Fake It For Me - A Fake Wife Billionaire Romance

by Layla Valentine

  Lenny shook his head. “Man, that shit’s ancient history now,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at Jack. “They brought me in the room. They thought I’d killed Laura, same reason Hardy does. Said she ruined my life and I put paid to her, same old story.” Lenny shook his head again. “They brought out pictures of her—you seen those?”

  Cassandra nodded, wincing—she had seen more than pictures.

  “Then you know that whoever did that to her wasn’t just getting back at her over a deal gone bad, or whatever. No, there were marks all round her neck, face all beat to hell. Real nasty business.”

  “What else did they ask you?” Cassandra didn’t dare to glance at Jack; she needed to keep Lenny’s attention on her and keep the tension level in the room down. Training in dealing with hostile interview subjects sure does come in handy where you least expect it, she thought absently.

  “All the normal questions, ‘Where were you on this night,’ ‘who was with you,’ ‘do you have any proof that you were there,’ shit like that. The night Laura got killed, I was trying to sling a pair of shoes so I could go buy a gram.” Lenny made a face.

  “Is that all you did that night, Lenny?”

  “I’m telling you; I bought some stuff, and then I went and hung out at Roxy’s for a while. Then I came back here.”

  “What else did the police ask you? Come on, Lenny, I’m doing everything I can to help you out here. Work with me.” Cassandra glanced askance at Jack, who was barely holding in his frustration.

  “I told you; they asked where I was, who I was with, all the normal things. That night was the same as every night; get some cash, find some dope, come home and use.” Lenny was shaking slightly under Jack’s weight, and Cassandra could see he was starting to go into the twitchy, itchy state of intense craving.

  “I’d be using right now if I had my hands to myself,” he said. “That’s all I know. I wasn’t there, I wasn’t involved. If I’d seen Laura in the street I might spit on her, but I wasn’t in any shape to do what that son of a bitch did to her.”

  “Anything else you can remember them asking you? I know it was a while ago, but I just want to make sure we’ve got all the details. You get that, right Lenny?”

  The junkie considered for a moment, his gaze abstracted. “They asked me the same questions so many times I didn’t really think about it.” He licked his lips and looked at Cassandra. “They asked me where I was the night it happened. Who I was with, the clothes I was wearing, if I wore any jewelry, all that stuff. I said to ‘em, do I look like the kind of guy who wears jewelry? I’d sell the clothes off of my back for a hit.”

  Something tugged at Cassandra’s mind. She sat back on her haunches, frowning as she felt something tickling at a corner of her brain.

  “What? What is it, Cass?” Jack said, turning to look at her.

  Cassandra shook her head, holding her hand up to silence his questions. There was something about the mention of jewelry.

  There was something… Come on, Cass, think. It was something to do with a bracelet, or a necklace…something.

  She shook her head as nothing rose up as she attempted to call the detail to mind. Was it something she’d seen in a police report, or was it something she remembered from walking into the scene itself? It was impossible to remember exactly, but the sudden nagging in her brain was enough to convince Cassandra that Lenny wasn’t the man they were looking for.

  “He’s not who we need to be talking to,” Cassandra said finally, taking a deep breath and sighing as she turned her attention back to the two men in front of her. “We’re wasting our time here, Lenny wasn’t involved. I mean, look at him; he can barely sit still long enough to answer questions. There’s no way he would have been able to kill someone and make it look like you did it.”

  For a moment, Jack didn’t move. He said nothing, and Cassandra could tell that he was deliberating, trying to decide whether or not he agreed with her analysis. He closed his eyes and Cassandra saw a ripple of tension work through him. A moment later, he released his hold on Lenny and stood up, stepping away from the mattress. Cassandra struggled to her feet, stamping a couple of times to rid herself of the pins-and-needles feeling in her toes.

  “I have an idea,” she told Jack quickly. “I know you’re in charge here, but something just came to me. I’m not sure what it means yet, but I think there’s somewhere else we need to be.”

