Page 85 of Our Little Secret

Was it her imagination or did she hear footsteps? Soft and muted but moving quickly?

Noiselessly, she slid from beneath the covers, snagged her bathrobe from a hook on the bathroom door. Pushing her arms into sleeves, she slipped into the hallway. Nothing seemed out of place amid the darkness. But still . . .

Cinching the robe’s tie around her waist, she crept along the darkened hallway and stopped at the top of the stairs, her eyes straining. Yet she didn’t switch on a light, didn’t want to warn whoever might be lurking.

Slowly, she descended.

The first floor was as still as the second. Had she heard a nocturnal bird or a bat on the rooftop? Or maybe just the wind causing a loose shingle to clatter?

Or had it been nothing?

Just the vestiges of her disturbing dream?

In the kitchen she looked outside, but the garden far below, dark with the night, appeared undisturbed. Quiet. Shep barely lifted his head as she passed by his bed near the table, the spot he’d claimed for the night. His eyes did blink open for a second, and he gave two soft thumps of his tail before tucking his nose into his body again.

You’re losing it, that nagging voice in her head chided as she eased through the living room just as she’d left it earlier.Go back to bed.

She crossed the foyer, but on her way to the stairs she paused at the door of Neal’s office, then noiselessly opened it and stepped inside.

This small room, with its couch, his desk in the curve of the turret, and a chair squeezed between the bookshelf-lined walls, was her husband’s private sanctuary. It was an unwritten rule that no one was allowed in without him because of the sensitivity of the files of cases on which he was working. Most of his work was digital, though she knew he had more than a few manila files locked in the fireproof cabinet in the corner. The safe where he kept the family’s personal documents along with the small caliber pistol Neal had brought with him into the marriage. The gun had been left to him by his grandfather.

Again, something that was uniquely his.

Though she was the co-owner of the house, she considered this room Neal’s domain, and she always felt as if she were trespassing when she stepped inside without his knowledge. It didn’t happen often, just for her to drop mail onto his desk or dust or vacuum occasionally. Even then she felt as if she were an intruder. She didn’t bother snapping on any light; her eyes adjusted to the dim illumination that sifted through the window from the streetlight outside. An old clock sat on a shelf and rhythmically ticked off the seconds. She spied his laptop and had the urge to open it and peek inside.

He was always quick to close it whenever anyone walked into the room.

Had he been lying about receiving footage from the tracker in her car?

Was there any chance that she would find a secretive email from Jennifer Adkins or some other woman? Someone she didn’t know about? She told herself she was being paranoid. Yes, she’d doubted Neal in the past, half believing that Neal had cheated on her once or twice before, but she’d found no solid proof. Once when Marilee was two or three and she confronted him about his long hours, he’d claimed he’d been distracted by work and was determined to prove himself to the senior partners.

Then came Jennifer Adkins.

Oh, as if you have any reason to snoop or cast the first stone?

Her relationship with Neal was tenuous, hanging by the proverbial thread. He had moved out for nearly three months after the Jennifer Adkins debacle and now they were trying to piece back together what they once had held so securely. Only she hadn’t stopped seeing Gideon before Neal had returned.

Big mistake.

And now . . . she quickly stepped around the desk and flipped the laptop open. The screen jumped to life and she bit her lip. He hadn’t shut it down. She pressed a button and saw a menu appear. The top file was markedLeah. She clicked on the folder and it opened to a digital note.

No surprise there.

Except for the amount.

Not for twenty-five thousand dollars, as he’d said earlier.

Fifty thousand dollars. She thought she had read the amount incorrectly, but she hadn’t.

Stunned, she let out her breath slowly and sat down in his desk chair.

Why would Neal lie?

Why would Leah?

What the hell was going on here?

She scrolled through the info in the file and found other “loans” that she hadn’t known about. One for ten thousand dollars eleven years earlier, then another ten grand four years ago, and then five thousand just three months earlier this year. During their separation.