Page 17 of The Getaway

“Well, I’m stressed and preoccupied. Doesn’t that matter to you?” she demanded.

“Are you ever not stressed and preoccupied?” he asked. “If it’s not about the drive out here, then it’s dust in Kasie’s cabin or the weather or the new clients and now these stupid notes. This is a vacation, Suzy. You’re supposed to be relaxing!”

The dog continued to yap, her little nails clipping against the wood surface of the bench.

“Well, someone is making it pretty difficult to do that!” Suzy snapped back.

“Wintour, shut up!” Sean shouted, red in the face.

“Don’t you tell her to shut up!” Suzy snatched Wintour up and held her. She instantly stopped barking. Sean hung his head, rubbing his forehead with his thumb and pointer finger.

“I’ll talk to him, okay?” he said in a much calmer voice. “I’ll find out who wrote this and whether there’s any truth to any of it. Just not right now.”

“But don’t you know?” Suzy asked, her whole body trembling in time with Wintour’s. Was Lincoln trying to destroy them? Was he going to ruin Sean’s life as retribution for the blackmail? She was such an idiot. She was not cut out for this kind of game, and she’d known that going in. But the opportunity had been too good to pass up. And she’d needed the money. If Sean ever found out how much she’d actually sunk into the Nantucket house, he’d divorce her in a blink. “Have you done anything that could land you in jail, Sean?”

“I can’t believe you’d even ask me that,” he said, looking away, pushing his hands into his pockets. “No. I haven’t. You know I’m not a criminal, Suzy. Whatever this is, it’s not true.”

I’m a criminal, she thought and was almost on the verge of saying it out loud. What would it be like to just say it? To blurt it out and have it not be a secret anymore? I’m blackmailing your best friend.

The tightness in her chest coiled tighter. “But is he going to replace you? With who?”

“Damned if I know,” Sean said. “But if Lincoln thinks he can run that business without me, he’s sorely mistaken. He’d already be in jail if not for me.”

Suzy blinked. What the heck did that mean?

“There you are!” Juliet appeared at the door, her eyes bloodshot. “Suzy. We need to talk.” Wintour barked once.

“Are you breaking up with her?” Sean joked, clearly trying to lighten the mood.

“Now,” Juliet said sharply. And then, perhaps hearing her tone, added, “Please?”

“All righty then.” Sean took the note back from Suzy and tucked it into his pocket. Juliet’s gaze followed the envelope’s path like a hawk following a mouse. “I was just leaving.”

“What is it?” Suzy asked the moment he was gone. “What’s wrong?”

Juliet tossed her note down on the table. Suzy looked at it, and her vision momentarily hazed over.

Lincoln did a paternity test on the sly. Beckham is his baby.

“Whoever wrote these knows,” Juliet said, pale as the clouds outside the window. “How do they know, Suzy?”

The tightness in Suzy’s chest pulsed.

“I didn’t tell anyone. I swear.”

Juliet’s face was like stone. Suzy had never seen her so rigid. So suspicious.

“I swear on the life of my children, Juliet, I haven’t told a soul.”

“Then how? How could someone have written this?” Juliet demanded, her eyes going watery.

“I don’t know.”

Suzy took a breath. All signs pointed back to Lincoln again. He was the only person who knew that he’d had sex with Juliet. And the only person who knew that Suzy knew.

Closing her eyes against another wave of dread, Suzy sat on one of the hard chairs, still hugging Wintour to her chest. That day back in March when she’d called up Lincoln and said she was in the city on business and asked if he could meet for a drink was a day she would never forget. It had been gray and windy, ice pelting from the sky as she yanked open the door to the posh Madison Avenue bar to meet him. She’d felt like a drowned rat, but he had—of course—been perfectly unruffled as he sat at the bar, chatting with the square-jawed bartender. He’d greeted her with a cheek kiss and a warm, unsuspecting hug and asked, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

And she, unable to hold her nerve for a second longer—worried that if she didn’t get right to it, she’d chicken out—had said, “I know about you and Juliet. And I’m willing to keep it a secret if you help me out of a bind.”