And attached to the text is a photo. Of Stephanie and the twins, sitting on a blanket. Stephanie is turned away, lifting one of the smiling babies, probably unaware of the photo being taken. Does Stephanie know who she’s talking to? He texts his wife urgently.

It’s her. You’re talking to Erica. She just sent me a picture of you. Take the babies and get away from her!

But he gets no answer. The lack of a response is maddening. He’d told Stephanie to keep her phone close. Has she got her hands full with the twins, or has something happened? He tells himself that the park must be full of people this time of day. Nothing can happen to his family in broad daylight.

But the silence from both of them is making him crazy. Finally he hits speed dial to Stephanie’s cell. He hears the phone ring and ring. He’s starting to panic when his wife answers. She sounds out of breath.

‘What’s going on?’ he demands frantically.

‘What? What’s the matter?’ she answers, sounding normal but defensive. ‘I was just getting the twins into the buggy.’

He lowers his voice. ‘That woman with you, is she still there?’

‘No, she left a minute ago. How do you know about her?’

Patrick closes his eyes. ‘That was Erica.’

Stephanie turns and looks in the direction that the blonde woman had gone, just moments before. Stephanie can no longer see her.

As Patrick explains everything, she feels a chill.

‘She didn’t say who she was?’ Patrick asks.

‘No,’ Stephanie says, her voice hollow. ‘She just chatted with me, then she got a call on her cell.’ It unnerves her that she was here with Jackie and Emma while her husband was talking to his blackmailer and she didn’t even know. ‘She seemed so nice,’ Stephanie says, faltering.

‘She’s not nice, Stephanie,’ Patrick says adamantly. ‘She’s trying to mess with us.’

‘I’ve seen her before,’ Stephanie says. ‘Yesterday … I was in the drugstore, and she was behind me in line.’ She adds, ‘She even remembers what I bought.’

‘Jesus,’ Patrick says under his breath.

‘I’ve got to get the twins home and fed. I’ve got to go,’ Stephanie says shakily.

‘Okay, I’ll let you know if I hear anything else from her.’

Stephanie adjusts the twins in the buggy, now casting nervous looks over her shoulder. The woman who Patrick is convinced was Erica seemed perfectly harmless. But people can seem harmless and be anything but. You can’t judge people by appearances – they can fool you. She pushes the buggy rapidly along the pavement, eager to get home and inside, where she will carefully lock the door. She thinks anxiously about how things stand. Patrick told Erica they wouldn’t pay her – while she was sitting six feet away from his wife and babies. Stephanie feels more certain than ever that they should go to the police.

When she gets home and gets the twins fed and changed and down for their nap, she’s too wired to crawl into bed herself. Instead, she goes into the living room and opens her laptop and does something she hasn’t been able to bring herself to do until now. She opens a Google search, and it doesn’t take her long to find what she’s looking for. There’s an article in a Denver newspaper.

TRAGIC ACCIDENT CLAIMS LIFE OF PREGNANT WOMAN

January 10, 2009

A tragic accident this morning has claimed the life of Lindsey Kilgour, aged twenty-one, in the Colorado mountain town of Creemore. The Grant County Coroner has determined that the woman, who was eight months pregnant, died of carbon monoxide poisoning. She was in the running car while her husband, Patrick Kilgour, dug out the vehicle from the recent snowstorm. The couple had been intending to visit family in Grand Junction.

The husband found his wife unresponsive and called emergency services. Emergency personnel tried to revive the victim at the scene but were unsuccessful.

The death has been ruled accidental. Carbon monoxide is a colourless, odourless gas that can kill within a matter of minutes. The authorities are again reminding everyone of the dangers of being inside a running car surrounded by snow. Especially in times of heavy snowfall, care must be taken to ensure that the exhaust pipe is not blocked, as the deadly gas can seep up beneath the floorboards of the vehicle.

