Chapter 36
CHAPTER
Gina
Present
THE SCREAM FROZE Gina in place.
She’d heard the term “bloodcurdling” before. Not until this moment did she understand that it was a real phenomenon. Like every one of her red blood cells halted in her veins and shriveled.
In the awful, haunting silence afterward, Gina thought her knees might give out. A shriek like that meant something horrible had happened. That all her fears had been well founded. That a murderer lurked among them.
Drawing her gun, she took small reassurance from its cool weight in her palm. Gina refused to be the next one screaming.
Should she call out for the others? Or would that only allow a potential killer to find her? She thought she heard feet pounding on the main staircase. Or maybe down the back steps. Gina had ventured too far from both of them to be sure.
The kitchen ahead remained quiet. Where had everyone gone? From upstairs came high, panicked voices. Sophie’s daughters? Book club members?
Some instinct drew her toward the huge glass doors as the rain slowed. Had the sound emanated from out there? The house was well insulated, muting most of the external noise. Yet that scream seemed loud enough to hear for miles.
She tugged on the handle, rolling the pocket glass window aside just enough to squeeze through.
Outside, there was a sheltered patio table and enough overhang to protect her from the rain.
Breathing in the earthy scent of the air, she scanned the pool deck, searching for any movement.
The source of the scream or the person who’d caused it.
All was still save the falling rain and the wind stirring the ties of cushions on some chaise loungers.
Then her gaze snagged on an oddly shaped shadow. A lumpy pile near the steps into the pool.
Behind her, Gina heard stirring in the kitchen through the door she’d left cracked. But her focus remained on that misshapen heap. Wet clothes?
Stepping closer, out into the rain, she peered down into the pool. Distinguished a body partially submerged. Recognized the seaweed-like strands floating in the water’s edge that was actually long blond hair.
Marine-blue eyes stared back at her. Open, but unseeing.
Sophie Durand lay along the watery steps, a dark stain around her head clouding the water.
Fear bubbled free. Gina screamed.
She scuttled backward, almost slipping. Catching herself on the table because no way was she falling into that water with … a body.
People came pouring out of the house and onto the pool deck. Some from the kitchen. Others from another set of doors. Gina vaguely registered Fatima and Kaitlin. Destiny and Mei. Another group rushed down the stairs from the second-floor balcony—Charlotte and Amelia, with Jordyn two steps behind.
Then, a horrible cry from Charlotte as she and Amelia saw their mother. The girls clung to one another, Amelia hiding her face against her sister’s shoulder while Charlotte couldn’t seem to drag her eyes away from Sophie’s lifeless body.
Arms extended, Jordyn moved to comfort the girls, ushering them out of the rain toward the shelter of the first-floor overhang with the others.
“Where is Luke?” Gina asked, her throat raw after her terrified scream.
It had been the first cohesive sentence to come out of her mouth even though her brain ran a mile a minute trying to put together what had happened here.
Only murmurs in reply. Someone behind her sobbed quietly.
In the meantime, fury simmered inside her. Rage that she’d known Luke could be a murderer, and she’d done nothing. She’d been too focused on revenge that now she’d never have the chance to deliver.
All that hard work had been for nothing.
Sophie had been a horrible, horrible person. But justice should have meant taking her down a few pegs. Humiliating her. Making her regret her life choices. Not … this.
“Where. Is. Luke?” Gina shouted, turning toward the women gathered around the pool deck.
Jordyn and the girls stopped in their tracks. The rest of them huddled together under the overhang close to the house. Only Gina stood fully in the rain near Sophie’s body.
“Gina,” Destiny said gently. “Put the gun down.”
Lowering her gaze, Gina saw she still had the small derringer drawn. Raindrops slid along the steel onto her shaking hands. Nausea clawed at her gut.
“I … Oh. Sorry.” Fumbling to click the safety into place, Gina lowered the weapon.
As she did, the others began to speak.
“We need to call 911.”
“I don’t know where the phones are.”
“Did anyone find Brad?”
Gina didn’t know who said what as the words circled her adrenaline-fogged brain. Or maybe it was shock acting like a barrier between her and the rest of the world. Then, three words blasted into her consciousness and detonated.
“Was Sophie shot?”
Mei had been the one to voice the very reasonable question. A question that told Gina how much trouble she could be in.
“It wasn’t me,” Gina assured them, spinning to face the book club members and Sophie’s daughters. As the adrenaline wore off, her teeth started chattering and she trembled all over. “I swear.”
Even in the shadows of the rainy night she could see them take a collective step back. Did they think Gina would start firing on them? Oh God. Did these people really think her capable of murder?
Jordyn cleared her throat, shoulders back. “I think we should have the girls look for our cell phones. Is that okay with everyone?”
While the others agreed that would be best, Gina took the opportunity to slide her weapon into the holster. No way was she relinquishing it until she figured out what the hell was going on. Only Destiny seemed to have noticed. The woman’s eyes tracked her every move.
“I never fired the gun,” Gina informed Destiny as she stepped under the overhang out of the rain. She needed to tell her story so they could find the real culprit. “It’s Luke we should be looking for. He’s the one who wanted to kill her.”
Destiny looked her up and down. “We all came out here to find you standing over her with a weapon in hand.”
