The Betrayed Wife

by Kevin O'Brien

  THE BETRAYED WIFE

  Eden approached her tentatively. She almost looked desperate for approval.

  A rake in her hand, Sheila just stared at her. Dylan’s daughter had been hiding a lovely face behind that awful Goth makeup.

  But as far as Sheila was concerned, she was still a monster.

  “I thought I’d start cooking my dinner—if that’s okay with you,” Eden murmured.

  “Fine.”

  “Listen, I’m really sorry about what happened to your garden,” she said, her voice quivering a little. “I know you don’t believe me, but I had nothing to do with it. Anyway, I’d like to help tomorrow, getting it back to the way it was.”

  “It’ll be a long, long time and a lot of work before it’s back to the way it was,” Sheila said coolly.

  “I’d like to help out just the same.”

  Sheila figured this was her cue to toss aside the rake and hug her. But she couldn’t. She kept thinking of Eden and that burnout creep stalking her, the texts, and today, the garden.

  “Go make your dinner,” she muttered, tightening her grip on the rake. “And I’d like you to keep something in mind . . .”

  “What?” Eden murmured.

  “If one of my kids gets sick or hurt, if some sort of freak accident happens to any of them, I’m holding you accountable. I promise, I’ll make you pay . . .”

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  Books by Kevin O’Brien

  ONLY SON

  THE NEXT TO DIE

  MAKE THEM CRY

  WATCH THEM DIE

  LEFT FOR DEAD

  THE LAST VICTIM

  KILLING SPREE

  ONE LAST SCREAM

  FINAL BREATH

  VICIOUS

  DISTURBED

  TERRIFIED

  UNSPEAKABLE

  TELL ME YOU’RE SORRY

  NO ONE NEEDS TO KNOW

  YOU’LL MISS ME WHEN I’M GONE

  HIDE YOUR FEAR

  THEY WON’T BE HURT

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  KEVIN O’BRIEN

  THE BETRAYED WIFE

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents THE BETRAYED WIFE

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 Kevin O’Brien

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-4507-5

  Electronic edition: August 2019

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-4510-5 (e-book)

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-4510-8 (e-book)

  This book is for my friends, the Kelly Family:

  Ed, Sue, Ryan and Eric.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to my Kensington family for all their hard work to help make this book happen. I’m so lucky to have been with them for the past twenty-two years. Here’s to twenty-two more! A special thank-you goes to my brilliant editor, John Scognamiglio, for his guidance, his patience, and his friendship. John’s creative contribution is here on every page.

  My gratitude also goes to the lovely and talented Meg Ruley, the talented and lovely Christina Hogrebe, and the marvelous team at Jane Rotrosen Agency for helping make my dreams come true.

  Another big thank-you to my writers’ group pals, David Massengill, Garth Stein, and Colin McArthur, for making it through the first rough one hundred pages of this book and helping me see where it needed to be polished up or completely gutted.

  I want to give a special thank-you to my friends with Seattle 7 Writers, especially Dave Boling, Erica Bauermeister, Carol Cassella, Laurie Frankel, Suzanne Selfors, Jennie Shortridge, and Garth Stein. You guys are the best!

  Another thank-you goes to the amazing Dante and Pattie Bellini.

  Thanks also to the following individuals and groups for their support and encouragement, and for putting up with me: Dan Annear and Chuck Rank, Jeff Ayers, Ben Bauermeister, Pam Binder, A Book for All Seasons, The Book Stall, Marlys Bourm, Amanda Brooks, Terry and Judine Brooks, Lynn Brunelle, George Camper and Shane White, Barbara and John Cegielski, Barbara and Jim Church, Anna Cottle and Mary Alice Kier, Paul Dwoskin, Elliott Bay Book Company, John Flick and Dan Reich, Bridget Foley and Stephen Susco, Matt Gani, Cate Goethals and Tom Goodwin, Bob and Dana Gold, Cathy Johnson, Elizabeth Kinsella, David Korabik, Hallie Kuperman, Stafford Lombard, Paul Mariz, Roberta Miner, Dan Monda, Jim Munchel, Bob and Gerry O’Brien, Meghan O’Neill, the wonderful folks at ReaderLink Distribution Services, my faithful friends from Sacred Heart School, Eva Marie Saint, John Saul and Mike Sack, John Simmons, Roseann Stella, Dan Stutesman, George and Sheila Stydahar, and Marc Von Borstel.

  Finally, thanks so much to my family. You guys are the greatest!

  CHAPTER ONE

  9/5 Wed—12: 30 A.M.

  “I have only a few sunny days left.”

  That’s what Antonia announced in a Facebook post several days ago. Like we’re all supposed to give a shit.

