Chapter 26
26
One minute Ani had been telling John off—he’d promised to delete her from his “find my friends” app—the next she was staring down at him on the floor, pinned under Gil’s knee like a squished cockroach.
And God help her, it felt good to see him in that humiliating position. It probably wasn’t as humiliating as catching your husband cheating on you with your fertility doctor. And yet, it satisfied some primal part of her she’d barely known existed.
But she’d have to address that part later.
“Gil, this is my ex-husband, John Walsh. You can let him up.”
Before Gil’s face shut down into blankness, she caught shock, embarrassment, and fear in quick succession. Fear? Why would he be afraid of John? Ani had never seen anyone move so quickly. Gil had been a blur of quiet, efficient movement as he’d burst into the room and disabled John. It was…well, quite frankly, it was hot.
Gil eased his knee off John’s back and allowed him to sit up. He did so, rubbing his shoulder. “I should sue,” he grumbled.
“This is my hotel room, and I didn’t invite you in here.” Gil straightened up and offered John a hand to do the same.
Although it must have galled John, he grudgingly accepted the help. “Who are you?” he asked as he climbed back to his feet.
Ani decided it was time to assert some control over the situation. “This is Gil McGowan. We’re…working together.” She couldn’t quite come up with the right way to describe their current situation. And she didn’t want John knowing anything about their personal relationship.
“In a hotel room?” John surveyed their surroundings. “You could at least hook up with someone who can afford a better hotel than this.”
Ani set her teeth, determined not to let John goad her. “It’s not your business where I stay and you can keep your comments to yourself.”
She turned to Gil, who was busy righting the bag of groceries he’d dropped. She noticed a carton of blueberries and a box of condoms. Picturing him in the supermarket perusing the fruit section, her heart melted a little. Oh Gil. Would he want anything to do with her after this embarrassing drama? “John still has me on his ‘find my friends.’ He was supposed to delete me.”
Gil simply nodded at the explanation and tucked his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans. An alert stance, ready for anything. His expression didn’t give her any clues about what he was thinking.
She let out a long breath and turned back to John. “And he still hasn’t told me why he came all this way instead of texting or calling.”
“Because…I…I…” John shot Gil a resentful glance.
Ani could see why he might feel intimidated. Seeing Gil and John side by side was eye-opening. She wouldn’t be surprised if John recommitted to that gym membership when he got home. John had played football in high school, but since then his exercise was mostly golf and playing the field. He looked like what he was—a good-looking, weak man who blamed all his bad behavior on other people.
“Can we talk in private?” he finally asked Ani.
“We have nothing to talk about. We’re divorced. It’s finalized, you signed, I signed, we’re done.”
He stole another glance at Gil, who folded his arms across his chest, raising the intimidation factor one more tick. “Are you with him now?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“That’s not a ‘no.’”
Ani lost patience. It had taken her a few years to wrap her mind and heart around the fact that their marriage wasn’t working. Once she had, she’d taken a painful, honest look at why it had taken her that long. Pride…no one wanted to admit they’d made a mistake. Devotion…she’d taken her marriage vows very seriously. But also, insecurity. Who besides John would ever want a limping, scarred woman like her?
He’d always hinted that he’d done her a favor by choosing her. That was pure manipulation, and it had worked. But not anymore.
Now, looking at him, she felt suddenly ten feet tall.
“I will do whatever I want with Gil, whenever I want. And believe me, I want a lot. You have three minutes to tell me why you’re here, then I’m going to call the…” No, better not call the police. She thought about the state trooper flying to Fire Peak Lodge, and didn’t want to take a chance. “I’ll kindly request Gil to throw you out of here,” she said instead.
“What is he, your bodyguard?”
“That’s right.” Gil stepped forward. “She said three minutes. Better get talking.”
John looked so outraged that Ani almost laughed. For once, she wasn’t putting his sensitivities first. “I came a long way to see you Ani. You’re really going to treat me like this?”
Playing the victim. She knew this move. For a moment, it worked. From Indiana to Fairbanks, Alaska was quite a trek. Then she reminded herself that he hadn’t asked her if he could come, and that he’d probably flirted with multiple flight attendants along the way.
“Apparently so.” She folded her arms across her chest, mirroring Gil’s posture. The two of them probably looked like a parody rap album cover. “Two minutes thirty seconds.”
“Someone broke into our house,” he blurted. “I got notified by the security system.”
Hadn’t he deleted his name from any of the apps?
“It’s just an empty house. Probably kids looking for a place to party. You should call the realtor and have her change the code on the lock.”
“It wasn’t kids. I drove over to check it out, and I saw two men wearing black masks coming out.”
Ani shrugged, not wanting John to see how that news affected her. “Maybe they were worried about Covid, or maybe they have allergies.”
“Masks are very helpful for anyone with allergies,” Gil added. “Cuts down on pollen intake.”
John ignored Gil and focused on Ani. “They also had guns, or at least one of them did. I saw it on his belt. I got a little freaked out. I was parked in front, but I was afraid they’d see me so I scooted down. Remember the old lady from next door, with the Pekinese obsession?”
“Mrs. Bigelow,” Ani said impatiently. How could John never remember her name? Did women simply cease to exist for him once they hit fifty? “What about her?”
“She was walking her dog, and she stopped to talk to them. I overheard them ask about you.”
Gil cleared his throat. “So if I’m getting this straight, you were hiding in your car while the little old lady interrogated the suspects?”
Ani pressed her lips together to keep from laughing at the look on John’s face. “Her name is Mrs. Bigelow,” she corrected him.