Stephanie feels numb. Worst of all, there are photographs. One is of a small car in the snow, a thick layer of it on the roof. She stares at it. Her husband’s first wife died in that car. She feels a shiver along her back. But it’s the second, larger photo that she studies the longest. It’s a picture of her husband. It’s blurry, but it’s a close-up, and his face is a grimace of pain. He looks so much younger, thinner, with longer hair, but it’s unmistakably him. She feels overwhelmed by it for a moment, absorbing his obvious pain.

Stephanie sits back in her chair. She hadn’t known. She wasn’t much into social media, but she had googled her husband’s name once, when they were first dating, of course. But there were so many Patrick Kilgours that she’d immediately given up. She googles his name again now. She has to go through several pages before she finds this news report again.

She looks once more at the photo of her husband. That expression, that grainy black-and-white image will haunt her now, for the rest of her life.

She can’t help herself, she looks for more. She finds other stories, with the same pictures of the car, of her husband. But in some articles there’s a picture of his first wife, too, smiling into the camera. And what strikes Stephanie about this photo is that she looks so happy.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

NIALL KNOWS THERE’S something going on. Something is bothering his partner, Patrick, and he thinks it’s more than just colicky twins. He remembers their recent conversation.

Patrick had slumped in the chair in front of Niall’s desk, looking both nervous and deeply exhausted at the same time. He’d apologized for his recent poor performance, particularly the lacklustre client meeting earlier in the week. He’d blamed it on lack of sleep, said he felt like he was walking in a fog half the time from sheer tiredness.

‘Can’t Stephanie take care of the babies?’ Niall asked. ‘I mean, she gave up her job and she’s home with them, right?’

Patrick had given him a sharp look, which Niall didn’t care to interpret. Okay, maybe he was being harsh, and his own wife would have kicked him in the shins for that one, but they couldn’t afford mistakes. Patrick’s performance was making Niall worried these days. They’d built up quite a good business in the last four years, and he doesn’t want to lose it all now.

‘You don’t know what twins are like,’ Patrick said. ‘Your kid never had colic either.’

This was true. Niall had a four-year-old and they weren’t planning to have another. Henry had not been a difficult baby. Nancy had stayed home and dealt with it all so that he could focus on the business. Obviously things were a bit different in Patrick’s household. But it was frustrating that there was nothing Niall could do about it.

Niall decided to take a gentler approach. ‘You know how important you are to this enterprise, Patrick,’ he said. ‘We both need you at the top of your game.’

‘I know,’ Patrick admitted. ‘I’ll – I’ll try to figure something out.’

And they’d left it at that, with no concrete plan to deal with the problem.

Now Niall stands perfectly still over his draughting table. He’d just heard Patrick on the phone, talking loudly, as if he were arguing with someone. He’d distinctly heard him say, ‘What’s going on?’ Niall froze, listening. But then Patrick lowered his voice and he wasn’t able to hear any more.

Now, he pops his head into Patrick’s office and asks, ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yeah, fine,’ Patrick says. But he looks distraught, and as if he’s trying not to show it.

‘I thought I heard you arguing with someone on the phone,’ Niall says.

‘Oh, that,’ Patrick answers, giving a little laugh. ‘Just talking to Stephanie. The twins were both crying and she couldn’t hear me. It can be a little frustrating sometimes.’

‘Okay,’ Niall says, and returns to his own office. He wonders again if there’s something else going on, something that Patrick is keeping from him.

Patrick isn’t the only one around here keeping secrets, he thinks, his mind turning to Erica, and how she looks lying on her back, naked against the sheets. He wants to see her again. She knows he’s married, and she’s fine with it. He just has to make sure Nancy doesn’t find out.

She’d only found out about Anne because he’d been careless. He won’t make that mistake again.

Patrick grabs his suit jacket and leaves the office. He feels like Niall is breathing down his neck – the last thing he needs right now.

Tags: Shari Lapena Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net