The Perfect Divorce (Perfect, #2)

by Jeneva Rose

“Stacy!” the voice from upstairs cries out. “Help me!” My mouth falls open and tears spring to my eyes as I realize the woman calling out for me, pleading for my help . . . is Carissa.

“That’s great. What’s the job?” Alejandro sets the glass down and picks up his fork, the metal tines scraping against the porcelain plate. “Waste management,” he says. “It’s just temporary, but it pays well.” He looks down as though he’s embarrassed.

“I almost didn’t take the job,”

“And why’s that?” Alejandro wipes his mouth with the cloth napkin, then folds it and places it on top of his cleared plate, signaling that he’s finished. “I wasn’t sure if it was the right job for me.”

Then I feel it, something hard and cold pressed into the side of my abdomen. My gaze goes to him. The sadness in his eyes has returned, but it’s mixed with something else . . . shame . . . or maybe it’s grit. It looks the same when you’re doing the wrong thing for what you think is the right reason. “I’m sorry, Sarah,” he says, pulling back the hammer of the gun.

And then she appears. Sarah. Her lifeless face looking off to the side, blood smeared across it, still bright and fresh.

What I’ve done doesn’t change the fact that I loved her. I’m staring at the image of my wife and the mother of my child dead—and I’m both elated and heartbroken.

This time it’s not just her face, it’s her whole body, lying naked in our bed. Her limbs are twisted and splayed out. A large pool of blood has settled under and around her hips.

“You just wanted her dead, and that’s what she is. Plus, she’s not your wife anymore. She’s . . . not anything anymore.”

“Did Sarah say anything about Stacy Howard before you . . .” I trail off. I don’t need to say what we both already know. “No.” “Shit.” A dead end—literally. I need to find something that can remove the thorn of Stacy from my side . . . and maybe Carissa too. “I know she was planning something.” “If she was, she isn’t anymore,”

“I did it. I finally did it.” Someone bested the great Sarah Morgan. She thought she could keep this up and keep getting away with it. Playing with people like they were nothing, mere puppets attached to a string of lies and deceit and corruption, all clumped and tangled into a web of shit with Sarah smiling at the other end. Not anymore.

It runs south from our lake house, past Greenwich and the golf course, into the middle of nowhere. I click on it and the details pop up—noting it was traveled to earlier this afternoon. “No way,”

“Stacy,” he says, wide-eyed as though shocked to find me down here. I recognize him immediately. He puts his hands up and takes a small step toward me. His mouth parts as he’s about to speak, but nothing comes out because I don’t give him the chance to talk. I pull the trigger and scream out in unison with the two deafening bangs.

“Nagel, what’s up?” “We followed Bob to an abandoned farmhouse south of Greenwich off of 603. We’re parked a little down the road to ensure our cover wasn’t blown, but we just heard shots fired. What do you want us to do?”

The first thing I notice is Bob Miller, lying face down on the concrete, his head craned to the side, eyes still open, lifeless. I don’t have to check his pulse to know he’s already gone.

“Forensics came back with the results from the blood on that knife that was dropped off at the station,” Olson says as the machine dispenses the hot, brown liquid into a matching brown paper cup. “That fast?” I ask, shocked at the turnaround. She nods. “And?” “It’s pig’s blood.”

“Speaking of Sarah, someone has to inform her about Bob.” Olson shakes her head. “That’s two dead husbands now. I feel bad for her.” “They were in the middle of a separation,” I say. “Still. They have a kid together.”

A lock clicks. A dead bolt slides. The door opens, and on the other side stands Sarah Morgan.

The moment I laid eyes on Alejandro, seated in my conference room, waiting for me to welcome him into the program, I knew he wasn’t who he said he was. “How’d you know?” he asks. “Bob’s never recommended a candidate for the program, not once, and I knew it wasn’t because he had some soft spot for you.”

“He hired me to kill you.”

“How long have you and my husband known each other?” “A long time.” “And has he ever used your services before?” Alejandro lets out the smallest sigh and says, “Yes.”

