Page 58 of Smoky Lake

“My bad. Mrs. Bigelow. What did they say, exactly?” Gil pinned John with a hard stare that expected—demanded—answers.

And got them.

“She said that Ani didn’t live there anymore, and that she didn’t know where you were.”

“Did you take a photo of these men?” Gil asked. “Note any distinguishing features, age, race, that kind of thing?”

John’s face reddened to a shade of fuchsia rarely seen in nature.

What Ani wouldn’t give for a recording of this entire encounter. She wanted to relive it moment by delicious moment, some time when it wasn’t moving so fast and there wasn’t so much at stake.

“They were just guys.” He looked at the floor, then up again, as if he was struggling with himself. “I saw their license plate, it looked weird. I described it to this cop I play racquetball with. He said those are diplomatic plates. What’s a car with diplomatic plates doing in Barlow, Indiana, right? That’s when I got really freaked out. I was going to text you, but you know, the cloud and all. It seemed like it might not be safe.”

“So you came all this way to warn me about them?”

“Yes. Be careful, Ani. Whatever you’re up to, you should stop.” He gave her that blue-eyed smile that had won her heart in high school. “We might be divorced, but I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Seriously, did he really think she was going to fall at his feet as if she was sixteen again? “There’s something you need from me, isn’t there?”

John didn’t miss a beat, now that she was onto him. “I need your signature on something too. Figured I’d kill two birds with one stone.”

“What could you possibly need it for? We’ve signed all our paperwork.”

“It’s…personal.” He shot a sidelong glance at Gil’s stony face. Ani gave Gil a nod, and he crossed to the bathroom, from where they heard water running a moment later.

John lowered his voice. “I need to sell the timeshare in Galveston, and I can’t without your signature.”

“You couldn’t send me a Docusign?”

“I was going to, but then those guys showed up at our old house and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

He sounded sincere enough. He wasn’t a terrible person, after all, just weak and disloyal.

She lifted her chin. “Fine.”

It would put yet another period on that time in her life. He pulled the document from an elegant maroon planner adorned with his initials in gold. She’d bought it for him when he got promoted to manager of his dealership.

Then he handed her a pen, and her heart stuttered. It was her very favorite pen, the one she’d used to sign their marriage license—a slim silver Mont Blanc with a tiny sparkling crystal embedded on the clicker.

“You can keep the pen,” he told her. “I found it in a box of board games, from the last time we played Clue. Thought you might want it back.”

She reached for it eagerly, but before she could take it from him, Gil stepped back into the room. “Hang on a hot second,” he growled.

“No, it’s fine,” Ani told him, still reaching for the pen. “He just needs a signature.”

Gil plucked the pen from John’s grasp. “Let me take a look at that first.”

“It’s a pen, dude. What’s your malfunction?”

Paranoia? thought Ani. Had Gil crossed a line from justified caution into delusion? But she held her tongue, not wanting to give John any ground to criticize Gil.

She watched as Gil took apart the pen. When the thing was in pieces, he held up a device so tiny, it fit on the tip of his finger. “Tracker.”

Shock ran through her, from head to toes. So that was why John had flown all the way here—to put a tracker on her.

“I thought his story made no sense,” Gil explained with a shrug. “I’m sure Mrs. Bigelow is a courageous woman, but no one stops to talk to armed, masked men wearing black.” He turned to John. “They caught you, didn’t they? They sent you here.”

John took a step backwards, looking from Ani to Gil, then to the door. Gil moved to block his path to the exit.

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