Page 45 of The Husband's Secret
Obviously there was no winning against these people. The best she could hope for was to give them whatever it was they wanted and pray they went away. If she hadn’t been so depressed she would have laughed out loud at the thought.
Ben made a sudden right turn and braked to a stop. Brenda looked around at the closed food market and the abandoned parking lot. Why had they stopped? She turned to Ben. She reminded herself that he was a professional. He knew what he was doing.
“When I get out of the car, lock the doors. Climb over the console, and if there’s trouble drive away as fast as you can.”
“What? No way. I’m not—”
“Do it.” He opened his door and emerged from the car.
Brenda hit the lock button and scrambled into the driver’s seat. She twisted around to stare out the rear window. The air refused to fill her lungs and her heart thundered so hard she was certain it would burst any moment. If something happened to him, what would she and Janey do? Plus…she really liked him. Really, really liked him.
Please don’t get yourself killed.
The driver’s-side door of the other vehicle opened. Brenda’s world seemed to decelerate into slow motion, yet somehow the fear and anticipation kept building at a rapid-fire pace.
Please don’t let this guy have a gun.
Blond hair. Sunglasses.
Not a man. Brenda drew back a little. It was a woman.
The driver closed her door, leaned against it and removed her sunglasses. Recognition slammed into Brenda. This was the woman from LAX. The one with Scott on Tuesday.
Brenda was out of the car before she had time to think through the step. She left the door wide open and stormed toward Ben and the other woman. By God, she would have answers from this woman.
“It’s her,” she shouted to Ben. “She’s the woman from the airport. The one I saw with Scott on Tuesday.”
A whole other stunning reality hit Brenda then. It had only been two days.Two days. Forty-eight hours since all hell broke loose in her and Janey’s lives. Since her world changed for the second time in less than a month. She wilted. Grabbed on to the front of the woman’s car for support.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
Ben was already speaking to this person, but Brenda didn’t care. She needed to understand how this all happened. How this woman was connected to Scott. And why all of this—this total insanity—was happening.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” the blonde said to Brenda. “I’ve been trying to get a message to you since Tuesday night.”
“Who are you?” Brenda repeated, beyond angry now.
“I used to work for Scott,” she said. “I was once a court reporter until I got burned out. But I’m still a really good transcriptionist. I’ve worked for medical practices, law firms. All sorts of places. For Scott, I would transcribe his conference calls and even the face-to-face meetings. He recorded everything. He would send the recordings to me, and I would enter the dialogue into a program. A quick edit and then I’d drop the typed pages into this file hosting service where he would retrieve them.”
Sounded exactly like something Scott would want to do with his client meetings. Still, Brenda would just bet their relationship had not been a working one only. This woman, whoever she was, was exactly his type. Tall, thin and blonde. And gorgeous.
“I missed your name,” Ben said.
He hadn’t missed it; she was yet to give it. Brenda silently steamed.
“Ginger York. I live in New Hope but most of my clients are here in Huntsville.”
“Why were you in Los Angeles with him?” Brenda wanted to hear this.Transcribing a meeting for a man who was supposed to be dead?
“He was asked to go to Los Angeles by a man he thought could help him with the trouble he’d gotten into. He asked me to go with him so that we looked like a couple traveling. He hoped people would look at me instead of him.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s why I was wearing that racy dress. I wouldn’t usually wear something so daring during daylight.”
As furious as Brenda was, the story sort of made sense. “Did it not cross your mind that he was supposed to be dead?”
“Hell yeah! He almost scared me to death when he showed up at my place.” She pressed a hand to her chest as if her heart were running away just recalling the event. “I mean, I live in the middle of nowhere. In a cabin—sort of off the grid. I don’t get many visitors unless it’s someone I’ve invited. And, as you say, I thought he was dead. It was freaky for sure.”
“How did he explain his resurrection?” Ben asked.
Brenda might have laughed at the question if she hadn’t been so outraged. This woman made it seem totally not a big deal that a man she thought blew up in his office showed up at her house—other than it was a little startling.
