Chapter 3
Her phone kept buzzing throughout the night. She ended up pulling a pillow over her head and burying underneath it. When she fell asleep, she slept the sleep of the exhausted and woke up the next morning feeling like dried bread that had been ground into bread crumbs. Splintered. Rough. She didn’t know how to pull it all together.
Sleep was supposed to be refreshing. Supposed to make her feel better. Instead, it made her feel like she couldn’t get her mind back on track. She got up, dressed and headed into the kitchen. Coffee would help. There was only instant, but she’d take it. Desperate times and all that.
She pulled out her phone to see several texts from Bridget. In all of them, there was a note saying, Corey and Warrick are on their way.
That even failed to impress her. She’d met Corey and had walked away. What did he think she would do this time? Still, she needed help; she just didn’t know where to get it. They might be able to give her a name.
Bridget also said she was supposed to contact the detective to let him know she was alive. Everybody was worried about her. And the last message really made her heart jump into her throat.
I don’t even know if I should tell you this, but I don’t think you should come home. At least not to your place. Come to my place. Your place has been broken into, and it’s in shambles.
At that, she stuffed the cell phone back into her pocket, poured hot water over the coffee crystals, stirred it and took her cup as stepped out onto the verandah. It was really beautiful here. She should seriously talk to her aunt about maybe renting it for a year. Apparently her apartment was no longer an option. She didn’t know if she was safe here or not. But she had to live someplace. And, at the end of all this, this little piece of heaven would at least help heal her soul a bit. Joshua would have a blast living here. He was into bugs and water and stones and every other outdoor thing imaginable.
Well, he was a little boy and very true to form. But he was also the kind who would pick up a spider and drop it in a safe place. She wasn’t of the same ilk regarding spiders but understood that was who he was. When he had asked her if she wanted the spider to crawl on her, she had shaken her head politely and said, “No, sweetie. He likes you best.”
It was all she could do to stop the cringe reaction when the spider came closer. She’d gotten a lot better about bugs, but she still had a lot of room to grow. Joshua was a good boy.
She patiently brushed away tears and anger at herself for constantly succumbing to them. There was a time to cry, and there was a time to straighten her spine and do what needed to be done. In the back of her mind was always that thought that maybe she could hire somebody to steal her son back. She could run to Mexico and hide from the authorities until he grew up. She had read numerous stories in the news about people doing just that. Sure, eventually they got caught. She didn’t give a damn as long as she got time to spend with her son. To consider a future without him was just too unthinkable.
She walked down the verandah steps, her thin sandals making a light clacking sound as she took each riser. It was early; nobody was here; and, with any luck, they would get lost the same as she had. She had mixed feelings about having no one to help her. It’d be nice to not be alone. But the last thing she wanted was to involve two men she didn’t know—at least she didn’t know any longer.
She’d never seen this behavior in Greg before. But then she’d never crossed him. She would have left a hell of a lot earlier if she had realized how illegal his dealings were. Had he married the other woman too? For a moment she indulged in the thought of not being legally married to Greg. Wouldn’t that be great? Although he was too canny to do something he could be caught in so easily.
She shook her head and tried not to spill her coffee as she walked down the thirty feet of the rough path to the lake’s edge. An old dock sat off to the side, looking worse for wear and desperately in need of a hammer to get some of the nails pounded flat once more. Some pretty good storms were common in this area, so the cabin could leak. She’d love to spend some time here and do some house repairs. Bring it back to the way she remembered it. Her aunt was getting on in years now. Angela imagined her aunt would go stay with one of her kids, never returning to the cabin. Angela wanted to rent it, unless the family wanted to sell it.
She gave a broken laugh. “Who am I kidding? I’ll be lucky if I have enough money to put food on the table when this is over.”
The lawyers had pretty well wiped her out. Her husband had mountains of money, all from his own business ventures, but he certainly wasn’t into sharing. If he refused her access to her son, he sure as hell wouldn’t let her have access to his money either.
A duck swam by, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, cutting a wide circle around her to make sure she couldn’t catch him.
“Go ahead, little one. Keep on floating. I have no designs on you.”
