Untrue Love Page 14

  The other man shook his head in disgust. “Why are you even wasting time with this? That woman has nothing to do with you and me.”

  “I know that,” Paul said a little too loudly. “She wants to put on a conference. She’s desperate to put on a conference.”

  “It’s a distraction.”

  “I know.”

  “We’re approaching a critical moment. The slightest mistake could ruin everything. Shut it down.”

  “I will.”

  “When?”

  Paul sighed. “Soon. Look, I know why I’m here. I will get you what you want.”

  “What we both want,” the other man interjected.

  “What we both want,” Paul agreed. “In the meantime, I’m trying to keep things cordial with Ms. Stanton. She has a temper, and if I piss her off so much that she starts complaining about me to the other trustees, that could attract attention and turn into a very big distraction indeed. So instead, let me string her along. I’ll give her a few vague promises, enough that she thinks that I’m on her side. Meanwhile I’ll make sure that no real decisions are made until the job is done and it won’t matter anymore.”

  The other man regarded him suspiciously, then finally shrugged. “Fine. Far be it from me to tell you how to toy with a woman. I’ve seen how good you are at that. So tell me: How close are we getting to the mark?”

  Paul smiled in satisfaction. “We’re close. I have a number of connections within his operation. I’m not plugged into the money side of the business yet, but it won’t be long now.”

  “Good,” the man nodded. He chuckled. “Remind me never to get on your bad side. You’re really looking forward to taking him down, aren’t you?”

  Paul’s eyes hardened. “Philip Baptiste is a son of a bitch, and it will be my great pleasure to ruin his life.” He crossed his arms across his chest, leaned back in his chair, and contemplated the glorious day when he would wipe the smile off that smug bastard’s face.

  47

  PHILIP BAPTISTE CHECKED his reflection in the window. He thought his face was looking a little heavy, and vowed to do a better job of getting into the gym. Getting older, he reminded himself, was no excuse for getting old.

  “Tell me what you know,” he said to the man seated behind him. He didn’t turn around.

  “There have been persistent efforts to crack our firewall. IT is confident that no one has gained access to our confidential files. But we have to assume that they’re using social engineering techniques as well.”

  Philip sighed. “Do we know who they might be targeting?”

  “No, but if it were me I’d start at the bottom. Secretaries and assistants. I’d make as many friends as I could, and see what they might let slip when I’m buying the drinks.”

  Philip turned and glanced at the man. “What can we do?”

  His lawyer shrugged. “Tighten security. Take a hard look at our email archives and think about what might be most damaging if it got into the wrong hands. Think about it from the intruder’s perspective: What is he looking for, and how can we make it next to impossible for him to find it?”

  Philip shook his head. “Cowards. When my father was doing business, and someone was gunning for him, they didn’t hide in the shadows or sneak in through the backdoor. You knew who you were fighting, and what was at stake.”

  The lawyer smiled. “Times have changed. It’s more dangerous now, but there’s also more opportunity. We have to take the bad with the good.”

  Philip rubbed his chin, considering. Then he reached a conclusion and, as was his custom, swung immediately into action. “We’re vulnerable because we’re too passive. We’re waiting to see what they’ll do instead of taking the fight to them. I want to find out who’s on the other side of these attacks, and I want to make their lives very difficult. Who do we know?”

  The lawyer considered. “Two candidates come to mind. They’re both very skilled. For the computer espionage, there’s a hacker we’ve worked with before, he specializes in this sort of thing. We can set him on the task of identifying where the intrusions are coming from and returning fire with fire. He’s not cheap, though.”

  “Do it. Who else?”

  “I know a guy in Chicago. He’s discrete. I’ll bring him in, get him thinking about who on the front lines might be a danger to us.”

  “Good. Keep me up to date on your progress.” Philip turned back to the window and looked out at the lights in the nighttime sky. He thought back to his father. It was true, the man had worked in a simpler time, but he was also the toughest bastard that Philip ever knew. He had passed that toughness on to his son, although Philip went to great trouble to hide that inheritance under tanned skin, expensive suits, and an easy smile. It had proved an effective technique; more than one business adversary had been fooled by Philip’s polished exterior into thinking that he was equally soft on the inside. That was a fatal mistake.

  He looked out into the night, eyes searching as if he could spot the one who was trying to take him down. “Come on, you bastard,” he muttered under his breath. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  48

  THE RED RUBBER ball was slippery with dog saliva, but Usher’s tail was wagging so insistently and he was looking at her with an expression of such frantic expectation that Ellie couldn’t say “no.” She picked up the slippery ball and threw it to the other side of the living room, while Usher sprinted after it.

  In the other hand she held her phone and listened to it ring with a rising feeling of irritation. There was a click that made her heart leap, thinking that her call had finally been answered, but then she heard the voice mail recording that, by now, she could have recited from memory.

  “Hi, this is Jackson. You’re hearing this because I’m away from my phone right now, which is weird, because I’m never away from my phone. I must be fighting crime or something. Anyway, leave a message and I’ll get back to you, just as soon as I’ve finished defending truth, justice, and the American way.”

