The Jealousy Game novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: Three Rules
At seven I left the counter to my morning girl and walked down to the marina.
Casper's shed sat at the far end of the dock, a long tin building with a roll-up door and a sign that said ENGSTROM WOODEN BOATS in hand-painted letters.
The whole way down the dock I kept hearing the line from the bank screen: B. Hallam, Personal Savings, forty-eight thousand dollars.
Brett was not a man who saved.
The door was half open.
Inside, a cedar hull lay upside down on sawhorses, its ribs bare and its planks half hung.
He was planing one of them at a bench, in a gray sweatshirt, with his back to me.
He heard my step and did not turn around.
"Lena."
"I want to see the notebook."
"I know."
He set the plane down and faced me.
His eyes were red at the rims, and I thought he had not slept either.
"I'll show you," he said. "Not today."
"Today."
"If I give it to you now, you'll walk into Brett's office and throw it at him. Or you'll burn it. Either way he wins, because he'll say you're having another spell and everyone will believe him."
"Do you believe him?"
"No."
"Then why did you sit at that table thirty-one times?"
He took a long time to answer.
"So you wouldn't be the only one in the room who knew what he was doing."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the one I have."
I wanted to hit him with something, so I put my hands in my coat pockets.
"Fine. Then here's how this goes."
He waited.
"One. You tell me only what you can prove. No guesses, no feelings, no what-ifs."
"Okay."
"Two. No hands. Not on me, not to help, not to catch me if I fall off a boat."
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