Page 58 of Dirty Love

For the first time since I called her, she looks around the room, wondering where my invisible eyes are. She scans past me, and I clear my throat.

“Back a little to the left. The clock.”

She gives me a rueful smile and leans back against the couch. “Because if I leave him, he’ll tell the world I murdered my baby. He has video of me doing that line of cocaine in the bathroom. There was a time when I wanted him to expose me, but I can’t do that to Keegan’s memory. Right now he’s my private angel. If people know about him, they’ll find his grave. They’ll say disgusting things about his memory. And it will taint all the things I’ve quietly done to remember him.”

“You said you can’t have children…”

Her face twists. “God’s idea of justice, maybe. Something went wrong during the operation when they tried to save his life. I had messed up cycles for a while after, and then my body gave up trying. It’s for the best.”

“How long after that did you start over?”

“We have that in common, don’t we?” Her lips twist in a cold smile. “Not long at all. Grant was all prepared for it. Fucking bastard said it was for the best that we’d lost the baby. A week later, he’d somehow formalized these new identities for us. He was no longer Grant Rook, but Grant Derew, and I was Tabitha Leyton for real, not just a stage name.”

Like the barrels of a lock sliding into place, my brain spun that information around until it clunked up against something else I knew.

Grant Rook.

Youngest son of Malcolm Rook, a rancher in Washington State.

Brother of Spencer Rook, who is on our firm’s radar as a rising star in the white nationalist movement.

Grant Rook died ten years earlier.

How did he just ghost right there in plain view standing behind one of the country’s biggest pop stars?

I stare at the screen.

Tabitha has no idea who she’s married to.

But I do now.

And everything has just changed.

—twenty-six—

Wilson

Washington

Christmas night

I stay on the phone with my secret girl until she falls asleep. Then I take the tablet into the main space and I prop it on the kitchen counter so I can keep an eye on her while I figure this out.

Most of her details I know by heart.

Her tour dates.

I grab a thick black marker and pace to the wall.

Los Angeles

San Francisco

Portland

Salt Lake City

Denver

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