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“Ask her.”
“I don’t know if I’d be able to believe her.”
“What I think and what I know are different things. I can give you the facts, but I can’t tell you her reasons.”
“But Jennifer thinks my wife was cheating on me.”
“It’s an old trick—an unfaithful spouse accuses the faithful spouse of adultery and walks away.” I shrugged. “Maybe she believed it. But she wanted to believe it, because when I told her you weren’t a cheater, she insisted you were just too sneaky for me to catch. No one is too sneaky for me.”
He barked out a gruff laugh.
I let him have his time, even though now I was hyperaware that we were over the middle of the desert. If we crashed, would anyone find our bodies? Would there be anything to find?
“When we got married,” Logan finally said, “I told Brittney I wanted children. Two, maybe more, but at least two. I’m thirty-eight, I don’t want to be an old man with babies. Brittney’s twenty-nine. She said she wanted kids, too, just wanted to wait a couple of years so we could enjoy being newlyweds. I was fine with that. As soon as I started talking about it a few months ago, things changed. I knew it, but I didn’t want to believe it.”
He looked so sad that for a minute I was no longer terrified of dying in a fiery crash.
He continued. “I know people can change. That people can want different things at different times. But I made it clear from the beginning that this was important to me. I thought it was important to Brittney. She told me exactly what I wanted to hear.” He paused, added, “That she would set up something like this—to give herself a reason to divorce me? I just don’t understand. If she doesn’t love me, I would give her a divorce.”
It surprised me that someone so smart in the business world, who had made hundreds of millions of dollars because of his unique ideas and raw intelligence, could be so ignorant when it came to human nature. Not everyone was capable of doing what Brittney had done but, sometimes, even the people you loved disappointed you.
“Did you know that she had been involved with Brad Parsons before you married?” I asked.
“She told me after we started seeing each other that they’d gone out a few times but it hadn’t been serious.”
“Now you know and can decide what to do.”
“I already have.”
That surprised me. He seemed to be so torn up and upset that I didn’t think he’d reached the point where he could make a decision.
“I already directed my lawyer to draw up divorce papers. I’ll give her a no-fault divorce. Per our prenup she’ll receive three million dollars, plus I’ll give her the house. I didn’t like the house, anyway.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself.
He frowned at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was laughing at the situation. You are nothing like I thought you would be.”
“Most people aren’t,” he said. “For what it’s worth, when I hired you to find Jennifer, I had no doubt that you would.”
“You don’t know me, but I appreciate your confidence.”
“I researched you Sunday night, after you showed up at the house. If I weren’t so worried about Jennifer, I would have figured out then what Brittney was doing. But one thing I don’t understand. You have your own business, but your family also has a PI business. Why aren’t you under their wing?”
“Long story.”
He glanced at his watch. “We have twenty minutes.”
“Short version—my mom and I have a different way of doing things.”
“You and Jack work well together. The unspoken commentary was loud.”
I laughed. “It was?”
Now Logan smiled and relaxed. “I read people well. I have to. Maybe not so well in my personal life, but in business, I’m rarely wrong.”
Jennifer White was staying in a nondescript motel that provided individual cabins around a cement and cactus courtyard. I liked that my instincts were right—between the book on her nightstand and her affection for J.A. Jance, I’d been sure she had decided to hide out in Bisbee. Too bad I couldn’t have sleuthed my way here instead of having her give me the address.
