by Brenda Hiatt
He smiled—an obnoxious, indulgent smile. “Of course. Anyway, I thought we should talk. As I know your mom told you, I’ve been thinking we should try to work things out. It’s only been eight months . . . Why are you shaking your head?”
“Because it’s over, Tom. I told my mother that in no uncertain terms when she called, and now I’m telling you. We’re divorced. I’ve moved on. If you want to vacation in Aruba, I can’t stop you. But you’re not sharing my room.”
“Moved on?” He looked startled. “What do . . . ? You don’t mean you’re seeing someone else?”
It wasn’t what I’d meant, but I wasn’t about to admit it. “Why so surprised? Not that it’s remotely any of your business now. You cheated on me, remember? And even when I gave you a chance, you were never willing to explain that to me, back when we were still married. I’m not about to explain myself to you, now that we’re divorced.”
“Fine. Fine.” That was the way he always dropped a subject rather than admit he was wrong. “Tell you what. I’ll take you out to dinner—a nice dinner, in honor of what would have been our anniversary—and we’ll talk things through like rational adults.”
I was about to tell him that if anyone was being irrational it was him, when the phone rang. To my outrage, Tom answered it before I could reach it.
“Hello? . . . Yes, she’s here. Who is this?”
“Tom! Give me that.” I reached for the receiver, but he turned his back to me.
“This is Tom Seally, her husband.”
“Ex-husband!” I shouted, but he’d cupped his hand around the mouthpiece.
“You’re with what? The Federal . . . Why would the FBI be calling here? What’s going on?” He swung around to stare at me.
I held my hand out for the receiver, glaring at him, but apparently Agent Truman or Walters was giving him some kind of explanation. Great. That was all I needed.
“I see. Yes, I’ll tell her. Thanks.” He hung up the phone.
“What is wrong with you?” I demanded. “That call wasn’t for you. You can’t just waltz in here and—”
“Wrong with me? You’re on your own for just a few months, and you’re in trouble with the FBI. What have you gotten yourself into, Wynne?” He looked both angry and alarmed—probably worried about his precious reputation.
“You mean he didn’t tell you?”
Tom narrowed his eyes, and I got the impression he was actually seeing me for the first time since I’d come into the room.
“Agent Truman said that you haven’t returned his call and that it’s important that you cooperate. So just what exactly have you done that requires cooperating with the FBI? Did you witness a crime or something?”
“Not exactly,” I began, then stopped myself. “You know, this isn’t any of your business, either. Nothing to do with me is any of your business. Not any more.”
Again with the patronizing look. “Wynne, Wynne. If you’re in some kind of trouble, you have to let me help you. But to do that, I have to know what’s going on.”
“I’m not in any kind of trouble,” I lied with a perfectly straight face. “They think I may have witnessed something, but I’ve already told them I didn’t see anything. They probably just want me to sign a statement or something, but I’ve been out all day. If you’d just handed me the phone, I could have cleared everything up.”
He looked at me for another long moment, and I wondered if he’d call my bluff, but he didn’t. “Okay. He said he’d call back in a couple of hours, so let’s go get some dinner, and you can tell me all about it.”
“I don’t want dinner, and I don’t want to tell you about anything. And you’re not staying in this room tonight.” I sounded shrewish but didn’t care. Tom definitely brought out the worst in me. Maybe he always had.
“Okay, fine. We’ll go down to the front desk, and I’ll book another room. But then we’ll go get something to eat. You always get cranky when you’re hungry, remember?”
As if I didn’t have plenty of cause for crankiness right now, dinner or no dinner. “I already have plans. You’ll just have to get a meal on your own.”
“Look, Wynne, I really think we need to talk. There’s . . . something I need to tell you about Debra and some decisions we need to make.”
“What about Debra?” I asked suspiciously.
“Over dinner. It’s too long a story to launch into on an empty stomach.”
I started to insist that tell me now, but then I remembered what I’d originally come up to my room for—and that Ronan was waiting downstairs. I’d endure Tom for the space of a meal if I had to, to find out what was going on with Deb and to finally convince him, once and for all, that I had zero interest in reconciling. But I hoped I could convince him to hash everything out without that. I needed to be free this evening, to help Ronan with his plan.
“You go down and book a room, and I’ll join you in a few minutes,” I said without committing to dinner. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
For a moment I thought he was going to insist on waiting in the room, but then he shrugged and left. The moment the door closed behind him, I punched in the room safe combination and removed my old wedding ring.
I didn’t have a pocket in the sundress I was wearing, so I stuck it in change-purse section of my wallet. I also grabbed one of the big blue envelopes and a sheet of stationery out of the desk drawer and tucked those in my purse, too.
Then, just in case Tom was outside the door listening, I went into the bathroom, checked my face in the mirror, and flushed the toilet. Good thing, too, because Tom actually was loitering in the hallway when I opened the door a few seconds later.
“Ready?” he said.
I nodded, biting back a comment about his need to escort me downstairs after leaving me to sink or swim for the past eight months. I’d thought I’d worked past most of my anger over his infidelity and the divorce, but obviously not. Still, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he could still needle me.
