A Stranger on the Beach(34)

“I didn’t talk to him. He was calling you. That’s the name that showed up on your phone, anyway. Aidan with a heart.”

“Aidan with a heart?”

“Yes. Is there an echo in here? Who is he?”

Aidan’s name—not just his number—came up on my phone? With a heart? I was flummoxed. I’d never put Aidan’s number in my phone. And certainly not with some stupid heart.

“I—I.”

“You don’t know who that is?” Jason asked.

“The only Aidan I know is a friend of Lynn’s,” I said.

“Why’s he calling you ten times in the last hour?”

“Um, because, she’s in Florida. I was supposed to—uh, to let him into her house. He’s staying there while she’s gone, but he doesn’t have a key.”

“Why is his number in your phone?”

“Maybe because Lynn shared her contacts with me? Phones are weird like that.”

Jason nodded, but I could tell he didn’t believe me. I tried to organize my features into some semblance of calm expression as my heart pounded with guilt and the fear of being found out. Though God knows why I felt so bad. I didn’t buy for one minute Jason’s story that the Russian woman was a business associate—which meant he’d cheated first. Now that we were back in our apartment together, I was prepared to forgive and forget. Was he?

“Will you be home for dinner?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll call you.”

He walked out, without any further goodbye, and my heart sank. This reconciliation was twelve hours old and already on shaky ground.

As soon as I heard the front door slam, I grabbed my handbag from the counter and pulled out my phone. When I saw the call log, my legs buckled, and I had to sit down. It was insane. There were fourteen missed calls and three voicemails since last night. And Jason was right. The calls registered as coming from “Aidan?,” as if I’d entered his number with a cutesy heart beside it into my contacts. But I hadn’t. We’d never once talked on the phone; I didn’t even know his number. Frantically, I pulled up my contacts. There it was, under “A”—Aidan?, with a cell number listed that I didn’t recognize. How the hell—? Well, of course. He’d gone into my phone and entered himself into my contacts during that wild night we spent together. I’d been drunk, passed out, hungover. It was my own fault. I had a distinct memory of Aidan watching me intently as I typed in my passcode. I remembered thinking that was odd and wondering if I should shield the phone from his view. But I didn’t, because I was afraid of seeming paranoid or condescending. I didn’t want him ragging on me for being a snob, so I let him watch. I basically gave him the code. How foolish was that? Then I left my phone lying in plain view on the bedside table. All Aidan would’ve had to do was wait for the right moment to type in my code and put his number in my contacts. I’d left myself completely vulnerable to a man I barely knew.

As the implications dawned on me, I started to sweat. My entire life was on that phone. Pictures of my family. My calendar, with every doctor’s appointment and lunch date and exercise class I had scheduled for months to come. The addresses and phone numbers of my loved ones—my daughter, my sister, my husband. My emails and texts, waiting to be plundered for personal details. All sorts of financial information. On and on. Aidan had uninterrupted time with my phone while I slept. He could know a lot.

Shit. He could know everything about me.

There was no telling how much damage he could do with that information, if he chose to.





24


Tommy was taking Aidan out on his boat, supposedly fishing, but Aidan knew better. They never spent time together for its own sake. There was always some ulterior motive on Tommy’s part, usually a lecture, or something he wanted Aidan to do that would supposedly be good for him in the long run. Tommy’s big-brothering got old sometimes. But the weather was fine for the first time in a week, and Aidan loved the ocean. Tommy always stocked a cooler full of beer and his wife Kelly’s excellent meat loaf sandwiches. What the hell, if Aidan said no to the boat, he’d get lectured anyway. Might as well say yes and enjoy a day on the water.

Tommy was coming off an overnight shift and asked Aidan to meet him at the marina in Port Jeff at nine thirty that morning. It was a bit of a haul to the North Shore. Tommy only docked there because he got the slip on the cheap from a friend in town. The boat was an old bay, small and wheezing, fragrant with gasoline, that he got for a song after it was seized from a drug dealer. Aidan wondered why his brother didn’t take better advantage of his position. Tommy, Kelly, and their three kids lived in a cramped raised ranch on the same street where Tommy and Aidan grew up, which meant Ma dropping in to supper constantly. Tommy drove his work cruiser, and Kelly drove an eight-year-old Toyota. Vacation was splurging on the Holiday Inn for the kids’ travel soccer games. If it was him, he might consider cashing in. But that was Tommy, always the stickler. Aidan had to admire it, really.

Tommy was waiting for him on the boat, gassed up and ready to cast off. As Aidan hopped on board, Tommy touched his own forehead in the spot where Aidan had the bruise from getting slugged by Caroline’s husband last night.

“What happened to your head?” he asked.

“I, uh, had a few too many the other night at work. Walked into a door. Professional hazard.”