He pulls a gun from his back pocket, but he doesn’t point it at Giles, he points it directly at Magnolia.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Mags?”
“I came because you fucking set me up to take the fall for this.” She attempts to wave a hand. “All this time ... you were the motherfucking Lizard.”
No fucking way. That motherfucker did not play me.
No. I refuse to fucking believe it.
Ransom has been hunting the Lizard. He can’t be the Lizard.
I watch through the scope, and I know I’m wrong the minute he smiles and spits a wad of dip in the dirt. “I thought it meant alligator, actually. But languages aren’t my thing.”
Fucking. Shit.
I keep the crosshairs on Ransom’s head and my finger rests on the trigger, but I can’t do it.
Temperance will never forgive me if I do it. She will never understand. I’ll never be able to explain this to her.
Especially because I don’t know how I missed it myself.Ransom fucking played us all. Even his own goddamned sister.
“How could you lie to me?” Magnolia’s voice carries through the quiet night.
“Why the hell are you here?” Ransom asks.
“Mount.” Magnolia bites out his name. “Apparently he wanted me to see for myself what a piece of shit you really are.” She waves an arm at the women in the boat. “How could you?”
That motherfucker.Is that why he sent me? Because he wanted me to protect Magnolia while she confronted Ransom?
There are too many unanswered questions and complications for me to do a fucking thing.
Which Mount had to know.
Why didn’t he tell me Ransom was the target?
It takes me all of half a second to answer that question.
He knew I’d never do it if he told me.
But now, faced with the prospect of letting the man I thought I knew kill a woman who is screaming at him about lying to her ... the choice becomes muddy.
I only have one option, and it’s the one thing a sniper should never, ever fucking do.
Abandon my position and move in to take care of this face-to-face.
I pop the round out of the rifle and eject the magazine before leaving the rifle on top of the container and checking my sidearm.
None of this is happening at a distance.
I climb down from the shipping container to make my way toward the clusterfuck unfolding between the occupants of the BMW and the Suburban.
“Mount never could mind his own business,” Ransom says, staring at Magnolia. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. You were never supposed to know. It was one last job, and I was done. We were going to have a life.”
“Is that why Mount’s guy found accounts in my name in the Cayman Islands? Accounts taking payments for the shit you’ve been pinning on me? Why the fuck would you do that if you weren’t setting me up?” Magnolia’s tone is desperate, bordering on hysterically pissed.
“Baby, you gotta believe me. Everything I did was for you. For us.”
“Don’t you dare tell me you’re sellingwomento helpme.You know what I’ve been through. You know I have lines. You know I would never fucking sink so low.”