Chapter Twelve #3
She’d bet it was the whole static thing.
Going back to the calendar, she saw when the appointments went from once a week to twice a week.
And there it was.
Her second appointment started up after Ridge and Lucian had been getting down and dirty on that other plane, and they’d come clean on something.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
How was she supposed to work this unless she literally told everyone her business?
Lucian’s business.
This put her in a really ugly spot, but she and Honor had a partnership that required they both be on the same page.
She had no choice.
“I have to tell you something.”
Honor stared at her.
Why didn’t she like the sound of that?
“What?”
She tried to find the best way to say it. Well, in this case, it was best to just do it. Hopefully, her partner wouldn’t go to a bad place with this, when she told her.
Like up in her business.
“You know how everyone thinks Lucian and Ridge are having an affair?”
She nodded, and then her eyes went huge.
“Oh, Bish.”
Was her partner about to confirm this?
Honor hated this kind of thing. She hated having to jump into people’s relationships. That always got messy.
“Please say that’s just gossip. Please say that you’re not going to confirm that.”
Yeah, she was.
Bishop dropped the bomb.
It was the second in a matter of minutes, too.
“In the static, they are. Here, they aren’t. The dates line up to when we both found out from them. It was when we were back from planning the wedding for Hailey and Bodhi in Utah.”
Bishop kept it as light on details as she could and didn’t say shit about this plane.
Why?
It literally just happened yesterday.
There was no way that Wynter knew about it. Ridge had lied to Lucian, and he hadn’t found out until right before Wynter’s death.
Honor stared at her and was now forced to be in that awkward place she hated to be.
Up in her friend’s personal business.
But still, Bishop kept talking.
Unfortunately.
“It’s not really an affair. We both knew about it. They told us BEFOREHAND. They asked permission in order to go deeper into the static to help solve the murders.”
Honor sighed.
Bishop was expecting the worst.
That was NOT what she got.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You know, with it? You’re not going to eat your gun, are you? I’m not going to have to beat your ass, Princess, to stop you from offing yourself, am I?” she asked.
Honestly, Bishop would have laughed if this wasn’t the worst possible scenario for them.
In the back of her head, she was thinking about one thing, and one thing alone.
Someone would have to tell Ridge.
The man, who was beating himself to a pulp out of guilt that he’d dropped the ball, was going to have to be informed about his wife’s infidelity.
“No! I’m good. I’m not jealous or upset. They came to us, and asked permission first. It wasn’t an affair.”
Honor was back to pacing again, and Bishop didn’t blame her.
Not.
At.
All.
When she stopped, she went there.
“And she didn’t like it, so she started sleeping with her therapist?” she asked. “Why didn’t she just tell her husband to knock that shit off if she changed her mind? Wouldn’t they have stopped?” she asked, keeping her voice down.
She nodded.
“They absolutely would have,” Bishop admitted. “They told us both if we were uncomfortable with it happening, to tell them. She never said a word to anyone—well, to any of us. Clearly, she was saying words to someone,” she stated, pointing at the phone and incriminating evidence.
Honor had to go there.
She had to take the woo-woo shit out of the equation and go with details until they could be removed.
“Bish, what if this wasn’t the killer taking out Wynter, but the doctor doing it?
We told him that women were committing suicide.
We told him at the appointment, at which time he NEVER let on that he knew her.
I sat right there, and between the two of them, I had no freaking clue what was going on. ”
Bishop’s brain was going a million miles a minute.
“I mean, we can ask him and see if he gets rattled. I know how we can tell if he’s lying.”
She lifted a brow.
Then, went there.
“HART?” she asked.
Bishop nodded.
“Yeah, Hart. We can’t let her body be cremated yet. Bodhi didn’t do a full autopsy, and if this isn’t part of the Oracle issue, we might have a whole other set of issues.”
Honor knew that was accurate.
“We’re going to have to tell Bo, so he’s on the same page with us. He’s the ME, and his name is going on that death certificate stating he autopsied her. If she gets dug back up...”
She was aware.
It appeared that they were about to dig a little deeper.
Opening the door, she called Bodhi in, and he was confused about what was wrong. Both women looked stirred up.
“Yes?” he asked, when Honor closed the morgue office door behind him.
Bishop was to the point.
“We’re going to need a full autopsy. Could this be made to look like a suicide?” Bishop asked.
He was surprised.
But honest.
“Well, yes, it could be. Any ‘suicide’ can be faked. Only, why are you going there with this one?”
Yeah, well, welcome to the crazy, Doc.
It was a party of three now.
Bishop showed him the text message, and as soon as he saw it, he gasped.
Oh, his face said it all. The man might not investigate homicides, but he investigated deaths, and the context clues led him down that same nasty trail.
Of infidelity.
“Why would she be meeting him anyplace but the office? That would be where a psychiatrist meets patients.”
Then, he got it.
“You want me to swab for semen, don’t you?” he asked, suspecting they were all taking a trip down a very dark path to the destruction of someone’s heart.
Bishop rubbed her hands over her face and sighed in frustration.
Wynter had really left some shit behind on this one.
“Yeah, we’re going to need to make sure all of our I’s are dotted, and T’s are crossed on this one. Are the drug tests back?”
He shook his head.
“No, I am sending them out now. I was doing the paperwork for transport to the lab.”
Bishop shared what she knew, so that Bodhi would know what to look for in her tests.
“Wynter was on Zoloft from the shrink, and also birth control. Ridge wanted more kids, and she didn’t. He found them half used and assumed it was because she didn’t want a kid with him.”
Honor closed her eyes.
“What if it was because she didn’t want a kid with the man that she was cheating on her husband with?” she asked.
Yeah, that was sounding more and more likely.
Instead of saying anything, Bodhi grabbed a paper gown and started unfolding it. His gut told him that this was going to break Ridge in ways he’d never see coming.
He hated that he had to be the one to do this. Only, someone had to.
It appeared it was time to do the job.
“I’ll text you if or when I find sperm. Find out when Ridge last had sex with his wife. I’ll be able to tell you how long the sperm has been in her body, and if there was any rape.”
Well, it seemed the shrink had some explaining to do, and this could go one of three ways.
He wasn’t the one who killed Wynter.
He was banging more than one of his patients.
Or he was actually the one behind all these killings.
It was time to find out.