She wanted to sit on the edge of the dock, though her body was too stiff and sore after the long drive and her rough night. She slipped her feet out of the sandals and stepped into the water from the shoreline. She dabbled her toes in the cool water. Even though it was summertime, it was a little on the chilly side. That probably had as much to do with her fatigue as anything.
She stood here, feeling a little better as she sipped her coffee and stared at her peaceful surroundings. This was the right decision. She needed this. Something inside her soul ached to be here. Hidden away, safe, not having to worry about real life intruding … Greg didn’t know about this place, thank heavens.
After wading for a few minutes, she put her sandals back on and walked out onto the dock. She remembered a ladder used to be here into the lake.
It was much deeper at the end of the dock, and they used to jump and dive off it. They had this big floatable raft thing they swam out to and played on. She had such great memories here of lots of family barbecues and late evenings sitting around a campfire roasting hotdogs and marshmallows.
She hugged her arms to her chest, feeling a chill now. She should have brought a sweater. The sun was up, but just barely. And the cabin was tucked into the trees, so the rays of warmth hadn’t reached her yet. It would soon, but, for the next fifteen to twenty minutes, she’d be standing in the shadows.
In many ways, this was how she’d felt for most of her marriage. It had been much less than she had hoped for. Greg had been a big man; she had been bowled over by everything he’d promised. She thought at the time she loved him. She just hadn’t realized she’d mistaken love for security. And she’d sure found out fast how security came with bars.
She’d never been allowed to do anything on her own. Greg controlled what she did with her time. He picked out her clothing, ordered her to take various courses so she’d look better, act better—even voice classes. Nothing was wrong with her voice, but he had this arrogance about him that thought she didn’t sound as upper class as she could. Rolling her Rs and elongating her Os was supposed to do that.
She thought back to how naive and stupid she’d been. And how quickly he’d formed her into what he wanted. She still didn’t understand how it had happened. It wasn’t who she was. But she had been desperate to get married and to start a family. After losing the baby way back when, it seemed she had spent years trying to get back to that stage of life again. But she hadn’t wanted it to be with just anybody. She certainly didn’t want a casual one-night stand. She’d wanted a long-term relationship. She’d wanted it all.
The house, the two kids, the holidays at the lake. Instead, she got a controlling, lying cheat of a husband, an absolutely adorable son, and a lifestyle where she’d felt caged. Freedom from Greg had been bliss. With her son, she hadn’t even regretted walking away from the lifestyle. As long as she had Joshua, she didn’t bother about anything else. Joshua was perfect.
He was perfect in every way. And yet she had no way to get him back. Her husband wouldn’t let go of his control.
She sat on the edge of the dock, dangling her feet above the water. She tried to organize her thoughts as to what the day would bring. If and when the men arrived, what were her chances of getting rid of them? And how much had Bridget told them?
Not that she had told Bridget everything either. Angela hadn’t wanted to get her into trouble. It was bad enough that Joshua’s life was impacted. The last thing Angela wanted was to create any more stress for Bridget. This was too important a crunch time for her. Law school had been brutal. Angela had watched her friend crumble under the stress and workload, along with a job and everything else. Bridget had shunned all men, making room for only those things she could handle.
That had been a great idea, but there had also been repercussions. And some of them had been that Bridget could not see exactly what was going on in Angela’s world, and Angela had deliberately not brought Bridget in on all the details. Angela didn’t want Bridget to worry. But Angela wished that she’d had someone to share this nightmare with. Being on the run was one thing. Being on the run and trying to get her son back, that was a whole different story.
Hearing an odd sound, she twisted, spilling the last of her coffee on the boards, to see a man walking toward her. She hopped to her feet, looking for a place to run. But she was at the end of the dock. The only other place she could go was into the water. Then she heard a shout.
“Angela, it’s me. I’m here with Warrick.”
To the left of where the stranger stood, she saw Corey striding toward her. He still had that long, loose-limbed walk. But instead of the young man she’d known, it was the man she’d met in the coffee shop. Powerful and in control. He just looked so damn different.
She’d been stunned when she saw him again. She’d carried the idealistic young man he had been in her heart for so long. And now, after all this time, to see him grown up, and not just grown up but somebody to be respected and be proud of, she was sad she hadn’t followed up on their relationship way back when. But she’d been too young, and it was too early and too … He hadn’t been right for her back then.
