Betrayed by Trust (14 page)

Three months later, late October

W
e need a taller stepstool,” I muttered, dragging ours to the front door. It was light enough for even an eight months pregnant shrimp like me to carry, but awkward given my girth. I waited for the usual rejoinder from Dan. It had become a joke between us in the early days of our marriage. No stepstool in the world could be tall enough for me to reach what I needed. That’s why we kept everything I normally used on the lower shelves.

“Where do you think you’re going with that?” Dan went off-script as he took the little ladder away from me.

I lifted the garland of paper spiders in my other hand. “It’s almost Halloween. We need to get these up.”

Dan glared at me. “I’ll do it.”

“You said that yesterday.”

“Yesterday I was putting the crib together, and carving the pumpkin.”

I looked over at our lopsided gourd. It wore a pirate’s eye patch, because the knife had slipped and there was a gaping hole where a glaring eye was supposed to be. Fortunately, Dan had done a much better job with the crib. “Fair enough. But I’m not an invalid. I can do this.”

“Not while I’m around.” Dan snatched the spiders out of my hand and stalked to the front door.

He returned a few minutes later, sans spiders. “Done. And for the sake of my nerves, no more climbing until after the baby comes. Okay?”

I made a show of sighing heavily. “All right.”

Dan leaned the stepstool against the wall so he could put his arms around my shoulders from behind. He rested his chin on the top of my head. “It won’t be too much longer. Then Evan will be here and I can help carry him around.”

The next morning dawned gray and foggy, and Dan and I drove to work with dark shadows looming suddenly out of the mist and disappearing just as quickly behind us. It was an appropriate day to be inside an old Victorian mansion turned office building. Despite the fact that the Trust investigated
real
events where things went bump in the night, or maybe because of it, the staff loved to decorate for Halloween. The building was strewn with orange crepe paper streamers, pasteboard black cats, plastic spiders, and fake cobwebs. I loved it.

This was my last week before taking maternity leave, and I wanted to get as much squared away as possible so Nancy could pick up without confusion where I’d left off. I was a little behind since the women in the office had thrown me a Halloween themed baby shower last week. Even some of the guys had shown up briefly. Barry had dropped off a gift of baby monitors, but hadn’t stayed, much to my relief. The two of us had taken the easy way out by avoiding one another, instead of trying to become friends again. Not that we’d ever really been friends. Not the way Dan and I were.

By mid-day I’d only made my way through a quarter of the paperwork that had greeted me that morning. I examined the next piece of paper, then frowned at the inter-departmental invoice on my desk. The bill was for the monitoring of something called an
XKSD
3000 system, but what had me confused was that the address for the equipment installation was ours. I called the tech department, but they’d all left for lunch, so I left a message and went downstairs to Dan’s office.

He smiled as I waddled in. “Hey, beautiful! What’s up?”

“I’ve got something here I thought you might be able to figure out for me.” I waved the invoice.

“I would have come up to you.”

“I need the exercise,” I said rubbing my lower back. It ached nearly all the time, now. “Do you know what this is for?” I handed him the invoice.

As Dan studied the paper, his brows drew down and his jaw muscles started jumping as if he were trying to contain his temper.

“What’s it for?”

His lips tightened and a feeling of dread crept over me when he didn’t respond.

“Tell me!”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Let’s go to lunch.” He put on his jacket, then carefully folded the invoice and slipped it inside.

I waited until we were in the car on the way to Benny’s before I said, “Okay, give. What’s the invoice for?”

He patted his breast pocket. “It’s for monitoring equipment.”

“I can see that. But why would it be for our house?”

He didn’t say anything.

Our house.
Someone was monitoring our house. And not just someone. The Trust. Kincaid. Nothing happened without his approval.

A sick feeling churned in my gut. “What kind of monitoring equipment?”

Dan’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “The
XKSD
3000 is a high-end surveillance system. Miniature cameras, wireless mics, and phone intercepts. The whole shebang.”

“Oh my God! He’s been
spying
on us? Watching us?”

