“I want you to know if you need anything …” His voice trailed off. She heard a scratching sound and guessed he was rubbing his fingers along his face. Adam was one of those men who had a perpetual five o’clock shadow, even right after he’d shaved. Claire had never found hairy men particularly attractive, but she’d still managed to sleep with Adam anyway.
She couldn’t even console herself by saying it had happened a long time ago.
“Claire?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m sorry to bring this up, but Paul should have a file on his computer for work in progress. Can you email it to me? I hate to ask, but we’ve got a really important presentation first thing Monday morning and it would take hours to duplicate Paul’s work.”
“It’s fine. I understand.” She reached under Paul’s desk and pulled out the keyboard. “I’ll send it from his email.”
“You’ve got his password?”
“Yes. He trusted me.” Claire was conscious that she and Adam both knew he shouldn’t have.
What a stupid, pointless mistake.
She said, “You’ll have it in a few minutes.”
Claire hung up the phone. She thought about the hours she had spent with Adam Quinn. Hours she should’ve spent with her husband. Hours she would kill to have back now.
There was no going back. She had to keep moving forward.
Paul’s iMac desktop was a blank field of blue with the dock at the bottom. Beside the icons listing Paul’s applications were three folders: Work, Personal, House. She clicked House and quickly found the January to-do list. She also saw a file titled “insurance” that contained not just the name of their insurance agent, but a PDF with descriptions, photographs, and serial numbers of everything in the house. Claire sent all 508 pages to the printer.
Next, she opened the Work folder. This was far more complicated and confusing. There was no “work in progress” folder, just a long list of files with numbers instead of names. Claire assumed these were project numbers, but she couldn’t be certain. She clicked on the date field to list them chronologically. There were fifteen recent files he’d been working on in the last two weeks. The last one had been opened the night before Paul died.
Claire clicked on the file. She expected to find a schematic or scope of work, but all that happened was the little iMovie icon on the dock started bouncing.
“Oh,” she said, because at first she didn’t understand what she was seeing. And then she smiled for the first time since the Snake Man had told them not to move.
Paul had been looking at porn on his computer.
Not just any porn.
Kinky porn.
A young woman in a leather bustier was chained to a concrete-block wall. She wore a studded dog collar. Her arms and legs were spreadeagled, giving her crotchless leather panties a workout. She was making squeaky, fearful noises that sounded more 1970s horny than present-day scared.
Claire shot a guilty glance at the open doorway to Paul’s office. She muted the sound, but let the movie play.
The woman was in a filthy room, which made it all the more shocking that Paul was interested. She was obviously young, but not alarmingly so. Her brunette hair was cut in a chic pixie. Heavy mascara ringed her eyes. Bright red lipstick made her lips seem bigger than they were. Her breasts were small, but she had fantastic legs. Paul had always liked Claire’s legs, even when she had on the ankle monitor.
Actually, he’d especially loved the ankle monitor, which was the kinkiest thing she’d ever gotten out of him until he’d turned inexplicably rough with her in the alley.
And now, of course, because this movie was pretty out there.
Suddenly, a man’s head filled the screen. He was wearing a leather ski mask with open zippers at the mouth and eyes. He smiled into the camera. There was something disturbing about the way his red lips showed against the metal teeth of the zipper, though Claire doubted Paul had been looking at the man.
The focus blurred, then sharpened. The smile disappeared. And then the man started walking toward the girl. Claire saw his erect penis jutting out from his tight leather briefs. There was a machete in his hand. The long blade glinted in the overhead light. The man stopped a few feet away from the girl.
The machete arced into the air.
Claire gasped.
The machete came down on the woman’s neck.
Claire gasped again.
The man wrenched out the blade. Blood sprayed everywhere—onto the walls, onto the man, onto the camera.
Claire leaned forward, unable to look away.
Was this real?
The woman’s body convulsed, arms and legs pulling at the chains, head jerking. Blood poured down her chest, pooled at her feet.
The man started fucking her.
“Mrs. Scott?”
Claire jumped back so hard that the chair slammed into the wall.
“Are you up there?” Fred Nolan was walking up the stairs.
Claire banged on the keyboard, blindly searching for a way to stop the movie.
“Hello?” Nolan’s footsteps were getting closer. “Mrs. Scott?”
She held down the control button and furiously tapped on the Q to quit the program. Error messages started popping up. Claire grabbed the mouse and clicked each one closed. The rainbow wheel started to spin. “Shit!” she hissed.
“Mrs. Scott?” Fred Nolan was standing in the open doorway. “Something wrong?”
Claire looked back at the computer. Sweet Jesus. The desktop was blank again. She willed her voice not to shake. “What is it?”
“Just wanted to say that I’m sorry about before.”
Claire nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
Nolan let his gaze travel around the room. “Nice office.”
She tried not to blink because every time her eyes closed, she saw the woman. The man. The blood.
“Anyway,” he tucked his hands into his pockets, “I wanted you to know that I talked to Detective Rayman about your husband’s case.”
She had to clear her throat a few times before she forced out, “What?”
“Detective Rayman with the Atlanta Police? You spoke to him the night your husband was murdered?”
She held her breath, trying to calm it. “Yes.”
“I want you to know that we looked at all possible connections, and there doesn’t seem to be one between what happened to your husband and what happened today.”
Claire nodded. She felt a sharp jab of pain in her jaw from clenching her teeth.
Nolan let his eyes slowly take another tour of the office. “Your husband was a tidy guy.”
Claire didn’t respond.
“Kind of a control freak?”
She shrugged, though Paul had never tried to control her. Except when he jammed her face into that brick wall in the alley.
Nolan indicated the digital lock on the door. “That’s some pretty serious security.”
She echoed the words that Paul had often told her. “Doesn’t really matter if you don’t set the alarm.”
Nolan smiled his deeply unsettling smile. He wasn’t standing over her, but he might as well have been. “We’ll need to send a crew up here anyway.”
She felt her heart stop. The computer. The files. The movie. “That’s not necessary.”
“Better safe than sorry.”