Hell. She hadn’t been right for anybody back then. She’d been such a mess. She hadn’t treated him as well as she should have. For that, she was sorry. But to see this powerful male walking toward her as if he knew exactly what was in her mind and understood where she was coming from made it incredibly difficult to even break her gaze free. He was mesmerizing. He stepped up to the edge of the dock and held out his hand. “I’m coming toward you,” he said. “This will be okay. We will get to the bottom of it.”
She widened her gaze and then realized she was standing with one foot at the edge of the dock as if she were going to fling herself into the water. She took a deep breath and let herself relax, then turned and walked toward him casually. “Hi.” Her gaze drifted past him to the man standing behind him. “You must be Warrick.”
The big man smiled and nodded. There was something so damn compassionate in his gaze that she wondered what he possibly did for a living. She knew what Corey did. Bridget had told her of his accomplishments along the way. But Warrick had a gentler countenance. Whereas Corey had hardened planes on his face, Warrick was more of a big teddy bear.
She glanced at Corey. “Why did you come?”
He smiled, shoving his hands in his pockets. “It’d be nice if you said hi first before you try to send me away again.”
“I did say hi.” She frowned at him. “Answer the question.” Her voice rang clearly across the lake.
He studied her for a long moment and tilted his head slightly. “I came to help.”
She crossed her arms, her fingers tapping aimlessly on her coffee mug. “What do you think you can do?”
He leaned forward. “You must have thought there’s something I could do, or you wouldn’t have contacted me in the first place. The fact that you got scared and ran means you really need me.”
“Nobody else has been able to help me.” She was surprised to hear how much bitterness was in her tone. “I don’t see that you can do anything different.”
“Come back to the cabin, and let’s talk,” he said quietly. “You don’t know what I can do because you don’t know who I am anymore.”
“And you don’t know what kind of trouble you might have just gotten yourself into,” she countered him. “For all you know, when we walk back to that cabin, somebody’ll be there with a gun.”
He gave her a smile and let her see his teeth. “Good,” he said in a low tone. “I hope that asshole is waiting for us.”
She stared at him for a long moment, and, for whatever reason, she believed him. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
Warrick said, “Take another few breaths, try to step back from the panic, and then you’ll be able to explain it that much easier.”
Standing where she was, she deliberately took several more deep inhales and then walked up the last bit of distance to Corey and Warrick. She reached out, shook Warrick’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
He enclosed her small hands in his huge ones. “Likewise.”
She glanced at Corey, flashed a smile and said, “Let’s head back to the cabin.” She led the way. She could hear them talking behind her. She slowed to walk beside them.
Warrick nudged Corey. “Wow. There’s history here.”
“You have no idea,” Corey said sadly. “But it was a long time ago.”
“Some things just never end. And some things end so damn fast you have no idea what hit you.”
“I heard about Sandra, dude. I’m really sorry about that.”
“It hurts,” Warrick said. “What do you do? Sandra made a decision, and it’s one that doesn’t include me in her life anymore.”
Listening to him, Angela was surprised. He looked like such a sweet and loving man that she couldn’t imagine anybody not wanting him. But then, just like her husband had been an asshole, there were women equally bad, and they didn’t always know or recognize the good in the people around them.
She stepped into the cabin, stoked the fire again and put the teakettle back on. She had almost no food. As they walked in, she announced, “I don’t have anything to feed you.”
“We didn’t come here to get fed,” Corey returned.
She cast him a glance. “Maybe not, but I’m starved.”
Warrick laughed, a deep rumble that eased up his chest in a way that made her look at him in surprise.
“That sounded like thunder.”
He grinned. “We stopped and picked up a bunch of sandwiches. Do you want one?”
She narrowed her gaze at him. “Yes, please.”
Warrick reached out, smacking Corey on the arm. “I’ll grab our bags.”
She frowned as soon as he left. “Your friend is taking a lot on himself. I didn’t invite you to stay.”
“If we feed you, we get to stay for a bit.” He sat down at the kitchen table. “Are you making tea or coffee?”
