href="#litres_trial_promo">CHAPTER TEN
HE WOULD COME after her.
Without him, Tessa Henning wasn’t worth the dust left by a mercilessly harvested and exquisitely carved elephant’s tusk, but once he discovered she knew too much, Brice would hunt her down just the same. He’d come after her because she was a traitor. He’d find her because she was his wife and he believed in gratitude and loyalty. He expected it. Brice had put her on a pedestal...made her feel beautiful and wanted at a time when everyone else saw her as awkward. He’d given her a life of luxury and security. He’d been generous.
He loved her.
She closed her eyes. She hoped it had been love all this time. Maybe it still was. Maybe she was wrong about everything. Brice had always been a decent man. A decent husband. Marriage involved trust. But didn’t love and trust take two in a marriage? Love and trust were funny words. Tessa swallowed hard, but the lingering, bitter taste of uncertainty dried her throat even more. She needed to stop rationalizing.
Listen to your gut. Don’t ignore your instincts this time. This isn’t just about you anymore. There’s a kid involved.
She took a deep breath, the kind she did in yoga class, then opened her eyes and took one last look around. The designer “organic eggshell”-colored paint she’d once thought made their bedroom appear clean and classy now seemed cold and painfully neutral. She ran her hand across the brown silk sheets that lay rumpled next to her duffel bag, making sure nothing she needed had been lost in them. Their silky touch was anything but soothing. It reminded her of how easily comfort and security could slip away. The pit of her stomach quivered.
“Just get Nick out of here first, then figure out what to do next,” she muttered, trying to keep her nerve up. The sound of Nick’s name grounded her and she rammed the last few bare essentials she’d piled on her bed into her bag, including her journal and the iPad she’d saved some work, research and personal files on. Nothing was only about her anymore. Not since her sister and brother-in-law were killed in an accident six months ago and her thirteen-year-old nephew became her responsibility. Well, hers and his uncle Mac’s, but she’d pretty much assumed primary guardianship. It had been Mac’s choice at first—a choice that preserved his rugged, bachelor bush-pilot lifestyle up in Kenya’s Serengeti. Not that he was entirely delinquent as a guardian, but Mac had managed to convince her early on that there was no way he could raise Nick. He sent money instead.
But she wasn’t complaining, exactly. She loved Nick and was glad he was a part of her life. Six months ago, she’d thought that having him around would be like having a part of her sister to hang on to. Things didn’t turn out that way. For someone with no child-rearing experience, suddenly having a grieving teenage boy dropped into your life was like expecting a deer to raise a baby wolf. Still, a part of her hated that she was going to lose Nick if her suspicions about Brice proved to be true.
She slung her mini backpack purse onto her shoulder, grabbed the duffel then hurried down the curved marble staircase to the main level of their modern South African villa. The floor-to-ceiling window that framed a spectacular view of the Southern Ocean’s crested waters never failed to take her breath away, but today the clawing waves seemed like they were desperate to capture her...to keep her from escaping. That same view made anyone who attended one of Brice’s upscale cocktail parties jealous of what they had. Those guests didn’t have a clue that his fortune had come at a price. Even Tessa didn’t have solid proof, and hadn’t even suspected Brice’s illegal activity until recently, but she was not going to stand by and be a victim. Or watch others suffer at his hands.
The journalist in her had been screaming that something was off for a while now, but given all she was going through after her sister’s death, her mind kept telling her to stay out of it, play it safe and take care of Nick. The problem was, there was no safe anymore. Home would never feel safe again. Tides changed and the undertow was deadly for the unprepared. She needed to be prepared.
At first, she’d thought Brice’s increasing emotional distance, preoccupation with work and irritability were due to the change their daily lives had undergone when Nick came to live with them. She had thought her husband was avoiding the stages of mourning she and Nick had been suffering through, and she had decided not to confront him about it. She figured it would all pass and they’d find a new equilibrium; plus, it wasn’t fair to make Nick suffer through their marital stresses. Not after what he’d already been through and not when his uncle Mac couldn’t get over his bachelor-ness and take his nephew in. But since her initial suspicions, things had been getting worse. Maybe Tessa’s imagination was working overtime and she was reading into the bits and pieces of a phone conversation she’d overheard when Brice didn’t know she’d returned home early from taking Nick to one of his posttraumatic therapy sessions, but she needed to know for sure. If Brice was involved in criminal activity, no way was she going to let Nick live around him.
A door on the far side of the living room led to Brice’s office. He kept it locked whenever he took trips, but Tessa had been planning today for over a month now. Trust. Traitor. She reached into her pocket for the key she’d made, then entered. His office had always made her nervous. Like a mother walking into a crystal display shop with a hyperactive child. Just about everything was made of glass or covered in it. The shelves. His desktop, resting on a sleek, sawhorse-style base with wooden drawers and files under either side. The decorative items between books. It had never hit her before, but now it looked as if he were being daring...seeing just how much load his life could take before everything shattered.
She went to his desk and wondered how he kept the glass fingerprint-free. She avoided touching the surface and opened the drawers. A credenza along the wall behind the desk carried his main computer. No doubt he’d taken his laptop with him.
She wished like crazy that she knew his computer passwords. One backup of his hard drive would be all she needed, but she had no time to guess and no clue how to hack. She’d take anything, though—the last bank statement, receipts...anything that would put her suspicions to rest and prove Brice wasn’t involved in dark business dealings. Prove that the man who’d swept her off her feet was still the same Brice she’d married. A charismatic and shrewd but moral and ethical businessman. Her husband. Yet the last words she’d overheard from that phone call still echoed in her ears: No one can find out. I’ll deny involvement with my last breath.
The nape of her neck prickled as she rifled through his drawers, careful to leave everything looking untouched. She hated this: the sneaking behind his back, the spying...the adrenaline. Boy, did she hate adrenaline. The longer it took for Brice to notice something was wrong when he returned from his business trip in two days, the more of a head start she’d have. She cursed e-bills and cloud storage, then tried one last drawer. A small clear plastic container lay in the back, covered by a stack of manila envelopes. She lifted it out and stacked the envelopes in place. The container had at least six flash drives piled inside. Maybe some things are too sensitive to store in cyberspace. Huh, Brice?
Her cell phone ring tone sent her pulse scattering. She fumbled for it in her back pocket and checked the screen. Katia. Her editor must have already seen the article she’d sent her just an hour ago. Tessa took a second to steady her voice, then answered.
“Hey, Kat.”
“Tessa, are you crazy? I can’t publish this in tomorrow’s paper. Have you forgotten who your husband is?”
Tessa pressed a hand over her eyes. Why had she bothered? Had she really thought the friendship that had grown between her and