“You keep the email?” Sean asked.
“Sure. I’ve got a folder of them.”
“What was next?” Katie asked.
“There was another one before Christmas. More of the same thing. ‘Ho ho ho, be glad they don’t know.’ And at New Year’s, there was a third one.”
“Same sort of message?”
“ ‘I made a resolution. This year, the whole world finds out what you are.’ ”
A felon. A fraud.
“How many have you seen altogether?”
“Four that I know of.”
More bullshit, but he didn’t want to tell them about the one that showed up right before he was supposed to go to Louisville. The one that spooked him so bad, he sat in his apartment drinking Jack and Coke and staring out at Lake Michigan for half the night.
“How do you know you’re not missing any?”
“I can’t know for sure, but I asked Ginny to keep an eye out for anything short and strange like that. And I’ve been checking the accounts myself, pretty much every day.”
“So what do you think this is all about? Blackmail?”
He didn’t have to guess what it was about. He knew. It was about Louisville, Buffalo, Iowa City.
It was about what he’d done to Ben.
If he’d known the last time he was in Kentucky that he wouldn’t see the High Hat or Ben Abrams again, it wouldn’t have changed anything. He still would have left. But he hadn’t known.
He picked at invisible lint on the knee of his jeans. “Maybe.”
“Do you think you know this person?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think they mean you any harm?”
He hesitated before he answered, long enough to bring Katie’s eyes up to his. This time, he told her the truth. “I don’t know.”
She glanced at Sean. He was sitting up straight in his chair, arms crossed, looking like he had no interesting thoughts. But when he caught her eyes, his lips curved up just the tiniest bit.
They had something, those two. He wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been honest when he and Katie were swapping spit in that suite.
She leaned forward, pinned Judah in place with her gaze, and asked, “You think this is just about you being gay, or do you have other skeletons in the closet?”
He jerked as if she’d electrocuted him.
Jesus! He’d been handling gay rumors for years, and one direct question from Katie had him practically jumping out of his skin. Why not just take out an ad in The New York Times?
At least her knowing saved his having to tell her. Though it did raise the question of how she’d figured it out.
He waited until his heart rate had slowed before he smiled and said, “See, I knew I hired you for a reason.”
“I thought you hired me because you wanted to do me.”
“I know. Isn’t that sad?”