“There’s only instant coffee.” She glanced at the teakettle, then back at his face and broke out laughing. “You do know what that is?”
“I know what it is,” he snapped. “But it’s right up there with green beans as far as I’m concerned. They’re both poisons. Coffee should be brewed slow and hot and very, very strong.”
“You’ll deal with this or do without.” In saying that, she took out an extra cup, poured in some crystals, poured water over them, stirred it and walked across the room and placed it in front of him. “If you brought coffee, then you could make real coffee, but, in the meantime, that’s all I have to offer.”
Within minutes, Warrick came back inside, several bags in one hand, and what looked like food and a couple thermoses in the other.
Corey took the instant coffee to the sink and dumped it.
“Hey, I could have had that,” Warrick said.
Corey brought the cup back, reached for the thermoses and proceeded to pour Angela a cup. Then he rummaged in the cupboard for a second cup. All the while, he never said a word.
She realized how completely inhospitable she’d been. She was frustrated, angry and pissed off that somehow walking away from Corey the other day had brought him back into her world. Yet at the same time it was damn good to see him. She sat down at the table as Warrick handed her a sandwich.
“Eat. It’ll help put the grizzly bear back inside.”
She didn’t say a word but chowed down. But all food tasted like sawdust now. When she was finished, she sat for a long moment. “I’m sorry. I should be more thankful. I know you came with the best of intentions.”
“You have us for a few days, so deal with it,” Corey said.
She looked at him. “What do you think you can do in a couple days?”
“No idea. Maybe you should start talking to us, telling us exactly what the problem is.”
Bitterly she said, “Do you want the whole sordid story?”
He stared at her for a long moment, then inclined his head. “Yes, we do. We need all the details. But the bottom line is, is somebody trying to kill you?”
She took a deep breath and shrugged. “Maybe.”
Corey and Warrick exchanged hard glances and turned to look at her. “Start at the beginning.”
“I don’t really know where it all started.” She launched into a short description of her marriage, her son, her walking away and thinking Greg was okay with her leaving because he had this other woman and son, to finding out he had planned to never let her see her son again.
“The last time I saw Joshua was in the mall.” She took a moment to catch her breath, realizing tears were already pouring down her cheeks. “After that incident, things got bad. The threatening notes came almost every day. Greg would text and email. And the last one read I know where you live. Say your last goodbyes.”
“Well, that’s definitely a death threat.”
Warrick stepped in. “Did you tell the detectives about any of this?”
“I did. But I don’t know if anybody really gave a shit. I think they had labeled me as a neurotic mother. And quite possibly not a fit one, as Greg was implying.” She stared off in the distance. “I’d have given up my life so Joshua could have a good one, but not having his mother can’t be the best for him.”
“Every little boy should have a mother,” Corey said gently. “And I know you would be a good mother.”
She gave him a lopsided smile. “You always were a good cheerleader.”
He gave her a crooked smile. “Maybe. I’ve grown up a lot since then too.”
She nodded. “I almost didn’t recognize you at the coffee shop.”
“Well, you don’t look a day different,” he said. “A little more stressed. But then this is a pretty rough time for you.”
Warrick’s gaze went from one to the other.
She dropped her gaze, waiting to see if Corey would explain, but he didn’t. She figured he would tell Warrick later in private.
She said, “So I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. Somebody apparently is after me. I place the blame for that firmly on Greg’s shoulders. He’s doing everything he can to make it appear I’m an unfit mother so he gets to keep Joshua.”
“Do you have the name or any other contact information of this other woman?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t. Oh …” She reached up and touched her temple. “There could be another reason he might be trying to kill me.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m just too rattled and tired. I should have mentioned it first.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When I dropped Joshua off two weeks ago, the one and only time I actually took him to his father’s place, where we used to live, his dad was really angry. Greg said he’d be with us in a few minutes and went outside. He was basically yelling on the phone. On a table in his home office were a ton of photos. But they were pretty ugly. They looked like photos of people in various compromising positions. There were also a couple spreadsheets. I didn’t know what the hell it was all about. I quickly took pictures, and, no, I don’t know why I did that.” She looked up at the two men staring at her intently. “I didn’t think of them again until just over a week ago after I saw Joshua at the mall. Greg was surrounded by all these bodyguards, and no one would let me talk to Joshua. I was so upset that I seriously started to look at what I could do to get my son back.”
