Bed of Lies Read Online Free PDF Page A

on a tightrope. At least Terry is still alive.
    And if his last hour was drawing near, she would see her brother for the last time if it killed her.
    Paulette walked toward her armoire to quickly grab some clothes to dress and head to the hospital. She tugged her cotton nightgown over her head and glanced at her reflection in the gilded-edged, free-standing mirror near her walk-in closet. She stopped in her tracks and stared, stunned as she gazed at herself.
    Her body seemed to have changed overnight. Her breasts now spilled over the tops of her balconette bra and the straps cut into her shoulders from holding the burden of the additional weight. Her waist had grown by several inches. Even when she sucked up all the air in her lungs to make her stomach flat, she still had a slight potbelly—like she had had one too many burritos and was bloated with gas. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but even her hips and thighs were starting to look a little wider. She was almost three and a half months’ pregnant, and yet her body was already showing all the telltale signs of the impending baby.
    Now frantic for quite a different reason, Paulette rushed the remaining distance across her bedroom and yanked open one of her armoire drawers. She searched for one of the many fashionable billowing, long wool sweaters she often wore nowadays. Paired with a set of leggings, it cloaked her changing body perfectly. But she wouldn’t be able to hide the pregnancy much longer—not at this rate. Either her body would betray her and reveal her secret, or the changing weather would. It would be April in only a couple of months. The weather in Northern Virginia would get warmer soon. Wool sweaters and thick leggings would start to look strange if she continued to wear them.
    You didn’t really think you could keep up this charade forever, did you? a little voice in her head mocked as she threw one of the sweaters over her head and shoved her arms through the sleeves. Come on, Paulette. You’re not sixteen anymore. No one’s that naïve!
    No, she wasn’t sixteen anymore. When she was sixteen and pregnant, she had had an abortion. The guilt over that was the reason she had chosen not to have one this time around, even though she wasn’t sure whether the father of her baby was her husband, Antonio, or her ex-boyfriend, Marques, who had blackmailed her into giving him thousands of dollars and having an affair with him. She had decided to risk the damage this baby could have on her marriage because she couldn’t talk herself into walking into that women’s clinic and putting her feet in those stirrups again.
    But the risks were great. When Paulette finally had to reveal to Antonio her pregnancy, she was terrified at what the aftermath would be. Would he divorce her? Would he kick her out of the house? Would he kill her?
    Her hands stilled after she tugged on her leggings and she reached for one of the brown leather riding boots at the foot of her bed.
    Will he kill me?
    Marques’s murder was still unsolved. There were no eyewitnesses and Marques’s seedy drug ties had left police detectives with a long list of possible suspects. But Paulette had her own suspicions, though she hadn’t shared them with the boys in blue.
    Marques had been killed in his apartment in the wee hours of the morning and according to neighbors, there had been loud voices before sounds of a struggle. Marques was found beaten and strangled by police soon after.
    Antonio had stormed out of their house the night before the murder after Paulette, crippled by guilt, had finally told him about her affair. Her husband hadn’t been reachable for hours and hadn’t returned home until the next morning. He also had never told Paulette where he had been all that time while her calls to his cell went to voice mail and her texts went unanswered.
    She didn’t want to believe Antonio was capable of such a horrendous