Chapter 6 #4
Dell was dead.”
Nikki gasped and threw her manicured hands to her mouth. Her swimming eyes grew even larger. “Dead?” she whispered. “But I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen until—”
Tommy shushed her and pulled her into another hug. She sobbed into his chest, as if she had any right.
“Wait,” Dell said, and leaned in next to them. She stood close enough to see Tommy’s stubble had grown a fraction darker, and Nikki
had a thin trail of acne scars along her cheekbone.
“Supposed to happen?” she demanded. “Supposed to happen?! What the hell does that mean?” She was losing control of her body. If it was possible for the dead to explode from rage, she
was about to find out. She looked around for another object to throw and saw only the antique brass umbrella stand in the
corner. She charged over to it like the She-Hulk, ready to lift it like a trash can and smash her ex-fiancé over the head
with it, when Cole reached for her arm.
“Ms. Rodgers! You can’t. That will be too obvious.”
“I don’t care about obvious,” she seethed, and fought him off. “I will haunt him out of here if I have to.”
“Ms. Rodgers, please!” Cole pled. “This is why I warned you against eavesdropping!”
She stopped and turned to him, still in a fit of rage. “Eavesdropping? That’s what you’re concerned about right now? Not the fact we just heard my fiancé discussing my death as if it had been penciled
into the calendar?!” She growled and made another move for the umbrella stand. She got one hand on it before Cole lunged at
her again.
“You can’t!”
“Why not?” she said with a huff.
“Because. Alerting him to your presence could set off a catastrophic chain of events.”
“I think we are well past catastrophe here—”
“But you can’t be certain what he was talking about! Knowing more might help!” Cole cried, and threw himself between her and the umbrella stand. He held his hands up like he was begging her not to shoot. His face scrunched like she might have been about to hit him instead. “Please.”
Dell calmed at the pleading expression on his face. The energy needed to move an object drained out of her like a stopper
had been pulled. “What do you mean knowing more?”
Cole peeled open his eyes, which he had pinched shut. He straightened himself when he realized she was no longer a threat.
“I mean perhaps it would help to clarify the situation more.”
She narrowed her gaze at him. “But I thought you said no eavesdropping.”
His face briefly bent into a frown. “I did! But this is a pretty obvious wrong turn, don’t you think? So maybe it’s worth
exploring more.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You mean my wrong turn is being about to marry a cheating jerk?” She gestured at Tommy and Nikki,
back to holding each other amid the broken lamp. “Message received!” she shouted with her arms out. She dropped them with
a slap against her thighs. “Still dead though.”
Cole stroked his chin. “Yes, that doesn’t seem to have remedied the situation yet.”
Dell impatiently stared at him, waiting to see if he would offer an alternative solution. “Might it be something else?” he
asked.
“Something else like what?” Dell said with her hands on her hips.
Cole looked as though he didn’t want to say what he was thinking. “Well, there was what she said about supposed to happen.” He pointed at Nikki.
Dell recoiled at the memory even though its sting still lingered.
“You think that really means something? That they were somehow plotting behind my back?” Memories from the morning started piling together at the front of her brain faster than she could stop them.
What the reporters had said on the porch, Tommy’s hushed conversation with his mother—the fact Tommy had called his mother before he’d called 911.
“Oh my God,” she said out loud. She marched up to Tommy and screamed in his ear. “Were you going to kill me?”
“Ms. Rodgers!” Cole cried, and tried to calm her.
She shook him off once more. “No! I think this snake had some kind of plan! When we woke up this morning, he called his mom before anyone else. And then when she was here, they
were whispering about telling the right story to the police, and she was basically offering to cover up anything bad for him, and then—!” She cut off with a gasp and slapped
her hands over her mouth.
“What is it?” Cole asked.
Dell couldn’t believe the pieces snapping together before her, but there they were. “Our prenup,” she said numbly. “We never
signed it yesterday because I had to leave, and he was really adamant about signing it. And then this morning, his mom mentioned
we never signed it, but he said it doesn’t matter now anyway because he can’t marry me if I’m dead.” She slapped her hands
over her mouth with another gasp. She turned to Cole to find him frowning.
“I don’t understand. How would a prenuptial agreement have benefitted him? I believe it’s you who is bringing more financial resources to the partnership?”
“There is no more partnership,” she spat like she had a kernel in her teeth.
“But yes, the prenup protected me more than him—unless.” She smacked her hand to her forehead when the memory came back to her.
Her phone call with her brothers the previous morning.
They’d asked if she’d had the family lawyer review the final changes, and she’d lied to them, saying she had.
“There must be something else in there. Something I wasn’t paying attention to. ”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but there’s a copy of it in his lawyer’s office downtown.” She nodded at Tommy.
“Well, perhaps that should be our next step,” Cole said.