Keep Them Close(53)

The look on Luke’s face reads pure hatred. But he’s really just mad at himself.

“I never went after you, Luke. I went after Trinity. But you went after me. So I’m protecting myself. You’ll still win your case, I think, because you still have my DNA and fingerprints on the contraband and a plausible story. That should be enough for reasonable doubt. But show that video to the prosecutors, and I play them this audio. You’ll go to prison.”

“Then so will you,” he says.

“I will? For what? For the crime of putting a bag in a car?”

“A bag with drugs,” he says, but the conviction in his voice is slipping.

“Says who? Where’s the proof there were drugs in the bag I put in there? Your word? Luke, that’s not how the law on possession works. To be convicted of possession, you have to be caught in the act with the drugs. You were. You have to have custody and control over the drugs. You did. And on that recording, you admitted you put the drugs there. So you’re guilty. Me? Even if you could prove that the bag I put in the trunk had drugs in it—and you can’t—so what? I wasn’t caught in the act. At the time they found the drugs, I didn’t have custody of them. I didn’t have control over them. I was thirty miles away. Possession isn’t like murder. You can’t be prosecuted just because at some point in the past, you possessed drugs. You have to be caught in the act. It’s called the corpus delicti, if you want to research it.”

Now he’s just getting flustered. I don’t blame him. He’s in over his head. He’s playing on my turf.

“Bottom line,” I say, “bury that video, and I’ll bury this audio. Or it’s bad for you.”

He backs away, red in the face. “I…I trusted you…You were my attorney—”

“No, no,” I say. “We terminated our attorney-client relationship the night before. In writing. Signed and dated by you. Our conversation was not privileged. It is admissible in a court of law.”

“You…” He shakes his head. A bitter smile crosses his face.

I slap the plastic case with the disc against his chest. “Don’t play your card, Luke, and I won’t play mine. And we’ll get past this, you’ll see.”





44


Allison

I’m awake before my alarm at 5:30 a.m. Sleep has been a problem for me. For one, being alone in a bed for the first time in nearly twenty years, which I’ve done for the last week since giving Finley the boot. And Marlow Luckett paid me a visit two days later; no matter how often I tell myself that he won’t return, it hasn’t been easy dozing off at night.

Oh, let’s see, then there’s the Childress trial getting closer every day with so much to do, dealing with Finley’s craziness, and of course Luke’s betrayal. I can feel it all wearing me down, knotting my neck and shoulders, pressing behind my eyes.

I throw on my workout gear, head into the garage, and punch the door opener. Having learned a hard lesson about garages, I hang back a moment, letting my eyes scan the surroundings for hostile actors. I quickly spot Finley’s SUV parked by the curb. He is standing on the sidewalk, coat flapping in the wind, his face raw with the kind of desperation I never thought I’d see on him. “I know, I know. Just hear me out,” he says.

I remove my earbuds. “Fin, for God’s sake. It’s not even six in the morning.”

“I can’t sleep,” he says, approaching me but stopping cautiously short. “I can’t stop thinking about us. Can we at least talk about this? I know, believe me, I know I’ve made mistakes. I was stupid. I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have you.” He puts his hands together. “I promise I’ll never make that mistake again. Ever. I’ll do counseling. I’ll do anything.”

His words, the sound of his voice, twist something inside me. God help me, part of me still aches for him—the man I always wanted, the man I married, the man I thought would always be mine. My body remembers the warmth of his hand at the small of my back, the way he used to make me laugh in the middle of the most ordinary days. That’s the cruelest part: My love for him never really left. It sits inside me, raw and stubborn and noisy.

He senses a dent in my armor. “I needed a slap in the face. I deserved it. You should probably slap me for real.” An excuse to draw closer. He turns his head, exposing his cheek, freshly shaved. I actually prefer his stubble, the five-o’clock shadow. “Slap me. Punch me. Kick me. I deserve that and more.”

I can’t deny that on some level, I enjoy his groveling, his hurt, after all the distress and humiliation he caused me. The years I swallowed my suspicions instead of spitting them out. The nights I stared at him across the dinner table, wondering who else was on his mind but saying nothing. Wondering, when we were intimate, if he was imagining another woman.

“I know we can make this right,” he says. “I still believe in us.” He stares at me, blue eyes wide, pleading.

A part of me wants to step forward, to let him hold me. Instead, I lock my arms tighter across my chest, digging my nails into my sleeves. That pain steadies me.

Us, he said. It takes two spouses to destroy a marriage. I know I failed us, too, that my silence was as deadly as his lies. I also kept a secret—that I knew his. And I did nothing. Never confronted him. Never forced him to look me in the eye and tell me the truth. I was stubborn, prideful. As long as I pretended not to know, I was just a woman whose trust was betrayed. If I acknowledged the adultery, I’d have to choose between knowingly staying with a cheater or being alone. So I buried my head in the sand, played dumb. I watched our marriage wither and die without fighting for it.