Trust Me (Last Stand #1)(75)
Author: Brenda Novak

Jane’s heart skipped a beat. Wendy suspected. Or maybe, by now, she knew. It’d be like Noah to tell her. But Jane couldn’t let herself react to the sarcasm that had tinged her sister-in-law’s response. “No, it’s about Oliver. I—I need to talk to Noah, if you don’t mind.”

“This can’t wait until morning?” she asked.

Jane supposed it could. Now that Oliver was asleep, she wasn’t in immediate danger. And she’d get up before he did in the morning. It was just that she felt so…used and violated and…and unloved. “I-I’m sorry, Wendy.” She started to cry. She couldn’t help it.

“Jane, I know you’ve been through a lot, but now that Oliver’s back, you have to stop relying on my husband so much.”

“But this is about Oliver.”

“The adjustment won’t be easy. But you can do it. Okay? I’ll have Noah call you in the morning. Or, better yet, maybe this is something you can talk over with Betty or Maurice.”

Noah had told her. He’d confessed. Wendy had always been sympathetic, and she was being generous now, considering. But Jane felt stripped naked and lashed raw.

“Right. I—I understand. I’ll—” she struggled with the lump in her throat “—I’ll call them tomorrow.”

“Good,” she said, and then she was gone.

Jane was tempted to drive over there and throw a rock at the window. She knew Noah wouldn’t be able to shut her out quite so easily. He still cared about her. He had to. It wasn’t very long ago that they’d been together at his office.

But then she heard a noise behind her. Turning, she saw Oliver staring at her through the front window. The way he looked at her was so chilling that, for a moment, she couldn’t move.

Finally, he stopped staring and opened the door. “What are you doing?”

Was it her imagination that he sounded suspicious? “I had to call Wendy,” she said. “She—she wants me to cut her hair in the morning, but as I was going to sleep, I realized I’ve double-booked myself.”

“It’s after one. Isn’t that a little late to be bothering her about a hair appointment?”

“I thought maybe she’d still be awake, watching a movie. I didn’t want her to get up early for nothing.” Jane was beginning to shake. Her robe was thin, and she wasn’t wearing any shoes, but he was blocking her entrance to the house. “I—I did it out here so that I wouldn’t disturb you,” she added.

He didn’t move. “You’re not going to make a big deal out of one light bondage session, are you?”

He hadn’t completely bought her story. “Of course not.”

“Then you liked it?”

She’d hated it with every cell of her body, but she forced a smile. “It wasn’t so bad.”

“Sex is a give-and-take between husbands and wives. You understand that.”

“Of course.”

“And what happens in our bedroom stays between us, right, Jane?”

His voice was deceptive in its gentleness. After the past few hours, Jane had learned just how deceptive. “It’s no one’s business but ours,” she concurred.

Then he stepped away from the door and let her in, but he didn’t reach out and take her hand, or lead her back to the bedroom with him. Finished with her for the night, he left her standing in the kitchen, staring out into the darkness.

20

“I’ve found the connection.”

Skye resisted the impulse to cover her stomach with one hand as David stood up to pull out the chair across from him. He’d called her just before noon and asked her to meet him at the California Bar & Bistro on Arden Way for lunch, and she’d agreed because he’d said he had news.

She knew she should be making an announcement of her own. But she’d already decided not to tell him about the baby. She’d known she was pregnant for little more than a day—hadn’t yet come to terms with the shock of it herself.

“Don’t tell me it’s Jane,” she said in surprise.

“It’s Noah.”

The waitress interrupted with a greeting for Skye and a glass of water. Skye managed a rather vacant smile in return, but her attention was on David. Noah? “But you said it wasn’t Noah.”

“I was wrong. Lorenzo once worked for him on a construction site.”

“NSL Construction didn’t show up in Lorenzo’s work history.” Skye had read through the information David had already gleaned, several times.

“Actually, he worked for one of Noah’s subcontractors for almost a year. Even that didn’t show up on his employment record because it was under the table.”

“He took cash wages?”

“Exactly.”

“How’d you find out?”

“I waited until Noah was out of the office, then dropped in to have a chat with his secretary.”

Skye remembered the slight, willowy young woman she’d seen there when she’d stopped by to confront Noah about the affair. “She remembered Lorenzo?”

“No, but she gave me a list of the subs they’ve used over the past several years. Last week, I mailed each one a copy of Lorenzo’s picture, and this morning, one of the workers at C&L Concrete contacted me. When he saw Lorenzo’s picture on his boss’s desk, it caught his eye. He read the request for information at the bottom and called me to say he’d worked with Lorenzo on a few occasions.”

Skye propped her elbows on the table and leaned closer, so the customers around them wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop. It was busy even for a Friday. “But how would Noah get to know the temporary worker of one of his subs well enough to hire him to kill me? From everything you’ve compiled on Lorenzo, they don’t seem compatible as friends.”

“It’s not as big a stretch as you might think. A general may spend several days working on one part of a job while his subs work on another. When you come into contact with someone every day, even for a week, you get pretty familiar.”

She shook her head. “I can’t see Noah sending Lorenzo to my house.”

The waitress came to take their order, so Skye quickly perused the menu and chose a chicken salad. David opted for a bacon burger.

“I’m not sure how it all came about,” David said. “But this gives us the start we’ve been searching for.”

“Maybe Jane could tell us more. She knows Noah as intimately as she does Oliver.”