Deadly Little Secrets Page 0,132

A year wasn’t very long, and by then, they could make a little brother or sister for Jeremiah. It would space the children well.

“I wish you could be here now. It will be hard,” she whispered, still mindful of the boy, who slept undisturbed in his footie pajamas. “It’s already been hard. The police, all the calls and questions.”

“Soon,” Jurgens murmured into her hair, “there will be the funeral.”

“You think they will find him that quickly?” Caroline was concerned.

“It won’t be long. You did your work well,” he praised. She had timed everything perfectly. In the early hours of the morning, she’d arisen, called the warehouse, all of Drake’s phones, every point of contact she could think of. There would be a record of her calling all the places, doing all she could to locate him. She’d called the hospitals next, then the police, just as any distraught young wife might do. She’d told them the baby had woken her and she’d realized Drake had not come home. He often worked late, she had gone on to bed.

The steps they’d planned, every move, she had executed with magnificent pathos. She was perfect, his beloved, his Caroline.

“You have courage now, for me, ja?”

“Ja,” she echoed him with a watery smile. “But the waiting, the funeral,” she murmured, ducking her head. “It will be hard to wait, to not know when it will all happen. How long it will be.”

“You will be all the more convincing to them, because you will be shocked. You see this, ja?”

“Yes. Yes, I…” She wiped away her tears, took a bracing breath. “I know. I’ll be patient.”

He chuckled, feeling his heart swell. “I will send flowers. When the time comes. They will be for you, of course,” he said, smiling with passion in his heart, knowing she would recognize them, the ones that came from him. “Something for our son as well. You will know.”

She nodded, emotion suffusing her features. “I’ll know. I always have.”

“Sehr gut.” Very good. “I must go.” He hesitated, then spoke his mind. “I will miss you. Every moment, I’ll miss you.”

She hugged him again, even more tightly. “I’ll miss you desperately, but I’ll get through, knowing we’ll be together in the end.”

He smiled, relief coursing through him. She was so luminous, his Caroline. All his, now.

“You will be brilliant,” he complimented, hugging her again, wishing he didn’t have to release her now, let her go on with this part of their plan alone. Trust, though, was everything between them so he would step back, let her do her part.

Jurgens pressed an untraceable phone into her hand. He had learned much from Drake about keeping phones private and untrackable. “I’ll call. It will be some time before they find him, but they will find him.” He kissed her again, another long, magnificent kiss to hold him until he could claim her. “You’ll see me. Here and there. When you do, know that I am wishing to be like this, with you. Always.”

She buried her face in his chest once more, her strong arms holding him as if she would never release him. It swelled his heart with love for her.

She moved back, crossed her arms to hug herself as if bereft without him. “I’ll be here. I know the steps, and I’ll follow them, just as we planned.”

“Ich liebe dich,” he said, voicing it aloud for the very first time. I love you. It was like the sun breaking through the clouds, to see the joy on her face.

“Oh, darling.” She nearly sobbed the words as she flung herself back into his arms. “I love you too.”

The feel of her made it that much harder to leave, but go he must. He’d already spent too much time.

Jurgens slipped out the way he had come in, savoring her words, savoring the look, taste, and feel of her as he made his way through the underground passage that connected the mansion to its neighbor, half a mile away. Smiling, he changed his black watch cap for a ball cap, put on the heavy leather belt with its flashlight and nightstick that he’d left in the terminus of the passageway, and ghosted out of the simple garden shed.

Keys jingling, he got back into the small SUV and started the engine, making his rounds as the new hire by the neighborhood security company.

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DARK AND DANGEROUS

Sizzling seduction and hair-raising suspense combine in Jeanne Adams’s gripping new novel