“And what do you think all those photos were?” Warrick asked.
She looked at him. “At a guess, I’d say blackmail. You have to understand that I thought my husband was a beautiful man. But really the facade was beautiful. Inside, he’s as rotten as any man I’ve ever met. He was probably blackmailing other people. The spreadsheets appeared to be payouts, but I don’t know for sure. I don’t understand most of that stuff. And I didn’t have time to look.”
“Where are those photos?” Corey asked urgently. “Do you still have them?”
She nodded. “I downloaded them and emailed them to myself.”
“Can you access them from here?”
She studied them both for a long moment. “If we have internet, I can. Otherwise …” She pulled out her phone and tossed it over to Corey, “The originals are still on there.”
*
Corey picked up her phone, quickly flipped through to the photos and brought them up. “It’s really hard to see them on here.”
She nodded. “They were hard to see anyway. But on the laptop we can at least blow them up.”
He lifted his gaze from her phone. “The only thing I have to question here is why you would take pictures of all of this.”
She winced. “Because I already had an inkling he might make life very difficult for me. It’s not that I wanted any money out of the divorce, but I did want my son. I was open to sharing visitation in many ways. But I wanted sole custody. I wanted to make sure my son was looked after.”
“But, as he is potentially blackmailing others, you were picking this up to blackmail him,” Warrick said.
She sat back and stared at him. “I hadn’t thought of that. I just wanted to protect myself,” she said. “To make sure Joshua would be okay.”
“Had he ever hurt your son? Is there any hint he would be anything other than a good father?” Warrick asked.
She shook her head. “Outside of being a disinterested yet controlling father, no. But he was already starting to make threats about how I would end up with nothing, including Joshua. And that Greg had all this evidence, saying, if I ever crossed the line, he would make sure I didn’t get custody.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know why I took those pictures. But the photos were all wrong themselves. Greg was up to something. And I just didn’t know where it was going. It was instinct that had me taking photos of it all.” She shrugged. “And maybe I’m a shitty person, but everything inside me said to make a copy.”
Both men nodded. Corey handed the cell phone to Warrick. “Can you see anything there?”
He glanced at her. “How is the internet here?”
“I just arrived last night, so I have no idea. I brought my laptop in, but I haven’t hooked it up.”
“Why don’t you bring it out then?”
“Are the pictures important?”
“Potentially. And, if the wrong person knows you made copies of those things, then you might be a whole lot easier to get rid of than to worry about what you might know.”
Corey watched the color drain from her face. He had seen divorce battles get really ugly, and custody battles were worse. It was interesting she’d actually chosen to take pictures of everything. It would have been his instinct too, if he had seen the photographs were incriminating. Because, if her husband was up to something really ugly, then that gave her leverage over anything he might try to do to her. It was something all his friends would’ve done.
He just hadn’t expected her to do it.
And he could see she was racked with guilt over it. He watched as she stood and walked into a small room.
“Interesting cabin.” Warrick looked up from the phone. “This is a perfect getaway for the summers.”
“I could actually live here all year round,” Corey said. “It’s a great step out of society.”
“And it’s her aunt’s?”
“Apparently. Bridget said it was. We haven’t asked her specifically.”
Just then Angela came back into the room, carrying a laptop. She opened the lid and hit the Power button.
“Your aunt doesn’t live here anymore?” Corey asked.
“She never lived here. It was her summer cabin. I don’t think they ever came up any later than October.” She took a seat and picked up her coffee. “When I needed to get out of town, I didn’t have any other place to go.”
“It’s a good thing you did leave town, considering the state your apartment’s in.”
“How bad is it?”
The two men exchanged a glance, then looked back at her. “Pretty bad. It will take hours to put everything away again, or it might be easier to get a Dumpster.”
She sighed. “And that’s not something I have money for.”
“When did you start doing website work?” Corey asked.
