Pretty Little Wife(51)
Aaron would pay. Lila just had to figure out if she needed this woman to make that happen.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Present Day
BY THE NEXT MORNING, TELEVISION TRUCKS AND REPORTERS had camped out at the end of Lila’s driveway. She was surprised it had taken them this long.
She could see her neighbors scurry away from the fray if she watched out her front window, so she closed the curtains and didn’t look. Instead, she sat at her kitchen island and tried to think of a new plan. The not knowing what came next plagued her. She had allies she’d never expected, like Cassie, and doubters that took her by surprise, like Brent.
Through it all, Aaron hovered in the background, waiting to pounce. She didn’t understand the delay. Even if he weren’t close enough to watch every moment, the notes suggested he was nearby. He had to know she was under siege. He’d relish that. Seeing her squirm and panic.
Tobias stayed with her. He grabbed groceries to save her from a potential battle with the public. Jared came by, but now, seven days out from disappearance day, she’d become a shut-in with the alarm set, the news permanently off, and a makeshift weapon nearby at all times.
If Aaron’s goal was to slowly make her unravel, that she could understand. Only by force of sheer will did that not happen. She focused all of her energy on staying up and moving. Anxiety crashed over her, sending her to the floor of her closet last night, but she rode through it. He would not win by pounding her mentally and physically into the ground.
If he wanted to pop up and insist she tried to kill him, she’d bring out the videos. The extra set sat in a safety deposit box at a bank thirty miles away in an institution she otherwise didn’t use for banking. She had made arrangements for them to automatically be released to the police and press if anything happened to her.
Mutually assured destruction. That was the plan. It might not be perfect, but if she was going down, then people would know why. After every single piece of dirty laundry got aired, they could decide if her vigilante justice was so wrong after all.
What she really wanted was for his body to turn up and for the games to stop. She’d planned this to give herself an out, and she wanted to take it. Running without answers would leave everything undone. But a part of her thought it might be time to hand over the videos and tell the truth.
She glanced over at Tobias. He lounged on the couch with a mountain of paperwork around him. He’d suffered through meetings with other lawyers in the area about strategy. He’d met with Jared. Tobias had even managed to sweet-talk Brent into admitting Aaron had never said anything that would suggest Lila did something to him.
His meeting with Ginny was, as he described it, bumpy. Lila would have been disappointed in Ginny if Tobias had any other reaction.
“The police aren’t telling us what, if anything, they’ve found.” Worries about Aaron getting in the house and planting something incriminating swam in her head from day one.
Tobias snorted. “You haven’t been arrested. Take that as your answer.”
Lila could see him winding up to ask a series of questions. She couldn’t blame him. If this spun out, he’d need as much information as possible to defend her. There was a limit on what she would say. She refused to drag anyone deeper into her decisions, but she could divulge the things that had put her on her current course.
“Ryan Horita’s name came up more than once in my meeting with Ginny.” Tobias flipped the pages of his notepad and seemed to be silently reading from it.
“She’s had him in for questioning.”
“You know what I’m saying, Lila.” Tobias glanced up at her. “What do I need to know about this guy?”
In every way, Ryan had been irrelevant to her thinking on Aaron. She didn’t start her plan because she wanted out of her marriage or a divorce. She’d plotted and researched because she wanted to stop Aaron. It was that simple.
She thought about the affair and the videos. Tobias needed to know about the existence of both. What he did with the information or how he spun it in her defense would be part of the legal dance they’d do later. Hopefully never, but she suspected later.
“I need to tell you about Ryan and about some evidence I found.”
“When?”
“The evidence? Weeks ago. Before Aaron went missing.” She knew the explanation sounded ridiculous. “They’re unrelated, but together might make it look like I did something to Aaron.”
He stared at her for a few seconds before saying anything. “Do you know where he is right now?”
“No.” She needed him to believe her on that. “I really don’t.”
“Okay, good.” He nodded. “I was going to tell you not to tell me, if you did.”
She couldn’t help but smile at his practical way of dealing with this case stress. He rarely judged, not even clients. Other lawyers would trade stories once the trials ended or talk in hypotheticals. Tobias never did. He insisted good people could be driven to do horrible things, which was why he was the first person she called.
“Tell me the worst.” He flipped his notepad to a blank page. “So we can plan.”
He intended to protect her just like he did with the secrets about her past. But this time, she’d tell only part of the story.
She’d made her decision about Aaron, and she’d face the consequences alone.