Little Secrets

by Jennifer Hillier

  “And you dumped him for the guy you ended up marrying?” Julian asks, and it’s more a statement than a question.

  Jesus, Sal, what did you tell this guy? “Not … exactly.”

  “Sal’s a good guy,” he says. “You ever regret it? Choosing your husband over him?”

  “I…” Wow. She has no idea how to answer that. She was not prepared for these types of questions, especially right off the bat, but the man seems incapable of small talk. Or even hello. “I mean, of course I don’t. Sal knows that. We’re good.”

  “I’m just trying to confirm how you know each other.” Julian’s eyes crinkle, and it occurs to her that he’s smiling. Or attempting to. “See if your story matches up with Sal’s. Because obviously you and I have never met before, and I need to make sure you’re the person he says you are.”

  “Sal’s my best friend.” It’s the simplest explanation, and the one that’s most accurate. “We go back a long way. I can show you my ID if you need to confirm my name.”

  Shit. That was stupid. She doesn’t want to show him her ID; then he’d know everything about her, including her address, and somehow that seems … dangerous.

  He shakes his head. “Nah, no need. We’re good.”

  “How do you know Sal?” she asks.

  He raises an eyebrow, bemused. “What did he tell you?”

  “He said you’ve worked for him. Once or twice.”

  “That’s true.” There’s a glint in Julian’s dark eyes. “But that’s not how we met. Once upon a time, we were both residents at MCC.”

  Marin stares at him, waiting for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. And then she understands. MCC is Monroe Correctional Complex. It’s a prison. Jesus Christ. When Sal was nineteen and a sophomore, he was arrested for selling marijuana. It was minor as far as drug offenses went, but it was his second offense, and his father was pissed. He refused to bail Sal out of jail, so Sal did thirty days before he got a court date, and the judge let him off with time served. This all happened before they met, and Sal never talks about it, which is why she often forgets he was ever incarcerated.

  “We kept in touch after we both got out. He talked about you when you guys were together then. Still does,” Julian says. “Says you’re the one that got away.”

  “That’s interesting, because he’s never mentioned you at all,” she blurts, and then feels her face turn red. Her words were a lot blunter than she intended.

  It doesn’t seem to bother Julian. He shrugs. “I’m not the kind of guy you tell your friends about.”

  “He usually tells me everything,” she says.

  “Does he?” Julian says with a small smile, and before she can ask him what that means, he adds, “We don’t see each other often. When he needs me, he calls. I specialize in problems that need to be dealt with a certain way.”

  “What kind of problems?” She holds her breath, wondering if he’ll say the words.

  “Whatever you need, Marin.”

  He doesn’t explain, and an awkward silence falls over them until Marin’s phone lights up. It’s a text from Sal, checking in on her. She’s mortified when Julian’s gaze is naturally drawn to the phone screen and McKenzie’s naked body. She grabs the phone from the table. Nobody else but her is ever supposed to see this on her phone.

  “It’s Sal.” She can feel the heat from her cheeks spreading down her neck. “Wanting to know if everything’s okay.”

  Julian leans back, sips his coffee. “Go ahead and text him back.”

  She types quickly, then moves to stick her phone in her purse.

  “Sorry, Marin,” Julian says. “I’m going to need that on the table.”

  “Really?”

  “Unlock it for me, please.” His tone is pleasant, but there’s no mistaking that it’s a demand, not a request.

  She presses her thumb to the home button and the phone opens.

  He picks it up and starts swiping, meticulously closing all the apps she had open. Then he places the phone back on the table, where McKenzie smiles up at them in all her naked glory until the screen goes black.

  “I needed to make sure we’re not being recorded,” Julian says.

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  She would have no good reason to record any of this. Whatever happens here tonight, she would never want anyone but Sal to know about it, or that she even thought about it, or that she seriously considered it enough to have a conversation with someone who could actually do something about it.

  “Food’s here,” Julian says.

  Bets the waitress places oversize plates piled high with food gleaming with grease and butter on the table. She notices Julian has ordered almost the exact same thing she did, right down to the add-on pancake, only with wheat toast instead of sourdough.

  “What do you say we eat first, and talk after?” He picks up his fork and uses the side of it to slice into an egg. The yolk runs out all over his hash browns. “Conversations about murder are much easier to have when your stomach is full, don’t you think?”

  Chapter 12

  For a while Marin can almost pretend they’re two people on a blind date, which in some ways, they are. They were set up by a mutual acquaintance, after all.

  Except everything about this is illegal.

  “So, that’s her?” Julian finally puts his fork down. “On your phone? Is that the woman your husband is cheating with?”

  He’s finished two-thirds of his food and she’s finished half of hers, and it appears they’re both full. Bets sees that they’re done, but she doesn’t approach the table. It’s as if she knows she’s not allowed to come over until Julian signals her, and he’s not looking in that direction. He’s looking straight at Marin, and it feels like his dark eyes see right through her. She doesn’t think she could lie to him about anything if she wanted to.

  She starts talking, and it all comes out in one long, rabbity rush. It’s almost as if she finally feels free to say every single awful thing she’s been thinking about, things she’d never say in group, things she might only tell her therapist. Julian is a stranger, maybe that’s why. Maybe it’s because she knows he won’t judge her.

