Pretty Little Wife(22)
He put up a hand. “I was drawing it out for maximum dramatic impact.”
She felt her eyes bulge. “What is it?”
“I found one very big piece of the puzzle.” His smile fell a bit. “Even though I’m not sure what it means.”
Her patience expired. “Tell me before I fire you.”
“Fine. Ruin the moment.” He leaned forward and dropped the file in front of Ginny. “Lila Ridgefield is a hard woman to track.”
“Meaning?” Ginny grabbed the cover and flipped it open.
Before she could read more than a few sentences, Pete started the explanation. “She appeared out of nowhere thirteen years ago at age twenty-one.”
Ginny glanced up. “And before then?”
“Before then, Lila Ridgefield didn’t exist.”
Chapter Twelve
A MIX OF EXHAUSTION AND SUFFOCATING WARINESS WOUND around Lila as she sat at her kitchen island the next morning. She’d turned the coffeemaker temperature to scalding. Anything to revive her. To force her brain to restart and work through the very real problem in front of her.
A curl of steam rose from her coffee mug. She watched it twirl then vanish. In her sleep-deprived state, the puff of heat hypnotized her. Seemed much more interesting than it probably was.
She hadn’t managed an hour of sleep. Common sense told her to stay in all night when she really wanted to leave this house. Get out. She settled for a few stolen minutes on the phone. Those weren’t enough to settle her restless brain.
For the hundredth time, the possibility of Aaron being very much alive skittered through her mind.
Impossible. Had to be. She had killed him. She’d checked. Waited until his breathing stopped before dumping him in his SUV. A guy couldn’t just come back from that.
Still, she half expected him to walk through the door in a storm of outrage, dragging chaos behind him. Blaming. Calling the police. Kicking her out. But then, that would be risky, because she had something on him. Something that could destroy everything he’d carefully built, lie by disgusting lie.
She set the mug down and mentally ran through the last few days. Backtracked and relived every moment. She needed answers, and she couldn’t exactly ask someone . . . or could she? There had to be a stray piece of paper, a note—something that told her where he was and how he’d escaped.
She slid off the bar stool and walked around the kitchen. Paced without any discernible pattern. Walked from the kitchen, down the hall. Stopped at the doorway to Aaron’s office. She knew from previous missions to uncover answers that he didn’t keep anything of value in here.
The empty safe mocked her. The blank calendar with page after page of blocks devoid of any notes. She had no idea why he’d bought it if he didn’t intend to fill it with a record of his activities. Just one more way for him to be secretive as he pretended to be like everyone else.
Now she knew better.
She gave the room one last look before backing into the hallway. She had the door halfway closed and was thinking about where else to look when the shadow cleared in her head. There, in one of the panes of the double French doors to the outside patio, she saw the reflection of a square . . . or what looked like one.
“What the hell?” She whispered the question to the empty room.
Forgetting the exhaustion and the threat closing in around her, she stepped across the oriental carpet he’d insisted on buying from the antiques shop on their way back from a long weekend in Vermont.
The crisscross panes rose from the inside of the glass. The straight edges of the flier or whatever it was were slipped into a space on the outside. It hadn’t been there yesterday, but it was now. That meant someone had walked through her backyard. The idea of anyone getting that close to her sphere of privacy sent her stomach plummeting.
She unlocked the door and opened it. What looked like an unlined index card, folded in half, lay tucked into the edge of the door. The wind whipped it around, but it held.
The thick paper felt heavy under her fingers as she slipped it out of its hiding place. A typed message in block letters.
THAT DIDN’T GO AS PLANNED, DID IT?
Not specific, but she understood. Enough to make her heart stop.
This person knew what she’d done . . . or tried to do. That could only mean one thing.
Aaron was alive.
Chapter Thirteen
ON THE THIRD MORNING AFTER AARON PAYNE VANISHED, HIS boss and best friend visited the sheriff’s office. Brent came without being asked. Sat and waited, insisting he speak to someone handling the investigation.
That level of interest raised a flag. Put the spotlight on him. Ginny assumed he didn’t know, and she didn’t bother cluing him in. She also didn’t rush around and jump to do his bidding.
She finished her call with Aaron’s brother, Jared, becoming more and more convinced that something bad had happened to Aaron. No one had seen him. He wasn’t touching his money. Everything—his car, his wallet, and his phone—seemed to be missing.
None of that sounded good.
Neither did Lila’s name change. Pete had dug around and not found anything. He was extending the search, and Ginny wanted to talk with Lila, surprise her with the information they did know, but she wasn’t answering her phone. Next stop, a home visit. But Ginny had to get through another talk with Brent first.