Chapter 18 #2
“Colin, I can’t believe you’ve let me think you care for me. What you were really doing was trying to get me to trip up and confess to trying to ruin your father’s company. For what? The fun of it?” I started brushing with such vigor that I thought I might actually see blood.
He looked down at his feet. “Money was my guess for your primary motivator.”
I flashed my eyes at him as he ventured to look at me again.
“Kate, you don’t understand. That was before I got to know you.”
I finished rinsing and turned off the water. “Oh, yes, you certainly know me now, don’t you? You know all of me!”
A loud crack of thunder seemed to articulate my point.
And then my phone rang. It was sitting on the bathroom counter next to Colin’s hand, where we both saw that it was Grant. He handed it to me, but I noticed his face was no longer looking as apologetic as it had just a moment ago.
I considered not answering. It wasn’t the right moment. We were in the middle of an argument. Of Colin’s big reveal. Of my heartbreak. Of the end of whatever this was between us.
And yet I knew… I knew he was jealous of Grant. Rich, powerful, handsome Colin was jealous of his employee because of whatever he imagined might have gone on once between Grant and me. The hurt part of me was petty and vengeful, and I answered with a smile.
“Hi, Grant!” My voice was lively and high-pitched.
Colin’s jaw muscles tightened visibly before he looked away.
“How did I not tell you this before?” Grant said over the phone. “I snuck into Kirkman’s—I mean, Colin’s—office and guess what was inside a cabinet that those keys you were hiding in your desk magically opened?”
I walked past Colin’s scowl and into the room. “You went through my things?” I admonished Grant.
“He did what?” I heard Colin behind me.
Grant continued, “Yeah, but you’ll forgive me when I tell you what I found.
There are pages and pages of documents and fax confirmations.
Who still faxes anything? Anyway, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, but I took some pictures of those fax numbers, and I was just running them online.
Would you believe Kirkman was faxing our accounts information to our competitors?
This is huge. I had to call you right away. I guess that’s why he was fired, huh?”
My mind was reeling. There were way too many damn revelations that day.
“Whoa. Oh my gosh…that’s… wow.” I closed my eyes to absorb this better, but I was wiped out emotionally and mentally. “Listen, I’m getting ready for the wedding now. We’ll discuss later. Okay, thanks, bye!”
The dark clouds loomed closer in my view through the window. The wind was picking up. Down by the beach, workers scurried around like red ants whose anthill someone had stepped on.
“Is there something wrong?” Colin asked.
“Kirkman is your guy,” I said in a flat tone. “Grant opened a cabinet in your office that I assume you haven’t been able to get into since you inherited the office. He found tons of documents and fax confirmations.”
“Wait a second,” he said, making his way between me and the window. “Grant went through my office? How? I’ve been looking for the key to that cabinet for weeks. How did he get in?”
Now it was my turn to tell him everything I’d left out before. I told him how Grant and I had tried to find Maggie at her apartment building, how we’d found the keys in the parking garage, how we’d come up with many scenarios to explain Maggie’s disappearance.
“With the way Kirkman was mysteriously fired, and you came in at the same time she disappeared, we wondered if you and she had had some kind of dark love affair and then you might have kidnapped her.”
It all sounded so stupid now. So absolutely ridiculous. I’d let my imagination run wild in the past, but joining in Grant’s delusions, and then taking action in real life… I waited for Colin to recommend me for a psychiatric evaluation.
“You’re saying that you traveled with me to Chicago thinking I’d kidnapped Maggie? You said that was a passing joke between the two of you.” His face was unreadable. “What about our first date? Our second date?”
He was turning this around. I was the injured party here. He’d let me believe he was into me.
“Well, I don’t know if I really thought you’d kidnapped her, but I thought you were involved somehow. Which you might have been, actually. You’ve said nothing about her week-long absence since your little reveal earlier.”
“I haven’t had much of a chance,” he said. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. I had no clue where she was or why she was gone. Her father was in the dark as well. It’s possible Kirkman was involved, but I’d ruled him out since we continued to lose clients after he left…”
He sat down, leaned forward on his elbows, and shook his head.
“You were investigating me, too,” he said, as if it had just dawned on him.
The way he said the word “too” reminded me of what I’d just been so nauseous about. My stomach started to churn again, so I reached for the sparkling water.
Colin stood up, headed to his closet, and took out his suit for that evening.
“Stephen warned me not to be late for the family pictures,” he said before disappearing into the bathroom. He’d used his expressionless tone that I had associated with his work persona.
But this time, he’d used it on me.