Mistress

Chapter 94

I try to maintain an even keel, keep my composure, as it dawns on me what I have now learned about Diana. It’s almost incomprehensible that she’d set up her friend Nina like that.

Maybe she didn’t. Maybe someone else sent this e-mail from her account. I don’t know. But this can’t be. I couldn’t have been that wrong about Diana-

“So do you want to hear my theory or not?” asks Sean Patrick Riley.

I left Diana’s apartment just before ten, as she had requested of me over the phone earlier that day. But I just barely made that deadline, having been a bit distracted by Diana’s lingerie and sex toys. Nina Jacobs must have gotten off the elevator and walked into the apartment only minutes, if not seconds, after I scooted out the fire escape.

And someone-our government, the Russians, the Chinese, take your pick-pushed Nina off the balcony only minutes later.

“Sean,” I say.

“It’s a crazy theory,” Sean says.

“No, I-”

“Maybe it wasn’t Diana Hotchkiss who fell from that balcony. Maybe it was Nina. Maybe Diana Hotchkiss set up Nina to be there so-”

“Sean, listen to me. Listen to me carefully. Go home.”

He draws back. “Come again?”

“Go back to Chicago. You’ve done your part. This is enormously helpful. This proves what I’ve thought all along.”

“What have you thought all along?” he demands. “What the fuck is this about?”

I sigh. “This is about an SUV detonating today. This is about a conspiracy and cover-up all the way to the Oval Office.”

Sean Patrick Riley watches me for a long time before he speaks. “The fuck it is.”

“No foolin’, Sean. Diana was in the middle of something big. SUVs-exploding-in-the-capital big. Poor Nina was an unknowing pawn in a high-stakes game. I think Nina is lying in a morgue with a tag on her toe that says ‘Diana Hotchkiss.’ And as much as I don’t want to believe it, the evidence you just gave me doesn’t lie. She was wearing Diana’s clothes and staying in her house. She was pretending to be Diana, Sean. She was set up. And you’ve just helped me prove it.”

It takes him a while, but even a skeptical ex-cop like him can’t deny the e-mails he himself found. E-mails that were carefully deleted, that couldn’t even be discovered in the e-mail program’s trash. E-mails that were deleted by a pro, and that could only be discovered by a fellow expert that Sean hired to conduct a forensic examination of Nina’s computer.

“So that’s why you wanted me to do the forensic review of her computer,” he mumbles. “You figured there might be something like this on here.”

Right. Hooray for me. “People will kill you for knowing this,” I say. “So go back to Chicago. In a couple of days, this will all be over, one way or the other. If I don’t survive this, then run with what you know. You can wait that long, can’t you? Nina’s not going to get any deader.”

He argues the point. I don’t know if I’ve convinced him or not. But I do know that I have to get out of here, separate myself from him, and keep on the move.