  Antonia and her tan. Okay, I admit: At forty-four, she looks pretty good—what with all her exercising and all that sun. But the way she talks about her tanning sessions and how important they are, you’d think she was doing work for the United Nations: “Oh, no, I can�
��t be there for that . . . I’ll be tanning!” Every damn summer, it’s the same thing. As soon as she gets off work at the Hilton, Antonia hurries home, makes herself a Cosmopolitan (still thinking she’s Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City), changes into her bikini, and heads up to the roof of her apartment building with her Coppertone, her blanket, and the Cosmopolitan in a thermos. All her friends and former boyfriends know about her sacred routine.

  The roof has no protective railing, and it’s seven stories high. No one’s supposed to be up there. If Antonia stumbled and plunged to her death from that roof, would anyone be all that surprised?

  Would anyone really care?

  She’s a terrible mother. I’ll certainly vouch for that. I guess a couple of her work friends at the hotel might miss her, but hell, they don’t really know her—not like I do. She’s currently single (it’s been an off-month for her), so she won’t leave behind a devastated boyfriend to shed any tears for her. And I sincerely doubt her two loser ex-husbands or any of her loser ex-boyfriends will show up at the memorial service.

  I can imagine the preacher giving the eulogy, struggling to come up with something nice to say about her: “Okay, so she was a self-centered, uncaring bitch, but Antonia had a killer body and a terrific tan. And, by all accounts, she was great in the sack. She lived fast and died young . . .”

  Too bad she won’t leave a good-looking corpse, not the way she’s going to die.

  And she isn’t exactly young . . .

  I admit, I’m being hard on Antonia here. I read a while ago—I don’t remember where—that some people, when they know they’re going to die, they push their loved ones away. It’s supposed to make the separation easier for the survivor. Maybe I’ve been doing something like that in reverse—to make it easier for me to pull this off. But I really don’t think I’ll miss her when she’s gone.

  I know she has her good side. She can be a hell of a lot of fun at times, and she has a great laugh.

  But really, right now she’s just in the way.

  If everything is going to happen as I want it to, Antonia can’t be around. I’ve known that for weeks now. And I’ve prepared myself for it.

  According to the weather report, Portland is supposed to be warm and sunny tomorrow, so it’s a sure bet that Antonia will be soaking up some rays on the roof.

  But she won’t be completely alone.

  Antonia was right. She’s used up the last of her sunny days.

  Thursday, September 6—4:12 P.M.

  Portland, Oregon

  Newcomb—“Toni” to most of her friends—had a conflict of major proportions. It was a perfect afternoon for a rooftop tanning session. But she’d come home from work five minutes ago to find a second notice stuck to her mailbox in the lobby of her apartment building: The post office was holding a package for her. She’d ordered an item online from Barneys a couple of weeks ago. It was supposed to be like Botox in a bottle, and cost a small fortune: $180. The trouble was that her neighbors in the building had recently complained that someone was stealing their packages. So, for the time being, no parcels were left in the lobby.

  Antonia had to work late tomorrow. If she didn’t pick up the package now, she’d have to wait until Monday afternoon—and hope it was still there at the post office.

  Meanwhile, it was gorgeous out, and the Weather Channel predicted rain for next week. It was probably the last decent afternoon before autumn rolled in. The days were already getting shorter.

  For a few minutes, Antonia stood, staring through the window of her messy sixth-floor apartment. The appeal of “Botox in a bottle” was strong, but the appeal of her rooftop tanning time was even stronger. She’d been looking forward to it all day. And with every minute of indecision, she was losing precious sun time.

  “Screw it,” she said, heading into the kitchen to make her usual rooftop cocktail. She’d take her chances at the post office on Monday.

  Ten minutes later, Antonia stepped out of her apartment and locked her door. She wore sandals and had a Chris Isaak T-shirt over her bikini. In her backpack, she carried a beach towel, her smartphone, sunglasses, Coppertone, and the thermos with her chilled Cosmopolitan.

  In the dim hallway, she turned toward the back stairwell and spotted old Mrs. Pollakoff stepping off the elevator with two bulging grocery bags. Mrs. Pollakoff lived next door and was a nice old biddy. But she liked to talk, slowly, and usually about something excruciatingly boring. All it took was one “Hey, Mrs. Pollakoff ” to get her started, and then Antonia would have to stop everything and listen to the old woman drone on and on: “Well . . . I . . . heard . . . from . . . my . . . niece . . . today. And . . . her . . . son . . . has . . . this . . . particularly . . . terrible . . . ear . . . infection . . .”

