Page 27 of Entwined With You

“This I’ve got to see. What’s the URL?”

I shake my head, “It’s long gone. We used the New York Times classifieds as a backup. We’d check every week, to make sure one of us hadn’t left a message for the other.”

“None of this surprises me,” he says.

“No?”

“Sabrina was one of the cleverest women I’ve ever known. I imagine you are, too. It was a good plan you two put together.”

I am uncomfortably pleased by the fact that he’s just given me that kind of praise. Since I don’t know what to say, I continue with my story. “We planned out our aliases beforehand. Samantha’s not my real name.”

“And Sabrina wasn’t hers. I know. It was Stacy.”

I nod. And then without thinking about it, I add, “After you two met, that seemed like all she talked about on our calls. I thought she was an idiot for falling so hard but she swore you were perfection on a stick.”

“I thought the same about her.”

“I guess I was right, though. About the idiot part.” I look at him hard, watching every tiny movement in his face.

“I didn’t kill her.”

I see nothing to suggest that he’s lying, and I know—or I used to know—all of his tells. So does that mean he’s telling the truth? Or that he’s a more experienced con?

“You said you talked to her before the heist. But it was on a Tuesday. Didn’t you talk on Wednesdays?”

“Usually. But we’d text a code if we needed to talk off the regular schedule. She did, and so I called. She told me everything. She said her share would be huge and you guys were going to leave the country and get married. That you were probably going to be gone for a long time, and you were going to be living legit. She said you might stay abroad forever.”

Once again, I watch his face. He’s nodding slowly and his eyes are glistening. I look away, not wanting to feel sympathy for him, but at the same time wanting everything I think I know to be wrong.

I don’t want him to have killed me. I want the man I loved. I want to be able to tell him it’s me.

But I’m also not willing to be stupid about it. I have to know the truth before he learns that I’ve been lying.

“She told me she wanted to go to France.”

He nods. “I wanted the UK. English. But she said France would be an adventure, and we’d learn the language. I said her adventure sounded more like a pain in the ass.” A hint of a smile touches his lips. “It wasn’t a fight, but I think it was our first moment of adult compromise.”

“What did you decide?”

“London. But frequent trips to France. And classes in French. And once we were both reasonably fluent, we’d move.” He smiles at the memory. “Actually, that was our first real argument, too. And it was stupid, really. If she hadn’t come up with the London-then-Paris plan, I would have eventually caved. I just wanted her. Hell, I’d have agreed to live in the Sahara so long as she was with me.

Every word is heavy with grief, and though I try to hold tight to my anger, I have to admit that I believe him. Or, at least, I want to believe him.

“I still think it’s so weird that she never told me about you,” he says. “ We told each other everything.”

“No, you didn’t.”

He swipes his hand, indicating me. “Yeah. I realize that now.”

“I mean there was other stuff.”

His brow furrows. “What other stuff?”

“Honestly, I only know of one thing.”

“What?”

“The threat.”