When we reached the ground floor, I said, “You go book your room, and I’ll see if I can find a dining guide or something.” I really needed to get away from him for a moment so I could find Ronan and give him a heads-up about this new complication to our plan.
“I saw a stack of those guides on the front desk,” Tom said, putting a hand on my back to steer me in that direction. Once upon a time, I’d thought that gesture was protective and even romantic. Now I realized it was possessive and controlling—not at all the same thing.
Though I didn’t dare create a scene in the lobby, where one of Michelle’s cronies might be lurking, I was cursing up a storm inside my head. I surreptitiously glanced around for Ronan—and saw him heading straight toward us. I raised my eyebrows and gave a quick shake of my head to warn him off, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Excuse me,” he said, speaking to Tom instead of to me. “But haven’t we met?”
Tom stopped, clearly as surprised as I was. “I, uh, I don’t recall—”
Ronan put his hand on Tom’s shoulder, subtly detaching him from me. “Oh, sure you do. It was last fall, at that big get-together. Here, let me buy you a drink so we can catch up.”
He started to steer Tom, who was clearly confused but unwilling to admit it, in the direction of the piano bar. The moment Tom’s back was to me, Ronan turned to look at me and mouthed the word, “Run.”
Suddenly, I realized what was going on. I was trying so hard not to laugh out loud that I couldn’t immediately correct Ronan’s mistake. But at the little snorty noise I made, Tom turned and reached for my arm to bring me alongside him.
“Don’t touch her,” Ronan said, his voice suddenly dangerous. “I think maybe you and I had better go outside and have a talk.”
“What the—? Who do you—?” Tom started to bluster.
&nbs
p; Ronan gripped his upper arm like a vise and started steering him toward the front of the hotel. “Wynne, go back to the lobby and wait there. Remember what you promised.”
I finally found my voice, though it quivered a bit with amusement. “Um, Ronan, I think you have the wrong idea.”
Tom quickly turned back to me while Ronan glared, clearly thinking I was refusing his order after he’d arranged my escape from my “captor.”
“Wait,” Tom said, still looking confused and a little bit angry. “Just wait a minute. You know this guy, Wynne?”
“Ronan, this is Tom Seally—my ex-husband. Tom, this is Ronan. We met during my dive lessons.” He didn’t need any more information than that.
Ronan immediately released Tom’s arm, looking thunderstruck. The words “paradigm shift” popped into my head as he struggled to come up with something appropriate to say.
“Tom showed up unexpectedly,” I explained, in an attempt to try to smooth over the awkwardness. “He was just about to book a room for himself, weren’t you, Tom?”
But Tom didn’t budge. “What, so you can . . . You’re friends with this . . . this thug?”
“Ronan isn’t a thug. I’m sure he thought you were some stranger trying to manhandle me. He was just being chivalrous.”
Ronan was the one who nearly laughed this time, but he skillfully turned it into a cough and extended a hand to Tom. “My apologies. Wynne is right. I completely misread the situation and assumed she needed assistance. My mistake.”
After another long, awkward moment, Tom shook his hand. “Understandable, I suppose, if you knew she was in Aruba alone. I guess I should thank you for looking out for her. She hasn’t had much experience fending for herself and tends to be a little too trusting.”
His meaning was clear but Ronan didn’t rise to the bait. “I’ve only known Wynne a few days, but I’d say she has a pretty good head on her shoulders. I don’t think you need to worry.”
“That’s good to hear.”
The subtext between these two was thick enough to cut with a knife. Maybe I should have been flattered, but I was getting impatient with all the posturing.
“Now, where was it you met, again?” Tom asked, still looking more than a little suspicious.
I decided it was time I reentered the conversation. “During my scuba diving lessons. Ronan was—”
“Scuba diving? You?” Tom was insultingly incredulous. “You’re kidding, right? Why on earth would you take scuba diving lessons?”
“Because I wanted to learn to dive, of course.” It was one thing to take this from Debra, but I wasn’t about to take it from Tom. “I did fine. And I enjoyed it.”
“Uh-huh. So do they do special lessons for, well, people like you?”
I couldn’t help bristling. “What do you mean, ‘people like me’?”
“You know. People who aren’t necessarily in the best shape. Older people trying stuff like that for the first time. I mean, it has to be kind of risky, and—”
Ronan cut him off, which was probably lucky for Tom since I was just about to punch him. “Wynne did extremely well, Mr. Seally. In fact, I’d say she was the best student in the class, even if the others were much younger. There’s something to be said for the wisdom that comes with age.” His tone implied that Tom had somehow missed out on that perk.
“That doesn’t mean a whole lot coming from another beginner, but I guess it’s nice of you to say.”
Ronan smiled a not particularly pleasant smile. “I’ve been diving for more than twenty years, Mr. Seally, and I’ve taught dozens of people to dive. Wynne is a quicker study than most. Braver, too.”
“Oh, so you were her teacher? A little fraternizing with the students, is that what’s going on? Wynne, you can be so gullible—”
“He wasn’t my instructor. He was piloting the boat our first day out on the ocean. Since we were the only ones on board close to the same age, we struck up a friendship.” I caught myself, realizing I was falling back into my old pattern of defensiveness. No more. “Not that it’s any of your business,” I reminded Tom—and myself.