  Jack held her gaze for a long moment and then nodded. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, nodding towards the room where they’d entered the apartment.

  As they started towards the dining room, Cassandra looked back to see Lenny watching them, confusion evident on his face, before reaching for the little baggie of white powder, his hands shaking and his attention absorbed completely by the dope. She shook her head and reminded herself that his fate was none of her business—beyond keeping Jack from killing him, at least.

  Turning back to the dining room, she saw that Jack had already jumped through the window. She pushed herself up onto the windowsill, thinking about the best possible way to get the information she needed.

  “Where are we going?” Jack asked, as he lifted her through the window and set her on her feet.

  “Laura’s place,” Cassandra said. “I need to see if there’s something…” She shook her head. “I just need to see it.”

  Jack shrugged, looking out over the balcony. “I suppose we better get down from here then,” he said, flashing an almost-smile in her direction.

  “I can’t wait,” Cassandra said sarcastically, steeling herself for their descent.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A few dozen near-heart attacks later, Cassandra was back behind the wheel of her car, speeding along the highway.

  Jack lay in the backseat in silence, and as the music on her stereo swirled around her in eddies and floods of sonic fury, Cassandra wracked her mind to try and figure out what it was about Lenny’s words that had pricked at her memory. There was something she’d seen, somewhere along the line, that she had to see again. There was something she’d noticed, something she’d thought to be insignificant, that had gone into the back of her mind without being catalogued.

  Cassandra stifled a yawn; the nap she had taken earlier was starting to wear off. She just hoped that somehow their luck would hold out; that they’d take a look at Laura’s place, figure out what it was that she needed to remember, and from there discover who it was who had framed Jack.

  She wasn’t sure when she had decided that she believed Hardy was innocent. Now she was convinced not only of Hardy’s innocence, but also that her own reputation as a journalist was now on the line. It was up to her to figure out where the investigation had gone wrong; to find out what it was that she and the cops had missed.

  Cassandra yawned, wishing she had taken a moment to grab something with caffeine in it before getting back onto the Interstate. She had gotten maybe three hours of sleep during her nap that morning in the driver’s seat—far from enough to satisfy her brain’s needs.

  Get to Laura’s place and figure out what you need to figure out, and then maybe if something happens you can get some sleep after that. Stick with me for just a little while longer, brain.

  As she drove, Cassandra thought back to the case she’d covered months before. At the time she’d received it, the tip off about Laura’s murder had seemed like a grisly answer to her prayers. She had been with The Daily Inquisitor for almost a year at that point, having joined fresh out of college. For months she had been struggling to set herself apart from her colleagues. Out of fear of seeming difficult, she’d let editorial put her on whatever assignments needed covering, and her articles always seemed to end up buried in the middle of the paper, next to advertorial content that no one ever read. She had made herself available to do legwork for other reporters, doing small-time interviews, tracking down details for research that would back up a scoop, but no matter how hard she tried to get a toe in the door, it seemed that no one wanted
to give her a meaty assignment—not when she was so readily available for the grunt work.

  Everything had changed when she picked up the phone, late one night in the near-empty office. The anonymous caller had told her that there had been a murder, and to get to an address up in Scarsville as soon as possible. When Cassandra asked the person to identify themselves, they had already hung up.

  After calling the police, Cassandra had hurried out to the address; unaware that she was about to be the first on the scene of the murder of Laura Granger, sweetheart of the NYPD. When she’d arrived at Granger’s house, the police had been right on her heels. It had been Cassandra’s first dead body, and she had been shocked at the sight of the scene. Even after months of living in New York, and writing about the most repellent crimes, she still hadn’t become hardened to the uglier side of the city she lived in.

  When Cassandra’s investigative report on Laura Granger had come out, her parents had been proud of her; the suggestions that she should quit her job and come back home to the tiny town she’d grown up in, buried in Vermont, had finally stopped. Her father had framed the copies of her articles that she’d sent them. They hadn’t known quite how far down the rabbit hole their daughter had gone to get the information she needed; Cassandra hadn’t told them about the late nights poring over reports and analyses, digging through information on Laura Granger, on Jack Hardy and his methods.

