Tell No Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

himself. What a contrast with the new office suite he was checking out in the morning. Sleek marble and plush carpet and electricity that stayed on when you flipped the switch. After three years of blood and sweat, heartache and small triumphs, maybe he was finally ready to make it easy on himself.
    *   *   *
    He reset the burglar alarm behind him and headed up the stairs, which gleamed with Lemon Pledge—Cris’s doing. Now and then they’d hire a cleaning lady, but every time they brought in someone regular, Cris would wind up tidying the place beforehand, making the woman lunch, and advising her son about college loans. Quickly, the convenience turned into a second job. She laughed about it—what a joke, you hear the one about the overzealous Pacific Heights housewife?—but at the end of the day, she preferred that the Brashers clean their own damn house.
    She waited upstairs at the kitchen island, sitting over a glass of wine and a sliced loaf of Boudin sourdough, her hair up so a fan of caramel skin showed at her back collar. She turned at his footsteps, chin to shoulder. “Chicken reheating in the oven, mi vida. Five minutes.”
    He drew near, kissed her between the shoulder blades. “How was your day?”
    Her head shook ever so slightly, and then she gave a faint sniffle. The heel of her hand rose to her cheek, and a spot of wet tapped the glossy photo on the counter in front of her. A birth announcement from a childhood friend. It showed a newborn swaddled in a blue hospital blanket, eyes no more than seams in a wrinkled face.
    Daniel slid beside Cris, put his arms around both shoulders, and kissed her head as she wiped at her tears.
    “Wow,” she said. “Talk about self-centered. I should just be happy for them. I am happy for them, but I should just be.”
    He adopted his best commercial voice-over tone. “Guilt: When feeling bad’s not enough.”
    She laughed a little, hit his arm gently. “Okay, okay. You know what’ll make me feel better? Sending a gift.” She reached for her silver laptop, across by the prep sink. “Babyregister-dot-com. I’m sure they have my credit card on file by now.”
    He waited, watching her.
    “I’m okay.” She kissed him, a peck pushing his face away. “I’m fine. Two minutes. Chicken.”
    He walked over to the living-room couch and dumped out his briefcase on the glass coffee table. Flyers and envelopes and junk mail. Sifting through the mess, he searched for the form—no, the “termination agreement.” Who named these things? Last week he’d been stuck on hold with a “listening-care associate,” which was enough to make him want to—
    Finally. A clasp envelope in the distinctive gray of the department.
    The timer dinged, and Cris clapped her Mac shut and padded to the oven.
    He pinched up the metal clasps, ran a finger beneath the flap, and slid free a single sheet. At first he couldn’t register what he was reading—the uneven scratch of the handwriting, the pencil-scraped letters cramped, then spaced, on the unlined white page—but the words came clear, one by one, and his heart did something funny against his ribs. The air had gone suddenly frigid, prickling the hairs at the base of his neck. He blinked hard and looked again, this time the sentences rushing at him.
    admit what youv done. or you will bleed for it.

 
    Chapter 6
    “Uh, hon?” Daniel’s eyes, still fixed on the cramped handwriting.
    Hoisting the roasting pan, Cris replied with a faint noise in the back of her throat. Then he heard metal thunk against Caesarstone, and she seemed to have levitated to his side, oven mitt on his back; his face must have mirrored the shock vibrating his insides.
    She read over his shoulder. “Is that a joke?”
    “Doesn’t feel like one.”
    “‘Admit what you’ve done,’” she read. “What are you supposed to have done?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “Disgruntled group member, maybe?” She tugged off the oven mitt, let it slap to the