Page 77 of Operation Annulment
He lowers himself into his chair with a murderous glare. “Still defending her after all this time, I see. Were the bitch not fucking up the lives of nearly everyone I know and care about, I might find it adorable.”
“I don’t have time for this shit?—”
“Sit the fuck down!” Mike barks, slamming his hand down on his desk. “You don’t know shit about fuck?—”
“Really? I saw the emails. They came from Kate.”
He shakes his head. “Only, they didn’t. We obtained a search warrant for Jess’s apartment. It’s standard procedure—we were looking for any evidence that could help us locate the suspects. Allthose emails originated from her laptop, and upon taking a closer look at the address, he points to the discrepancy, and I don’t know how I didn’t catch it before. “That’s not your wife’s email address, correct?”
“No,” I’m forced to admit. “It’s not. The grammatical errors are consistent with Jess’s writing, too.”
Mike continues, “Kate pointed that out as well. There were photographs of her and several of you on Jess’s computer. I don’t know how far back they go, but I think it’s safe to say she’s been stalking you both for a while.”
My head drops down, and I brace my arms on my thighs. “So, Jess is responsible—not Kate? How? She admitted she gave her a warning.”
“We videotaped Kate’s statement of her interaction with Jessica Davis on Monday, along with her whereabouts during the time Jessica claims she was assaulted,” he says, turning his laptop toward me. “As part of this investigation concerns you, I think it’s only fair that you see it.”
Seeing a pale-faced, trembling Kate is enough to pull my breath from my lungs, but hearing the way she defended me to my ex-wife is like a battering ram to my heart.
I told her that the queen protects the king.
My brain decides that now is an excellent time to remind me of everything I said to Kate in anger and the look of devastation on her face.
“Jess violated the terms of her parole. She’s being charged with damn near everything: perjury, forgery, making a false report, attempted murder?—”
“Attempted murder? Who did she try to kill?”
“She poisoned Dakota Quinn,” he says, his lips flattening into a thin line.
My pulse picks up. “What—when?”
He taps several keys, and there it is, in grainy black and white: my ex-wife at a gym she doesn’t belong to, slipping something into Dakota’s smoothie.
“October thirty-first. The gym released this to us after we found some disturbing searches on Jess’s laptop.”
Halloween.
The same fucking day that Dakota came stumbling out of the locker room, collapsing in my arms. The thought of her losing the baby leaves me feeling sick.
Mike taps the screen with his knuckle. “You know, if we hadn’t had a hunch that something was off with Jess’s story, Kate would be going to prison. We’d have nothing right now if she’d wiped the hard drive. Side note: you might be interested in researching the soap opera character Carla Snyder.”
My brows lift. “Soap opera character? How is that related to this?”
“It’s ridiculous, but we had an anonymous tip, and it checks out. Fake pregnancies, drugging men and telling them they slept with her, brain lesions—you name it, and the character’s done it. So has Jess, for that matter, if the evidence is any indicator.”
I stumble out of the station in a daze, feeling like I’ve been hit by a semi-truck. Kate’s only crime was falling in love with me, and I was too much of an asshole to hear her out when she tried to tell me the truth.
She must have been so scared.
The only woman who’s ever truly loved me for me, and I pushed her away, telling her she meant nothing.
My phone rings. Garrett, of course. His timing is impeccable.
“Hey, it’s not?—”
“Ding dong, the witch is dead,” he crows. “What did I tell you about karma, huh? I knew something was off with that girl, and I was right. Are you and Kate celebrating?”
“Garrett—” I swallow hard. “I fucked it all up.”