  In the three months since Jack Hardy had gone to jail, Cassandra’s career had gained momentum. She wasn’t the type to get complacent, though. She knew that she had to stay relevant, keep her eye out for her next big scoop, if she wanted to hold onto her position. She had been focused on getting a more permanent position—a senior correspondent, a section editorship, something that didn’t require her to constantly be out in the field—when Jack had caught her in her own apartment. Max Adelman, Senior Editor at The Daily Inquisitor, had been keeping a close eye on her, but Cassandra had been waiting for him to give her something other than praise in staff meetings and the occasional bonus; what she really wanted was a promotion.

  Cassandra took one hand off of the steering wheel, reaching up to rub at her eyes. They were starting to take on that heavy, scratchy feeling again; the telltale sign that she was starting to get to the downhill side of fatigue. She reminded herself that Jack was a fugitive on the lam. It wasn’t like they could afford to take a bunch of time off to sleep—they could run into the law at any moment, and then their road trip would come to a screeching halt.

  Jack wouldn’t just be back in jail; they’d tack on at least a few more months for the escape. Maybe even years, depending on what he did to escape.

  That was a question she hadn’t asked Jack—how had he gotten out of the prison in the first place? Cassandra tried to remember if the news report she’d heard on the radio—the breaking news that had first informed her that Jack was on the loose—had mentioned anything about his method of escape.

  “Jack,” she said, glancing at the shape of his curled-up body in her rearview mirror.

  “Hmm?” Jack replied, his head turning just enough for Cassandra to catch a glimpse of his eyes.

  “How’d you get out of the pen?”

  Jack chuckled. Cassandra watched as he slipped a hand into his pocket and tugged out his pack of cigarettes, shaking one loose and tugging it out of the box. As if she had been conditioned, she followed his example, reaching over into the passenger seat to pluck one of the cigarettes from the pack and pressing the travel lighter on her center console. Jack rolled down one of the back windows and lit up, and when the button popped free of the heating mechanism, Cassandra brought the electric coil to the tip of her cigarette.

  “I made my plan the day I started my sentence,” Jack said, taking a drag and holding it in his lungs for a second before exhaling a plume of smoke towards the open window. “At least, I knew at that point that, no matter what, I was going to get out and investigate. It took me a month of watching how things worked there, and another month of getting my shit together, before I managed to get out.”

  “What did you do?”

  Jack shrugged, and Cassandra took another drag of her cigarette.

  “Prison guards are human beings,” Jack explained. “Wherever you have people, there are weak links. Not everyone working there is committed to the job. Some of them are just punching a time card, you know? The trick is, you have to figure out who those people are without tipping your hand; if they start suspecting you’re trying to find a chink in the armor, they’re down on you in a heartbeat. Full isolation, meals through a slot in the door; they keep you in cuffs and shackles for your one hour of exercise per day.” Cassandra nodded, frowning. “If I ever get clear of this,” Jack said musingly, “I’m going to write my congressman about the conditions in prison. The one I was in wasn’t even all that bad, really, but it still sucked. They all suck.” Jack paused. “Especially if you’re wrongly convicted.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” Cassandra pointed out, a teasing note in her voice.

  “Anyway,” Jack said, flicking ash through the opening in the window, “I figured out who the weak links were, and I have a few tricks up my sleeve. I got a weapon off of one of the dipshit guards, and got him to escort me. He was too scared to raise the alarm, I guess.” Jack chuckled again. “Or he just didn’t care enough. He led me out towards the gate… Next thing you know, I’m on the other side of security, making my way towards the city, and your apartment.”

  Cassandra was fascinated by the combination of intelligence and violence that had gone into Jack’s escape. She would have thought, based on Hardy’s career in the military and then as a bounty hunter, that he would have taken someone down, stolen their uniform, and gone from there. The fact that he had spent so much time planning his escape told Cassandra that he was even smarter than she had realized.