  “The affair’s been going on awhile. He’s with her right now. At a hotel, somewhere here in the city.” Shame colors her face red again; she can feel the flush on her cheeks.

  “Let me see the picture.”

  She hands him the phone, her shame giving way to rage. He takes another long look until the screen goes black, a small smile playing at his lips. What is it about men and naked women? Sal had a similar reaction earlier. Amusement, with a touch of … leer.

  “Do you and your husband have kids?” he asks.

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  Her response surprises him. He raises a questioning eyebrow, but she doesn’t elaborate. She will never discuss her son with this man, and she’s glad Sal didn’t, either. Sebastian is off-limits.

  “Tell me everything you know about her,” Julian says.

  This part is easy. Unlike with Derek, Marin feels only one emotion when it comes to the other woman, and it starts with h and ends with ate.

  He listens without interrupting. When she finishes, her throat is dry. She reaches for her water glass and knocks her coffee mug over in the process. Luckily, it’s near empty, and only a few drops spill onto the table. Bets is there in a flash with a damp cloth, and she offers to take their plates away. They both decline to-go containers.

  “I’m sorry.” Marin wipes up a drop of coffee the waitress missed. “I’m not usually this jumpy.”

  “That’s because you’re normal,” Julian says, “and this is a very abnormal conversation for you to be having. There’s no pressure here, Marin. I’m here to help you, not make your life harder.”

  His words are unexpectedly kind, and she reminds herself that this is only a meeting. Sitting here with him doesn’t mean she has to go through with it. No decisions have to be made right this minute.

  She can still chan
ge her mind.

  He’s staring at her again, and it’s different now that she’s spilled her story and he has the details about what brought her here. She’s told him secrets. It feels strangely intimate.

  “Sal always said you were a beautiful woman, Marin,” Julian says, and she can feel her face flush again. “And he’s right. Successful, too, from what he’s told me. I’ve seen this situation many times before, and I can say with certainty that whatever your husband is doing has very little to do with you.”

  Wrong. It has everything to do with her.

  “Do you have any questions for me?” Julian asks.

  She takes a deep breath. Here we go. “I suppose … I suppose cost is a big one. How much do you charge? And how do you … what would you…?” She swallows.

  “My methods shouldn’t concern you.” The glint in his eye is back. “Some situations I handle personally, and some I … outsource. All you need to know is that it will be taken care of. But my fee is two fifty. And it’s nonnegotiable.”

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand?” She didn’t know what she was expecting. Sal said he was expensive, but the number is even higher than she imagined.

  “You get what you pay for.”

  “But I—” She has so many questions, and no idea where to start. She hates that she sounds like a naive idiot first-timer, which is exactly what she is, and she’s regretting being so insistent on meeting Julian alone. She wishes Sal were here. “Can I … can I pay you half up front?”

  “No.” His laugh is short, more like a bark. “You pay the entire amount up front. Cash or wire transfer.”

  “It’s just … I don’t know how I can possibly explain a payment of a quarter of a million dollars.” She knows she has it, but it’s not like it’s sitting in her checking account. And it’s not like she can spend it without justifying it. “Won’t that raise suspicion?”

  “If you do a wire transfer, the account number I’ll give you is for a charity. A legitimate, long-standing charity. You’ve donated to charities before, haven’t you?” He doesn’t wait for a response; he already knows she has. “I’ll even give you a tax receipt. As far as the IRS or anyone else is concerned, it will look like you made a very generous donation to a women’s shelter.”

  “Seriously?”

  He sips his coffee. He doesn’t bother to answer. It’s clear he doesn’t like to repeat himself.

  “But how do I know you’ll actually—”

  “Complete the job? You don’t. That’s where trust comes in.” Julian leans forward. “Trust is a big thing in my field. And it goes both ways, Marin. I have to trust you, too. And I do, because I trust your good friend Sal.”

  It takes her a minute to process this, and he waits patiently as her mind races through a hundred different scenarios. Finally, she whispers, “If I go through with this, how soon will I know when you’re planning to do it?”

  “You won’t know anything about it. You’ll find out when it’s done. It could take a few weeks.”

  “Weeks?”

  He puts his coffee cup down. “The more time that passes between this conversation and the actual event, the better. The reason so many people get caught is because the job is completed too soon after payment, and the client is too involved in the plan. The more distance between you and everything else, the better.”

  She says nothing. It all sounds so routine for him, and yet so inconceivable to her. They’re actually talking about this. She’s really doing this.

  “What you’re paying me for isn’t just to kill someone, Marin.” Julian’s tone is conversational. He seems unconcerned that anyone around might overhear him. “If your only concern was the actual killing, you could do it yourself, assuming you were angry enough. Or pay any punk off the streets to do it for you, for a whole hell of a lot less money. The killing is the easiest part.”

  She blinks. In her whole life, she’s never heard anyone say that.