  A coworker at the Hilton once told Antonia that you can always tell if someone is engaged with you and really listening by looking at their toes. If their toes pointed toward you, they were engaged. If their toes pointed in another direction, they wanted you to shut up so they could move on. That was how it was with old Mrs. Pollakoff. Antonia’s toes always pointed in another direction whenever Mrs. Pollakoff stopped to talk to her.

  Antonia thought about ducking back inside her apartment, but it was too late. The old woman had already spotted her. “Well . . . where . . . are . . . you . . . off . . . to?” she asked, between gasps for air as she lugged her grocery bags toward her unit.

  “A friend’s pool,” Antonia lied. Her toes were already pointing away from Mrs. Pollakoff, who looked like she was about to have a heart attack from the load she carried. The roof access was one flight up the back stairwell, and the last thing Antonia wanted to do right now was stop and help Mrs. Pollakoff with her groceries.

  “Would . . . you . . . mind . . . giving . . . me . . . a . . . hand . . . here?”

  Antonia tried not to wince. She quickly nodded and grabbed one of the bags. “I’m just going to take this to your door, Mrs. P,” she said, walking ahead. “Hope you don’t mind, but I’m running kind of late . . .”

  “Have . . . you . . . noticed . . . lately . . . at . . . the . . . Safeway . . . that . . . more . . . and . . . more . . . people . . . are . . . bringing . . . their . . . dogs . . . into . . . the . . . supermarket. . . even . . . though . . . it’s . . . supposed . . . to . . . be . . . against . . . the . . . law?”

  Antonia ended up carrying the bag into Mrs. Pollakoff’s kitchen, which was about ninety-five degrees and smelled like sour milk. She also listened to the old woman go on and on about how no one paid attention to the “No Pets Allowed” signs anymore.

  The good-deed side trip took only three or four extra minutes, but it felt like an eternity before Antonia got out of there. She hurried down the hallway to the back stairwell. Up on the top floor, there was a metal spiral staircase blocked by a chain. A faded sign hung from the sagging chain: DO NOT ENTER.

  Antonia swung her leg over the chain and started up the slightly wobbly stairway to a little room, no bigger than a closet. The caretaker kept a broom, a dustpan, and a bucket in there for the rare occasions when he swept the roof. The beige paint on the walls was peeling, and cobwebs swathed all four corners of the high ceiling. A door—with a fogged, mesh, safety-glass window—led outside to the roof. It had one of those push bars that activates the fire alarm when the door was opened. But the janitor had the key to a lock just below the bar, and that bypassed the alarm trigger.

  Antonia had “borrowed” the key from the previous janitor years ago. She kept it on a rubber bracelet specifically for these sessions. No one else in the building had access to the roof. She wasn’t supposed to be up there, either, but so far, she’d never been caught. She slipped her key into the door.

  It wasn’t locked.

  “Oh, crap,” she muttered.

  Was someone out there now? She hoped not. It would ruin her whole afternoon.

  With a bit of trepidation, Antonia opened the door and stepped outside. She didn’t see anybody, and nothing looked diffe
rent. A couple of puddles had formed from the rain two nights before, but that was all.

  Antonia figured maybe she’d forgotten to lock up when she’d been up here on Monday afternoon.

  Ducking back inside, she grabbed the broom, stepped out again, and wedged the broomstick in the doorway. She was always slightly paranoid about the door slamming shut and getting stuck, leaving her stranded up there.

  Outside at last, Antonia felt the sun’s delicious warmth. Heat seemed to waft up from the faded black tar covering the rooftop. She took her sunglasses out of her backpack, put them on, and ambled over toward her usual spot.

  Ten chimney-like air ducts were staggered across the flat roof. The ledge around it was only about two feet high. Beyond the ledge, she had a beautiful view of Portland’s Northwest neighborhood. There weren’t any other tall buildings within two or three blocks, so Antonia had some privacy.

  That was why, once she laid out her blanket, she usually sunned topless. This afternoon would be no different. Antonia sat down on her beach towel, pulled the T-shirt over her head, and removed her top. As she rubbed Coppertone on herself, she breathed in the lotion’s scent. It always reminded her of orange blossoms, trips to the beach, and sex. She often imagined some slick, handsome, executive vice president in a high-rise office building a few blocks away, looking at her through high-powered binoculars. Maybe he knew about her tanning sessions and looked forward to them as much as she did. Maybe he got off on seeing her sunbathing semi-nude. It was a nice fantasy. In reality, no one had ever bothered her while she was up on the roof—except two summers ago, when a low-flying helicopter had visited her on a few occasions. She’d figured it carried a rush-hour traffic reporter for one of the radio stations. The first time the chopper hovered over her, Antonia had automatically covered herself up. But during the return visits on other afternoons, she’d decided to give them a peek—more than a peek, a good long look. She was proud of her body, and she liked showing it off.