Page 94

It was a lie and a truth. She had quit her job, but she was loyal to Sam. Would Henry buy it? Either way, she didn’t think he’d step aside, though he did let go of her arm. She rubbed the red mark across her wrist. She’d have a nasty bruise tomorrow. He was surprisingly strong for an older and rather out-of-shape man.

Henry’s eyes narrowed as he considered her words.

“You quit?”

“Yes, the job isn’t for me.”

She decided it might be best not to tell him she was the newest reporter at the local television news station. That fact might even be worse than working for Sam.

“Sam fired me,” Henry spat out. “He fucking fired me. That little snot-nosed prick fired me after all I’ve done for that family. All I’ve given and sacrificed for them. Can you believe that?”

Okay, if she could keep Henry talking, eventually the movers would arrive. She just had to distract him for a few minutes.

“I’m sure you’ve sacrificed so much.” She said, using her best soothing voice. “It’s just like a wealthy family to take and never give back, isn’t it?”

“I’ve cleaned up Joel’s messes for years,” Henry said, throwing his hands in the air, the knife’s edge catching the sun streaming through the windows. “Years, I tell you. Joel knew that I could be counted on to do what needed to be done. I was his go-to guy, his right hand. But the minute Joel gets sick, Sam waltzes in like he owns the joint and runs me out. Me! Of all people. He probably would have fired Leigh, too, eventually. He doesn’t know anything about loyalty or keeping secrets where they belong.”

“You kept Joel’s secrets, didn’t you? You were loyal.”

“I was loyal.” Henry patted his chest. “I know all the secrets, and so did Leigh. I guess she forgot about loyalty when she decided to leave the company. She was keeping those purchase orders to blackmail me. If she kept them, then she probably has a whole bunch more. She wasn’t going to give them to Joel. She was going to shake me down for cash.”

That didn’t sound at all like the Leigh that Alli had been hearing about these last weeks.

“She tried to get money from you? She asked you for money?”

“No,” Henry replied, frowning at the question. “But I know she would have before she left. She’s always had it out for me.”

Henry assumed that everyone was like him. If he would have blackmailed someone, he assumed others would too.

“Why did she have it out for you? She didn’t like you?”

“At one point, she loved me,” Henry boasted. “She couldn’t get enough of me.”

Ewww. But then every woman probably had one man they looked back on and wondered what they ever saw in him.

Henry was Leigh’s.

So perhaps…

“You’re the baby’s father? You got Leigh pregnant thirty years ago.”

“We had a deal,” Henry shouted, his face even redder than before. “We made a deal, and she was going to go back on it. After all of these years, she was going to turn on me. I begged her not to. I begged her not to tell, but she was going to blow everything up.”

Whoa.

“You made a deal? For Leigh to go to Boston and have the baby? For her to give it up for adoption?”

“She made the deal with Joel,” Henry replied. “Joel gave her several months off, and she went to Boston to have the baby. She gave it to her sister. Then she came back, and we all pretended like it never happened. That was the agreement. But then she was going to tell.”

“Why do you think she was going to tell? Why would she after thirty years?”

“I don’t know, but I heard her on the phone,” Henry said. “I heard her say something about the truth needing to come out. I knew what she meant. I knew what she was going to do.”

The picture was clear now. Too clear.

“You killed Leigh. You killed her because you thought she was going to tell your secret.”

“I begged her not to. She kept saying that she wasn’t going to tell anyone. That I’d misheard what she said. I didn’t believe her. She was going to ruin everything.”