  A question rose up in Cassandra’s mind, and she took another drag of her cigarette before flicking the butt out through the window, debating whether or not she had the courage to ask it. She exhaled the last of the smoke from her cigarette, and took a cursory glance in her mirrors, checking to make sure the traffic around her was clear, when she took in a sight that made her stomach turn over and her heart start hammering in her chest.

  “Oh God, not now,” she murmured, as the car sped up behind them.

  “What?” Jack’s voice was sharp.

  “State trooper,” Cassandra said, unable to take her eyes off of the car behind her. “Maybe he’ll pass me.”

  Cold dread crept down her spine. Cassandra knew that when she’d failed to show up to work, her coworkers would have been concerned—especially when they realized that Jack had escaped in the night before, and she hadn’t even called in sick. Her phone had flashed with missed calls—she had put it on airplane mode once the first few had come in. Cassandra had considered calling the office, or sending an email to let someone know that she was okay, but she had been too wrapped up in the tumultuous events of the day. By the time they had reached Lenny’s apartment in the city, the concern had slipped her mind altogether.

  Cassandra hoped against hope that the trooper would pass her by; but just when she was certain he would get bored of following her and change lanes, she heard the sound of the siren starting up, and saw the bubble light on the top of the car light up, spinning in lazy flashes behind her.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit—he’s pulling me over.”

  She took a quick, deep breath and tried to force her tired brain to think. Considering that she was basically missing in action, it was likely that her colleagues would have filed some kind of report.

  Cassandra knew that under most circumstances, it took twenty-four hours for the police to accept a missing person report. On the other hand, when there was a fugitive on the loose and the missing person in question had been involved in putting that fugitive in jail, Cassandra thought the cops might make an exception. Had the trooper run her license plate? Did her coworkers even have t
hat information? Would the police need that, or would a simple BOLO on her name and appearance be enough? Cassandra began to slow down, knowing that if she tried to evade the cop now, he’d started the siren and lights, and she would be screwed.

  “Shit,” Jack said. He shifted slightly, and Cassandra glanced down in the rearview mirror to see him rummaging amongst her things. “Pull over, but take your time. I need to get under cover.”

  “I’ll try,” Cassandra said. Her palms felt slick. Her heart started pounding in her chest for what seemed like the tenth time that day. If they reported me missing, it would be by name. If he hasn’t already scanned my tag, I can’t let him see my license.

  Cassandra slowed down and made her way over to the shoulder, using her signal to indicate that she was complying with the nonverbal command the officer had given her. It helped that while traffic was relatively light for the time of day, there were still other cars to navigate around; it made her slow maneuver seem more natural, and gave her time to think of some kind of excuse in case the office asked to see her ID.

  If he’d already figured out who I am, he’d be doing more than the courtesy flash of the lights and regular siren. I’d be surrounded by cops in minutes.

  Jack was taking his own precautions. Cassandra caught glimpses in the mirror as he grabbed up the detritus in the back seat: an abandoned beach towel, a throw she’d stowed on the back shelf for those nights when she stayed at the office too late and needed to grab a nap before driving home. He slithered down behind the front seats and into the floorboards, covering himself with the throw and scattering things around to make it look like a messy back seat instead of a hiding spot for a fugitive.

  When Cassandra was mostly certain that Jack was as concealed as he could possibly be under the circumstances, she completed her movement onto the shoulder and rolled to a stop, parking the car.

  As she waited for the state trooper to pull up behind her, Cassandra closed her eyes for a moment, inhaling slowly as she attempted to calm down the rabbit-rapid fluttering of her heart. She swallowed against the lump that was forming in her throat and opened her eyes just in time to see the trooper get out of his car. He reminded her faintly of an older version of Riley, though it was obvious from the bulges in his uniform that he wasn’t at the peak of his physical fitness.