Chương 2
Daniel pointed toward the monitor without looking away from her.
“We watched you push her.”
“You watched part of an argument.”
“We watched you lie to my face.”
Claire’s mouth tightened.
Nora had seen that expression before. Most people never did.
It was the face Claire made when charm stopped working and she had not yet decided what to use next.
Daniel bent and picked up Nora’s phone.
The screen was shattered. One corner had separated from the casing.
“Can this be recovered?”
Nora nodded.
“I backed most of it up.”
Claire looked at her.
The fear in her eyes was real now.
Daniel noticed that too.
“What’s on it?”
Nora hesitated.
There were things she had imagined saying to him for more than a year. Accusations. Dates. Rachel’s name. The old security request. The hotel receipts. The emails that had looked harmless until Nora put them beside one another.
But she was sitting in the Mercer foyer with glass near her shoe and her baby moving inside her, and suddenly rehearsed sentences felt obscene.
“Not here,” she said.
Claire laughed again, softer this time. “Convenient.”
Nora looked at Daniel.
“I need my husband.”
Daniel blinked.
It was an odd sentence in the middle of everything, and that was why it helped her.
She needed Sam.
Not Daniel’s security team. Not Daniel’s lawyer. Not Daniel’s money.
Sam.
“I need to call him,” she said.
Daniel looked down at the broken phone.
“I’ll get you one.”
“No.”
Nora heard how sharply she said it.
She softened her voice.
“Not yours.”
Daniel understood.
He took his own phone from his pocket anyway.
“I can have someone bring a landline handset.”
“That’s fine.”
Claire turned away.
“Unbelievable.”
Daniel looked at her.
“What?”
“You’re treating me like a criminal.”
He glanced at the security monitor again.
“I don’t know what I’m treating you like yet.”
That answer hurt her.
Nora could tell because Claire’s chin moved backward slightly, almost imperceptibly.
For a moment she looked less like the woman who had shoved Nora and more like a person who had discovered that the floor beneath her marriage was not solid.
Then she said, “You asked me if this baby is yours.”
Daniel rubbed one hand across his mouth.
“Yes.”
“You promised you would never ask me that again.”
“I also believed you when you told me Nora attacked you.”
“Those things have nothing to do with each other.”
“They do now.”
Claire stared at him.
Nora wished she could disappear.
Whatever existed between them had started long before she walked into the house, and she had just broken the surface of it.
A housekeeper appeared at the far end of the corridor, saw the three of them, and stopped.
Daniel turned.
“Marisol, could you bring the cordless phone?”
The woman’s eyes moved to Claire’s gown, Nora’s broken phone, the glass on the marble.
“Yes, Mr. Mercer.”
“And could you ask Thomas not to let anyone in or out through the front without checking with me?”
Claire’s head snapped toward him.
“You’re locking me in?”
“No.”
“That’s exactly what you just said.”
“I said I want to know who comes and goes.”
“In my own house.”
“In our house.”
“Daniel.”
He looked exhausted already.
“Nobody is locking you in.”
Nora watched Claire absorb the correction.
It seemed small, but it mattered.
Claire had expected him to apologize.
He did not.
Marisol returned with the phone.
Nora thanked her and dialed Sam’s number from memory.
He answered after two rings.
“Hey.”
His voice almost undid her.
She turned slightly away from the others.
“Sam.”
The pause on his end changed.
“What happened?”
“I need you to come get me.”
“Where are you?”
She closed her eyes.
“At the Mercers’.”
Another pause.
Longer.
“Nora.”
“I know.”
“You went there?”
“I know.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Is the baby okay?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“I got pushed, but I didn’t fall on my stomach. I’m going to get checked.”
Sam breathed into the phone.
Behind Nora, Claire and Daniel had begun speaking quietly.
She could not make out the words.
“Send me the address.”
“You know it.”
“I want you to say it.”
Sam did that when he was frightened. He made things practical.
Nora gave him the address.
“I’m leaving now.”
“Okay.”
“Stay somewhere with people.”
She looked around the enormous foyer.
The chandelier hummed faintly.
“There are people.”
“I mean people who aren’t insane millionaires.”
Despite herself, Nora made a sound that might have been a laugh.
Sam heard it.
“Good,” he said. “Do that again in twenty minutes.”
Then he hung up.
Nora held the phone against her chest for a moment.
Across the room, Claire was saying, “Ask her. Ask her why she waited until tonight.”
Daniel turned toward Nora.
He seemed reluctant to do it.
“Why did you?”
Nora handed the cordless phone back to Marisol, who disappeared immediately.
“Because I knew you’d both be home.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“I know.”
Claire folded her arms.
Nora looked at her.
Then at Daniel.
“I found something three weeks ago.”
“What?”
“A copy of an old security service request from this house.”
Daniel’s expression changed slightly.
His company had started as a security business. Everybody who had ever worked around the Mercers knew that.
Nora continued.
“It was from the year Rachel died.”
Claire closed her eyes.
“Oh, Jesus Christ.”
Daniel did not look at her.
“What request?”
“Someone asked for foyer footage to be deleted.”
His face remained still.
“Who?”
“Claire.”
Claire stepped forward.
“That is not what happened.”
Nora felt her stomach tighten, not pain exactly, but tension.
“You told the technician the camera had recorded a private marital incident.”
“It had.”
“Rachel told me you accused her of attacking you in this foyer.”
Daniel looked at Claire then.
Nora kept going.
“She told me there had been a camera.”
Claire said, “Rachel told everyone a lot of things.”
May you like
The sentence landed badly.
Even Claire seemed to know it.
