She wet her lips, a signal of guilt and nervousness as good as a signed confession. “Not entirely. I’ll admit that my career factored into it initially.” She reached for his arm again and held on this time. “But not now, Tate. Not since I’ve come to love… Mandy. Once I got in, I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t just walk away and leave things unresolved.”
“So how long were you going to pretend to be my wife? Were we going to fuck with the lights out for the rest of our days? Was I never going to see you naked? How long were you going to live a lie? Forever?”
“No.” Her hand slid off his arm and she slumped with despair. “I don’t know. I was going to tell you, only—”
“When?”
“When I knew Mandy was okay and that you were safe.”
“So we’re back to the assassination plot.”
“Stop saying that so blithely,” she exclaimed. “The threat is real.” She glanced at the poster. “And imperative.”
“Then tell me who you suspect. You’ve been living with the same people I have been ever since you came out of the hospital.” He shook his head again and laughed bitterly at his own stupidity. “Jesus, this explains so much. The memory lapses. Shep. The riding horse.” He looked over her body. “It explains so many things,” he said gruffly. After clearing his throat, he said, “Why didn’t I see it?”
“You weren’t looking. You and Carole hadn’t been intimate for a long time.”
He seemed disinclined to address that. He picked up his previous train of thought. “Who do you suspect of wanting to kill me? My parents? My brother? My best friend? Dorothy Rae? No, wait—Fancy! That’s it.” He snapped his fingers. “She got pissed off at me a couple years ago when I wouldn’t loan her my car, so she wants me dead.”
“Don’t joke about it.” Avery shook with frustration.
“This whole thing’s a joke,” he said, lowering his face close to hers. “A dirty rotten joke played on all of us by a conniving bitch with big ambitions. Granted, I’ve been a blind, deaf idiot, but now I’m seeing it all crystal clear.
“Didn’t you commit a journalistic faux pas a year or so back—something about making allegations before all the facts were checked out? Yeah, I think you were the one. You devised this scheme to rectify that mistake and reinstate yourself among your colleagues. You’re a reporter who needed a hot story, so, when the opportunity presented itself, you cooked this one up.”
She shook her head and whispered mournfully, but without much conviction, “No.”
“I’ll give you credit, Avery Daniels. You go after your story no matter what it takes, don’t you? This time you were even willing to whore for it. Probably not for the first time. Do you go down on all your interviewees? Is that their reward for giving you their secrets?”
She wrapped the robe around her tighter, but it did little to protect her from his chilling rebuke. “I wasn’t whoring, Tate. Everything that happened between us was honest.”
“Like hell.”
“It was!”
“I’ve been fucking an impostor.”
“And loving it!”
“Obviously, because you’re as good at that as you are at playacting!”
Her anger had been spent with that one verbal volley. Now tears filled her imploring eyes. “You’re wrong. Please believe me, Tate. You must be careful.” She pointed down at the poster. “He’s going to do it on Election Day. Tomorrow.”
He was shaking his head adamantly. “You’ll never convince me that somebody in my family is going to put a bullet through my head.”
“Wait!” she cried, suddenly remembering something she had forgotten to mention. “There’s a tall, gray-haired man who’s been following you from city to city.” She quickly enumerated the times and places she had seen Gray Hair in the crowds. “Van’s got the tapes to prove it.”
“Ah, the cameraman from KTEX,” he said, smiling ruefully. “So that explains him. Who else is in on your little game?”
“Irish McCabe.”
“Who’s he?”
She explained their relationship and how Irish had mistakenly identified Carole’s body. “He has her jewelry, if you want it back.”
“What about the locket?” he asked, nodding at her chest.
“A gift from my father.”