She looks up at last, her eyes noncommittal. “I said what I had to. I read the moment.”
“You read it well. I’m the only one who knew you were bluffing about the cache.”
She laughs softly. “I wasn’t bluffing.”
“What?”
“One hour before they threw me in that helicopter, all I had was the number of the account I’d set up in the Seychelles.”
“Then how—”
“Max’s phone. Before you and Paul left to dump his body, I took the cell phone he had on him. I punched in the first password from Sally’s necklace, and it opened like a charm.”
“My God. What was the second password to?”
“A password vault application on his phone. That’s what ‘MaiLoc1971’ opened. Once I got into that app, it was like Aladdin’s cave. I could have emptied those accounts if I’d had time. I was still going through the stuff when Wyatt’s guys showed up to grab me. I slid it under the credenza in your den two seconds before they kicked in the door.”
“But you remembered some account numbers?”
Jet taps her temple and gives me an ironic smile. “‘The Brain,’ remember? I’ve never been so thankful for being a number freak. If I hadn’t been able to quote those account numbers, we’d be dead now.”
“Yes, we would.” Given that we survived the ordeal under the pavilion, my mind has wandered back before those crisis moments, to the ones in my kitchen. “I’ve thought a lot about Max,” I tell her.
Jet’s mouth tightens. “He was going to kill us. All of us. You said that yourself. That was the only way he could get custody of Kevin.”
“I know. I’m sure of that. Max would have shot Paul on the patio.”
“Then he deserved what happened to him, didn’t he?”
I don’t answer. I’m thinking about a conversation I had with Nadine when she and I woke up this morning. It was that discussion that caused me to put Jet’s sapphire earrings in my pocket and bring them to this meeting, to give back to her.
“It’s changed, hasn’t it?” she asks. “Between us.”
“Yes.”
Her dark eyes deepen. “When did it change for you?”
I’m not sure how to answer this. “I don’t know if you ever really know something like that. You just feel one way—you see a future—and then you don’t.”
She peers into the shadows under the trees. “I know exactly when it was for me.”
“Really?”
“Last night. When Max said what he did about me—the sexual thing—and you believed him, not me.”
I don’t respond to this.
“I know what he said sounded credible,” she goes on. “But I told you he was lying. And you still decided that I was the liar.”
“You’re right. After we proved he had lied, I felt like throwing up. I was ashamed.”
Her lips compress like a child’s as she works to thread one troublesome stem into a tiny knot. “I’m probably being unrealistic,” she says. “But I want somebody who’ll believe me, even if what I swear to seems impossible.”
I know how she feels. On the other hand, two nights ago she completely fabricated the story about Max raping her, and I’d believed that. I can’t help but feel that’s what made me vulnerable to Max’s lie. I’d just as soon abandon this line of discussion, but I feel one point must be made.
“Paul didn’t believe you, either,” I remind her.
“No. He didn’t. But Paul and I have a child. That’s the difference.”
She’s right, even if Paul isn’t Kevin’s biological father. In every other way, Kevin is his son. But I wonder if a man who Jet lied to for so many years will ever be able to give her the trust she craves.
I held something back a moment ago: I know the exact instant that I realized Jet and I have no future together. It was last night under the Boar Island pavilion, when Beau Holland revealed that she was the one who had given up Nadine as the holder of Sally’s cache. I understand Jet giving a couple of thugs what they’d demanded from her. After all, they’d threatened her child. But afterward . . . she chose not to warn Nadine, or even me. She abandoned Nadine to her fate. I don’t know why she did that, and I’m not sure I ever want to know. But it changed my feelings about her forever.
“It’s all right,” she says, watching my face. “I understand.”
“What?”
“Nadine. The cache. I can’t really explain what I did.”
“How did you even know she had it?”
Jet’s fingers stop moving, but she doesn’t look up from the string of flowers. “I didn’t know. I guessed. Once I realized it was out there, that Sally had made this thing and given it to someone, the possibilities were pretty limited. I didn’t think she’d trust any man with it, honestly. Not even an attorney. Not in this town. The Poker Club is large enough that any man could be beholden to them, and not even Sally would know. Once I got that far, I figured it had to be Nadine. If her mother had been alive, Sally would have chosen her. But she wasn’t. That’s it, really.”
I don’t know what to say. This is actually worse than what I imagined. She gave up Nadine without even being sure she had the cache.
“I know it’s terrible,” Jet says softly. “It’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever done. But they threatened Kevin. I was terrified for him. I wanted it all to go away. The danger. I didn’t let myself believe they would really hurt Nadine. But I was lying to myself. I know that, because it was my fear of what they would do to Kevin that drove my actions.”
I wish I could say something to ease her conscience, but nothing comes to me.
“Please tell Nadine I’m sorry, even though it probably won’t mean anything.”
I nod and leave it at that.
“Look,” Jet says, pointing under the trees. “Turn very slowly.”
I do. Something is watching us from the edge of the clearing. It’s a doe. A spotted fawn stands just behind her in the overgrowth, nervously watching its mother. The doe stares at us for perhaps fifteen seconds, then, with supreme indifference, leaps over a patch of briars and vanishes. The fawn looks lost for a moment, then scrambles after her.
“A good omen?” Jet whispers, plucking another flower from the ground. She has seven tied together now. Soon she will close the circle.
“For what?” I ask. “The future?”
She gives a slow shrug as her fingers work. “I’ve been worried about you. We talked about having a child together.” She looks up, her eyes filled with concern. “You need one. Deserve one. And neither of us are kids anymore.”
“That’s about the last thing I’ve been thinking about.”
Sadness creeps into her face. “Are you going back to Washington? Or will you stay here and run the paper, like you told Paul?”
So the two of them have been talking. “I don’t know. Does it matter to you?”
“Of course.” A strange smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. “But I can think of somebody who’d love to make babies with you, if you’re still here.”