“I doubt there are cameras in the house. Even top of the line cameras are pretty bulky. They’d be too easy to spot. The invoice is for the monitoring of seven stations. That probably means cameras covering the front and back, and mics in the house.”

“He’s been listening to everything we say? For how long? In our bedroom, too?”

Again the muscle in Dan’s jaw jumped. “Maybe.”

I flashed on the previous night’s vocal friskiness. “That son of a bitch! I’ll kill him!” My palms stung, and I realized I’d clenched my fists so tight my nails were close to drawing blood. “
Why?
”

“Men like Kincaid need to be in control. You wouldn’t let him sequester you, so he put eyes and ears on you instead.”

“So it’s my fault?”

“No. Of course not. This is all on him.”

I was glad Dan was driving. I was so furious I was shaking. I’d have driven off the road. “I’ll show him control. Take the next exit. We’re going back.”

Dan didn’t say anything; he just kept driving north on the Five.

“Dan? Turn around!”

“No, babe. If we confront him, we’ll do it with our heads on straight.” He took the next exit, and in a few minutes we were in Benny’s parking lot. It was still cold and drizzly, and I was glad Dan left the engine running to keep the heat on.

“What do you mean,
if
we confront him?” I demanded. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“We need to figure out what his game is first. We shouldn’t go off half-cocked without a plan.”

“I thought you already said it. He’s trying to protect me—in a sick, intrusive sort of way.”

“He could have done that effectively with just the cameras outside. He wants to know who we talk to, and what we say in private. Why?”

“He doesn’t trust us?” I tried to think past my fury, to remember three months’ worth of conversations. How much had we’d talked about work? Had we’d said anything negative about the Trust or Kincaid?

“What do you think we ought to do?” I asked.

“That is the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it?”

We sat in silence for several minutes, the rain pattering on the roof, until I reached over and switched off the engine. “I think we should have lunch, then go back to work. Our best bet is to act normally until we can examine our options and figure out what to do about this.”

“Can you do that?” he asked. “You don’t have much of a poker face, and a minute ago you were ready to rip Kinkaid’s head off.”

“I think so. I’m working with Kalisa this afternoon so I won’t have to deal with him today, and I go on maternity leave at the end of the week.”

Dan got out of the car and came around to help me to a standing position. “Maybe you should beg off with Kalisa. She can be way too perceptive.”

“But she doesn’t read minds. Not like Foxworth could. She told me that’s a very rare ability, and even he could only read a person’s surface thoughts. Besides, our exercises take a lot of concentration. I won’t have time to think about Kincaid and his monitors.”

“Okay. That will work for today.”

When he paused, I could see his wheels turning. “What are you thinking?” I asked.

“That we’ll need a plan for how handle Kincaid in the future. In the meantime, I’m kind of glad there are cameras on our place. I’ve been working late a lot, and I hate that you’re home alone all that time. I should have thought of it.”

“
What?
”

He held up his hands in the classic
don’t shoot
gesture. “I’m not happy that Kincaid put them there without our knowledge. And we’re not going to let them continue listening to everything we say and do. I can disrupt the microphone transmissions so the techs think they just lost service. That will give us a few days to think. We’ll eventually have to confront him, but as long as Kincaid thinks we’re in the dark, he won’t be trying to figure out a way around what we want. This invoice was misdirected. You weren’t supposed to see it, and as far as Kincaid knows, you still haven’t. That gives us some time to figure things out.”

I stopped in my tracks, just outside the restaurant, dread chilling me more than the cold drizzle. “Oh crap.”

“What’s the matter?” Dan turned back to me, then put a steadying hand on my arm.

“I left a message for the tech guys about the invoice. I called them first, before I talked to you.”

Dan’s lips thinned. “Then there’s only one thing we can do.”

Neither one of us had much of an appetite, but Dan wouldn’t go back to the office until I’d eaten half my turkey sandwich. Within minutes of our return, Jerry, from the tech department called me.

“You had a question about one of our invoices? Do you have the billing number?”

Was it my imagination, or did his voice sound a little tense? My heart pounded. I had left the number in my message. Was he playing me, or just being lazy?

“Yeah. Let me get that for you.” Then I remembered that Dan still had the invoice in his coat pocket. “Damn. I can’t seem to find it.”