“Nearly fifteen years ago, Bob hired me to kill a woman named Jenna Way.” “Well, I know you didn’t kill her,” I say. “How?” “Because I did, twelve years ago, in this very room.” Alejandro’s eyes go wide. Maybe it’s shock or the realization that I’m more deadly than he is. Then they flicker with something else . . . passion, lust, desire. If I weren’t already undressed, he’d be undressing me with those eyes right now. “Don’t act so surprised,” I say. “I’m not. I’m impressed.”

“I had breached Jenna’s house, and I was waiting for her to return home like she did at the same time every night. But she didn’t, not that night. She’d apparently gotten a flat tire, which set her back forty-five minutes. Instead, her husband arrived home first—Greg, Bob’s brother, earlier than usual too. Thinking it was Jenna, I pulled the trigger the second the front door opened, but the gun jammed. Greg heard it, and he came flying at me. He had seen my face, so I knew what I had to do. He fought hard, but I fought harder. I got the upper hand and plunged a kitchen knife right into his gut. I was going to make it look like a break-in gone wrong but decided I could stage it as a crime of passion instead, so I stabbed him over and over, and then I left the knife in his chest.

He was taking his final breaths, still coughing on his own blood when I slipped out of there. Lucky for me, she panicked and pulled the knife from his chest, thinking she was helping him. But really, she accelerated his death and added evidence that would point to her as the murderer.” I burst out in a manic laugh. “So, Bob killed his own brother?”

“Out of curiosity, how much did Bob offer to pay you to kill me?” “Two hundred and fifty K.” “I’ll pay you the same not to kill me.”

We lock eyes, an intensity burning between us. I wrap my hand around his head and jerk him toward me. Our lips and teeth smash against one another as I slide on top of his body, taking the length of him inside of me. This time, I’m going to fuck him.

Two killers attracted to each other

“The woman we found chained up in the basement was Stacy Howard,” Hudson says. “You remember who she is?” I nod and push out more tears. “I can’t believe it,” I lie. I can believe it because I’m the one who put her there. In truth, I really had nothing to do with Bob sleeping with Stacy, as much as he wanted to blame that on me. He fell into her web of deceit and blackmail all on his own. But that mistake landed them both in my web, and there can be only one queen. Stacy’s lucky she wasn’t a casualty in this war.

I was careful. Extremely careful, ensuring she never saw me, not even a glimpse. After Stacy was unconscious from that chloroform-soaked rag I shoved into her face and that Propofol injection I jabbed in her arm, I hauled her out to the abandoned farmhouse. This was much earlier in the day. I returned to Stacy’s place on my way home from work and texted her roommate from her phone, which I had left there. I said she was going to meet up with Bob. This made the time of her disappearance Monday evening rather than Monday afternoon, when she really went missing. Then, I sent a few texts to a contact labeled Bob Miller, a number I had stored in her phone that connected to a burner. Even if they ask her about those texts, her memory is so fuzzy she won’t remember whether or not she actually sent them.

“Stacy reported that another woman in the basement with her was Carissa Brooks,” Hudson explains. My expression is a mix of sadness and shock. I add in a lip quiver. “Was? What do you mean ‘was’? Is she okay?” They exchange another look. “We can’t locate her at this time,” he says. And they never will, I think to myself as I conjure up more tears, pushing them out as fast as I can produce them.

“Given the amount of blood found at the salon and in the abandoned house, it doesn’t look good—I mean, if they’re a match. But we are hopeful we’ll find her regardless,” Hudson says. I lower my head and sniffle. “I hope so too.” They won’t find her though. She’s long gone.

She said the only way he’d ever let her go was if she were dead, and she basically felt like she already was. She said she couldn’t live this way anymore, always in fear, looking over her shoulder every other second, scared of what was around every corner. She begged for my help, begged me to help her escape, to get away from him for good. And I agreed, as long as she did exactly as she was told. If she did, she’d be free of him forever. I gave her the supplies to start drawing her own blood and told her how to properly store it.

After her last customer left for the day, I told her to dye and cut her hair, get rid of all evidence of her new hairstyle, and remove her piercings. Then she was to stage the salon to make it look like it had been ransacked. Three of the five pints of blood she drew from her own body were to be spread throughout the salon—a pool near a tipped-over chair, smears and droplets here and there, and then a trail leading to the back of the salon.

