Her eyes were fixed on him while she said it. When she turned to me, the smile remained perfect.
“Sarah, it must have been so hard on you.”
“It was my duty.”
Our eyes met and locked. The hostility between us could have lit a match. Dinner began. Stories. Laughter. College nostalgia. Scott stuck to soda. Jessica worked the room beautifully, sprinkling old stories that included Scott just often enough to suggest intimacy without crossing an obvious line. I listened, smiled, fed Leo, and said very little. Only one woman, Amy, who had always been decent to me back in college, kept sending me worried glances. Later, someone suggested a game of truth or dare. The bottle landed on Jessica.
“Truth,” she said.
“Be honest,” one of the women teased. “Are you seeing someone? Or interested in someone?”
Jessica blushed beautifully, glanced toward Scott so quickly most people would have missed it, and then looked down.
“What does it matter if there is? Some chances, once you miss them, they’re gone forever. Some people are just meant to stay in your heart.”
The room reacted exactly as she hoped. Teasing. Interest. Everyone looking around, recalculating.
“Ooh, she has someone.”
“Is it somebody in this room?”
“Stop it, you guys.”
Her tone denied it, but her face almost confirmed it. I let the moment stretch just enough, then laughed softly.
“Jessica, you sound like you’re in a soap opera. This isn’t the dark ages. If you like someone, just go for it. Keeping them in your heart is only self-torture.”
I paused, still smiling.
“Unless the person is already married. That wouldn’t be right. We’re all decent people here. Ruining a family is a line nobody crosses, right?”
The words were gentle. They were also a blade. The room froze. Jessica’s blush went rigid. Scott’s head came up sharply. Amy jumped in almost immediately.
“Exactly. Sarah’s right. We’re adults. Let’s keep the jokes appropriate.”
The game moved on, but the flirtation was dead for the night. Jessica went quiet. Scott became visibly tense. I acted as if nothing had happened. Later, when the dinner broke into smaller groups, Scott said he was tired and wanted to go back to the room. I said I’d take Leo to the resort playground for a while. I knew exactly what he would do. K confirmed it thirty minutes later. Scott and Jessica had entered room 211 in Building 3, a suite building, not either of their assigned rooms. A prearranged meeting place. I told K not to risk entry, only to monitor. At the evening barbecue by the lake, Jessica was back to her sparkling self. Scott sat with a group of men talking over sodas. I stayed close to Leo on the grass. When I went to grab his jacket from a chair, I heard angry whispering behind a thicket of shrubs. Scott and Jessica. I went still and slipped behind the trunk of a nearby tree.
“What was that at lunch?” Jessica hissed. “Did she have to humiliate me in front of everybody?”
“How was I supposed to know she’d say that?” Scott shot back. “You weren’t exactly subtle.”
“What did I say? I only said someone was in my heart. I think she did it on purpose. Scott, I can’t do this much longer. I can’t stand looking at her smug face another second. And that brat—”
“Quiet. Keep your voice down.”
“I’m serious. You said this would be handled. I’m maxed out on cards covering the gaps at OraTech. Where’s the money? When is that $300,000 going to be clean?”
“What do you want me to do? The audit isn’t finished. Moving a large sum now raises red flags. By next Monday I’ll get you fifty. By Wednesday, maybe a hundred.”
“What good is that? I don’t care. By next Wednesday I want to see one hundred thousand or don’t blame me if I tell everyone everything, including how you tried to rope Dr. Evans into creating some negligence.”
“Jessica, are you insane? You can’t say that here.”
“Oh, I can. Don’t push me, Scott. If I go down, we all go down. You’re a paper tiger now. Without those pills, you’re nothing.”
The argument sharpened so fast it made my skin prickle. I slipped the burner phone from my pocket and started recording. The ambient noise was awful, but the key phrases were there. Then Leo ran toward me.
“Mommy, my toy car fell under the chair.”
The voices behind the bushes cut off. I hid the phone instantly and bent to him.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ll get it.”
Scott and Jessica emerged separately a few seconds later, both furious, both startled to see me there.
“Leo dropped his toy,” I said lightly, as if I had heard nothing.
Scott muttered something about checking the grill and walked off. Jessica shot me a poisonous look and disappeared in the other direction. I carried Leo back to our seats with my pulse hammering. That conversation was a gold mine. The lawyer. The proxy agreement. The money transfers. The negligence reference. Jessica was panicking. Scott was scrambling. Their alliance was cracking. That night, after Leo fell asleep and Scott pretended to be asleep beside me, I took the burner phone into the bathroom, locked the door, and listened to the recording. It was messy, but the key phrases came through clearly. I saved the file, forwarded a copy to K to clean up, and sent encrypted messages to Linda and Mr. Davies letting them know we had another breakthrough. The drive home from the resort the next day was silent and brittle. I knew they were unsettled. Good. Unsettled people make mistakes. The next several days stayed quiet on the surface. Scott spent even more time in the study. He became irritated about his next full checkup.
“Another one? I feel fine.”
“Dr. Evans said the first three months are critical. It’s for your own good.”
He waved me off but went. The night before the appointment, I woke to a sound and realized he wasn’t in bed. I crept down the hall. The study door was cracked.
“No, we can’t wait any longer,” Scott whispered into the phone. “She’s watching me too closely. With the checkups, with the meds. I have a bad feeling she knows something. I’ll try to sound out Dr. Evans again. If that doesn’t work, we go to Plan B. Just a small dosage adjustment. Make it look like her mistake.”
Jessica’s tiny voice came back through the speaker.
“Are you crazy? Messing with dosage? What if something goes wrong?”
“If something goes wrong, it’s her fault for not taking care of me properly. As long as we’re clean, they can’t trace it back to us. I can’t let her keep this over my head forever. The apartment money still hasn’t surfaced and the audit is a nightmare. We have to get rid of her.”
“Let me think. Don’t do anything rash. I’ll meet you tomorrow. The usual place.”
“Fine. Tomorrow.”
I slipped back to bed before he returned, my heart pounding so hard I thought it would wake the whole house. There it was. Plan B. A dosage adjustment. Frame me. Endanger his own life to destroy mine. The next morning, when I brought his pills, he swallowed them in front of me, but I saw him palm something small and tuck it into his pocket. On the drive to the hospital, I asked casually:
“What’s in your hand? You’re being so secretive.”
He flinched and opened his hand. A packet of tissues.
“Nothing. My nose is stuffy.”
