Nick’s gaze slid to me. I shook my head in warning. “I’m surprised Finn didn’t mention it, considering she was there.”
My mother’s head snapped up. “What? Finlay, you didn’t tell us anything about this!” She looked to my sister. Georgia held up her hands, using her full mouth as an excuse not to answer.
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “Nick got there just in time.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have made it out of there without your help.” His eyes caught mine across the table and held them.
“Mommy’s a hero?” Delia asked, pushing brussels around her plate.
“Yeah, she is,” Nick said in a low voice that felt like it was just for me.
Vero fanned herself with her napkin. “Is it a little warm in here? It feels a little warm in here.”
“What on earth were you doing in the middle of a shoot-out?” my mother cried, dragging my attention from Nick.
“It’s a long story. Not one for the table,” I said, clearing a lump from my throat. “Delia, honey, if you’ve finished your dinner, you can be excused to play with your toys.” Delia leapt from her seat and raced off to the living room, leaving Zach behind to rub au gratin in his hair.
My sister talked around a mouthful of ham. “So that whole internet-forum-hit-job thing turned out to be real after all?”
My mother’s fork paused halfway to her mouth.
“As far as we can tell,” Nick said. “But the investigation is deadlocked. The website disappeared before we could get anything useful out of it.”
“What website is that?” my father asked, dragging his roll over the last of the sauce on his plate.
“We think a local arm of the Russian mafia was using a women’s chat room as a front for organized crime.”
My mother’s fork dropped with a clatter.
I felt Vero go still beside me.
I set down my glass, unable to hold it as my fingers went numb. I turned to my mother.
The arsonist who’d started the fire at the trailer, the clever cover-up of Carl’s murder, the identity of the person who’d hired a contract killer to murder my ex-husband … Up until a moment ago, they had all seemed like entirely separate mysteries, their motives completely disconnected from one another. But what if they were, at their very core, connected by one common, unbreakable bond—by the most powerful motive of all—the one I hadn’t stopped to consider when Vero and I were sitting on the floor over a box of Crayola markers, struggling to sleuth it all out?
A mother’s love. The irrepressible instinct to protect her child.
Holy shit! Was my own mother FedUp?
My mind reeled back to that first message on the forum. A real piece of work … 100 Good reasons the world would be better off without him … FedUp hated Steven, but she had never come out and stated she’d wanted him dead, or that she was willing to pay for it. Nor had she voiced any overtly sinister requests in any of the emails we’d exchanged. Vero and I had thought FedUp was speaking in code, being intentionally vague to avoid detection, but what if it was all just an innocent mistake? What if FedUp hadn’t schemed to hire a contract killer and stiff the bill? What if she was just an angry mom, bitching about her awful ex-son-in-law, oblivious to the chain of events she was setting in motion?
I lifted my wineglass, downing the entire thing in one long swallow. Nick glanced up from his plate, his brows drawing together as I stared hard at my mother. “This website sounds like a real cesspool,” I said. “A lot of awful, horrible people doing awful, horrible things. Steven could have been killed. Nick’s lucky he survived.” Vero pinched my elbow under the table.
My mother tossed her napkin on her plate. “Finlay, if you’ve finished, I could use some help in the kitchen.”
“Gladly.”
She pushed up from her chair and carried her dishes with her. I followed her through the swing doors.
“So,” Vero said through a nervous laugh, “who’s got money on the game tomorrow?”
The sounds of their conversation faded as the doors swung closed behind me. My mother’s plate thunked down on the counter beside the sink. I stacked mine on top, folding my arms, watching my mother as she opened the refrigerator and searched for the whipped cream. “What on earth were you thinking?” I asked in a low voice.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mother, I know you’re FedUp.”
Her hands shook as she closed the fridge door. She cast an anxious look toward the dining room. “How could you know that?”