Secretive Read Free Page A

had fizzled, and they’d divorced, but they couldn’t sell the house, so they’d divided it into his and hers sections.
    Jack had lived upstairs and survived with a mini-fridge and a hotplate. Zoe had taken the downstairs guest bedroom and used the kitchen island as her freelance office. They had had separate lives: Jack had his start-up business in green energy, GRS Technology, and Zoe had her freelance copy-editing work plus a commercial property management gig and several dog-walking regulars. It had almost been like living in a duplex, minus the dividing wall.
    But then Jack’s business partner was murdered and Jack had disappeared. Things had gone downhill from there. Hard to imagine it getting worse, but it had. Millions of dollars went missing from GRS accounts and it looked as if not everything in the company had been on the up-and-up. Initially, the police thought Jack was dead, but when his body wasn’t discovered, they changed their working theory from “missing, presumed dead,” to “alive, presumed involved, if not guilty of murder and theft.”
    After racing halfway across the country to find answers, Zoe had discovered Jack was alive and that he’d skipped over several not so minor details from his past, including his former employer, the Central Intelligence Agency.
    When the dust settled, Jack had been cleared of the murder and the money had been returned to the business account, which was now frozen while the FBI investigated a scam that had been run through GRS. Zoe had last seen Jack diving into a Venice canal in pursuit of the man who murdered his business partner. The other man had been found, but there had been no sign of Jack, dead or otherwise.
    For six months.
    Except for a sketch that had been mailed to her after she returned from Italy, Zoe hadn’t heard anything, but because of the sketch she knew he was out there. She couldn’t explain it, not even to Helen. She just knew it. She figured he was waiting for the investigation to end. Once his name was cleared of fraud charges, Zoe knew Jack would return. In the meantime, she’d been living in suspended animation, waiting.
    And now he had shown up. He must have heard something about the fraud case. Maybe it was closed? Strange that she hadn’t heard anything, though.
    Jack’s room was dusty and she could see the evidence of the police search that had precipitated her flight from Dallas six months ago. Drawers hung open, clothes were scattered over the floor and piled on the bed, and papers tilted in stacks on the small desk in the corner. Zoe hadn’t bothered to look around here herself after she returned. Helen had kept an eye on the house and told her that the police had searched first, then the FBI. Zoe had the itemized list of the things they’d taken—Jack’s laptop, several boxes of files related to GRS, and, curiously, his four-cup coffeepot. If there was anything interesting to be found, Zoe was sure they would have discovered it.
    Zoe twitched back the curtain. Through the bare branches of the cottonwood tree that towered in front of the window, she could see the silver car. It made sense that he’d be cautious. Caution was one of his hallmarks. He’d survey the situation, get the lay of the land. Jack wasn’t one to rush into things.
    She spotted a shadowy figure in the driver’s seat and a smile curled up the corners of her lips. She should be angry, she knew. Six months and not a word. Not a single one, but she wasn’t mad, not right this second, anyway. Right now, she was relieved.
    She’d seen plenty of evidence that Jack could take care of himself, but there had been that niggling worry at the back of her mind, which she’d refused to acknowledge, that something might have happened to him. The figure shifted in the car, and the strong sunlight hit a patch of hair.
    Zoe’s smile faded. Jack’s hair was dark, not light.
    ––––––––
    M ORT didn’t recognize the number on the display of his office