Guilty As Sin (Sin Trilogy#2)

Then I thought of my brother. “Oh my God. We have to tell Asa.” My entire body trembled. “God, how do I tell him? What do I tell him?” My tears came harder and faster, and Jackie helped me to my feet.

As soon as I was upright, another realization slapped me in the face. I don’t know what happened to Lincoln’s father.

“Oh my God. I didn’t ask about Lincoln’s dad. I have to know if he’s—”

I rushed toward the door and tried to yank it open, but Jackie slammed it shut.

“You need to listen to me, Whitney. We’ve got our own mess of problems to deal with right now. You need to let the Riscoffs handle their own. I think it’d be best if you stay far away from that boy and his family. Nothing good can ever come of it.”





2





LINCOLN





I STARED down at the white sheet that covered my father.

No, not my father. My father’s body.

My father was gone. He wasn’t under that sheet.

I turned away to look at anything else. The wall. The silent machines. My mother’s hunched form as she cried on my brother’s shoulder. She’d pushed me away moments after I arrived and continued clinging to him.

Somehow, I couldn’t stop myself from looking back at the sheet.

How can my father be gone? I’d seen him today. Hours ago. He’d been laughing with one of the interns, clapping him on the back for something the kid had done, and I’d been struck with a sharp stab of envy.



My father had never laughed and joked around with me when I was that age. I would have given anything to see that kind of approval on his face. Instead, I rarely saw his face at all. He was constantly traveling for business or working long hours.

He didn’t teach me to play catch. My tutor did. He never saw me score a touchdown in boarding school because he could never fit my games into his schedule. He wasn’t around to tell me about girls and sex and using condoms. My friends did, and then Commodore hammered it home when I was older. My father . . . was conspicuously absent from the memories of most of the important moments in my life.

I remembered the week before I’d found out I had to come back to Gable a couple of months ago. My father had flown out to New York City for a meeting, and we’d had dinner at one of my favorite places. He’d complimented my wine selection.

And then immediately hit on the waitress.

I pushed that memory away too, and stared at the sheet with silent regret until Commodore walked into the room. I didn’t know where he’d been, but water dripped from his rain jacket.

He looked at the sheet. Then at me. My mother. My brother. He crossed the room and sank into the chair beside my father’s covered body. I watched as he braced himself to lift the sheet. It was the first time I’d ever seen the old man’s hand tremble like that.

As soon as he saw my father’s face, Commodore’s eyes snapped shut and he dropped the fabric.

“How did this happen?” His voice was rough and quiet but grew stronger and more demanding. “How the hell did this happen?” The question echoed in the room and down the hall.

His head snapped around, his gaze scouring me, my brother, and my mother.

“We don’t know yet, sir,” I replied.

My grandfather’s jaw ticked. “I want answers now. My son is dead, and the Gables were involved. No one sleeps until someone tells me exactly how the hell this happened.”



I cringed as he said Gables, but thankfully the doctor stepped inside the room.

“Mr. Riscoff? Sir, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived. I was with the man who arrived first on the scene. The police have finished interviewing him. If you’d like—”

“Get him in here!” Commodore’s voice boomed.

The doctor nodded and backed out of the room.

Commodore’s stare, harder than granite, landed on me. “I wasn’t supposed to outlive my son.”

My mother looked up, her face contorted in anguish. “It should’ve been you. He said you called him back to the office. That’s why he’s dead!”

Commodore’s brows swept together. “What the hell are you talking about?”

My mother’s finger jutted out, shaking in the air as she pointed at Commodore. “He left tonight, in the middle of that storm, because you couldn’t wait for some report until tomorrow. This is your fault.”

Commodore’s face showed nothing but confusion, and that told me exactly what I needed to know. My father wasn’t working tonight. There was no report.

He’d lied to my mother. Again.

Before Commodore could respond, the doctor returned with a man wearing damp clothing. “This is Mr. Ainsley, a volunteer firefighter. He—”

Commodore stood. “Let the man speak. I want to hear him tell us what happened. Not you.”

The doctor’s mouth snapped shut and he stepped back.

“I’m so sorry to you all for your loss.” Mr. Ainsley removed his hat, and his gaze drifted to my mother. “Ma’am.”

“Tell us something,” my mother screeched, and I was afraid she was going to scare him out of the room.

Ainsley nodded. “I was heading home from picking up a buddy at the bar, and noticed the guardrail was out on the bridge. In that rain, I figured it’d be all too easy to lose control and for a car to go off.”

“Which bridge?” I asked, because I’d driven over the bridge that was closest to Whitney’s parents’ house on my way from the cabin, and I didn’t see anything.

“Downtown. Bridge Street.”

I nodded, and he continued.

“I parked and got out and looked over the side, and I saw a woman on the bank. She wasn’t moving. I called 911, grabbed my bag, and climbed down. That’s when I saw the cars. Both of them were caught up on the rocks. One was upside down.”

“Jesus Christ,” Commodore whispered, bowing his head.



“I went to the woman because she was the only victim I saw at first.”

“At first?”

Ainsley nodded. “I checked her pulse. Nothing. She wasn’t breathing either. I tried CPR, but she was unresponsive. I stayed with her until the EMTs showed up. When fire and rescue came, we waded out into the river. That’s when we found the others.”

My stomach rolled as I pictured the scene he painted.

“My son would’ve been driving a Mercedes,” Commodore said, his voice rough.

“Yes, sir. That’s who I saw next. I’m sorry to say that . . .” He trailed off and looked at my mother. “You sure you all want to hear this?”

“Just tell us,” Commodore said. “We need to know.”

Ainsley glanced at my mother again, and his voice dropped low, almost like he was hoping she wouldn’t hear. “Mr. Riscoff was underwater in the passenger seat when we found him.”

My head jerked up and I stared at Commodore, certain the shock I was feeling was the same as what was reflected on his face.

“The passenger seat?” My mother’s voice trembled, and suddenly I was terrified I was going to lose both my parents tonight—my father to an accident and my mother to a heart attack. “Who was driving the car then?”

Thankfully, she didn’t grasp her arm or chest like she usually did when she was having an episode.

Her gaze darted around the room, from Ainsley to Commodore to me, and back to Ainsley again. “Who was driving the car?” she repeated, her tone turning shrill again.

Ainsley swallowed. “I don’t know for sure, ma’am. The driver’s seat was empty, and the window was open.”

My mother shot to her feet.

“Mother, please, sit—” Harrison tried to calm her down, but she ignored him.

“He said he had to work. He was working.” She said it to Commodore, as though hoping he could go back and make my father’s lies the truth. I knew if my grandfather could, he would.

Commodore’s face remained impassive. Nothing he could say would change what had happened. Nothing any of us said could.

My brother finally said what everyone in the room was thinking. “So she crawled out of the window . . . and left him in the car to . . .”

All the blood remaining in my mother’s face drained away as she absorbed what Harrison had just said. “That Gable woman killed him! She murdered my husband! She—”

I crossed the room and crouched in front of her. “Mother, calm down. Please.”

She spat in my face.

Shocked, I stumbled backward, blinking and wiping it away. My mother just spat in my face.