The Pretend Boyfriend (The Pretend Boyfriend #3)(12)
Author: Artemis Hunt

Shit. Now she really has to go through with it.

She twists the knob gently. The door opens without a sound. Her heart is hammering so hard against her ribs that she is sure the entire apartment block would wake up from whatever they are (soundlessly) doing and come out from their abodes to check.

Of course you have to do it yourself. Mr. Hot Shot PI is not going to get his hands dirty. You can hire someone, but you daren’t take the risk in case he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Brian has too much at stake.

Well, Brian doesn’t know about this and she isn’t sure that she will find . . . well, something. Anything to suggest that Brian had been set up. Anything at all.

What’s more, she doesn’t have much time. Delilah will be back from her yoga class by eleven.

Shit.

Sam closes the door behind her. A lighted lamp on a stand is the only light-giving source in the apartment. She reaches for the switches, and floods with the apartment with incandescent light.

Shit. The windows are open. She’s such an amateur. Anyway, there are no apartment blocks facing this unit, so with any luck, no one would report the lights of Apartment 501 being on. Besides, Sam isn’t planning to steal anything. She’s merely having a look around. The camera strap cuts into the back of her neck.

A soft whirring sound arrests her. She looks up in suspicion. Is it her imagination? There’s nothing mounted on the ceiling. No surveillance cameras.

Gawd, how is she going to do this if she’s so easily spooked?

She begins a search before she can lose her bladder control. She hopes she’s not going to have to need to use the toilet.

There’s nothing in the simple living room. She rifles through some drawers, but there are only magazines and books stacked inside. The whole apartment is as neat as a neat freak’s paradise. Sam sees a laptop bag – probably one Delilah has brought back from her office – and unzips it.

A Dell computer nests inside. Fat lot of good trying to hack into an office computer. There are several documents inside, but they are clinical trial protocols. Sam flips through them. Nothing about an experimental drug called CKZ2486. Unless, of course, it already has a name.

Doesn’t matter. She photographs the front page abstracts with her mini-camera. The flash is jarring.

A soft clicking sound somewhere beyond the lounge makes her look up. She stands absolutely still, the blood turbulent in her ears. Is someone in here?

Leave now, Sam, leave! her instincts scream at her.

I can’t. I have got to do this. It’s now or never.

When the sound doesn’t repeat itself, she disentangles her stiff limbs and makes her shoes walk ahead.

She explores the bedroom next. Delilah obviously lives alone. There are photos of herself everywhere. With two older people that Sam assumes are her parents. A younger woman who does not resemble Delilah in any way, but who is obviously quite close, as Delilah is snapped hugging her tightly. A sister maybe?

Sam dives into the bedside table drawers. In one of them, she finds a photo of a woman hugging the same presumed sister in exactly the same manner. Delilah before her surgery? The real Adele Jankovic? She’s a brunette and fairly plain. Certainly not in the same league as Delilah. But not completely unattractive either. Just not the type guys usually go for.

Sam takes a photo of the photo.

She explores the apartment further. At the end of a passage is a room with a closed door. The hairs on her back prickling, Sam tries the knob, but it’s locked.

Damn.

But wait a minute. She takes out the second key, the one she has tried earlier. This one fits into the knob. With trepidation, Sam turns it.

It hits her immediately like a punch to the stomach. A large corkboard fills the entire façade of one wall. It is pinned with dozens of photos of Brian. No. Not dozens. Hundreds, literally, in all shapes and sizes. And not only photos, but newspaper articles.

Write-ups on the rape case.

Sam is floored. Why would a rape victim have hundreds of Internet downloaded photographs of her ra**st?

Her gloved hands shaking, she starts to snap the montage from all angles, making sure she captures everything on her digital camera.

*

Back in her apartment, Sam prints out everything on her data card. The photos are sprawled across the expanse of her living room floor like a carpet of decorative art. Only it’s Brian, Brian everywhere. Brian in a Gucci suit at a fundraiser, looking extremely dapper and handsome. Brian at a benefit. Brian at the Clio Awards.

And more sinister are the photos of Brian which are not downloaded from Google Images. Brian running in the park. Brian at the dry cleaners. Brian at a deli in a shot clearly taken from across the street. Brian at the supermarket.

Sam sits back on her haunches, the blood thundering in her veins.

God, she’s got it all planned.

But is this evidence the proof the police need to drop the case?

Several sharp knocks come at her door, startling her. She freezes. Brian doesn’t ever show up without calling first, and she hasn’t ordered any food delivery. Who can it be? Delilah? How did she get in without buzzing first?

Same way you got into her apartment.

“Open up,” says a stentorian male voice. “This is the police.”

The police? But she didn’t call them. Not yet.

The knocking comes again, loud and insistent. The neighbors are probably all roused by now. Oh, what a field day they will have with the rumors tomorrow.

Her mind in a whirlwind, Sam makes herself pad to the door and unlatch it. The sight of two officers in their black garb outside stops her in her tracks.

“Samantha Fox?” one of the officers says. “You are under arrest for breaking and entering.”

As the rest of her Miranda rights are being read out to her, Sam’s brain drowns in a litany of Oh my God, oh my God, she knew I was going there . . . she set both of us up.

Both Brian and she are so screwed.

10

Brian receives the call at three a.m. It is one of the rare nights he is not with Sam. She had taken a rain check, citing dinner with a friend. He had wanted to spend as much time with her as possible before the inevitable – his incarceration. But he hadn’t wanted to interrupt her routine either.

What was he to her after all? A business partner. A friend. OK, a friend with benefits, but it isn’t as if they are engaged or anything.

Anyhow, it is better that she spends as much time with her other ‘friends’ as possible. Her life has to go on while he is in prison. Maybe she’ll forget him and hook up with Thor.

God forbid.

When he hears her distraught voice on the other side, he immediately sits up in his bed.