—I didn’t believe Dillon when he said it, then I saw the portrait of me on his wall. It hit me. You are not to blame. For any of this.”
“I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“It hurts because you and Colton were so close for so long.”
“He saved me, Lucy, after I was expelled from Stanford. For four years we were inseparable. And now, he wanted to hurt me. It’s my fault.”
“It’s Colton’s fault. He couldn’t get beyond what happened in New York. Remember, everything then was his idea, and if you weren’t there he would have died. You saved his life—he should have forgiven you for lying to him.”
“He’ll never see it that way.”
“That’s on him. Sean—none of us are perfect. But no one—not Colton, not Paxton—can come between us. I will always love you.”
He pulled her close and closed his eyes.
“I want so much to go back to the way things were last week. Before this. I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what, Sean? Talk to me.”
He didn’t know if he could. “I guess I need time. I need … peace.”
“Anything you need, I’m here.”
He held her tight. He needed Lucy so much, but feared he was broken.
“Hey,” she said, making him look at her. “I mean it. We’re going to get through this together.”
He stared at her and saw the truth in her eyes. He slowly began to believe it. With Lucy, he could do anything. His heart was still heavy, but he felt it get just a little bit lighter.
He kissed her. Held her lips to his for a long minute. Live big, Kane had said.
All Sean wanted, right now, was his family.
“I love you, Lucy Kincaid Rogan.”
Acknowledgments
Dear Reader,
I have always wanted to be a writer, but it was a distant dream, interrupted by life—raising a family and working full-time, I figured I didn’t have the time to write. After my son was born in 2001, I had an epiphany: If I wanted to write, I needed to make the time. I gave up television for three years (my friends and family know I love TV!) and I wrote every night after the kids went to bed. I finished five books in two years, selling my fifth book, The Prey, which was published in January 2006.
Most of my research for my early books came from reading. My research shelf overflowed with books on criminal psychology, forensics, police procedures, and true crime. I knew a few people who could help me with some of the details I couldn’t find in books, but mostly I made stuff up. And sometimes I got things wrong. There’s a phrase I heard that resonates with me: “You don’t know what you don’t know.” I try to keep that in mind when I write so I can research points where I might not even realize I got it wrong. If it’s plot-critical, I want it to be right.
Another hurdle in research is making sure that it doesn’t show. I only want enough information on the page to make the story work without halting the pace to explain too many details. There’s nothing that irritates me more than when I’m reading a thriller and the story just stops to explain a minute forensic detail for five pages. Sometimes I want to share all the fascinating things I’ve learned when I toured the morgue or interviewed a pilot or participated in SWAT training, and I have to rein myself in and remember to only put enough on the page to keep the story believable. I work on it in each and every book, to make sure I keep that balance.