Keep Them Close(40)

“I wanted to meet first as a courtesy,” he says. “By the way, while you’re here, here are photographs of the inventory from the car. If you want to do a physical inspection, that’s fine—”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” Not after the test results, it won’t. But I take the folder and stuff it in my bag.

“So we ran DNA and prints on everything in the bag that contained the drugs and, for that matter, everything in the space beneath the trunk.”

“And…Luke’s prints aren’t on a single thing, right? Not the bag. Not the drugs. Not the tube of lipstick. Nothing at all.”

“That’s right,” he concedes. “You were right.”

“Any hits at all on the database?”

He lets out a large sigh. “One match,” he says. “A match for both DNA and fingerprints. On both the bag and on the lipstick.”

I sit back and suppress a smile. “Anyone I know?”

He thinks about that a moment. “You could say that,” he says, angling his head.

I open my hands. “Don’t keep me in suspense, Bruce. Who’s the lucky person?”

He purses his lips. Leans back in his chair, eyebrows raised.

Every story needs a villain. And in Luke’s case, the villain is…

“You,” says Bruce. “The DNA and prints were a match for you, Allison.”





30


Allison

“That can’t…I mean obviously that can’t be…” Nerves close my throat, the wind knocked from me, still convinced that I must have heard him wrong.

“Every federal employee is fingerprinted,” says Bruce Ghadiali. “And you were part of the voluntary DNA submission program. I checked.”

But this can’t be right because there is no chance my fingers touched that tube of Trinity’s lipstick I took from Luke’s condo. I wore gloves the whole time. I’m not an idiot. And I sure as shit didn’t apply that lipstick to my lips.

Same with the Trinity shopping bag I dug out of Luke’s recycling bin. There is no way my fingerprints or DNA could be on it. None.

I look up at Bruce. “You can’t think that I had anything to do with this.”

“I was surprised to see these results,” he says. “I called you here as a courtesy, Allison, so you’d agree to withdraw as counsel. If you don’t, I’ll have to move to disqualify you.”

“That’s…absurd,” I manage, my voice weak.

“It’s anything but absurd. You’re a witness now. At a minimum—”

“I want to see it,” I say. “I want to see the evidence with my prints on it.”

He nods. “I figured as much. Look, not touch, right? It’s sealed up anyway.”

From his desk drawer, he removes a large, sealed, clear plastic bag containing the shopping bag, folded in half, and places it on the desk. Next to it, a smaller bag, also clear, containing the tube of lipstick.

I stand and lean over the desk, keeping my hands at my sides.

The bag isn’t purple and doesn’t say Trinity. It’s one of my recyclable nylon Treasure Island shopping bags.

The tube of lipstick isn’t the one I took from Luke’s living room. It’s one of mine, one of my favorites, one of the Charlotte Tilbury mattes in my rotation.

I close my eyes, a slow burn through my chest. Trinity. Oh, Trinity.

You.

Fucking.

Bitch.





31


Allison

I leave my meeting with Bruce Ghadiali on shaky legs, squinting in the piercing sunlight. How, I keep asking myself. How, how, how could this have happened? Trinity’s bag, Trinity’s lipstick, became my bag and my lipstick in the trunk of that Toyota.

I reach the parking lot and get inside the car. I grip the steering wheel like I’m trying to rip it off the dashboard and bellow out a yell, angry and primal, until my voice cracks.

When I’ve gotten that out of my system, my throat aching and head throbbing, I slow my breathing and start thinking. The how is not hard to figure: I must have screwed up when I scouted the alley behind Trinity’s fitness studio. There must have been a security camera. Which means a video. A video of me planting the pills in the trunk of Trinity’s car. Trinity caught me red-handed.

And then, under the theory that turnabout is fair play, she swapped out her bag for mine, her lipstick for mine.

But how did she get hold of my lipstick and shopping bag? She would have to know that I use a particular shopping bag that could be easily traceable to me and would have DNA and prints on it. And more to the point, she would’ve had to take the risk of breaking into my house to steal the bag and lipstick.

No. Trinity didn’t act alone. She had help. Only two people would know about the shopping bags I use, would know where to look for them, stashed in the mudroom. Only two people would have access to my home in the first place.

But Luke doesn’t make sense. Why would he willingly allow himself to get arrested and lose his job? He’d be risking everything he ever worked for, cutting off his nose to spite his face. No, no way it was Luke.

That leaves only one person. That person lives in my house.

That person is sleeping with Trinity Casto.

I misread you, Finley. I knew you felt inadequate. I knew you were bitter, resentful. But it’s one thing to get your jollies with another woman to build up your self-esteem. Inexcusable, unforgivable, pathetic—but at least I can understand it.