Jayce inclined his head. "I know you fell asleep. I know you had a headache. The infrared biometric scanner from my security system had your neural response readings sky-high. I also know when you went to sleep, what time your headache went away, and when you started dreaming, though I am not sure if my brain wave technology is reliable."
"Wow." Abigail bit into her sandwich. "The technology can do all of that? There are no visible cameras anywhere."
"That's right," Jayce said smugly. "We use waves like your WiFi or cellular phone signals. You can't see it, can you?"
"No." Abigail shook her head.
"But it's here," Jayce said, "and it can read your heart and brain patterns. It's pretty amazing and it's working well. I checked in on you from the office on my phone. When I saw that you were sleeping I didn't bother to call.
“My Dad was so pleased when he saw the readings, because now that he knows how it works, we can hook up his friend Oliver, and he can have the peace which he was yearning for."
Jayce crossed his hands over his chest. "I don't understand what women see in Oliver. Why would a woman marry a man that is forty-two years older than her?"
Abigail's head snapped up. "Huh?"
"It's Haley." Jayce sat down on the stool across from her. "I know I bring her name up so much. but the whole thing is a puzzle to me. I have issues letting go of puzzles or anything remotely mysterious." He drummed his fingers on the table. "Haley was Oliver Hillman's ex-wife; that in itself is amazing. I must admit I have been mulling about that all week. It's such a small world. I mean, who knew that my Haley—I mean, Haley—had joined his harem?"
Abigail cleared her throat. "Maybe Haley was a gold digger. Oliver Hillman is rich."
Jayce shrugged. "It's possible but I just hate thinking about it. Almost as much as I hate thinking about her being dead."
Abigail finished her sandwich and got up. "Maybe her husband killed her."
"Why?" Jayce asked, frowning. He was looking at her interestedly.
Abigail pulled open the fridge. "Well, how old was Haley when she married this old dude?"
"Twenty-four according to court records," Jayce said helpfully.
He was getting into the spirit of the guessing game. Abigail sighed. "So she was twenty-four. He was sixty-six and she was his fifth wife or something."
"Yes," Jayce said. "She was wife number five."
"And they divorced?" Abigail asked. "Why?"
She waited to hear if Jayce knew anything more. Obviously, he had been researching, but he just shrugged. "They divorced four years later. No explanation was given in the report I got."
"And that is the year she died," Abigail said. "Haley knew something. Oliver is an old guy in politics, and his companies are always getting huge contracts and what-not. He must have done some real shady stuff in his life. Maybe Haley found out about it, couldn't live with it, and instigated a divorce. Besides, she must have been reaching Oliver's sell-by date. Aren't all his wives like really young, nobody over thirty?"
Jayce was staring at her, transfixed. "That's right. I never thought of that. How'd you...never mind."
"And so he divorced your Haley but she knew too much, so old dude hired someone to kill her. A car accident would be a good cover."
"Oh my," Jayce said. "You are good at this." He laughed uncomfortably. "You almost had me believing that this is the real story."
"I can bet you, Jayce, that that is exactly how it went," Abigail said, unscrewing the bottle of water.
Jayce felt uneasy when she said that. She had eerily predicted, almost verbatim, what his friends would say about her, and now this.
Abigail was sipping from her water bottle and staring through the window at her reflection.
"Maybe that is why people around him are dying," Jayce said reflectively. "Maybe that's why he is fleeing Kingston and hiring our security firm. Maybe some of his bad deeds are coming home to roost. Someone killed his close friend and assistant, Hunter Newby. His secretary died last week. All of his trusted people are dying; maybe it started with Haley. Maybe someone killed Haley thinking that they were getting back at him."
Abigail stopped swallowing and choked on her water. She sputtered and started coughing. "That's clever. How did you think of that?" she squeezed out of her suddenly clogged throat, but all she was thinking was that Hunter was dead. She hadn't expected that—one link to that side of her life gone.
"Well, well," Jayce said smugly, "it seems as if I am not the only one who can build a story." He went around to her side of the table and knocked her on the back. "Feel better now?"
"Yes," Abigail said, straightening up. "Thanks."
Jayce looked down in her eyes. He searched her face thoroughly. "I am sorry."
"For what?" Abigail asked uncomfortably.
"For being such an ass about this whole Haley thing. I was stupid." He traced the outline of her lips. "Because you are here with me now. I have moved on."
He lowered his head to hers and whispered, "I am going to kiss you, and this time when I kiss you, I will know that I am kissing Abigail Petri."
Abigail sucked in a deep, charged breath. He didn’t touch her body, made no attempt to hold her; he just captured her lips and whispered, "Abby."
Chapter Fourteen
Abigail let herself into her apartment and locked the door. It was after one in the morning. After kissing Jayce, they had watched a movie, a historical epic that had her on the edge of her seat. Jayce had fallen asleep in the middle of it, though. She laughed softly. She knew that it was not his kind of movie, but he had valiantly watched the first twenty minutes with her.
She kicked off her shoes and clothes and stepped into the shower. The water pressure was low and she stood under the trickling water and stared sightlessly at her off-white tiles.
