Chapter 23
CHAPTER
Gina
Present
Unlike her home state of Louisiana, New York was not an open carry state.
If she was pulled over and caught with the weapon, it could lead to a felony charge, since she didn’t have a permit.
Yet here she sat behind the wheel in her own driveway, waiting for Sophie to leave her house for the day so Gina could break into the other woman’s home.
The job seemed to call for a weapon because …
Well, she couldn’t pinpoint exactly why she needed the reassurance of the gun close by.
She only knew that everyone around her seemed more dangerous the longer she spent among them.
Every person in the book club or associated with it seemed to be plotting something.
For starters, Luke’s secret life insurance policy on his wife made Gina uneasy.
But that was just the latest blip in a string of upsets ever since she first set foot in Saratoga.
First, her ex had made a trip to town, warning Tara and Sophie to be on the lookout for Evangeline. It had taken all her courage to face the podcasters in person after that, terrified they would recognize her. Then there’d been the incident with Tara last Halloween that had been utterly horrifying.
Not at all what Gina had intended for revenge.
Afterward, the police investigation had been brief but nerve-racking, and she’d waited every day for one of the cops to call her out as an imposter.
Thankfully, they seemed convinced the hit-and-run was accidental and the case had quickly grown cold.
She’d barely had time to catch her breath in the aftermath when Jordyn Lawson waltzed into town and infiltrated the book club, making Gina wonder about her motives.
Was she in town for a piece of Sophie too?
Then there was the obvious animosity between Kaitlin and Sophie.
Brad’s not-so-subtle digs. Destiny’s money problems. Mei’s suspicions of anyone female around her tomcat of a husband.
As for Fatima Chamoun, arguably Gina’s closest companion in the group?
The woman was cunning. With an IQ to rival her aerospace engineer husband’s and an ambition to match, Fatima played her cards close to the vest despite her outwardly effusive friendship.
Gina knew Fatima nursed a grudge against Sophie.
Was it strictly because Sophie’s daughters occasionally outshone her own?
Gina couldn’t pretend to understand the dynamics, but she knew better than to underestimate Fatima, which was why she’d chosen to stay close to her.
Gina could not afford the distractions of friends warring to take a shot at Sophie before her. Not when she was so close to realizing her vengeance.
In the book club group chat the night before, Sophie had mentioned she had a few errands to run this afternoon in order to prepare for the murder mystery game. With Sophie out of the house and Luke at work, Gina figured the time was right to do a little behind-the-scenes work at Sophie’s place.
Her own preparation for the Halloween book club night.
Now, she sat in the SUV and waited for Sophie to drive past in her white Mercedes.
Fortunately, Sophie’s Type A personality kept her to a strict schedule, and she zipped by Gina’s driveway within two minutes of the departure time she’d referenced in that group text.
As soon as the Mercedes was out of sight, Gina opened a security camera app on her phone.
Luke had shared access to his home system when they started seeing each other regularly, which gave Gina owner privileges to disable the recording devices at will.
If Sophie happened to check her own app while she was out, she might think her Wi-Fi was down, but according to Luke it wouldn’t trigger any warnings.
Sophie had made home protection his domain.
With the security turned off, Gina drove the short distance up Daybreak Hill to Sophie and Luke’s gargantuan home. She took the added precaution of parking on the far side of the pool house so that her vehicle wouldn’t be visible to any delivery services.
Parked beneath an oak tree bare of almost all its leaves, she removed the gun from the glovebox.
She checked the safety before sliding the 9mm into the holster at the small of her back, concealed by her high-waisted leggings.
The long hoodie she wore hid all signs of the weapon.
Then she grabbed the cloth sack she’d brought containing items to plant inside the home.
Items sure to stir a wife’s concerns about her husband’s fidelity.
Walking quickly across the yard, she unlocked the side door from her phone app, holding her breath until she closed it behind her again without tripping any alarms. Safely inside the mudroom the family used as their regular entryway, Gina slid off her canvas trainers and tucked them into the neat cubby space designated for one of the girls.
That way, if anyone else entered the home while Gina was inside, the sight of extra shoes wouldn’t immediately give her away.
Besides, she preferred the quiet stealth of her cotton socks on Sophie’s white oak floors, the home so minimalist in décor that it echoed forlornly with only one person inside it, especially with ceilings over twenty-feet high.
She’d been a guest of both Sophie’s and Luke’s at various times over the past year, so she was intimately familiar with the French country mansion.
Yet there was something very different about being inside it alone, when she could really take in the details.
Gina had lived in a mammoth house once too, but she’d like to think she did a better job of turning it into a home than Sophie had done here.
The house surrounded the pool deck on three sides, with huge sliding doors that could disappear into the walls on sunny days, allowing in tons of natural light.
White couches and seagrass rugs made for a sterile family room.
There were no personal touches here. No photos or memorabilia from family vacations.
Not even a charge cord or a leftover school textbook.
Gina paused before entering the kitchen, double-checking her phone app to ensure the interior camera was off too.
She happened to know there was a recording device above the side-by-side refrigerator, but the security dashboard showed that one was offline as well.
Only then did she venture into Sophie’s high-tech kitchen, where silver travertine countertops and white oak cabinetry complemented top-of-the-line appliances.
She didn’t technically need to be in this room since she had no intention of planting items in common areas of the home.
The couple’s bedroom and Luke’s office were her ultimate destinations.
Still, she found herself lingering in the space that was predominantly Sophie’s domain.
For a year and a half she’d been fixated on vengeance, obsessed with delivering Sophie Durand the comeuppance she so well deserved.
Now that Gina’s hard work was so close to paying off, she found herself savoring every moment leading up to the implosion of this perfect world Sophie had built for herself at the expense of others.
Gina found the details of it all fairly delicious.
Because having Sophie walk in on Gina and Luke in flagrante delicto wasn’t nearly satisfying enough.
To have Sophie confronted with the affair all at once robbed Gina of enjoying all of Sophie’s gut-wrenching fears that would come before the confirmation that her husband was cheating on her.
A slow, dawning awareness that her life was falling apart would be much more in keeping with the horrors that Sophie had visited on her show guests.
She had spoken to Gina—Evangeline—so warmly on the phone before the podcast had started recording.
Sophie had assured her that listeners would be interested in hearing the details of how her marriage had crumbled and that sharing her experience would help the audience relate to her.
Sophie waxed on and on about the way her podcast fostered a community for people going through difficult times and created a safe space to discuss the emotional injuries of troubled marriages.
Gina had been foolish enough to believe her. Drowning in her financial and marital problems, Gina had thought that Sophie really understood her. Worse, she had believed that Sophie cared.
Sophie reeled Gina in like a prized catch, positioning her perfectly before sending a harpoon through her world.
Overnight, Gina and her deepest pain had been cast into a popularity contest against Mark’s charm and ability to play to a crowd.
The breakup of her marriage had become entertainment, with strangers on the streets of her hometown stopping her to talk about the podcast. Even the ones who sided with her were unbearable, their noxious interest often exploitative, since they usually posted about their interactions with her online.
After she first left New Orleans, she’d changed her look just to keep people from recognizing her.
The nose job had been something she’d thought about for years, and she’d already made a downpayment to the surgeon when her husband sprang the divorce on her, so of course she went through with the procedure.
When she’d seen with her own eyes what a difference the adjustment had made to her face, she’d gotten the idea of moving to Saratoga.
Right into Sophie’s neighborhood.
Later, straight into the neighboring house on Daybreak Hill after it had been vacated by Tara Hughes, the previous renter.