We found a dress. The paparazzi snapped their pictures as Oren ushered the lot of us back into the SUV. As we pulled away from the curb, he glanced in the rearview mirror. “Seat belts buckled?”
Mine was. Beside me, Thea fastened hers. “Have you thought about hair and makeup?” she asked.
“Constantly,” I replied in a deadpan. “These days, I think of literally nothing else. A girl has to have her priorities in order.”
Thea smiled. “And here I was thinking your priorities all had the last name Hawthorne.”
“That’s not true,” I said. But isn’t it? How much time had I spent thinking about them? How badly had I wanted Jameson to mean it when he’d told me I was special?
How clearly could I still feel Grayson checking my wound?
“Your bodyguard didn’t want me to come today,” Thea murmured as we turned onto a long and winding road. “Neither did your lawyer. I persevered, and do you know why?”
“Not a clue.”
“This has nothing to do with my uncle or Zara.” Thea played with the tips of her dark hair. “I’m just doing what Emily would want me to do. Remember that, would you?”
Without warning, the car swerved. My body kicked into panic mode—fight or flight, and neither one of them was an option, strapped into the back seat. I whipped my head toward Oren, who was driving—and noticed that the guard in the passenger seat had his hand on his gun, vigilant, ready.
Something’s wrong. We shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have trusted, even for a moment, that I was safe. Alisa pushed this. She wanted me out here.
“Hold tight,” Oren yelled.
“What’s going on?” I asked. The words lodged themselves in my throat and came out as a whisper. I saw a flash of movement out of my window: a car, jerking toward us, high speed. I screamed.
My subconscious was screaming at me to run.
Oren swerved again, enough to prevent full-scale impact, but I heard the screech of metal on metal.
Someone is trying to run us off the road. Oren laid on the gas. The sound of sirens—police sirens—barely broke through the cacophony of panic in my head.
This can’t be happening. Please don’t let this be happening.
Please, no.
Oren roared into the left lane, ahead of the car that had attacked us. He swung the SUV around, up and over the median, sending us racing in the opposite direction.
I tried to scream, but it wasn’t loud or shrill. I was keening, and I couldn’t make it stop.
There was more than one siren now. I turned toward the back of the car, expecting the worst, preparing for impact—and I saw the car that had hit us spinning out. Within seconds, the vehicle was surrounded by cops.
“We’re okay,” I whispered. I didn’t believe it. My body was still telling me that I would never be okay again.
Oren eased off the gas, but he didn’t stop, and he didn’t turn around.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, my voice high enough in pitch and volume to crack glass.
“That,” Oren replied calmly, “was someone taking the bait.”
The bait? I swung my gaze toward Alisa. “What is he talking about?”
In the heat of the moment, I’d thought that it was Alisa’s fault that we were here. I’d doubted her—but Oren’s response suggested that maybe I should have blamed them both.
“This,” Alisa said, her trademark calm dented but not destroyed, “was the point.” That was the same thing she’d said when we’d seen the paparazzi outside the boutique.
The paparazzi. Making sure we were seen. The absolute need to come dress shopping, despite everything that had happened.
Because of everything that had happened.
“You used me as bait?” I wasn’t a yeller, but I was yelling now.
Beside me, Thea recovered her voice—and then some. “What the hell is going on here?”
Oren exited the highway and slowed to a stop at a red light. “Yes,” he told me apologetically, “we used you—and ourselves—as bait.” He glanced toward Thea and answered her question. “There was an attack on Avery two days ago. Our friends at the police station agreed to play this my way.”
“Your way could have killed us!” I couldn’t make my heart stop pounding. I could barely breathe.
“We had backup,” Oren assured me. “My people, as well as the police. I won’t tell you that you weren’t in danger, but the situation being what it was, danger was not a possibility that could be eliminated. There were no good options. You had to continue living in that house. Instead of waiting for another attack, Alisa and I engineered what looked like a prime opportunity. Now, maybe we can get some answers.”
First, they’d told me that the Hawthornes weren’t a threat. Then they’d used me to flush out the threat. “You could have told me,” I said roughly.
“It was better,” Alisa told me, “that you didn’t know. That no one knew.”
Better for whom? Before I could say that, Oren got a call.
“Did Rebecca know about the attack?” Thea asked beside me. “Is that why she’s been so upset?”
“Oren.” Alisa ignored Thea and me. “Did they apprehend the driver?”
“They did.” Oren paused, and I caught him looking at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes softening in a way that made my stomach twist. “Avery, it was your sister’s boyfriend.”
Drake. “Ex-boyfriend,” I corrected, my voice getting caught in my throat.
Oren didn’t respond to my assertion. “They found a rifle in his trunk that, at least preliminarily, matches the bullets. The police will be wanting to talk to your sister.”
“What?” I said, my heart still banging mercilessly at my rib cage. “Why?” On some level, I knew—I knew the answer to that question, but I couldn’t accept it.
I wouldn’t.
“If Drake was the shooter, someone would have had to sneak him onto the estate,” Alisa said, her voice uncharacteristically gentle.
Not Libby, I thought. “Libby wouldn’t—”
“Avery.” Alisa put a hand on my shoulder. “If something happens to you—even without a will—your sister and your father are your heirs.”