“My bad. Mrs. Bigelow. What did they say, exactly?” Gil pinned John with a hard stare that expected—demanded—answers.
And got them.
“She said that Ani didn’t live there anymore, and that she didn’t know where you were.”
“Did you take a photo of these men?” Gil asked. “Note any distinguishing features, age, race, that kind of thing?”
John’s face reddened to a shade of fuchsia rarely seen in nature.
What Ani wouldn’t give for a recording of this entire encounter. She wanted to relive it moment by delicious moment, some time when it wasn’t moving so fast and there wasn’t so much at stake.
“They were just guys.” He looked at the floor, then up again, as if he was struggling with himself. “I saw their license plate, it looked weird. I described it to this cop I play racquetball with. He said those are diplomatic plates. What’s a car with diplomatic plates doing in Barlow, Indiana, right? That’s when I got really freaked out. I was going to text you, but you know, the cloud and all. It seemed like it might not be safe.”
“So you came all this way to warn me about them?”
“Yes. Be careful, Ani. Whatever you’re up to, you should stop.” He gave her that blue-eyed smile that had won her heart in high school. “We might be divorced, but I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Seriously, did he really think she was going to fall at his feet as if she was sixteen again? “There’s something you need from me, isn’t there?”
John didn’t miss a beat, now that she was onto him. “I need your signature on something too. Figured I’d kill two birds with one stone.”
“What could you possibly need it for? We’ve signed all our paperwork.”
“It’s…personal.” He shot a sidelong glance at Gil’s stony face. Ani gave Gil a nod, and he crossed to the bathroom, from where they heard water running a moment later.
John lowered his voice. “I need to sell the timeshare in Galveston, and I can’t without your signature.”
“You couldn’t send me a Docusign?”
“I was going to, but then those guys showed up at our old house and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
He sounded sincere enough. He wasn’t a terrible person, after all, just weak and disloyal.
She lifted her chin. “Fine.”
It would put yet another period on that time in her life. He pulled the document from an elegant maroon planner adorned with his initials in gold. She’d bought it for him when he got promoted to manager of his dealership.
Then he handed her a pen, and her heart stuttered. It was her very favorite pen, the one she’d used to sign their marriage license—a slim silver Mont Blanc with a tiny sparkling crystal embedded on the clicker.
“You can keep the pen,” he told her. “I found it in a box of board games, from the last time we played Clue. Thought you might want it back.”
She reached for it eagerly, but before she could take it from him, Gil stepped back into the room. “Hang on a hot second,” he growled.
“No, it’s fine,” Ani told him, still reaching for the pen. “He just needs a signature.”
Gil plucked the pen from John’s grasp. “Let me take a look at that first.”
“It’s a pen, dude. What’s your malfunction?”
Paranoia? thought Ani. Had Gil crossed a line from justified caution into delusion? But she held her tongue, not wanting to give John any ground to criticize Gil.
She watched as Gil took apart the pen. When the thing was in pieces, he held up a device so tiny, it fit on the tip of his finger. “Tracker.”
Shock ran through her, from head to toes. So that was why John had flown all the way here—to put a tracker on her.
“I thought his story made no sense,” Gil explained with a shrug. “I’m sure Mrs. Bigelow is a courageous woman, but no one stops to talk to armed, masked men wearing black.” He turned to John. “They caught you, didn’t they? They sent you here.”
John took a step backwards, looking from Ani to Gil, then to the door. Gil moved to block his path to the exit.
“John?” Ani asked, hearing the hurt in her voice. “Is that true?”
John’s jaw slid back and forth. She recognized that look; it meant he was caught. She’d seen it more times than she wanted to admit.
“I just wanted to warn you,” he muttered. “You’re getting into some dangerous territory. Armed men came to the fucking house because of you. They got in my car and asked me a million questions about you.”
“Like what?” Gil asked.
“I don’t know. Where she works, her finances, all kinds of shit. What is going on, Ani?”
“Right now, you’re talking to me,” said Gil quietly. At that moment, Ani could have cried from sheer gratitude that she didn’t have to try to speak words. Who knew what would come out? “What did you tell them?”
“That we’re divorced and I don’t know what’s going on with Ani. I swear.”
“And the tracker?” Gil clearly wasn’t going to let him off the hook.
John hung his head, finally looking as ashamed as he ought to. “They paid me to give it to her.”
Gil took a quick step toward him. “So you led them here? For money?”
John scuttled away from him, like a crab on the run. “They said they just wanted to know where she was. They don’t want to hurt her. They said she might be working with a competitor or something like that. They want her to stop. That’s the message. Stop. I’m sorry, but do you know how expensive it is to get divorced? Maybe you should’ve let me take the house, Ani.”
Finally, finally , she managed to speak. “Just go, John. Go away.”
Gil took another menacing step in his direction.
“Back off, bodyguard.” John bent to pick up the travel bag he’d dropped when he first showed up. “Going for brawn, not brains this time, Ani?”
She didn’t answer, refusing to take his bait. John and his white denim jacket and his slip-on sneakers headed for the door. He turned back for one last word, one that held no mockery, just deadly serious warning. “Stay safe, Ani. Be careful. I actually want you to be okay, whether you believe me or not. You still mean a lot to me.”
The door clicked shut behind him. So many emotions ran through her that she couldn’t make sense of them all. She did what any grown woman would do after an encounter with their ex. She reached for the nearest couch pillow, flung it at the door with all her might, then burst into tears.