“Your phone told me different!”
He grips the steering wheel as if he’s about to tear it off. Through a clenched jaw, he says, “When I saw you at the café, I had no idea who you were. All I knew is that you were beautiful and I wanted to meet you. I needed to meet you. I was drawn to you as I’ve never been drawn to a woman before. So after I sat at your table and you walked away from me, I did a little research.”
“Bullshit. You targeted me. I’m just trying to figure out why. Are you one of the men Chris warned me about, the ruthless ones who want to use me against him?”
Pausing for a moment to get himself under better control, he says darkly, “It was fate that brought us together, Olivia. Nothing else. I kept an apartment in that building for years before you ever came to visit. Your friend Estelle could’ve had an apartment in any one of thousands of other places in the city, but she had one in mine. Fate threw us together at the café, and again at the party. We were destined to meet.”
All this talk of fate and destiny is annoying me. I fold my arms over my chest and send him a challenging look. “I suppose next you’re going to tell me you’d never met Chris before that night at my apartment.”
“I hadn’t met him.” He pauses. “In person.”
“I knew it!”
Unbelievably, he’s frustrated by my outburst. His voice grows louder. “I knew of him. He knew of me. We’d never met.”
When I make an impatient motion with my hand that he should continue, he does. Carefully. “Your ex-husband is…”
“Just spit it out. It can’t be any worse than anything I’ve already had to deal with today.”
His expression tells me I might be surprised.
I warn, “Tell me right now or I’ll grab the steering wheel and send us into that ditch.”
“Okay.” He takes a breath. “Your ex-husband is an international arms dealer.”
A quarter mile of winding country road passes before I speak again. “He’s actually the US ambassador the UN.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, nodding. “And he’s an international arms dealer. He uses his political position to facilitate his trade. You think it’s a coincidence he spends so much time in the Middle East when he’s the ambassador to the United Nations? He might as well be the ambassador to Oman.”
I protest faintly, “That’s ridiculous,” but my brain swarms with memories.
Chris talking low on the phone in the middle of the night, getting up to close the door to his office when I called out for him to come to bed.
Chris taking meetings at home with darting-eyed men in black suits and making excuses about avoiding the press when I asked why they weren’t meeting him at the office.
Chris receiving documents at home via courier that he would never open in my presence.
Chris learning to speak Arabic, though it wasn’t a requirement of his job, and he’d never shown an interest in Arab culture.
Chris learning to speak rudimentary Turkish…and Russian…and Czech.
Chris never, ever talking about his work, though he was consumed by it.
Chris’s bizarre behavior at the café and his warnings that he couldn’t keep me safe in Europe, that he had powerful enemies, and that if I didn’t get on a plane to New York in twenty-four hours, he’d send someone to make that happen.
Chris’s impotent fury when James said to him, “I think we both know she’s safer with me than with you.”
The only reason I’d be safer with a contract killer than my ex-husband is if my ex-husband is something much worse.
I stare in horror at James’s chiseled profile. “How did you two know of each other?”
“There aren’t that many people at my level who do what I do. And your ex has put out contracts that I’ve considered, but ultimately turned down.”
My feeling of sickness intensifying, I cover my mouth with my hand.
Chris has hired contract killers. Which, by proxy, makes him a killer.
Then, with the sensation that my understanding is an onion with layers that are being peeled away swiftly one by one, I whisper, “You know what happened to my daughter, don’t you?”
He nods grimly. “Yes. I’m so sorry. And I know it’s not much consolation, but I’m going to kill him.”
A high-pitched noise rings in my ears. I begin to shake. “Christopher?”
“No.” James turns his head and meets my gaze. “The man who fired the shots into the crowd.”
For a moment, my lungs freeze. I’m unable to breathe.
James knows who murdered Emmie.
Heat flashes over my body. I break out in a cold sweat, and my shaking grows worse. My voice comes out in a rasp. “Pull over!”
James’s look sharpens. “Why?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to throw up all over your dashboard.”
He guides the car quickly to the side of the road. He doesn’t have time to shut off the engine before I throw open the door, lean out, and retch violently into the lavender-scented twilight.
It isn’t until the final heaves have subsided that I start to cry.