He Chose Her, So I Faked My Death novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: The Trade

I called Marguerite Ames from a burner phone at midnight.

"I'll come," I said. "There's no trade. You hand me the ledger, and I decide about the baby when I'm ready."

"That's not what I offered."

"It's what you'll get."

There was a pause.

"Tuesday at ten," she said. "The greenhouse behind the house. My son will be at the office."

"Alone?"

"Alone."

Jasper drove me there himself.

He did not like it, and he said so three times.

"If she screams, I'm coming through the wall," he said at the gate.

"If she screams, she'll be the first Ames to do it in public."

He parked on the quiet service road behind the hedge and cut the engine.

For a moment he did not let go of my hand.

"Ten minutes," he said.

"Ten minutes."

I walked up through the garden to the greenhouse in my plain coat with my hair down, a woman nobody was supposed to recognize.

The house loomed above me through the trees.

I had lived in that house for five years.

I had never once been invited to the greenhouse.

Marguerite was sitting on a wrought-iron bench among the orchids with a silver tray of tea.

"You came," she said.

"I said I would."

"Sit. Please."

I stayed standing.

She poured one cup and did not offer it.

"I was wrong about the trade," she said. "I was a mother for four minutes and a negotiator for the rest. It's a habit."

"Then what do you want?"

"I want my son to stop." She set the pot down. "He asked me once, years ago, what I thought of the Radcliffe girl who vanished. I said she was a smart choice if he could find her. I said it as a joke."

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