“I think it was more a case of me loving you and you using me.” Talking to Trina had opened him up to the idea that he could still care for Jessie’s family, but it hadn’t convinced him anything about her.
“Ah, so we’re going the victim route,” she mused.
“What else would you call me?” It didn’t seem like he was going to be able to wake himself up. Maybe he should engage. Maybe he should get some answers.
“A man who didn’t want to see that the woman he loved was out of control. I was in a bad position, and I didn’t know how to get out.”
There was one problem with that. “You could have told me.”
“Yes, I could have,” she replied. “Have you thought about that? Why do you think I wouldn’t tell you?”
“Because you were afraid I would turn you in.” It always killed him to think that she hadn’t trusted him.
Her brows rose. “You wouldn’t have turned me in.”
“You couldn’t have known that.” He’d asked himself the same question a million times, gone over it in his head as he lay awake every night. What would he have done?
“Of course I could. You did lots of things to cover for my failings. I knew damn well I could talk to you and you would have either helped me get out of the situation or simply backed me up.”
“I wouldn’t have gone after Alexei. I wouldn’t have helped you hurt him.” He’d been their charge, and somewhere during those months of protecting him, he’d become their friend.
“I didn’t want to go after Markov either. That wasn’t supposed to be the job, but I was already in too deep,” she admitted. “I couldn’t walk away. They wouldn’t let me. I was supposed to facilitate the damn assassin. Not become the assassin. However, when it all went wrong, I knew I couldn’t go to jail. I had to follow through on the assignment. Then Holly and the doctor showed up with him, and it became this massive clusterfuck. But none of that explains why I drugged you that night.”
That seemed clear to him. “You didn’t want me to stop you.”
“If I’d wanted to do that, I would have knocked you out some other way. Do you remember anything about those five or ten minutes before you passed out?” Jessie asked.
“No.”
“Think, Michael.” She leaned forward. “It’s all in there. You do remember. Sometimes you dream about it at night. You remember how we were both drinking and you told me that something was wrong, and I said I felt it too. I tried to help you to the bed, and I told you someone must have drugged our drinks.”
He did remember that. She’d fallen to the floor once he was on the bed, and she’d promised she was getting her cell phone. She was going to call for help. “Why would you do that?”
“Why do you think?”
“You were trying to give yourself a way out. You knew you had to help the assassin that night, but you didn’t know how it would go,” he mused. “You thought you might be able to get back to the room and pretend it was the assassin who’d drugged us both so he could take Alexei out. You must have been disappointed when you realized you would have to use your gun.”
She wouldn’t have been able to hide that. After that kind of an incident, someone would have checked her weapon simply out of protocol, and she would have had questions to answer.
“I must have been disappointed because I would have to do the one thing I didn’t want to do. The one thing I’d worked so hard to avoid.” She leaned forward, the glow of the fire casting shadows on her face. “It would have been easier to tell you. The truth of the matter is you would have moved heaven and earth to help me. So why wouldn’t I use that against you? Why wouldn’t I drag you in and make you fix things for me? You always fixed things for me.”
“You didn’t want me to know.” That truth hit him. She’d been willing to risk a lot so he didn’t find out. He didn’t know whether or not he would have turned her in. Almost certainly not immediately. He would have stopped her from harming anyone, but he would have tried to save her.
“Why wouldn’t I want you to know?” He could have sworn there were tears in her eyes. They shone right on her lashes.
The answer played at the edge of his brain. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do, and you have to accept it. Not accepting it is what’s keeping you here. You might have left the house we lived in behind, but you didn’t leave me. I’m still here haunting you every day, and that’s gotten old,” she insisted. “You might have needed it at first, but there’s this part of you that wants out. You want to move on. You bring me into every decision you make. I’m the reason you can’t move on. Do you honestly believe that woman could kill a man?”