She had no hopes of sleeping now that she had practically slept out the day. She could spend all night right under the trickling water, just staring. She felt burdened by a heavy weight hanging over her. She always felt this way after discussing her past life as Haley, especially with Jayce. The whole situation was a little twisted.
In a bid to distance herself from Haley, she had called herself a gold digger. She hadn't been, not really. She had been troubled and bitter and almost certifiably so by the time she had joined Hillman Inc.
She had been on the outs with God, totally blaming Him for the mess her life was in, though it wasn't her fault. She had lost everything: her parents, her friends, and Jayce, and she hadn't recovered. Forgetting wasn't as easy as her mother suggested that it was.
She had been lonely. She had turned twenty-four that October 5th; as usual, she bought herself a birthday cake and lit two candles on the thing: one for herself and the other for Jayce.
Her aunt Barbara had called her earlier sobbing that she had gone to the doctor and they had discovered that her cancer had spread, which made her birthday bittersweet and even more depressing than it usually was. Barbara was her only family link.
That day when Oliver Hillman saw her blowing out the candles in the company cafeteria, it was past lunchtime and she had made sure that no one was around. A tear or two had slipped from her eyes. Her future looked bleak, and she was upset over her aunt, and at that moment she had wanted to chuck it all in and return to Montego Bay.
She missed Jayce so much that she was aching from it. She didn't care that her parents wanted her gone and that her father almost killed her. She just wanted to escape her pathetic life. It just kept getting worse. There was not even a little break for her.
"What's a pretty girl like you doing crying over a cake?" Oliver asked, sitting down across from her.
He was old was the first thought that entered Haley's head, and he was the big boss. What was he doing in the cafeteria?
Oliver inclined his head. "Is it your birthday?"
"Yes sir." She nodded. "It is."
"No 'sir'," he said, chuckling. "Gosh, don't call me sir. I am Oliver or Ollie. My close friends call
me Ollie. Want to be one?"
"One what?" Haley asked him, confused.
"Close friend." He leaned forward, his eyes twinkling. "I like you. What's your name?"
"Haley." She cleared her throat. "Haley Greenwald."
"Mmm." He licked his lips. It was obscene; his tongue had little black dots on it and it left traces of spittle at the corner of his mouth. She recoiled inside.
"Let me take you to dinner so you can celebrate your birthday properly."
"No," she shook her head, "I don't think so."
He looked taken aback; he had not expected rejection. "Why not? Have a boyfriend?"
"No." Haley shook her head vigorously and then blurted out involuntarily, "You are older than my father!"
Oliver chuckled and winked at her. "But I am not cold."
Haley had actually felt a little disturbed at his blatant flirting. Until now she had spurned any advances made to her by anyone, and Oliver Hillman would be the last man she would date. He was old and unattractive. His face had too much character to be called ugly but he was far from being attractive to her. As a matter of fact, he reminded her of a pig, with his squinty pale eyes and snout-looking nose and pinkish complexion.
He may not have been handsome but he was confident and extremely persistent. After that initial meeting, he had pursued her with a determination that had bordered on obsession. At the time she hadn't realized that her very repulsion of him was a turn-on to Oliver. He was used to getting things easily because of his millions. He had already been through four young wives and he had been actively hunting for a fifth.
When her aunt died five months after her first meeting with Oliver, he had been the only one to support her at the funeral. She had contacted her mother to tell her and Hannah Greenwald had actually pretended she didn't know her. She had muttered something unintelligible and hung up the phone on her. She had felt alone, isolated and grief stricken, with her only family link in the world gone. That was when Oliver had proposed.
Filled with grief and a deep desire to prove to her parents and the world that she didn't need anybody, she had married Oliver Hillman and she had well and truly left her past behind her. She had reinvented herself as the lady of the manor, Haley Hillman. All the time, though, she had been mindful that Oliver did not particularly like to keep his wives for long and she had quietly planned her exit strategy.
After witnessing him and Hunter cold-bloodedly killing someone, she had taken her head out of the clouds. She had requested a divorce. Her conscience, which she had thought had long since died, could not deal with what she saw. She couldn't pretend that all was well with her world anymore.
Oliver had gladly granted her the divorce. He realized his mistake in having her around when he killed one of his shady crime partners, but he couldn't have her running around with that knowledge.
He had recently been appointed a senator when the new government came to power, and he was a businessman, a well-respected pillar of society. Having her out in the world with her knowledge of him, like a loose canon, was not going to sit well with him.
He had to have her silenced. She realized that as soon as she moved out, and several attempts were made on her life. She was a target and she knew that Hunter, his chief henchman, was the one who was sent to do the deed.
She had gotten so desperate that she had gone to the police with her story. It was immediately squashed. The detective had taken her to a superintendent and he had laughed at her accusations, and quoted Shakespeare. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, huh? Don't go making trouble for the senator."
Returning from the police station, she had been in an accident. A car had rammed into hers and sent her careening off the road and flying through the windshield. Her face had taken most of the impact.
She remembered waking up in a hospital. Her jawbone was broken and wired shut she couldn't speak. Her eyes were swollen and she could barely see through them. Hunter was standing over her with a fierce look in his eyes.
