“No. I don’t discuss it all, usually.” That faint smile touched his mouth again. “I’m a newlywed. I have other things on my mind.”

I clapped my hands together. “Yay! That was my idea. I told him to keep reminding people she’s married and that he knows her husband.” And he got a dig in about Deanna, too. Well played all around.

“You knew he was going to do this?” my mom asked, sounding horrified.

I looked at her, frowning when I saw how pale she was. Considering the tan she’d gotten over the last two weekends, that was worrying. “No. I had no idea. We talked about the Giroux thing a while ago. Are you okay?”

She pressed her fingertips into her temples. “I’ve got a headache.”

“Hang on till this is over and I’ll get you something for that.” I looked back at the TV, but they broke for a commercial. I ran to the bathroom medicine cabinet and came back out rattling a little bottle of pills, surprised to find my mother packing up her stuff. “You’re leaving? What about lunch?”

“I’m tired, Eva. I’m going home to lie down.”

“You could take a nap here in the guest room.” I figured she’d like that. After all, Gideon had precisely replicated her design of my apartment bedroom right here. A misguided but thoughtful effort to give me a safe haven in his home at a time in our relationship when I hadn’t known whether I should fight for us or just run away.

She shook her head and slung the carrying strap of her laptop case over her shoulder. “I’ll be fine. We covered the most important things. I’ll call you later.”

She air-kissed both my cheeks and left.

Sinking back onto the couch, I put the pills on the coffee table and watched the rest of Gideon’s interview.

12

“Mr. Cross.” Scott stood up behind his desk. “Will you be in today after all?”

I shook my head and opened my office door, waving Angus inside before me. “I just have to take care of something. I’ll be in tomorrow.”

I’d cleared my schedule, redistributing my meetings and appointments throughout the rest of the week. I hadn’t planned to come to the Crossfire at all, but the information Angus had been sent to gather was too sensitive to risk disclosing anywhere else.

Taking a moment to close the door and make the glass opaque, I followed Angus to the seating area and dropped into a chair.

“You’ve had a busy few days, lad,” he said, his lips twisted wryly.

“Never a dull moment.” I exhaled roughly, fighting off fatigue. “Tell me you have something.”

Angus leaned forward. “Little more than I had to start with: a marriage license with a fictitious hometown and Jackson Tramell’s death certificate, which has Lauren Kittrie listed as his spouse. He was dead less than a year after they wed.”

I homed in on the most important information. “Lauren lied about where she was from?”

He nodded. “Easy enough to do.”

“But why?” Studying him, I saw the tension in his jaw. “There’s something else.”

“Manner of death is listed as undetermined,” he said quietly. “Jackson took a bullet to the right temple.”

My spine stiffened. “They couldn’t decide if it was suicide or homicide?”

“Aye. It couldnae be determined conclusively one way or the other.”

More questions without answers, with the biggest issue being whether Lauren had any relevance at all. Maybe we were chasing our tails.

“Fuck.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I just want a photo, for God’s sake.”

“It’s been a long time, Gideon. A quarter of a century. Maybe someone from her hometown would remember her, but we dinnae know where that is.”

Dropping my hand, I looked at him. I knew the inflections of his voice and what they signified. “You think someone went through and tidied things up.”

“It’s possible. Also possible that the police report of Jackson’s death was truly misplaced over the years.”

“You don’t believe that.”

He confirmed my statement with a shake of his head. “I brought in a lass to pose as an IRS agent looking for Lauren Kittrie Tramell. She questioned Monica Dieck, who said she hasn’t seen her former sister-in-law in many years and to her knowledge, Lauren is deceased.”

I shook my head, trying to make sense of it all and getting nowhere.

“Monica was scared, lad. When she heard Lauren’s name she went white as a ghost.”

Pushing to my feet, I began to pace. “What the fuck does that mean? None of this is getting me any closer to the truth.”

“There’s someone else who might have the answers.”

I came to an abrupt halt. “Eva’s mother.”

He nodded. “You could ask her.”

“Jesus.” I stared at him. “I just want to know that my wife is safe. That none of this poses any danger to her whatsoever.”