“I’ve always been into graphic design. I worked for a large company before I got married. Greg didn’t like me working. So I slowly wound down my work to spend more time with him, thinking that, you know, it might be what I was supposed to do in my new future. I was going to be a housewife. And, when I found myself suddenly separated and cut off from Greg’s accounts, I had to come up with a way to pay the bills.”
“Do you not have any money?”
“No. We had joint bank accounts. Next thing I knew, they were emptied. And what little money I had saved went to the first two lawyers to fight for Joshua. The trouble was, that got very expensive very fast.”
“Have you had any meetings over the custody yet?”
“Greg’s speaking to somebody next week. He wants to force me to have a mental evaluation to confirm that I’m an unfit mother,” she said bitterly. “I’ve talked to many medical doctors myself. But nobody so far was willing to take my side.”
“Interesting tactic.”
“Why? If I’m an unfit mother, he gets to cut me out of Joshua’s life.”
“Your husband doesn’t like to share, I gather?”
She was busy clicking on the laptop. But at his words, she lifted her head, looked at him in surprise and said, “No, he doesn’t. Why?”
“Joshua.”
She nodded slowly and sat back. “It never occurred to me that he would be like this. I figured he’d be happy to let us go. Instead he went the opposite direction and is making sure I don’t get anything.”
“We often only really understand what’s inside a person when something like this happens. Divorce doesn’t bring out the best in any of us. But, if he’s become violent or is doing something illegal, that’s a different story. There’s no reason you can’t both have access to Joshua. And, if Greg’s pulling any kind of stunt over that, then that’s something the law should be able to sort out.”
“Only if you have money,” she exclaimed. “If I don’t have that, then I’m up against his lawyers, and there’s just no way to fight them.”
“Why do you think he wants Joshua? Is it really because he doesn’t want to share, or do you think he has some other reasons?”
“I think he wants his son solely so I can’t have him. I think he wants his girlfriend to be his new wife, and then he’ll have two sons. His second son was born around the same time as Joshua. Only I was the idiot who didn’t know.” She added this last bit with enough bitterness for both Corey and Warrick to stare at her. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he ditched the other mother as well.”
“You have her name or contact information?”
“You asked me that already.” She shook her head. “I just know her name is Julia. Julia Webber. Her son’s name is Daniel.”
Corey brought out a pad of paper and quickly jotted down the information. “Have you heard of any problems between Greg and Julia?”
“I just found out about the other woman two weeks ago, when I left and then Greg kicked me out. So, no, but then Greg doesn’t talk to me.”
“What about your son? Did he mention anything about meeting them or what it was like being around Daniel and his mother?”
“He was thrilled to have a brother. He was thrilled they got to play,” she admitted. “But I don’t know how much is real and how much isn’t real. He’s only six. And of course he’s dazzled by all the good things that happen when he’s there.”
“Versus being with Mom who doesn’t have the money to take him out and buy him stuff?”
She nodded.
Warrick pointed toward the laptop. “Can you see if you have internet access here please?” He handed the phone back to Corey. “I’ll be setting up on that little coffee table over there.” He nodded behind them. Pushing his chair back, Warrick stood, grabbed one of the bags he’d carried in and brought out a laptop.
Corey knew what Warrick was doing, just not exactly how he would do it. But then that was why Corey had brought an IT guy. Between the two of them fussing on the laptops, Corey felt useless. He went out on the deck to take a closer look at the surroundings, the neighborhood and security—if there was any in the place. He applauded her parking around back.
When he’d first arrived, he’d had no idea if she was here. As he went around the cabin, he’d seen her car. But, by that time, he’d already caught sight of her down on the dock. Even then, he was still trying to fit this current woman, who seemed to have nothing but trouble in her life, with the woman who had left him all those years ago. Everything had been sweet and simple for her back then. Until the miscarriage.
He wondered if that had started the difficulties for her or if this was new.
He wandered around, checking out the hiding places anybody skulking around could use, what he could see across the lake and whether anybody there could see them.
It was very much country living. A lot of trees on a hillside, a nice gradual descent to the lake. But the cabin was hidden from most of the neighbors. Although there were open areas where he could see across the lake to the other properties, those were a long way away. A high-powered rifle with a scope could definitely make things more visible.