“Fine, fine. Whatever. So, are we going to go get some dinner or not?”
“Go book yourself a room first. I’ll wait here.”
He looked startled at my tone, and for a moment I thought he was going to argue, but then he shrugged and headed to the reception desk. I tried to remember whether I’d ever spoken that firmly to him while we were married. Maybe not.
“I can see why he’s your ex,” Ronan said as soon as Tom was out of earshot. “Though I guess it’s not my place to say so.”
I’d been glaring at Tom’s retreating back, but now I turned to face Ronan. “You can say anything you want about him. It can’t be worse than what I’m thinking. You’re probably wondering what’s wrong with me that I married a guy like that in the first place.”
Ronan shrugged. “People can change a lot over the years. Some for the better, some for the worse. But what’s he doing in Aruba all of a sudden?”
“From stuff my mom has been telling me, I think his girlfriend dumped him. I guess she was smarter than I gave her credit for. Now he says he wants to work things out. I pretty much told him to take a hike.”
“Good for you. But even if you try to avoid him, his being here is going to complicate our plan. It looks like you’d better let me handle it alone after all. I assume he doesn’t know anything about what’s going on?”
I glanced over at the reception desk. Tom was waiting behind a couple of other people. Good.
“He knows something is going on. One of the FBI agents called my room, and he answered the phone—even though I was right there.” I was still steamed about that. “He didn’t give Tom any specifics, but now he wants to know why the FBI are calling. I made up a story about them thinking I’d witnessed something, but I’m not sure he bought it. He’s going to want more details, especially if I can’t talk him out of taking me to dinner.”
“What do you plan to tell him?” Ronan was doing an admirable job of pretending it didn’t matter to him.
“As little as possible. If he had any inkling of what’s really going on, he’d insist on ‘handling’ things—which would mean putting me on the first plane back to Indy.”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. You might be safer if—”
“And then you could handle everything alone, like you just said? Uh-uh. The deal still stands. That reminds me . . . here’s the ring we can use as a decoy.” I dug my wedding ring out of my change purse and handed it to him without the slightest qualm. “Did you come up with the wording for the note?”
Ronan gave me an odd look as he took the ring, but then he nodded and pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “See what you think.”
It read: “I was afraid to leave the ring here because the FBI have been watching the hotel. It will be safer if I leave the ring for you under the ‘No Entry’ sign at the side of the red windmill across from the Bubali Bird Sanctuary. I will have it there by noon tomorrow.”
“Do you have something to copy it onto?” he asked.
I pulled the stationery and envelope from my purse in answer. Another glance showed that Tom was now talking to the woman at the desk. We didn’t have much time.
“I’d better do it later. Or you can do it—it’s not like they know what my handwriting looks like.”
“You’d be surprised what they can find out—at least, if Michelle is working with Stefan Melampus’s old cronies. Do you have something with a sample of your writing with you? I can probably copy it fairly closely.”
I decided not to ask where he’d acquired that particular skill. Instead, I dug through my purse and found an old shopping list. “Will this do?”
“Perfect. I’ll just say a friend asked me to leave it at the desk
, in case anyone asks—or is watching.”
“But I thought I would—”
“Your, ah, visitor may make this operation awkward if you try to help. Why don’t you go ahead to dinner with him, get him out of the way so I can set things up. Maybe you can convince him to back off.”
After an moment’s thought, I reluctantly nodded. “I guess you’re right. We need to leave the note well before midnight, and this will give you a chance to do that.” It rankled, though, making me even more upset at Tom for showing up unannounced. “I’ll ditch him as soon after dinner as I can, so I can help after.”
“And I promise to give you a full report the moment you get back,” Ronan said. Then, glancing behind me, he switched to a louder, more casual tone of voice. “I’d recommend the Argentine steakhouse, if there’s not too long a wait.”
Tom rejoined us, not looking particularly happy. “All they had available was a standard double-double room.”
“Which you took?” I asked. Already I could feel my blood pressure inching up again.
“Yeah, I took it.” He sounded positively disgusted. “Are you sure—?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” I hoped my tone didn’t leave him any room for hope that I’d change my mind.
“A standard room here should be very nice,” Ronan offered. “The Royal Aruban is an excellent hotel. Celebrities stay here.”
Tom grunted and made a sorry attempt at a smile. “Whatever. We should probably get going, Wynne.”
“Ronan was suggesting an Argentine steakhouse nearby.” I assumed he’d meant the one he and I had gone to for our first private meal together—the one where he’d first told me the significance of the ring I’d found. With any luck, I could be done with dinner and back here in an hour.
But Tom shook his head. “I’m not in the mood for steak. I asked the woman at the desk what she recommended, and she mentioned a restaurant up by the lighthouse at the north end of the island. I had her call and make us a reservation.”
I’d never known Tom not to be in the mood for steak. I opened my mouth to argue, since this plan would add at least an hour to my absence, but Tom was looking stubborn, clearly not wanting to take any advice from Ronan.
