“Just kidding. I know he’s your ex. And he’s not getting up anytime soon. He drank all the champagne.”
This was her life. You have kids with someone, and they’re coming along for the ride, no matter what. They’ll show up at work, on vacation, and eventually be taken hostage with you. You can’t just cut someone out of the photos and be done with them. If she and Markus made it out of this and stayed together, they were always going to have an entourage. Valentina, though—Gabby couldn’t complain. She only hoped Valentina hurried up.
Markus said, “A team of agents is on the way. You still have a chance to de-escalate this.”
Jasminetsk-tsked him. “Stop bluffing. It doesn’t suit you.” She turned to Gabby and said, “Guess what? Today, we’re going to play Sophie’s Choice. You get to pick one man.”
That was easy. Markus. “I already did. The divorce is final.”
Jasmine laughed. “I was kidding, I’ll have to tell Phil how quickly you were ready to throw him to the sharks, though.”
“Is this about the article Amanda wrote?”
Surprise flashed across Jasmine’s face. “How’d you know about that?” She narrowed her eyes. “Naomi?”
“No.”
“You can tell the truth. Naomi chose her sides when she didn’t snap up your stupid immunity deal. She’s dead to me.”
Yikes. “Cut her some slack, Jasmine. It kind of makes sense that she’d want to think about it before she abandoned everything.” Why was Gabby arguing for them to stay together?
“Doesn’t matter now. But yeah, Amanda came out here a couple times. I thought she was joining, and then last month, I got that trash in my inbox. She was giving me the chance to comment before she published. The woman was a snake in the grass.” Before Gabby said anything, Jasmine said, “I commented all right.”
“Did you kill her?” Markus asked.
Jasmine cocked her head. “Amanda wrote that ‘Inner-G has done everything but murder.’ It was practically a dare.” She stood up from the captain’s chair, walked to the railing, and gazed out over the water. It was a starless night. Fog was rolling in and undoubtedly frizzing Gabby’s hair.
“What did she expect me to do, go to prison?” Jasmine said, still looking out to sea. “It isn’t hard to hire a hitman if you have enough money.”
This was the problem with starting a Substack instead of working for a bigger newspaper. No one probably even knew she’d sent the article to Inner-G for comment. No one else knew the article existed.
“How does Sheridan come into it?”
Jasmine laughed, and the wind whipped her hair. It whipped Gabby’s hair too, right into her face, but her hands were tied, so she couldn’t fix it. Jasmine kept giving her evil villain speech, while Gabby could barely see through a curtain of red.
“I really need to get going, but someone needs to appreciate this with me, and now that I’ve met your ex, I think you’re just the woman.”
“Was she really a gift?” Gabby asked.
“Yes, which was bonkers because I wasn’t even a fan. That dummy just doesn’t pay attention. I mean, I was freaking out about her when G brought her down here, but only because I’d murdered Amanda and thought she might know something.”
Gabby laughed. “I don’t think she knows.”
“Well, now I know that.” With a flippant smile, she said, “Hindsight.”
Gabby scanned the horizon for any sign of Valentina. Now would be a great time for a rescue.
“So basically, if my man hadn’t given me the most epically stupid gift of all time, we wouldn’t be in this situation.” Jasmine shook her head.
There was an art to gift-giving. Besides having good taste, you had to know the person, you had to have history with them. You had to pay attention. Sometimes, no gift was better than a bad one.
The taser on her leg—now that had been a great gift, if only she could get to it.
“I didn’t want a reading,” Jasmine said. “Especially from her. Sheridan’s really not much of a psychic. I got all worked up for nothing about her.”
“She’s just stressed. It’s hard to make a prediction when you’re stressed.” Plus, could you really make predictions about yourself? Gabby still believed in Sheridan and her uncommon sense.
“And the president?”