  “Hi baby,” Ellie said with more patience than she was feeling. “It’s me. Again. I’m calling because you still haven’t sent me your flight information, and unless you want to spend several hours at the airport while I drive out to pick you up, you should maybe call me or email me or text me or contact me in some manner. Carrier pigeon, maybe? I don’t care. I miss you. I can’t wait to see you. Please call me.”

  She hung up and looked out the window, feeling at a loss. She had been trying to contact Jackson for days now, and it wasn’t like him to be so slow responding. She could only imagine that he must be dealing with some late-term headaches at work, otherwise he would certainly have called her back by now. She was in the middle of a very frustrating wait.

  Usher had returned, his excited breath coming in ragged gasps around the ball that was still clamped inside his jaws. His tail was wagging ferociously in an invitation to play.

  Ellie took hold of the ball and began playfully trying to pull it out of his mouth while Usher growled ferociously and pulled vigorously in the opposite direction.

  “I don’t need to wonder where you are, do I?” she asked playfully. “You’re on your bed, or you’re eating, or you’re chewing on your disgusting rubber ball. I like that about you, Usher. And maybe, some day, I’ll be able to teach a certain other male to be half as dependable.”

  49

  THE AIR WAS icy in her lungs, her fingers were feeling the cold even through her gloves, and every footfall felt dangerous on the ice-rimmed dirt path that ran alongside the road, but Ellie forged on.

  She was never one for exercise, but Usher had far too much energy to be contained within her apartment, and twice-a-day walks around the block plus the occasional visit to the dog park wasn’t working, either. To tire him out she had forged a new habit of going out jogging with him in the morning. In truth, it was more of a “jog short distances and then walk until her breathing was back under control,” but Usher seemed to enjoy it and he was less likely to drive her
crazy when she was trying to get work done at home. Ellie was beginning to think that someday she might even enjoy life as a jogger, but before she got there she needed to do something about her workout equipment. She was in no way equipped for outdoor exercise in cold weather.

  The trail winded alongside a cemetery, and Ellie took a tighter grip on the leash. Usher wanted to stop every ten feet to sniff at something, but she hardened her heart and forged on. Eventually, she hoped, he would get the hang of it and she wouldn’t need to jerk him back to heel quite so often.

  Her mind was far away, in San Francisco with Jackson. He still hadn’t returned her calls. She was beginning to wonder when it was appropriate to panic and call his mother, in case there had been some accident. Maybe he was in a car accident. Maybe he was in a hospital bed at this very moment, several beeping machines hooked into his body, an oxygen mask over his mouth and preventing him from calling out her name. Maybe he had only a precious few hours to live and needed the sight of her loving face to give him a reason to live!

  Or maybe, Ellie thought, she was being ridiculously melodramatic and needed to relax. It was a pattern that she was all too familiar with—she struggled with silence. If Jackson had contacted her, even to say he would not be making the trip to visit her, she would have something to grapple with. Instead, her mind filled the silence with a series of worst-case scenarios, each more terrible than the last. Ellie knew that she had a habit of driving herself crazy one slow step at a time, and she was fighting against it with every resource she could muster.

  Movement to her left drew her eye. She saw a woman bundled inside a bulky winter coat who was kneeling beside one of the graves and brushing snow and ice from the headstone. Silently Ellie gave props to the woman for visiting the cemetery on such a wintery day, but then something about the way she moved caught her attention.

  It was Karen Jefferson, she was sure of it. Ellie slowed her pace to get a better look, which caused Usher to reach the end of the leash and his kinetic energy jerked her forward. Ellie continued jogging by, trying not to be obvious that she was looking in Karen’s direction in case the other woman happened to catch sight of her.

  So Karen had lost someone. Who might it be? Ellie doubted that the woman had grown up in this town—she didn’t have the same feel as the locals that Ellie had met—so it must be someone else, a husband most likely. She felt a slight twinge of sadness, even though the deceased, whoever he was, had clearly passed away quite some time ago. Even so, she felt sorry for Karen and the grief that she still felt. It was hard to imagine that woman feeling anything other than anger, scorn, and contempt, but apparently Ellie had not seen all of her yet.

  Usher pulled impatiently on the leash, eager to hurry forward to whatever adventure lay around the next bend in the road, and Ellie jogged onwards with him. Her mind was casting back, though, to the image of a woman kneeling in the snow.

  50

  THE LAPTOP CHIMED to say that a new email had arrived. Ellie was cradling a cup of coffee between her palms and staring out the window at a bleak white-and-gray landscape, and her first thought was that it was Jackson finally getting back to her. She sat on the couch and swiped her finger over the trackpad to switch off the screensaver.

  At first she didn’t recognize the name of the email’s sender, but then a faint memory tickled the back of her consciousness. Susan O’Neil was someone high up in the administration of Ellie’s old university, a director of something or the other. If Ellie was still teaching in San Francisco she might have made a point of button-holing this woman at a university function and chatting her up; it was always a good idea to stay on the good side of a university’s movers and shakers. She could not imagine why the woman would be emailing her, though. She clicked to open the email, and her stomach gave a dreadful lurch at the sight of the first sentence.

