19
KAT
Present
“I can’t believeOliver wouldn’t let you go with him to Chicago,” Samantha says, sitting in the chair across from my desk.
“I know. I’m still a little upset about it.”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s busy all day or not.” She shakes her head. “The point is that you’d be together at night. You don’t think he’s cheating on you, do you?”
Hearing her words made me gasp. Why would she even ask that?
“No. Oliver would never cheat on me in a million years.” My tone is snippy.
“I don’t think he would either, but it doesn’t make sense why he wouldn’t let you go with him.”
“It’s because he’ll feel bad not being able to spend a lot of time with me. It’s not like he goes there for vacation.”
“You’re right.” She smiles. “Oliver loves you to death and would never betray you like that.”
Damn right, he wouldn’t.
Samantha glances at her watch before standing from her chair. “I have a client coming in soon. I’ll talk to you later.”
“See ya.” I smiled.
I won’t lie and say that somewhere in the back of my mind, the idea of Oliver cheating on me doesn’t float around because it does. But I know him inside and out, and I know how demanding his job is. I pick up my phone and dial his number. He answers on the first ring.
“Is it important, Kat? I’m in the middle of an important meeting.”
“No. I just wanted to tell you that I miss you.”
“I miss you too. We’ll talk later.” The other end goes silent.
“Excuse me, Kat?” My secretary pops her head inside my office. “There’s someone here to see you.”
“Send them in,” I say, looking back at my computer. The man steps inside my office, and when I look up, it’s Mark, Cindy’s husband, from back in Rockstead. “Mark? Oh my goodness.” I stand from my chair and walk over to him. “What are you doing here?” We hug.
“It’s good to see you, Kat.”
“It’s good to see you, too. Have a seat.” I gesture. “How’s Cindy?”
“She’s the reason why I’m here. There’s something you need to know.” He shifts in his seat, and his nervousness startles me.
“Okay. What is it?”
“Brian and Cindy were having an affair before….well, you know.”
“Excuse me?” My brows furrow. “How do you know?”
“I was looking for an old fishing rod of mine a couple of weeks ago for a friend, and I found a small box hidden way back in the closet. I opened it and found her old phone. Not too long after Brian died, she told me she lost her phone and had to get a new one.”
“I don’t understand, Mark.”
“I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she lied and stored the phone in the closet. So, I took it to work with me and charged it up. There were tons of pictures of them together in bed at a hotel outside of town. And then there were the text messages—mostly sexting, but there were a number of ‘I miss and love you’ texts, too.”
It felt like I had been stabbed all over again, and the killer was twisting the knife into my gut.