“What was the invoice for?” Jerry asked. “Maybe I can find it that way.”

“Some alphabet soup of equipment.” I took a deep breath. “The delivery address was smudged. I thought you might be able to tell me what it was.”

“Well I can’t help until you get that number for me.” Jerry sounded relieved. “Call me back when you find it.”

“Will do,” I said with false cheer. “Thanks for calling me back.” I hung up and slumped in my chair, burying my face in my palms.

“You look worn out.”

I jumped and spun around. Barry lounged against the doorframe, just as he used to do when we were dating. Was that really less than a year ago?

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

He didn’t look sorry. His handsome face bore his usual slightly amused smirk.

“You didn’t. I’m just tired.” What I said was half true. It was getting hard to find a comfortable position to sleep in. I stood so I didn’t have to crane my neck as much to look up at him.

Barry eyed my protruding belly. “Good thing your maternity leave starts next week. How’s the little papoose doing?” He stepped closer and put a hand on my stomach without asking if I minded. Evan chose that moment to protest his confinement with a particularly savage kick and Barry’s hand bounced off.

“Whoa!” Barry stared at my tummy with surprise. “Does it do that all the time?”

“
It
is a
he
. And no, thank God, he doesn’t.” I couldn’t keep myself from adding, “Just when I need to go to the bathroom.”

Barry’s expression grew surprisingly thoughtful. I wondered if he was thinking that he might have known all the details of my pregnancy if he hadn’t been a prick eight months ago. But he had been, and I was grateful for that. If he hadn’t, I’d be married to him instead of Dan, and he might have gone along with Kincaid’s plans for the baby.

“What can I do for you, Barry? Can it wait until I get back from the ladies room?”

“I just wanted to stop by and make peace with you. You’ve hardly said two words to me for months. Soon you’ll be on leave. I don’t guess we’ll see much of each other after that.”

I hoped that would be true. While I wanted to come back after Evan was born to work part time with Kalisa, I didn’t expect to see much of Barry, who now was often out in the field on investigations. That was fine with me. Seeing him just reminded me of how duped I’d been by his beach boy charm.

He must have seen some of that in my face. “It wasn’t all an act, Marianne. I genuinely liked you.
Like
you. Present tense.”

I hesitated, wondering where he was going with this. Was it just a case of him wanting what he couldn’t have? That might have been true back when he proposed, but it didn’t seem likely now that I was as round as a beach ball. “Thanks.”

“I was stupid back then, and I’m sorry I hurt you. Forgive me?”

Dan stepped into my tiny office behind Barry. His expression was completely neutral, but I saw the slight narrowing of his eyes, and knew he’d heard what Barry had said.

“Hey there, I just wanted you to know I’m heading downtown to the Hall of Records, but I’ll be back in time to take you home.”

A feeling of uneasiness curled around me, like the creeping mist in a horror movie. “Isn’t that Cindy’s job?” Dan was a senior researcher. He wasn’t usually sent on paperwork surveys.

“Yeah, but she got a call, and had to leave early. Kincaid needs this info for a conference in the morning.”

“There’s no need for you to backtrack,” Barry said. “I can take Marianne home.”

I didn’t want to accept Barry’s offer, but I didn’t want to make Dan drive an extra twenty miles during rush hour either.

“Maybe next time,” Dan said, coming to my rescue. “I have to bring back copies of the records, and I’ll be taking one of the Foundation’s vehicles anyway.” Then he met my gaze, and his brow furrowed. “You gonna be okay?” His expression told me clearly that he could see something was bothering me, and he wouldn’t go if I said no.

His concern for me made me feel safe and protected, almost displacing my odd anxiety. “I’ll be fine.”

Dan nodded and leaned around Barry to give me a quick peck. “Are you sure?” His hand lingered on my cheek. “How am I going to feel manly if you don’t let me take care of you?”

I chuckled and kissed him again. “I guess you’ll have to go wrestle a bear or something.”

“That’ll be enough of that,” Kalisa said with mock severity from the other side of Barry. “You’re making the rest of us jealous.”