  I don’t think you should be finding out this way, but as a woman I respect you too much to let things go on any further the way they have been. I hope you believe me when I say that I’m sorry for the way things turned out, and I feel I owe you an apology even though I know that you will probably never accept it. Still, this is better than nothing.

  Jackson and I have been involved, emotionally and physically, for several months now. At first I honestly thought it was just an affair, but over the last several weeks the relationship has picked up speed and now I believe we are truly committed to each other, for now and forever.

  I’ve talked to Jackson more than once about telling you what has happened. He’s been putting off the conversation, partly because I think he’s afraid of hurting you. Of course that’s silly. When things like this happen, someone always ends up getting hurt. I’m sure you see, though, that the harm is already done. We can’t roll back the clock and try to find a way to make everything nice for everybody. All that remains is for us to be honest with one another.

  You are shocked, I am sure, and angry. You have every right to be. Jackson and I acted selfishly and irresponsibly in keeping this from you for so long. We are deeply in love, however, and I hope that in time you can find it in your heart to wish us well. I know that Jackson thinks very highly of you, and it would break his heart if you thought less of him because of this.

  Maybe it’s selfish of me to tell you this, but Jackson once told that he never felt like he truly loved you, no matter how hard he tried. He’s told me that he cheated on you more than once, and I suspect that he was even involved for a time with Kate Trask in your old department. So you can see that it was only a matter of time before things fell apart between you. At least now you know the truth, and you can move on.

  I wish you only the best,

  Susan O’Neil

  Ellie stared at the screen, her eyes wide and her heart beating heavily in her chest. She heard a roaring in her ears, and she felt a little dizzy. She was sure that it must be a joke, and her eyes scanned the paragraphs again and again for the phrase that she missed, the one that admitted that it was all a practical joke.

  Eventually her mind closed on the truth, and she reached out an unsteady hand to close the cover of her laptop. She thought that she should be crying now, but no emotion would come. Her entire life and all her hopes for the future had just shattered in a moment, but all she could do was wonder, as if from a distance, why she wasn’t screaming.

  Usher could sense that something was wrong and came over, his claws clicking on the hardwood floor, to nuzzle at her legs. Ellie reached out a hand and scratched him underneath his collar. She gazed out the window at a cold day that looked to be getting colder, while inside her chest an empty space grew so wide that she thought it might suck everything inside.

  51

  WHEN HER FATHER returned, a bag of groceries in his hands, she was at the kitchen table finishing off a cup of coffee and thinking about shifting to whiskey. She looked up at him and tried to smile, but her eyes gave her away.

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asked, leaving the groceries on the counter and walking over to place a hand on her shoulder.

  Ellie simply shook her head. She had no words to describe how she was feeling. She didn’t feel much like crying anymore, but what had taken the place of the sadness was a confusing mix of anger, shame, disappointment, and a fierce desire for revenge that could only be satisfied by something extravagant, such as flying to San Francisco, breaking into Jackson’s apartment, and flinging his prized collection of jazz albums into the Bay.

  “Love sucks,” was all she managed to get out.

  “What happened?” her father asked, pulling out a chair and sitting next to her, his face full of concern.

  “I just received the worst news of my life, telling me that my whole life is based on a lie.” She took a deep breath, steeling herself. Somehow it felt like saying the truth out loud made it more real that it already was. “Jackson has been cheating on me.”

  “Damn it,” her father muttered. “That bastard.”

  “For months,” Ellie added, biting down on t
he pain as if it were a sore tooth. “Maybe even years. He was cheating while I was living with him! And this is just the stuff I know about. Who knows how many women he slept with without me knowing?”

  Her father shook his head. “Guys like him give guys like me a bad name. I’m so sorry, honey.”

  Ellie returned her attention to the coffee in her cup. “What am I going to do now?” she muttered to no one in particular.

  Her father reached out and rubbed her back with a strong hand. “You’ll be fine, sweetheart. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but you’ll be fine. Better even, now that you no longer have that liar in your life.”

  Ellie was having a hard time seeing it. She was so angry at Jackson that she never wanted to see or hear from him again, but it felt like something important had changed for the worse. As far as she knew, no one had ever cheated on her before. She was the one who left a relationship, not the other way around. And Ellie was beginning to realize how much of her confidence and security was based on the assumption that, when it came to love and connection and all the other things that contributed to her happiness and well-being, she was the one who was in control.

  Now look at me, she thought to herself. Not so powerful anymore, am I?

  There was only one thing left in her mind that didn’t fill her with feelings of emptiness and despair. She seized on it now.

  “I’m going to do the conference. Originally it was supposed to be for Jackson, to turn this school into a place where he would want to work, but now he can go to hell. I’m going to do it for myself. I’m the one who deserves something better. I feel terrible, Dad. I feel weak and helpless, and I feel like a victim, and I hate that more than anything. So I’m going to grab my shitty life by the throat and shake it until something good happens.”