“But did you hear a shot fired?” Gina asked, still shaking from the cold and the shock of finding a body. “I only drew the gun because I heard a godawful scream.”
Fatima fidgeted with the opera glasses that were part of her costume. “And you make it a habit to come to book club armed?”
“I didn’t see any bullet wounds on Sophie,” Mei observed, her voice more measured than the others. “But there is a lot of blood around her head.”
“Mei, you had a good reason to kill her,” Kaitlin announced flatly, her mascara smeared from rain or maybe tears.
“You just found out it was Sophie and not Tara who slept with Nikolai. Maybe you ran over Tara last year when you thought she was the guilty one, then decided to exact revenge on Sophie tonight.”
“That’s preposterous,” Mei scoffed, moving farther from the body toward the house. “And I’m going inside. I’m not going to catch pneumonia defending myself against baseless accusations.”
“I second the going indoors part,” Destiny added. “But I’d like Gina to come in where we can see her since my money’s still on her.”
“I could use a hand over here.” Brad limped out from the shadows at the far end of the pool deck. He held an arm at an awkward angle.
Wounded?
Mei and Kaitlin rushed forward to help. Then, before they reached him, Luke ran up from behind him as if trying to catch up. He reared back for a moment at the sight of the guests outside. Then he rushed toward Brad to lend him an arm.
“Are you okay, man?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
Gina thought he sounded strange. Had he killed his wife and was trying to pretend like he didn’t know about it?
Brad visibly shook off the help, muttering, “Get away from me.”
But they’d just neared Sophie’s body and Luke’s attention shifted. With a choked gasp at the sight of his wife, Luke moved toward her, falling to his knees.
“Sophie!” His shout sounded raw. Wretched.
But was his reaction genuine? No one else knew what Gina did about Luke. That he was a serial cheater who took out a fat insurance policy on his wife without her knowledge. Destiny moved toward Luke, laying a hand on his shaking shoulders while he hung his head.
As Brad moved nearer to them, Gina could see his wrists were duct-taped together. He looked unsteady on his feet, each step faltering.
“Brad what happened to you?” Kaitlin asked as the same time Fatima pushed her way to the front of the group and asked him, “Where have you been?”
“I don’t remember so well,” Brad admitted with a hesitant glance back at Luke. His gaze dipped toward the body briefly before he refocused on the others. “But someone bound and gagged me and put me in the basement. I think I was drugged.”
That caught Gina’s attention. Made sense considering his delayed reactions.
Moreover, the only person in this group that she knew enjoyed recreational drug use was Luke. Not often. But he’d asked her twice if she wanted to try Ecstasy, supposedly to make sex all the hotter. She’d refused both times.
“Luke,” Fatima called to him where he leaned over Sophie. “I don’t think you should touch her. The cops will want us to preserve any evidence.”
“She’s my wife, goddammit,” he barked back. “I’m entitled to see if she’s really gone or if there’s any chance—”
His voice broke, and it was all Gina could do not to run screaming at him. To call him out for faking his grief.
“You did this,” she accused him in front of everyone. “I saw the life insurance policy you took out on her last week. I know you wanted her dead.”
At the back of the group she heard a soft gasp. Turning, she realized Charlotte and Amelia had returned with the basket of cellphones in Charlotte’s hands. Jordyn stood behind them.
“Girls, that’s not true.” Luke straightened from the body, seeming to pull himself together as he reached a pleading hand toward them. “Let’s go inside and we can—”
“Call the police,” Fatima finished for him as she dug in the basket for her device. “I’m going inside, and I’m reporting this right now.”
“Wait. Please, Ms. Fatima.” Charlotte passed the basket of phones to her sister, gesturing for Amelia to make the rounds with it. “Can we just hear what Mr. Brad has to say first? I don’t understand who could have done this to him.”
“Smart girl.” Gina nodded her satisfaction as she found her phone in the jumble of devices that Amelia gave her. “Who else but Luke is strong enough to restrain Brad and maneuver a drugged man into the basement?”
“Oh please,” Destiny scoffed. “Someone with a gun doesn’t need to be strong to do either of those things.”
Gina’s stomach pitched at a possibility she hadn’t considered. What if Luke had framed her for this murder? Everyone already looked at her as if she was guilty.
“I do remember something now,” Brad said, supporting himself against the wall of glass doors leading into the kitchen. “I overheard an argument. And then someone hit me on the back of the head.”
“Who was arguing?” Kaitlin prodded him, her fists on her hips. “Luke and Gina?”
Gina trembled with the realization that could have happened. She had fought with Luke tonight.
In a flash, she recalled all the things she’d done to plot against Sophie in the last year.
Breaking into Sophie’s house. Planting evidence of her affair with a dead woman’s husband.
Putting GPS trackers on her lover’s vehicle.
An ambitious prosecutor could make a case against Gina even without physical evidence. The circumstantial would be damning.
Was it too late to start bargaining with God for some help?
She vowed to do better. Be better.
She would leave Saratoga and never come back.
“No, it wasn’t Luke and Gina,” Brad answered, rubbing his forehead with his still bound wrists. “I heard Sophie. And …” He swallowed visibly as he glanced around at the group. “And Amelia.”