The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(135)

And it was worlds away from Jen's world.

It wasn't even real.

But now the line, once as stable and sturdy as the Berlin Wall, had officially crumbled.

And it was real.

And it was personal.

And it was all happening right in front of me.

The doorbell rang a few hours later. But I must have fallen into some kind of trance because it felt like only a few minutes had passed.

"Get out of bed," Zo? said as soon as I opened the door.

I looked down at my feet. "I am."

"Physically yes, but mentally, you're still in bed."

I considered this. She was probably right. "Sophie told you what happened, huh?"

"Every painstaking detail. Sophie doesn't miss a word, does she?" She stepped by me and plopped down on my couch. "What are we watching?"

I closed the door and sat down next to her. "I don't remember," I said with a despondent sigh.

"Oh, no," Zo? groaned. "You're not turning into one of those girls, are you? Please don't turn into one of those girls. Once you're gone, I'll be the only normal one left!"

"Which girls?" I mumbled.

"You know exactly what girls I'm talking about. The kind that bury themselves in their bedroom for two weeks because of some stupid guy."

"Clearly, I'm not buried in my bedroom."

"But you would be if your TiVo was in there."

Damn, she knew me too well. And all along I thought I was so unpredictable. "I knew I should have bought a second TiVo for the bedroom."

Zo? grabbed the remote control from the coffee table and clicked on the "Now Playing" list. She started scrolling through my recorded programs. "Some brilliant lunatic with a wannabe license almost killed me on the way over here. So I literally risked my life to come here. Which means I'm eventually getting you out of this house."

I curled up into the fetal position in the corner of the couch and pulled the white cotton throw around my legs. "Leave me alone," I whimpered. "You know my problems run much deeper than just a stupid guy."

"I don't care if your problems run all the way to the freaking center of the earth! They're not just going to magically disappear while you're lying in bed all day. You need to get up and deal with them!" She continued browsing with the remote.

I knew she was right.

Raymond Jacobs wasn't going to just all of a sudden, for no good reason, decide to stop sending obnoxious letters to my niece. The server that held all the information for www.dontfallforthetrap.com wasn't going to just spontaneously combust. Jamie Richards's wife wasn't going to just evaporate into thin air so I didn't have to face her with an answer. And Sophie's fiancé wasn't going to just test himself and then send me the results via FedEx.

Yes, I knew all that. But it's not like I knew what to do about any of it. Or else I'd be out there doing it!

"Um, why do you have an episode of Desperate Housewives in Spanish?" Zo? said, stopping at the most recent recording on the list.

Still curled up in my ball, I turned my chin toward the screen. "I don't know, when was it recorded?"

Zo? clicked to display the program's details. "Yesterday," she read aloud. "While you were traveling."

I tucked my hands under my chin and closed my eyes. "I guess Marta must have been watching it while I was gone."

I heard rapid dialogue in Spanish and I opened my eyes to see Zo? had started playing the recording. "What? You're actually going to watch it? You don't understand a word of Spanish."

She shrugged and set the remote down next to her. "Nothing else on this thing but Extreme Makeover."

I closed my eyes again.

"Ooh," I heard Zo? cry out. "This is a good one. I saw this one. It's when Gabrielle turns all that stuff over to the FBI that leads to her husband's conviction."

It took a moment for me to register Zo?'s brief episode synopsis, but once I did, I opened my eyes again and sat up. "What do you mean? She turned in her own husband?"

She nodded. "Don't you remember? She found all those documents in the safe that implicated him in the crime he was pleading not guilty to. And she was so pissed off that he had been hiding them from her, she handed the information over to the feds. Then he was found guilty for laundering money or whatever and they sent him to jail."

I racked my brain. The story line was definitely familiar. I had seen every episode of the show, so it had to have at least rung a bell. But at this moment, I couldn't believe the idea hadn't crossed my mind before.

I reached over and grabbed the remote. "Let me see that scene."

I fast-forwarded through three quarters of the episode until I found the event Zo? was referring to. And sure enough, there it was. Of course, it was in Spanish, and I really only understood about every other word that was being said. But the intention was pretty clear, no matter what language was being spoken.

She betrayed her own husband – in a selfish act of revenge.

All because he had betrayed her first.

"?Es tan simple!" I cried out, jumping off the couch in my first burst of energy since I had left Jamie's hotel room.

Zo? looked at me like I had suddenly become possessed by some type of Spanish-speaking, Desperate Housewives–watching demon, and she feared she might have to start looking through the yellow pages for an exorcist. "What's simple?"