The Best Man to Trust - By Kerry Connor Page 0,46

and painful. If she was acting, it was the performance of a lifetime.

Scott took a step in front of her. “Come on, guys,” he said, his voice hard. “Back off. She doesn’t know anything.”

“Are you sure about that?” Alex asked. “You guys were broken up for a long time, and you really haven’t been back together all that long. How well do you really know her? Hell, how do you know getting back together wasn’t part of some plan on her part?”

“You can’t really believe that!” Rachel said.

Alex hesitated, a flicker of uncertainty passing across his face. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But all of our lives are on the line here. The questions have to be asked. Nobody else should die because we were all too polite to ask them.”

“Well, I don’t believe it,” Scott said. “And I don’t have to ask.”

“Then maybe it’s a good thing somebody is,” Greg mumbled against his flask.

“Where were you this afternoon, Rachel?” Alex asked.

“She was with me,” Scott said firmly, a touch of anger climbing into his tone.

“You said the two of you were taking a nap,” Alex noted.

“That’s right,” Scott said.

“So if you were asleep, you have no way of knowing if she was with you in the room the whole time.”

The argument seemed to draw Scott up short for a second. An instant later, his expression hardened with certainty. “I know.”

Alex simply raised his eyebrows, saying nothing, the look answer enough. He was right, Meredith thought. If Scott had been asleep, he couldn’t vouch for Rachel’s whereabouts the whole time. Of course, the reverse was also true. If Rachel had been asleep, Scott could have slipped out of their room, as well.

“Maybe you do,” Alex said, not unkindly. “But there’s no way the rest of us can.”

“I brought you here to be my friends, not accuse the woman I love of being a killer.”

“Well, I didn’t come here to die,” Alex retorted. “And you might be lovesick enough to trust her after the way she treated you, but the rest of us aren’t.”

“What are you talking about?” Rachel demanded.

Alex shot a scornful look her way. “Come on, Rach, we all remember what happened in college. The way you dumped him out of nowhere. Or maybe you don’t because you weren’t around anymore. We’re the ones who had to pick up the pieces when he was moping around because you ripped his guts out.” He looked at Scott. “When you proposed, I warned you, didn’t I? About trusting her again? The warning still stands.”

Rachel looked at Scott in shock. “If he didn’t approve of you marrying me, why did you ask him to perform the ceremony?”

“He didn’t disapprove, he just raised the issue. It’s what he does, he asks questions. And you wanted us to get married in the middle of nowhere! I didn’t want someone we didn’t even know doing it, so it made the most sense.”

“That doesn’t make sense at all,” Rachel snapped.

“Everyone calm down,” Tom said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Isn’t it?” Alex asked. “What do you suggest, Tom? We need to figure out who’s doing this before someone else gets hurt.”

“I agree,” Tom said. “But turning on each other and blindly throwing around a bunch of accusations isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

“Look where it got Jess,” Greg mused darkly.

Everyone looked at him in horror. “Will you shut up!” Rachel screamed at him.

He eyed her coolly. “Or what? You have a knife handy?”

The response seemed to shock everyone into silence. Rachel’s jaw moved up and down, but no sound came out. Finally, she clamped her lips together and turned away from him with barely concealed fury. “I knew we shouldn’t have invited you.”

Greg frowned in mock outrage. “Hey, he’s the one giving you the inquisition, and I’m the one you regret inviting? What kind of sense does that make?”

“Fine,” Rachel spat. “I regret inviting both of you.”

“I think it’s safe to say we regret that you did, too,” Greg returned.

“Greg, please,” Scott said with thinly concealed impatience. “This isn’t helping.”

Greg shrugged. “I wasn’t trying to.”

Meredith had already been growing tired of the man’s antics, and she’d finally reached the end of her tolerance. “Why not?” she challenged. “Don’t you want to figure out who’s responsible for this?”

“Sure, but it looks like Alex has that covered.”

“You seem awfully calm given the circumstances,” Meredith noted.

He raised his flask. “A little liquid courage goes a long way.”

Fully out of patience, she automatically reached out and grabbed the flask from him.