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She cleared her throat. “So what do we do now? We can’t let the police see us together.”
He shook his head. “They can see us together, but we have to be careful. What we’ll do is console one another. A husband and aunt-in-law, both heartbroken by Naomie’s death. You’ll come make sure I’m eating, all that stuff, and then, in the course of it all, we’ll slowly let everyone see us falling in love. It happens all the time—”
A loud knock on the door interrupted him.
He whipped toward the door, then looked back at her. “Who’s that?” he mouthed.
She shook her head:I don’t know.
A second knock came, louder this time. “Julia? Are you in there? Are you okay?”
Julia’s heart sank.
Rick.
CHAPTERFIFTY-FIVE
Jo twisted in her seat, surveying the landscape around Chris Alexander’s house.
“Something’s wrong,” she said.
“What?” Arnett asked.
“I don’t know. It’s just—something feels off. With the multiple text chains and Julia not answering her phone, and Chris off doing God knows what when his wife just died—something’s not right.”
“Julia’s probably with a client,” Arnett said.
“Maybe. Except then I would have expected the call to go straight to voice mail, or after a ring or two. But it rang, what, five times before voice mail picked up? And I left the message five minutes before the hour. Whatever appointment or class she was in should be over, and she should’ve gotten the message by now.”
Jo’s phone rang again. She snatched it up and instantly answered it.
“Jo,” Lopez’s voice came over the phone. “I was able to get current location towers for both burner phones.”
“How did you manage that so quickly?”
“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,” Lopez said. “Both of them are pinging the tower down off of Varness.”
“Varness? The one in the outskirts, over by Julia’s house?” Arnett asked.
“That’d be the one.”
“What the— Is she texting herself?” Jo asked.
“I’d’ve thought that, too, except up until about half an hour ago, they were both in completely different locations,” Lopez said. “My guess is something’s going down.”
“We’re on it.” Jo hung up the phone and fired up the engine of the Crown Vic. “Whatever’s happening, I hope to hell we aren’t too late.”
CHAPTERFIFTY-SIX
Chris turned to her, posture taut. “Who is that?” he whispered.
Julia froze. What the hell was Rick doing here? Hadn’t she made it clear to him he couldn’t be seen? If Chris figured out what was going on, he’d lose his shit.
“A friend from work checking on me,” she whispered back.
His eyes narrowed at her. “Open it.”
She mentally flailed for a way out. “He can’t know you’re here,” she whispered furiously.
