Page 40 of What the Wife Knew

“Do you have any idea what I could do to you right now? Out here. Alone.” He finally looked at me. The flat tone matched his empty expression. All the life from the party had been sucked out of him, leaving an empty shell. A dangerous, angry empty shell. “You’re not so tough without your bat.”

My bat. My flashlight. The night-lights I used to stave off the shadows. I missed all of that. My throat closed and my fingers clenched against the armrest.

“You put on a show at the beginning of the night, but you couldn’t keep up the act. You started frowning and made it clear you wanted to leave. I should thank you for that because the attitude change supports my story.You saw her mood swing.She’s jealous of Kathryn. She kept spiraling then she stormed out of the house.” He said the last part in a mocking tone.

“You have your phone and car GPS. They would give you away.” I had no idea if that was true. I couldn’t think or reason through any words before they popped out. The night kept pressing in, stealing the air.

Again he hummed, sounding very impressed with his maneuvering. “Good point. I wouldn’t want to leave any evidence behind.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Taking my new wife for a drive.” Satisfaction thrummed off him. “This is a beautiful forty-seven acres of woods, ponds, and rocks. Anything could happen out here.”

“Here” likely being the nature center. It should be closed at this time of night, but could you really close the outdoors?

I tried to swallow the thick lump of fear clogging my throat. I could outrun him in other conditions. The paralyzing panic that sprang up when the darkness fell threatened any plans of escape. His advantage in size foreclosed fighting back.

He looked out the windowshield. “I like the dark.”

Fucker. “You would.”

He smiled, clearly enjoying my vulnerability. “I wanted to bring you out here to remind you.”

Word games. Great. “Have you forgotten about the evidence I have?”

“I remember but you need to know I intend to fight back.” He opened his hand to reveal a small key. He dropped it in my lap. “You think you’ve won, but the war between us is just getting started.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Her

Present Day

Most lawyers probably refused to make house calls. Understandably so, but Elias was not one of them. The risk of social ruin that came with people seeing us in public together explained why he volunteered to commute between our properties instead. No matter how or why, he showed up at a respectable hour on Saturday morning with take-out coffees and earned my temporary gratitude.

Now to drop the reason for my invitation. “I need you to do a favor for me.”

He froze with a cup halfway to his mouth. “You understand I’m your attorney and not your personal assistant, right?”

“Unfortunately, but this will benefit you, too.” We sat across from each other at the kitchen table. This close I could see what he was thinking as he thought it, which might not be a great thing. “You said your good pal, Detective Nick, was likely going through my phone records and bank accounts and having me followed.”

“He’s not my—”

“You two are very chummy. It’s unsettling.”

Elias slowly lowered his coffee cup to the table and leanedback in his chair. “I came to talk to you about the bat and you being found in the greenhouse with said bat, and the disinfectant you clearly used right before we found you trying to hide said bat.”

So manysaidreferences. “I was looking forsaidoffending item so I could get rid of it.”

Elias exhaled and made a lot of noise doing it. “Don’t say that to anyone else.”

He was missing the point, so I highlighted it for him. “I just happened to find the hidden bat when you and the detective just happened to step into my yard. Convenient, right?”

“Are you saying Detective Sessions hid the bat to frame you?”

“I wasn’t but I won’t think of anything else now.” It made sense. Detective Sessions wasn’t my biggest fan and solving Richmond’s murder in a way that painted me as evil would buy him a lot of goodwill in this town. “Don’t look so shocked. If you were being framed, wouldn’t you do everything you could to throw the scent off you?”

“When the forensic testing comes back—”

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