Warrick called out, “Corey, come here for a sec.”
He wandered back inside to see Warrick sitting on the couch near the coffee table, laptop open, with a couple other gizmos on the side that Corey recognized as boosters. He sat down beside Warrick. “What did you find?”
“I downloaded the images off her phone.”
Corey sat down and watched as Warrick brought up the images one by one. “Wow. These could be damaging.” One was of two men in a sexual clench. Another was of a man and a woman in a similar clench. Another was of a man talking to somebody, handing a packet of something across. “I wonder where the hell Greg got these photos.”
“He could have taken them himself. Or paid for them. I don’t know,” Angela said from the kitchen table. “He had a lot of strange people through the house. Less after I moved in and Joshua was born. When I asked him about it, he said it was out of consideration for us.” She raised her head. “But then I realized he just used the home office more. So people came in and out of his office but never entered the main house. He had glass doors leading outside, which were on the side of the house closest to the driveway.”
“So people could drive up, stop in to see him and leave, and you’d never know?” Warrick asked.
She nodded. “And it happened all the time, all hours of the day and night.”
The two men looked at each other, then Corey said, “I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Did you share a bedroom?”
She lifted her gaze, locked onto his and in a shaky voice answered, “For the first few years, yes. He moved out about a year and a half before we split up.”
“And is that when the difficulty started?”
She shrugged. “No. He had logical reasons, all kinds of them.” She snorted. “Actually the end was well before that. Don’t forget Daniel is only a few weeks older than Joshua, so Greg obviously had an affair with this other woman at the same time he was married to me.” She leaned back and raised both hands, palms up. “And, if he’s got two, maybe he has three or four women. I don’t know.” She ran her hands through her hair. “I don’t care about that anymore. I just want my son back.”
Corey wasn’t sure what to think. But of course it happened. He nodded silently, brought out his notepad again and started taking notes. “Do you remember what day you took these?”
“It’s on my phone. All the images are dated. I don’t know if it’s got a time stamp or not, but it should have a date stamp.”
Warrick pulled up the images and pointed out the time and date stamps on the bottom. “Any idea how long they had been in his office?”
“No, because I had just arrived. I was dropping Joshua off, but my son was upset I was leaving, so I was still there when Greg got off the phone.”
“Why did you go to his office to drop Joshua off? Why not just at the front door?”
“Because that’s where Greg lived. The office was his room. But that day he wasn’t there, he was pacing in the yard.”
“Why didn’t you see him when you drove in?”
“I parked on the street and took the walkway up to the front door. When I rang the bell and knocked, nobody answered. I knew he was expecting us, so I opened the door and walked in.” She gave a wry smile. “It was the last time I was allowed to have Joshua with me. Greg kept him that day and ever after. It was the last time I was allowed inside his house too.”
“And the driveway, where is that in relationship to the front door?”
“It wraps around the side of the house. I could see him when he paced in front of the glass doors to his office, so I know he didn’t see me take the pictures.” She stopped for a long moment, thinking. “It sounds like you’re accusing me of something.”
“I’m not. I want to make sure we have your story straight, in case things blow up, and all of this has to go to the police. The minute there is any confusion, they start tearing apart your statements, and then they start looking for more conflicting statements.”
She nodded, but he could see her shoulders slump.
Corey added, “It’s only going to the police if there’s a bigger issue. They already know about the death threats and that your place was vandalized. I’m not sure what we’ll do with these photographs yet.”
“I didn’t recognize anybody in the pictures, but the sexual nature worried me.”
“It’s not the sexual nature that worries me,” Warrick said quietly. “Several of these are high-profile businessmen, and some are in politics.”
She gasped. “So they are being blackmailed?”
“They are images somebody might potentially pay money to stop from surfacing,” Corey corrected. “But we don’t know yet if Greg was actually blackmailing anyone. For all we know, he could have come across this packet in the street and had spread it out, figuring out what to do with it.”
“Damn. So there is a chance he’s still a good guy?”
Corey snorted. “There’s a chance, but it’s mighty slim. I’d say the chances are much better he was putting the screws to somebody who was refusing to pay. But again it’s all conjecture. We need more information, a lot more.”