  “What you’re paying me for is to make sure it doesn’t lead back to you.” Julian sips his coffee. “It’s to do it so it looks like a car crash, or a random mugging gone wrong, maybe a freak illness, or a fire, or a drowning. Something unexpected, but plausible. For this to be believable, you need to be as shocked as everybody else, nowhere near the location, and completely unprepared for the news. Even better if you didn’t know he was cheating.” He pauses. “Does he know you know?”

  “No.” Marin’s voice is shaking. Her entire body is shaking. The things he listed off, like they’re benign options, like they’re not a bunch of different ways to make someone … dead … she doesn’t know how to react to that.

  “How did you find out he was having an affair?”

  “Private investigator,” she says, and his eyes narrow.

  “Which one?”

  She shakes her head. “Again, I feel that’s irrelevant.”

  For some reason, Marin doesn’t want to say Vanessa Castro’s name. Castro discovered the affair by accident, while investigating the disappearance of her son, which Marin also refuses to talk about. None of this is Julian’s business.

  “If you keep things from me, it makes my job harder,” he says.

  “And if you’re as good as you say you are, it shouldn’t matter,” she says. It comes out a challenge.

  His jaw clenches, and then relaxes again. “Who else knows? Your therapist?”

  “How do you know I have a therapist?” Is he testing her? Or did Sal give him that level of background?

  “Women like you always do.”

  “I don’t have a therapist anymore.” Marin has no intention of revealing Dr. Chen’s name, either. Julian intimidates her, but he’s also making her feel protective of the people in her life. “And if you’re going to question me about every single person in my life I might have told about the affair—which I learned about today, by the way—we’re going to be here awhile.”

  A small smile crosses Julian’s lips. Whatever test she just took, it appears she passed.

  “You’ll need to call off your investigator,” he says. “Immediately.”

  “Done,” Marin says, but it’s a lie. While she understands that Julian doesn’t need the complication of a PI following the person he’s been hired to kill, she has no intention of telling Vanessa Castro to stop investigating everything. She’ll tell Castro not to bother investigating the affair. But nothing about her search for Sebastian will change.

  “Okay then. This brings us to the most important thing.” Julian leans forward. “Once you wire me the money, it’s confirmed. Everything begins. You wake up a couple of mornings later, freak out, change your mind, fine. But the money is gone. You don’t get it back. You understand that?”

  “Yes.” She’s starting to shake again, which feels silly, because they’ve come this far. She’s already shown him the worst part of herself, the part she could barely manage to tell Sal about except when joking or drunk, the part that might well send her straight to hell.

  Or worse, prison. Because you can’t threaten a person with hell if they’re already living in it.

  “You could just divorce him, you know,” Julian says. “It’s not the quickest way out, but at least there’s no risk. I have a great lawyer I can connect you with, for a fee, of course. He’ll dig up every bit of dirt on your husband and ensure you’ll get everything you’re entitled to.”

  She blinks. “What are you talking about?”

  She and Derek are not getting divorced. Divorce is ugly, and ultimately, it would only free him up to be with McKenzie, or whoever else he might meet after her. The only person who’d lose is Marin. And she doesn’t want to end up with less, like Tia. She’s already lost too much.

  “I’m just saying it’s an option,” Julian says. “Because if you go down this path, there’s always risk. Even if it looks like an accident, it’s still a death, and the spouse is always the first suspect. There could be police involved. An autopsy. Questions. And your husband’s a high-profile guy—”

&nb
sp; “I’m sorry, but what are you talking about?” She shouldn’t cut him off midsentence, but she’s confused. “I’m not here about Derek. He’s my husband.” She nearly adds and my son’s father, but catches herself just in time.

  It’s Julian’s turn to look confused. He seems caught off guard, and she gets the impression that he’s not caught off guard very often. “You don’t want your husband dead?”

  “Of course not.” She jabs at her phone until the nude selfie appears again. “Derek isn’t the problem. It’s her.”

  He leans back in his seat and appraises her for a moment. “That’s not what Sal told me.”

  “Then our mutual friend misunderstood.”

  Goddamn it, Sal. Marin has no doubt that it’s what Sal was hoping she would do. But she would never want Derek dead. He’s Sebastian’s dad. No matter what, she could never do anything to harm her son’s father. She stares at the photo until the screen goes black, inwardly cursing Sal for screwing this up.

  “Is this a problem for you?” she asks.

  “Nope,” Julian says, and the small smile is back. “Actually, it makes things a bit easier.”

  Neither of them says anything for the next few moments, but he’s looking at her differently now. He came here thinking she wanted a man dead, but it’s a woman who’s ruining Marin’s life. It’s a woman who’s trying to steal the last bit of family she has left. If that makes her a monster, so be it. In the past fourteen hours, she’s already imagined McKenzie’s death a dozen different ways—getting hit by a bus, falling out of a window, falling into a giant sinkhole, getting shoved off a goddamned cliff—and each fantasy provides her with a moment of immense relief.

  Raucous laughter emanates from a booth in the corner, where the noisy college students have finally finished eating. Three are male, two are female, and her gaze focuses on one girl in particular, the one with the long brown hair and shining eyes who’s so clearly in love with the handsome, confident boy sitting next to her. She could have been Marin, twenty years ago. And make no mistake, most of those years have been good. It’s only the last one that’s been hell.