15th Affair (Women's Murder Club #15)(51)

The door opened behind me. I swiveled my chair and saw a man who looked a lot like my husband come into the room.

My God. It was really him.

“I guess I’m the bad guy,” Joe said, dragging a chair out from the table and dropping down into it.

My mouth had fallen open, but the rest of me was paralyzed. Joe looked terrible. He had a beard, there were bags under his eyes, and his clothes were filthy.

What the hell had happened to him?

Why didn’t he look glad to see me?

I managed to croak, “Joe?”

He looked at me with an expression I can only call sadness.

“What do you want to know, Lindsay? I’ll try to tell you what you want to know.”





CHAPTER 78


I’D BEEN SHOCKED into silence.

This was my husband. My husband.

I looked across the table at Knightly and back at Joe. Joe said, “Chris, give us a moment. And kill the cameras.”

“Got it,” Knightly said. When he’d left and the door was closed, Joe moved over to the chair next to mine and reached for my hands.

I pulled away.

It was pure instinct. This man resembled the man I had loved and married, but I no longer knew who he was.

He said, “Lindsay, I know you’re upset. I would be, too.”

“Upset?”

“Wrong word. I know you’re furious at me and I…and that I deserve it. I know I’ve hurt you, and I can’t tell you how sad that makes me. I know what I’m saying isn’t working, but please, if you can, trust me.”

Trust him? How? Why?

“Where have you been?”

“I can’t say. Not yet.”

I shouted, “I’ve been thinking you’re dead!”

“I know.”

“And sometimes I wished you were.”

That was a lie, but I said it with vehemence. And Joe didn’t take his eyes away from me.

I kept going. “You didn’t call me or leave a message or send me a lousy text to say you were OK.”

He sighed and looked down at his hands. Was he remorseful? Was he thinking what to say to me? I didn’t care.

“You walked out on me and on Julie. In the last ten days, I’ve been viciously attacked. I’ve been beaten, shot at, outnumbered, and outgunned. And what have you been doing? Playing I Spy games with Alison Muller?”

He was looking me with sad eyes and I was doing second-by-second gut checks. Was he lying? Was he in trouble? What or who was Joe Molinari?

“Oh, God, Lindsay. I didn’t know you were attacked. Were you hurt? Are you OK?”

“Talk to me, Joe. Tell me everything and I’ll let you know if I’m OK after I’ve heard you out.”

He tried to take my hands again, and again I pulled away. This was pure reflex. I didn’t know if I still loved Joe, or if he had ever actually loved me.





CHAPTER 79


“BE RIGHT BACK,” Joe said.

He got up and left the room. I watched his empty chair spin lazily in his absence. I wondered what he could possibly say to me that would make me trust him—or if he would even try.

A few long minutes later, Joe came back into the room with two bottles of water, put one down in front of me, and uncapped the other. He drank half of it down.

Then he said, “Ali Muller used to work for me, I don’t know, eighteen years ago. We were both pretty young, idealistic, and she had a gift for intelligence gathering.”

“What kind of gift?” I asked.

“More than one, actually. Her IQ was off the charts. She was beautiful. People trusted her. She spoke a couple of languages. And she was pretty fearless.”

I had heard enough about Ali Muller from June Freundorfer, her CIA friend John Carroll, and her husband, Khalid Khan, and now Joe was singing her praises.

I didn’t want to know more. But I wasn’t letting myself off easily. Alison Muller was central to this sickening amalgam of secrets. And I was pretty sure she’d killed Shirley Chan.

Joe was saying, “She volunteered to set honey traps. You know?”

“She seduced men, slept with them, beguiled them into giving her information.”

“Right. That’s right.”

“And she slept with you, isn’t that also right, Joe?”

“We were in our twenties. It was kid stuff and it’s long over, Lindsay. What is relevant is that she was successful, well regarded in the Company, but eventually, she hated that kind of work. By then I was with the FBI and had lost touch with her.”

“Joe, come on. You’ve seen her recently.”

“I’m getting to that. When I was with Homeland Security, we knew Michael Chan was a spy for the Chinese, but we thought it was better to leave him in place. And I learned that Ali Muller, who was still with the CIA, had asked to get involved.

“Not long after, I moved here to be with you. Ali lived down the coast, had a good high-level day job that enabled her to travel without scrutiny. She was married with kids. It was a perfect setup for her real job. And as I came to find out recently, Chan fell for Muller. Very hard.

“I was in the Four Seasons the day Chan was taken out.”

“I know that.”

Joe arched his eyebrows.