Love by Association

“What about Colin?”

“I won’t tell him. I’m not agreeing to help, either, but I won’t tell him.”

“You’re sure? If you don’t feel good about that, let me know. It’s fine. I just... I need this chance, Julie, and I wanted to offer it to you, too, but don’t take it if...”

“It won’t be the first secret I’ve kept from my brother, Chantel.” Julie’s words held a hint of the dry humor Chantel had glimpsed in her a time or two. Chantel wanted to meet Julie’s former self, the one Colin hinted at. She nodded.

“What Smyth did to you. It probably wasn’t the only time...”

“Believe me, I’ve thought about that.”

She had the go-ahead. But she held back.

“The thing is...until I do this, there’s not going to be any chance for me to pursue anything with Colin,” she said, when she’d meant to begin laying out the plan. “I...can’t believe how much he’s come to mean to me in such a short time, but I’m not...ready...for a relationship. Not like what seems to be happening between us. Last night made that pretty clear.”

She wanted to be talking Johnson rhetoric. And was afraid that she was not.

But she couldn’t let any of it stop her.

“I understand.” Julie actually smiled. “He can be a bit overpowering. But he’s really a big pushover, once you know how to handle him.”

“You feel strong when you’re with him, don’t you?”

Julie’s nod was slow but sure. “I always have. He brings out the best in me.”

And in her, too?

Was she going to lose the best thing she’d ever had—the best thing she ever would have—before she’d even had it for real?

“But I have to feel strong in myself. To have the kind of courage you do—enough to move across the country all on my own, because it’s the right thing for me. Or to be able to attend a fundraiser, regardless of who’s present, because I care about the cause. Without having a panic attack.” She wasn’t grinning now.

And so, without further soul-searching, Chantel told Julie about her plan to rewrite the script.

“The new rewrite already has the hostess, me, being a flirt and the host, Colin, being overly interested in money. Leslie had said she wanted things beefed up with more suspicion, and that seemed the obvious venue to take.”

At least it must have to whomever Wayne had retained to rewrite the script.

“I plan to make a private aside or two to David Smyth early on. Enough to get him going. What I plan to add, is to have me be murdered during the evening—a surprise thing. I’ll have it done in that small room upstairs that’s being turned into a reserved studying room. Everyone will come up to look at the body and look for clues. I’ll be lying there, dead. After we know that junior has seen me, a call will go out, gathering everyone downstairs in the main room for a big announcement. The dead bodies will remain in place, as already planned, but everyone else, including Colin, will be in the drawing room. The big announcement won’t even be known to Colin. Someone will have to read it.”

She’d been thinking Leslie would be good for that part.

“Before the announcement is read, all the lights in the library will go out. No one will know if that’s for real or not. They’ll come back on in a moment or two. My hope is that junior will take that opportunity to sneak out of the room and head back upstairs to where I’m still lying there dead. If he gets caught, he’s just looking for clues.” She was profiling. Deliberately taunting the rapist with a temptation that should be hard for him to resist. Counting on him to take her bait. She’d seen it happen enough to know the ploy worked more often than most would expect.

“I’ll have a camera set up in the room. He comes in. Comes on to me. I tell him to get lost. He gets mad and tries to force me. Then we’ve got him on film. I scream. Everyone rushes upstairs to see what’s going on. He gets caught,” she hastened to add. “I’ll scream before it gets any further than that.”

Julie wasn’t shaking her head. “What do you plan to do with the video?”

Julie would never believe they could go to the police with it.

“Play it right there, if I have to. I’m hoping the mob will lynch him as soon as they see what he was trying to do. At the very least, his wife will see him for what he is.”

“And Colin?” The look on Julie’s face was more shrewd than Chantel would have liked.

“What about him?”

“You expect him just to sit back and be content with a lynch mob when he sees the man who raped his sister going after his girlfriend?”