Page 4 of Conner's Choice
“I had to ask.”
“It’s probably food poisoning. Lexi and I had salads for lunch today. Or the flu.”
He touched her forehead. “You don’t have a fever. Are you cold?”
Chilled to the bone. “A little.”
Kevin tossed a throw blanket over her. “I can’t afford to get sick, Lizzie, so I’m sleeping in a guest bedroom. But before I say good night, I have a gift for you. Maybe this will make you feel better.” He reached into a drawer in his armoire and removed a square blue velvet box. “I got home too late last night to give you this.”
Elizabeth flicked open the box and gasped in surprise. A rope of glittering diamonds lay inside. Gifts often followed his infidelity but nothing this extravagant. Nothing this… She struggled to find a word to describe the significance of these diamonds.
“Aren’t they perfect?” he bragged. “Straight from the heart of Africa.”
“Blood diamonds,” she murmured.
“So what? I paid a fortune for them. Don’t you think they’re exquisite?”
Either her instincts or her paranoia kicked into high gear. She noticed he didn’t touch the jewelry, didn’t attempt to clasp that rope of perfect blood diamonds around her neck to admire them. She shut the box and started to choke for real this time. “Oh, God, I’m going to be sick again.”
When she emerged from the bathroom after vomiting, the master bedroom was empty. Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief as she took the box of diamonds and shoved them into her nightstand. She couldn’t explain the abject fear spiraling through her. She’d never been afraid of Kevin until now. There was an expression on his face whenever he looked at her lately that terrified her. She discerned pure loathing.
Her husband loathed her.
Judge Aaron Wakefieldbanged his gavel. “The motion to suppress the attempted murder charge against Ray Farmer is denied. Anything else, Mr. Warner?”
“Not at this time, Your Honor.” Kevin grabbed his briefcase and quickly left the courtroom with his young paralegal trailing behind him.
Kevin cursed all the way to the Denver County jail after the judge denied his motion. He checked in and went through security. By the time Ray was brought to meet him in a windowless room, he could barely contain his fury. Kevin slammed a folder in front of his client and glared at him.
“Really, Ray? Attempted murder of your ex-wife, Beth?”
Ray shrugged his beefy shoulders. “She deserved it. Would have died, too, if not for her nosy lawyer, Britain Sherwood. I had set it up perfectly, Kev. No one knew I had been at the house that day, but Sherwood found her, and Beth told her I’d done it. I had that damn lawyer in my sights, too, and would have enjoyed running a knife through her, but she up and married Christian Stone. Now,that’sa family you don’t want to tangle with. And then you offered me this gig. Hey, this doesn’t change anything, does it, Kev?”
Kevin’s eyes darkened with intense dislike. “Don’t call meKev. And yes, this new charge makes my job a lot more difficult. You’re a murderer, Ray.”
Ray didn’t bat an eye. “I didn’t become one by myself,Kev. This new charge goes away without Beth’s testimony. We get rid of her.”
“First, we have to find her. She’s disappeared.”
“You have certain connections.”
“No one better discover ours.”
“I’ve kept my mouth shut, Kev.”
Kevin’s face remained like granite. It didn’t matter if Ray went to prison or not. Either way, he was a loose end. And Kevin Warner always tied up loose ends.
Chapter Two
After Kevin leftfor Ray Farmer’s arraignment, Elizabeth tore her house apart from top to bottom, looking for proof of her husband’s infidelity. Or worse. She started in their bedroom, examining each piece of furniture for a hidden or false bottom in a drawer or seams in cushions that appeared to have been ripped open and sewn together. Nothing. She checked the masonry in the fireplace for loose stones, running her hands along the cracks. Again, she didn’t find anything. Next, Elizabeth thoroughly searched through her husband’s clothes on his side of their enormous walk-in closet. Kevin owned twenty-five pairs of shoes, which he kept in their boxes. It took a half hour to go through all twenty-five boxes. Tackling his dress pants yielded a small gold hoop earring that wasn’t hers. She couldn’t identify it as Alexa’s, either, but it was evidence, so she dropped it into a plastic bag.
It took hours for Elizabeth to determine there wasn’t anything else for her to find in the house; she even checked the wall safe. Kevin wasn’t aware she knew the combination. Another secret she kept from him. There was nothing but important papers. Sighing in frustration, she logged onto their bank accounts. Kevin argued she didn’t need to know anything about their finances, but Elizabeth refused to budge on the issue. He’d grudgingly relented, allowing her online access by sharing his username and password with her. She found receipts for restaurants and hotels on days when she wasn’t with him and printed the bank statements. Alone, they wouldn’t be enough to take to Britain Sherwood. No, she needed irrefutable proof of her husband’s adultery, and, she suspected, other equally immoral activities. There was one place she’d avoided until now. Kevin’s study.
She’d learned the code by listening to the tone of each number. Elizabeth stepped cautiously inside, praying she hadn’t tripped some kind of silent alarm she didn’t know about or that Kevin didn’t have a hidden camera that sent live images straight to his phone. Determined, no matter the consequences, she continued her search. After rifling through Kevin’s collection of law books and knickknacks and not finding anything that might be a camera, she breathed a small sigh of relief.
Elizabeth unlocked his desk with keys she saw in a crystal candy dish. Apparently, he didn’t think she was inquisitive enough to disobey him. Discovering file after file of disgusting, heinous murder scenes, including the Parkers’, caused her to gag, and she choked back the bile burning her throat. How could anyone deal with this kind of human depravity and not be changed by it? Gathering her breath and swallowing heavily, she opened his laptop. Of course, it was password protected. She tried their names, their birthdates, their wedding anniversary, but nothing worked.
After too many attempts, the system might lock up, but she tried one more time and typed ALEXA. Bingo. Now she had access to the desktop screen. Elizabeth pulled Kevin’s recent documents and searches and nearly keeled over in a dead faint. Her husband had been researching how to get away with murder. One site described how a barrel of acid would effectively get rid of DNA. As she scanned article after article, her blood ran cold. She shook violently. And then her eye caught an unusual link, and she clicked on it.
