‘And what about you, Anne? What do you want?’
‘I want to be free,’ Anne said firmly, and with much more certainty than Nikki had expected. ‘Part of me will always love him. That’s the simple truth. But I want to live my life, Nikki. I want to stop looking over my shoulder day and night.’
‘You’re ready to let go.’ Nikki smiled approvingly, sweet relief flooding her own body. She too wanted Anne to be free. One day, she hoped, she might be free herself. Once all this nightmare with the murders was over, and Derek Williams had found out the truth about Lenka and Doug’s affair and everything that happened last year. Once the killing could stop.
‘Yes,’ said Anne. ‘I am ready. But that’s the dilemma I told you about before. I need Luis to let go as well. I need him to go home, not because I tell him to, but because he realizes it’s over between us. I need his men to stop following me. But I don’t think that can happen unless we, Luis and I, have some sort of closure. We need to agree to be friends, somehow. To reset our relationship.’
‘I see,’ said Nikki, still trying to adjust to this new, stronger Anne.
‘That’s what I wanted to ask you about,’ said Anne, emboldened by Nikki’s supportive responses. ‘He’s asked me to join his table at the End Addiction Ball at the Four Seasons tomorrow night. I think I should do it.’
A pained look swept over Nikki’s features. She and Doug used to go to the End Addiction gala every year. The ball was one of their favorite nights, a rare chance for Nikki to dress up and for the two of them to go on a real ‘date’ together. Bittersweet memories from those times mingled with a genuine concern for Anne’s welfare.
‘You think you should go on a date with your ex-husband?’ Nikki asked.
‘It wouldn’t be a date.’
‘So why go?’
‘To reset things between us, like I said,’ explained Anne. ‘To show him we can be friends, that he hasn’t “lost me”, but that our lives have to move on.’
It sounded so sensible, so rational the way Anne said it. And yet the alarm bells ringing in Nikki’s head wouldn’t stop. This was dangerous. This was wrong. Something bad was going to happen.
‘Philanthropy is one of the few things Luis and I have in common,’ Anne went on earnestly. ‘He cares deeply about the drug problems in Mexico, and all around the world. Remember, I told you about his sister?’
Nikki nodded. She remembered. She was still having trouble squaring this image of Luis Rodriguez as the addiction-fighting hero with Williams’ alternate characterization of him as a cocaine and Krok magnate, whose life of luxury was built entirely on the misery and despair of others.
‘That’s why I thought this event might be a good place for us to start. His sister’s overdose changed his life for the better once. Maybe this could be the time for him to change it again? To begin a new chapter. What do you think?’
This is my chance, thought Nikki. This is where I tell her what Williams told me. If she were ever going to warn Anne, surely this was the moment.
‘I’m not sure,’ Nikki played for time.
Meanwhile, Anne continued to wax lyrical. ‘Luis has donated millions of dollars to addiction charities and rehab programs over the years, like the one your husband ran,’ Anne smiled, the connection apparently only just occurring to her. ‘I know you don’t want to believe it, but he isn’t all bad, you know.’
‘I’m sure he’s not,’ Nikki heard herself saying, cursing herself for her cowardice.
‘So should I go with him to the gala? Or not?’ Anne’s big, doe eyes looked at her for guidance.
‘I can’t answer that,’ said Nikki. She felt bad ducking the responsibility, but really what choice did she have? She herself had never met Luis Rodriguez. She had no way of knowing whether Williams’ version of him, or Anne’s, was the accurate one. Or if, as Derek had implied, both sides coexisted. After all, even Robin Hood used to rob the rich before he could help the poor. ‘You must make up your own mind,’ she told Anne. ‘Hold on to your own conviction that you want your freedom. And then do whatever you believe is going to help you get it.’
After the session, Nikki tried to process her own conflicting feelings. While the thought of Anne attending a function with her ex was terrifying, on another Nikki felt profound relief. Because the big take-aways from today’s therapy were surely that a) Anne’s marriage was finally over; in her heart. And b) She knew nothing whatsoever about Luis’s supposed ‘secret life’ as a drug baron. If indeed he even had one.
Again, Nikki found herself beginning to doubt Derek Williams’ account of Luis Rodriguez’s past. Goodman had warned her not to trust Williams. And while the PI’s certainty in his own conclusions was definitely seductive, so far he’d provided no actual evidence of a link between Rodriguez and the missing au pair, Charlotte Clancy, or anything to indicate that Luis’s fortune was based on something other than real estate. Nikki wanted to believe Williams. She wanted to think that Anne’s controlling ex-husband was a criminal and a bad, bad man. But wanting to believe somebody was always a dangerous place to start.
Turning on her phone, she scrolled through her old messages till she found the one she wanted. It was more than a month old, and it was from Haddon.
‘Dr Haddon Defoe cordially invites you to be a guest at his table for this year’s End Addiction Gala.’
Nikki had already replied weeks ago, clicking the ‘No’ box. Since Doug’s death, she’d taken to automatically declining all social invitations. The only thing worse than having your life disintegrate from grief, and shame, was having it happen in front of an audience. The five words Nikki now hated most in the entire English language were: ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
How could you be sorry? She wanted to scream whenever she heard it. You don’t even know me.
But things were different now. Now she had a reason to go, a reason to put on her glad rags and smile and shake hands and tolerate the nauseating waves of sympathy. This would be her chance, perhaps her only chance, to see Luis Rodriguez for herself, in person. To form her own conclusions about him, not just blindly rely on Derek Williams’ information, or Anne’s. If there was even a remote possibility that he was involved in these Zombie Killings then she owed it to Trey and Lisa to learn whatever she could. Plus, she’d be in a better position to protect herself, and perhaps Anne too, if Luis really was the bad actor Williams claimed.
Haddon will be pleased I’ve changed my mind, Nikki thought, as she tapped out a new email.
What a rock Haddon had been since Doug’s death.