Page 85 of The Couple's Secret
He lifted his head from the machine but didn’t turn back toward them. “No. Why would I do that?”
Gretchen put away her notebook and pen. “What were you planning to do with your suspicions?”
Three years was a long time to hold onto something like that. To keep working side by side with your father. To let your anger and betrayal fester and grow. To plan.
“I don’t know.” Jackson wiped the moisture from his face and then turned his hat around, the brim keeping the rain from his eyes.
Zane laughed humorlessly. “Oh, so you were just going to sit on that indefinitely. Do absolutely nothing. You had to know Cora was in danger. Riley, too. Are you telling me you would have just left her?—”
“Shut up, Zane!” Jackson whirled around. “I didn’t have plans, okay? What was I supposed to do? I didn’t have proof!”
“That’s never stopped people before,” Josie said carefully. “When they want to stop someone from hurting someone else or when they want revenge. You must have been pretty angry.”
Jackson looked down at his hands, twisting his wedding ring around his finger.
Gretchen locked eyes with Josie briefly. They were on the same page. She said, “Plus your dad had all those law enforcement connections through his dad. John Fanning, Karl Staab, Bruce Olsen. They were all on his side. They never looked beneath the surface.”
Josie didn’t miss the almost imperceptible wince at the mention of Olsen’s name. “You must have felt pretty powerless.”
“Zane’s right,” Gretchen went on. “Cora was in danger. Could you have lived with yourself if she was taken from Riley the same way that Rachel and Gabrielle were taken from you and Zane?”
Jackson said nothing.
“Did you know she was planning to leave your dad?” Josie said.
Zane shook his head. “What? Things got that far? Jacks, what about Riley? What was going to happen to her?”
Through gritted teeth, Jackson said, “It doesn’t matter if she was planning to leave him. They’re both gone now.”
“Cora knew.” Josie pushed a wet lock of hair from her forehead. “She found Rachel’s purse and the skeleton key. Maybe she didn’t know what the key meant but she understood the significance of the purse. It belonged to your mother. That’s when Cora knew she was in trouble. Did she ever talk to you about it, Jackson?”
He kept twisting his wedding band, watching it turn around his finger. “No, and maybe that was for the best. What could I have done? What good would it have done any of us?”
None, Josie realized. Not for Jackson, anyway. It would have taken Riley away from him. Had he been in love with her back then, too?
“Jackson,” Josie said. “Did you know that Cora was planning to leave?”
He didn’t answer. Twisting his wedding band a final time, he grabbed the dolly and began trying to fit it beneath the edge of the Coke machine.
“You did know!” Zane accused.
It would have been easy enough information to come by given his position in the company and the family. Working with his father and Hollis. Rescuing Cora from Dalton Stevens periodically. He might have overheard something. Arguments between Cora and Tobias. Conversations between Hollis and Cora. Regardless, Josie believed Zane.
“You knew Cora was in danger,” Josie said. “Knew what your dad was capable of and you let it all slide. Then you found out she was leaving and realized it would sever your connection to Riley permanently. There was no way she’d be with the son of the man who killed two of his romantic partners, who scared her mom so badly that she thought she might be next.”
Jackson finally fit the dolly’s edge under the machine. “This trip down memory lane has been a real drag but there’s nothing left to say. I’m not sure what you’re hoping to accomplish but I’ve got shit to do.”
“You went to Karl Staab’s retirement party,” Josie said. “But your dad didn’t.”
He didn’t look away from where his hands curled around the handle of the dolly. “Is there a question in there somewhere?”
“They were your dad’s friends. Tobias was the only reason your family had connections to law enforcement,” Gretchen pointed out. “Fanning, Staab, Olsen.”
“Olsen was the one who responded to the 911 call the day your mom went missing,” Josie added. “When we talked with him, he made it sound like his loyalty was firmly with Tobias but that wasn’t true, was it?”
Jackson didn’t answer.
“What is she talking about?” Zane asked him.
