Page 56 of Run for Her Life
His mouth flattened. “Shit. I mean, it was…” He sat back, his hands stuffed inside the pockets of his hoodie, and looked at the closed door. “It was a mistake, okay? It meant nothing. It was barely anything.”
Zoe and Aiden exchanged a look. “So you were having an affair with her?”
“No!” He was appalled. “It was just three dates, okay? It was so stupid.” He hung his head low and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What the hell do you think I’ve done?”
“Walk us through this, Jim,” Zoe instructed. “Jackie Fink was found murdered. You’re the sheriff’s husband. This doesn’t look good for you.”
“I know! I know! Look, Lisa and I are going through a rough patch. She has it in her head that a baby will fix everything but I’m not even working right now. And her fertility treatments have been so…” He caught himself and clasped his hand into a fist. “Just please let me talk to her first.”
“I’m just going to wait until you accept that you’re talking to us first,” Zoe said.
His shoulders sagged in defeat and he wiped his nose. “We met at the café where she worked. I used to get an Americano almost every afternoon and we got talking.”
“What did you talk about?” Aiden asked.
“I don’t know. Regular stuff.”
“And you said you went on three dates?” Zoe asked.
“Yeah, it lasted only two weeks. I realized what an asshole I was being. And she was kind of weird.”
“How?” Aiden narrowed his eyes.
“All she ever talked about was the fire.” He grimaced. “Don’t get me wrong. We all talk about it. When I was a kid, we played Survivor. We would role-play being the victims and added a twist that one of us was the killer.” A wan smile crossed his lips. “Well, it was stupid and we all grew up. I have other things I wanted to talk about but she was only interested in one topic. I sent her flowers and ended things with her over the phone like a gentleman.”
Zoe struggled to hold back a burst of laughter at him referring to himself as a gentleman after cheating on his wife. “Did she mention any other person in her life? Friends or family?”
“Not really. I don’t think she had a life. Everything was about the fire. I think someone in her family was a victim, which started this obsession. Though… I think she mentioned someone else.” He closed his eyes. “I’m trying to remember. She was doing some freelance work and said someone was pushing her to do something she wasn’t comfortable with. I thought it was sexual favors or something but she said it wasn’t that but it was illegal.”
Zoe threw a discreet glance at Aiden. Her mind raced. It didn’t make sense. Why would Annabelle come up with the idea to steal the product? Was she truly that disturbed by the ethics of it? She didn’t need to steal it to leak the story to Adam. Jackie, on the other hand, had a reason to want to take it. She intended to use it to escalate her obsession.
“David!” he said suddenly. “She said some guy called David was pressuring her. She didn’t say about what.”
Zoe went blank as his words slowly permeated her brain and traveled through the cells, forming into a realization that Aiden seemed to have reached already.
“David Harrington.”
THIRTY-FOUR
David sat with his hands clasped, jaw set, his tie just a little too tight. Across from him, Dawn leaned back in her seat, tapping a pen lightly against the arm of her chair. Measured, calm, controlled.
This was who she was. She wasn’t any different at work. She wasn’t a mother at home and chairwoman of the board at work. She was always the chairwoman. Her warmth and affection calcified by tragedy. His nervousness pitched higher. It wasn’t the board members with stiff faces that made him uncomfortable. It was his mother. He was once again trying to prove himself. It was all he’d ever done.
“This isn’t personal, David.”
It was the first lie and first slap to his face.
Across the table, a man—gray-haired, three decades too comfortable in his position—cleared his throat. “We’ve reviewed the candidates thoroughly. The board has made its decision.”
David’s fingers flexed slightly against the table. “The board,” he repeated, eyes moving across the room. Half of them wouldn’t meet his gaze. The other half wore the faint, unreadable expressions of corporate survivors—people who knew when to stay silent, when to stay clear of the blast zone.
Dawn’s lips curled slightly, not quite a smile. “It’s not about your qualifications or your commitment to the company. You are valued.”
Another lie.
He sat back, exhaling slowly through his nose. “Then what is it about, Dawn?”
A silence stretched, just long enough to make it clear she wasn’t going to answer. She didn’t have to.
