Page 41 of The Replacement Wife (New Hope 2)

“And Mrs. Anderson, if you ever lie to me again, you’ll end up there too. For twice as long.”

I keep my face neutral, which is to say, mostly blank.

“No dinner for you, I’m afraid.”

“I’m on the weight loss plan.”

Mrs. Elizabeth frowns. She thinks I’m mocking her, but it’s blatant enough to be debatable. I hadn’t yet learned proof isn’t required in places like this. She reaches for my palm, turns it over, and places two pills inside. I watch as she retrieves a paper cup from a cart across the hall. She hands it to me. “For the pain.”

I pop the pills in my mouth and swallow. I have no idea what she’s giving me, but I hope they make me sleep.

“Drink up,” she orders. “We can’t have you choking, now can we? I doubt Mr. Anderson cares to be a widower twice over.”

I down the water. It does nothing to quench my thirst.

Mrs. Elizabeth unlocks the door, and with a slight shove, she forces me in.

It scares me to think I might someday go willingly.

Chapter Fourteen

Tom

Melanie had grossly misinterpreted Newton’s third law. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, for sure. But she was mistaken when she expected her push to elicit an equally forceful push back. She had not accounted for the fact that most people prefer to shove harder. She had forgotten to pick her enemies carefully because the way those enemies fight is who you become.

“This is not good,” Mark says, telling me what I already know. He’s here to prove a point—many points, actually—and he’s started by barging into my office. Now, he’s standing there, waiting for me to say something, the weight of the world on his shoulders. When I fail to come up with anything that fits, he shakes his head. “In fact, Tom, this is very, very bad.”

Mark has a tendency to exaggerate. I have no idea at this point if he is talking about me. It could be any number of things. With him, it’s always something. “It’s not so bad,” I say. “Plus, our numbers are in great shape.”

“You have two options,” Mark informs me bluntly. “Kill her—or see to it that her past goes away.”

I take a sip of my tea. I don’t have to ask who he means by her, so I say, “I’ve never killed anyone.” I don’t say that I have no idea about my wife’s past—or that it is particularly extensive—or that taking that route would most certainly be the path of most resistance.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what to tell you.” He shoves a manila folder across my desk.

I open it.

“Jack Fielding. Gregory Hollis. Evan Burnett.”

“Do you know what these men have in common?”

“What?” It’s not a lie if it’s a question.

“They’ve all had relations with Melanie. Relations that could—that will—come back to haunt us.”

“How is that?”

“Never mind. I don’t have time to go into it. What you need to know is this.” He points to their photographs. “These are the three main players we have to be concerned about.”

My eyebrows raise. “Main players?”

I’m not sure if I want to ask about the others. He’s just asked me to kill three people. Who knows how far he’ll go with this.

“I can’t have another dead wife on my hands,” I tell him. “That would look suspicious.”

“Tom,” Mark says. “We can’t have the RWP fail.”

“What’s the RWP?”