Page 74 of Don't Cross the Blue Line
“You’re Sutton Blake.” I pull the letter from my pocket. “You’ve been writing to me for six months. Making me feel like someone actually cared. And you knew.”
And then, something terrible, horrible, sickening, dawns on me.
She’s not the only one who knew about my letters.
“You work for that author?”
“You caught me.”
“Really?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m not surprised. I’m making conversation in an elevator.”
“What’s she write? That author.”
“Thrillers, mostly. Crime fiction.”
Elevator girl is her—Everly Hart. The voice from the elevator, the one who said everyone deserves a second chance. It was her the whole time.
I don’t know how I know it, but I do. I can see it through the dark lines of my memory—the presence of her. The sound of her voice. Her humor.
Everly.
Not E.J. Hartley’s assistant or her lawyer—or whoever might work with her. “Tell me, E.J.,” I say, the words sharp, pointed. “How’s your assistant doing these days?”
Everly’s eyes go wide, a look of sickening guilt etched deep in every line of her face in the amber glow of the emergency lights.
I close my eyes. I can’t even look at her. “I poured my heart out to you in that elevator, and you said nothing, Everly.”
“I was scared?—”
“I told you things in my letters I’ve never told anyone.” My chest feels like it’s breaking. “And every conversation tonight—at Blake’s, the furniture store, the tent—you knew exactly what to say to make me feel like you cared. Like we were?—”
“What? We were what?” she says, and her eyes are filling.
I can barely say the word. “Friends. Maybe more…” And I can’t believe I said that, but there was kissing, so…But I follow it with “And the whole time, you had the cheat sheet!”
She flinches, and it just solidifies the truth. Every confession tonight, she already knew the answers. Here I was, thinking I was being truly open for the first time to a real human and…well, she already knew all of it.
Even the part about the girl in the elevator.
Because it was her. Wow. I shake my head. “You lied to me, even in the elevator.”
“I didn’t know it was you, Beckett, until the very end. And what was I supposed to say?”
A few things come to mind, but I just shake my head. And then…wait…
“I preordered your next book. Ice Cold Heart. About a hockey player with a sordid past finding a second chance—that’s me, isn’t it?”
Her mouth opens, and weakly, she says, “It’s fiction.”
But I can see the truth in her eyes. Oh, wow. “What am I to you—research?”
Her brows rise, and for a liar, she isn’t very good at concealing the truth.
Wow, just…wow.
