“Good. Let me know if you get cold. I don’t want you getting sick again.”
“It was a stomach bug, not the flu.”
“Still.” He opened the door for her and she looked up with a smile that tugged at his heart.
She put her hands on his chest. “I love that you’re concerned for me. Thank you.”
She said it like she wasn’t accustomed to people caring, but he knew that wasn’t true because she had Maddy and Jace. Still, he knew what it was like to feel alone in spite of the people surrounding you. He’d never felt fully French or fully American, and it made for lonely times as he tried to figure out where he belonged.
“Of course I’m concerned,” he told her. Then he kissed her. No tongue, but a full press of his mouth against hers. It felt great to be able to do that. Right.
Her eyes widened as he pulled back. “Are you sure you don’t want to go back inside?” she asked.
He laughed. “Hell, no, I’m not sure. But we need food, Ang. And you need to get out before cabin fever makes you do something crazy.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know—ask me to teach you to cook?”
She snorted. “As if.” Then she hopped up in the Yukon and he shut the door and walked around to the driver’s side.
Colt backed out of the drive and started down the road.
“I don’t care that it’s gray out and looks like it might snow,” Angie said. “I love being outside again.”
“I thought you might.”
She sighed. “I love hanging with you Colt, though I would have preferred not to be sick. Please don’t think I’m ungrateful when I ask this—when can I go home again?”
“I’m not sure yet. A couple of days probably.”
He didn’t really know, but the only new development since yesterday was that Steve Gorky had left town with his wife, flying to Miami and the winter home they kept there. He’d golfed all afternoon and drank at the yacht club last night. His young wife shopped and lounged around the pool with her socialite friends, working on her tan. Basically, business as usual for the Gorkys.
Gorky’s grown sons were scattered from New York to Georgia, running Gorky Construction offices—and engaging in mafia-related activities, naturally. None had been seen in town recently.
Shaw and Sobol were still around, and Charles Martinelli hadn’t surfaced. Colt didn’t think he would.
Then there was Jenny Clark. Her death wasn’t suspicious enough for the police to think it was anything other than suicide. Whoever she’d been having sex with, he hadn’t come forward. Nobody’d expected he would.
Ian had gotten her phone records because of course he had. She’d had several calls from a number that turned out to be a burner phone. That was suspect, but really only pointed to the idea she might have been having an affair with a married man. Someone who wouldn’t want to use his own phone—and definitely wouldn’t come forward once she’d been found dead.
It was also a possible motive for suicide. Except she’d still been the one to erase files from the server—or her login had been compromised so someone else could do so—which made her sudden death very convenient for Gorky. She’d sent Angie a text message about wanting to talk.
Or had she? Someone else could have sent it using her phone. They might never know, but it hadn’t been the last time the phone was used. There’d been one call to a burner afterward, and then nothing.
Angie turned in her seat. “Everyone at Triple B is still shocked about Jenny. Do you know anything more about her death yet? Did she really commit suicide?”
Colt hesitated. “It looks that way, minette.”
“But why? That’s what I don’t understand.”
“Does anyone ever really know why someone kills themself?”
“No.” She sighed. “There was a girl in high school—Maddy knew her too. She was popular and everything, not the kind of person you’d think would want to kill herself. But she did. She stepped in front of a train. It was shocking. They had counselors come and talk to everyone in her class. That wasn’t us, but Maddy and I talked about it a lot. We both agreed that we’d never do something like that without telling the other one we were feeling that way.”
“And did you? Ever feel like that, I mean.”
She hugged herself. “No. And neither did Maddy. We had each other. I think that girl must not have had anyone, even though we thought she did. Her name was Christie Nelson. I’ll never forget it.” She let out a breath. “I wish Jenny had talked to someone. I still can’t believe she’d do that though. Her kids meant everything to her. She fought so hard to keep them.”
“You never know what someone’s breaking point is.” He made a decision. “She was having sex with someone, Ang. She took calls from someone we can’t identify, we’re assuming male based on the sexual activity, but it was a burner phone—untraceable. Which might suggest she was having an affair with a married man. She could have reached the end of her rope.”
“Okay. Wow. She never mentioned a man, but then we weren’t anything to each other except coworkers. She barely talked about Dwight and the divorce at work, though she sometimes did when it got bad. Even then she didn’t say much, just that he was pond scum and the judge had been insane the day he’d given Dwight shared custody.”
“Maybe she was trying to move on with this new guy. If he was married, it might have pushed her to the breaking point. Or someone could have forced her to take the pills that killed her. We don’t really know.”
Angie looked sad and a little shocked. “Is that possible?”
“It’s a theory. But we don’t know.”
“Poor Jen.” She touched his arm. “Thank you for telling me. I know you didn’t want to, not really, but I appreciate it.”
“I don’t want to tell you things when I don’t know
