head. “Uh-uh. No way.”
“She couldn’t have done it herself,” Ava insisted. Wyatt seemed to want to say something but remained silent.
Jacob answered, “Well, yeah, you got that right. I don’t see how. Hell, it’s amazing she could even do what you say you caught on camera.” He seemed genuinely astounded and almost envious.
Ava declared, “You had to have helped her. You’re the techie around here.”
“I didn’t know anything about it.” He held up both hands and looked at Wyatt. “Seriously, man.”
Ava couldn’t believe it, but he seemed sincere. Either he was putting on an Oscar-worthy performance or he really wasn’t involved.
Wyatt said, “Come on, Ava, we’ll sort this all out in the morning.”
She turned on him. “Including how you made up fake names for the biological parents of our child? I called them, you know, put them through the hell of reliving their daughter’s death! What were they, clients of the firm?”
He didn’t respond but she could tell she’d hit the mark. The Johnsons must have come in for some legal advice, and that’s how Wyatt had learned about their daughter’s plight.
“Jewel-Anne’s right,” Jacob said to Wyatt. He hooked a thumb at Ava, “She is fuckin’ nuts.”
Ava lifted her arms in disbelief, then left her cousin in his pigsty of a room. Outside, the darkness surrounded her with the breath of November rattling the trees. Could she have been so wrong about Jacob being involved? If not Jewel-Anne’s brother, then who? To Ava’s mind, there was no doubt that she’d had an accomplice. All she had to do was flush him out.
Or her. It could be a woman.
Wyatt was a couple of paces behind her. Feeling suffocated even being around him, she picked up her speed and jogged back to the house and the relative safety of her room.
Lyons hit him with the news the minute Snyder walked into his cubicle the next morning. “Guess what?” she asked, and was once again wearing a smile that caused her eyes to sparkle mischievously, like a child who could barely hold in a secret.
“What?”
“Guess who was pregnant during her sessions with the hypnotist?”
“Jewel-Anne Church?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Really?” he said, sitting down as she nodded, leaning against the frame of his cubicle. Her cell phone was in one hand, a small cassette in the other.
“Heard it on this little gem right here.”
“Who’s the baby’s daddy?”
“Unknown.”
“And where’s the baby?”
“Also unknown. Yet. I still have three more sessions to listen to, but I’ll keep you informed.”
“Do that,” he suggested, then added, “You know, I don’t know what this has to do with the case.”
“Neither do I. But I have a feeling there’s something.”
“Maybe you just like eavesdropping.”
“You have a better idea?”
He shrugged.
“Didn’t think so,” she said as his desk phone jangled. He picked up as she walked down the hall toward her own cubicle. He didn’t watch her leave, told himself he didn’t care what her butt looked like in the slim gray skirt she was wearing. Didn’t care at all.
For Ava, the next day was hellish. Jewel-Anne, playing the victim in all of this drama, spent most of her day in her room. Jacob, before and after he went to the mainland for school, threw her dark looks. Virginia kept muttering under her breath, “What goes around, comes around,” and Ian didn’t even try to hide the fact that he was so nervous he’d started smoking again. Trent, Ian, and Wyatt had all left early, right after breakfast; Ava had again watched them boat across the bay, much as they had the day before. Graciela had played dumb, doing her work almost mute, and whenever Ava crossed paths with Demetria, Jewel-Anne’s nurse sent her daggerlike glares meant to cut deep.
Oh, save me. Ava wasn’t taking on that guilt. She had enough to deal with as it was.
Khloe, often her champion, followed her upstairs to her bedroom after breakfast and said, “Couldn’t you have found a better way to confront Jewel-Anne? You can’t go threatening a girl in a wheelchair and almost throwing her over a second-story balcony.”
Ava had picked up her laptop, but now she set it back down. She’d started doing her preliminary search for an attorney, one that wasn’t associated with her husband, a lawyer who could help her become her own person again, break the guardianship and perhaps help her with divorce proceedings. She wanted to get back to her search, but not while Khloe was there.
“Just play it cool, okay?” Khloe advised.
“Jewel-Anne’s Noah’s mother and has been silently lording it over me for