"I knew you weren't dead," he whispered over her harshly. "Listen to me." He was so near she could feel his breath on her skin.
She had seriously thought that he was about to finish the deed and had closed her eyes tightly.
"You've been in here four days." Hunter growled, "Are you hearing me?"
Haley opened her eyes and tried to plead with him not to kill her but she couldn't move her mouth.
"I hoped you had died after I rammed your car." He sighed, "I don't want to kill you. Every time I attempt to, I just can't, and there is this guy that has been following you around. He looks fierce. Who is he, your new security? I may not be able to kill you but Oliver insists that you must die."
He moved even closer to Haley's battered face. "I told him that you were dead. I have a friend that knows how to forge death certificates. You had better stay dead, you hear me?" he said threateningly.
"I know a plastic surgeon that Oliver's second wife used; he's really good. Your face looks like hell now; you'll probably need him anyway. I am telling you this because I already called him. Don't let him restore your face to your previous one. Create a new identity and start your life again or else I will have to kill you, whether you have that guy following you around or not. I may have to kill him too. Disappear, you hear me?" he finished roughly.
Haley had swallowed and sighed with relief when he moved away. When he left, she had wondered if Hunter had gone mad or was seeing things. She didn't have any fierce security following her around. She wished she had thought of hiring one, but she hadn't. She had wanted to preserve her money, maybe invest in a business, so that she could have some income in the future.
The more she thought about what he said about the plastic surgery, the more she could see the sense in it. It was not the first time someone was telling her to disappear.
Her mother had told her to before, and now Oliver wanted her dead. She would be better off as somebody else. Maybe she should reinvent herself. That would be better for all concerned.
When she looked at her face in the mirror for the first time after the accident, she realized that she might not even have a choice. She looked like a massive purple bruise and only one of her eyes could be opened. One eye socket was broken, one jaw broken, and her nose was pulp. She had tried not to cry.
"What date is it?" she asked the surgeon who had come to her for a consultation.
"February 1," he said gently. "Are you sure that you don't want your old face back? He was looking at one of her pictures, which she had shown him on her phone. "I could do that, you know. You have such lovely bone structure."
"Yes, I am sure," Haley murmured. "I don't want to look like the old me at all. Change me so that not even my parents will recognize me."
The doctor had nodded. "Okay." He had shown her several sketches after that. She had leafed through each one and decided on a new face.
Her stay in the private hospital had been a long one. Various church groups had come by. One church lady, Marie Petri, had taken it upon herself to personally visit Haley.
"What's your name?" she asked one day when Haley was lying in bed after her second rhinoplasty.
"I don't know," Haley whispered. "I am nobody."
"Oh no, you have amnesia," Marie said sympathetically, completely misunderstanding her. She really didn't know who she was. She hadn't thought of a name for herself.
"Don't worry about it," Marie said optimistically. "God knows your name, whoever you are. He loves you, he will take care of you, and he has a plan for you. You are alive today because of him."
Haley pondered that. Did God really love her? He must have because Oliver had wanted her dead and yet he had sent an angel to protect her, an angel that only Hunter had seen. Only God could have used the man who was sent to take her life to suggest to her that she needed a new identity.
She was seeing God in a different light these days and she realized that maybe He had orchestrated things to sort out her life. The thought made her less lonely an
d less sorry for herself.
Every day she looked forward to Marie's positive encouragement and one day when Marie was reading the Bible story of Abigail and how she intervened on behalf of her foolish husband, Haley decided that she was going to be Abigail. She sounded like a good woman to emulate. She then searched her mind for a surname and then she thought that Marie's surname was good enough and was suitably rare. There couldn't be many Abigail Petri's in the world. That's when she became Abigail Petri.
She turned off the tap and toweled herself slowly. She was in a conundrum. She couldn't reveal her secret to Jayce now, not while Oliver Hillman was alive, and maybe not ever.
She shouldn't have returned to Montego Bay. She shouldn't have become involved in Jayce's life, but it was almost as if she couldn't help herself. She had wanted to come home.
Chapter Fifteen
Jayce's poolside party was in full swing before The General joined them with his friend, Oliver Hillman. The General had volunteered to show Oliver how the technology worked and they were in the house for the longest time, ruminating about their time together in the army. Oliver Hillman had been The General's superior when they were younger.
The poolside area was simply decorated with lanterns throwing off a green and yellow glow and mellow music wafting through the speakers strategically located outside.
Jayce had situated himself on a lounge chair that gave him a view of the entire pool area and especially Abigail. He couldn't take his eyes off her from the moment she had stepped into the house earlier. She had worn a simple pale pink dress and her hair was let loose in long, curly ringlets that flirted with her waist. She had on satiny makeup; her face was glowing.
She had been commandeered by the wives of his friends as soon as she got in. He had barely said a word to her and now they were sitting in a circle at a stone bench laughing and talking with Abigail, every one of them trying to get to know her better, and she was enjoying their company. He could see that she had a grin on her face and sometimes she laughed out loud, usually at something Melody said. He wondered what tale about him Melody was spinning.
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