Page 5 of Destroyed With You

“How long?” Winston had to clear his throat in order to continue. “Your people have had her under surveillance. Tell me how long you’ve known that she’s alive. And then tell me why the fuck you didn’t bring me in on this earlier.”

“Watch.”

“Dammit, Anderson, I–”

“That’s an order, Starr. Watch the damn screen.”

Winston watched as she entered an office building, realizing then that the footage was taken by a drone. It rose, the aspect ratio widening to take in the full Seattle skyline as it ascended higher and higher, finally hovering across the street, but level with the roof-line of the building she’d entered. The image zoomed in, focusing on a roof access shed with a closed metal door.

A few moments later, the door opened and a man stepped out. He surveyed the roof, frowned, then checked his watch.

Soon, the door opened again. At first, no one emerged, but Winston could see that the shadowy figure in the doorway was a woman. His gut constricted, and when she stepped onto the gravel and tar rooftop, he realized that he’d stopped breathing.

The man turned to her, his arms extended in greeting as he took a step toward her. Her mouth curved into a smile so familiar it made his heart ache. His body tightened with an unfamiliar longing, then recoiled when she lifted her hand to reveal the gun that had been concealed in the folds of her skirt.

She aimed. She fired.

And then his Linda turned her back on the body, slipped through the doorway, and disappeared from sight.

Chapter Two

“No,” Winston said, feeling sick. He shook his head, hating the weakness inside him that wished he could un-see what he’d just watched. “It’s a mistake. Whatever we’re looking at, it’s not what it seems.”

“Isn’t it?”

Fury cut through Winston as he wrenched his head away from the now-dark screen to focus on Seagrave. “Why the hell did you drag me here? Haven’t I been punished enough? My wife died—died—in a goddamn explosion. You know what I went through, damn you. You saw my pain, and you fucking sympathized. You were my friend. And now you show me this? Why? To rip me up all over again?”

“I’m showing you because you have a right to see it. And when the shock passes, you might even thank me for bringing you the truth.”

Winston huffed. “I wouldn’t bet the ranch.” He pushed himself out of the chair, wanting nothing more than to get out of this room and away from the nightmare playing out around him. The truth yawning before him like a dark abyss, threatening to suck him down, destroying the last, tattered remnants of joy he’d been clinging to for years.

But there wasn’t any place to go. Nowhere to which he could escape. Not really.

He sank back into his chair. “Her memory is all I have left. Why the hell do you want to rip that away from me?”

Seagrave’s shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry. The fact is that I need you on this. And I thought—well, I thought you’d rather curse the truth than curl up with a lie.”

For the first time in over a decade, Winston wished he hadn’t given up smoking. “Yeah, well, I guess you thought wrong.”

“I suppose I did.” Seagrave rolled toward the door. Pressing a button on the remote so that it began to swing open. “Take as long as you need. You know the way out.”

Winston kept his eyes on the floor, not looking up until he heard the door click shut behind his friend. Only then did he let the tears that had been clogging his throat flow free. It couldn’t be true. How the hell could it possibly be true?

Even now, he could remember the way she felt in his arms. Their long, intimate conversations. The trust they shared. The love that had filled them.

If all that was a lie, then he didn’t know himself, much less his wife. He wouldn’t believe that. Couldn’t believe it. Because if it were true, then the best years of his life had been nothing but a charade. A mockery of his former happiness.

“It’s not real,” he told himself. “It can’t be.”

But of course it could. He might be trapped beneath a pain so intense he would just as soon die than work through it, but that didn’t mean he was blind. Of course it could be true. He’d seen stranger things during his tenure at the SOC. And God knows he’d seen crueler women.

But his Linda? Even if it was her, how could she have walked away from him like that? She’d loved him with the same intensity that he’d loved her.

Hadn’t she?

He’d never once doubted that reality, and he didn’t want to now. It was as if he’d suddenly learned that gravity wasn’t real, and he’d been stuck to the earth with glue all these years. It didn’t feel right contemplating the possibility that she’d been playing a role. Acting a part. And yet there she was. It was her on that video—there was no doubt in his mind. And while it might be nice to think she had an identical twin or been cloned in some evil genius’s laboratory, this was reality, not a Netflix series.

His wife—Linda Marie North Starr—had just killed a man in cold blood. He’d seen it, and as much as he wished he could punch Seagrave in the face and erase the whole bloody evening, he couldn’t deny that basic reality. It wasn’t in his nature to hide from pain or bad news, no matter how much he might want to. He had to face the truth head-on. He knew three things for certain—Linda’s DNA had been recovered from the car, the body had been unrecognizable, and she’d worked for the city government of a town that was fraught with corruption.