While she was taking care of the physical evidence that was needed for this plan to work, I was setting her up with a new identity—because once it all went down, she couldn’t be Carissa anymore.

Carissa was never in that basement. I was. I fed Stacy everything I needed her to know, and everything I needed her to relay to the police when they inevitably found her.

Then, upon arrival, I’d throw on a pair of men’s steel-toed work boots, stomp around above her, and toss down a sandwich and a bottle of water—both of which were drugged with scopolamine, or as the kids call it, “Devil’s Breath.”

“He changed for the worse after I filed for divorce, becoming abusive and rather unhinged. I had never seen him act like that. He even threatened my life . . . more than once, and I was terrified for my own safety and for my daughter’s, so I filed a protective order against him—well, my divorce attorney did. Bob went even more ballistic after he found out. So, no, I don’t know exactly what he meant by that, because he had become a person I didn’t even recognize anymore. All I do know is he was dead set on getting full custody of Summer,”

That’s good police work. They’ll find the knife I stashed in Bob’s safe, hidden in the wall, behind a piece of gaudy artwork. It’ll have Kelly’s blood on the blade and Bob’s fingerprints on the handle. I remember the night I gave it to him. He held it in his hands, admiring the blood-streaked blade. Then I asked him to get rid of it and told him to get a rag so he could wipe down the handle. He left the room, and I switched them out—replacing the real murder weapon with one covered in pig’s blood. I knew he would keep it. I could see it in his eyes. He loved me, but he was terrified of me too, and rightfully so. Bob needed something that could protect himself in the future, just in case he ever ended up on my bad side. It was a test, and he failed it miserably.

Some will even speculate that I had something to do with it. But all the evidence will point to Bob and only Bob. Tears spring to my eyes . . . but this time, they’re real.

“It was Bob,” I say to Olson, who sits across from me. “Fingerprints on the knife found in his safe match his, and the blood is a match to Kelly Summers.”

“It sure is convenient.” Olson shakes her head, still flipping through the report. “It is, isn’t it?” I say, moving my mouth side to side. “Bob winds up dead, killed by the woman he kidnapped, and when we search his apartment, the murder weapon in the Kelly Summers case, after all these years, was in his safe, like it had a bow tied around it.”

“Well, Bob and Sarah married shortly after Adam was executed. And you’re telling me Bob framed Adam for murder and then went off and married Sarah.” She cocks her head and tosses the report on my desk. “But Sarah didn’t know any of that yet.” “Or did she?”

“It just seems too far-fetched. Sarah and Bob kill her first husband’s mistress and frame her husband for it? They never get caught, and they just start a life together living happily ever after until they decide to turn on each other? I feel like that leaves a lot of things to chance, especially framing Adam.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think Scott’s a danger to society, not unless he thinks there’s another person involved with his wife’s death.”

“Chief Deputy Olson,” I call out. She glances over her shoulder at me. “Yeah?” “I love you.” A smile cracks across her face. “I love you too,” she says, leaving my office.

money. I just want to tell a story. “Did you always believe your husband Adam Morgan was innocent?” she asks, getting right into it. “No, I knew he was, which is why I chose to stand by his side as his wife and as his lawyer.”

“It must have been awful to learn that your husband was not only wrongfully accused of murder, but was also wrongly executed,” she says, slightly tilting her head. I take a short, deep breath. “It was devastating. Adam was the love of my life, and the commonwealth of Virginia murdered him right in front of my eyes.”

It’s a horrible feeling to lose someone and for no one else to care because they don’t deem it as a loss. Bob took advantage of my grief and my vulnerability. The whole situation was beyond complicated for me to process. But Bob was there when no one else was, and that made it easy for him to get close to me.”

And she’s taken a liking to Alejandro too. He’s nice to have around; my relationship with him isn’t anything serious, mostly just sex. Plus, he’s a little bit of a loose end, and the only way to ensure loose ends don’t unravel is to keep them close. And I say little because who would ever believe the word of a felon? I mean, a person with felon status.

“Adam’s mother, Eleanor Rumple, passed away before the conviction of her son was overturned. How do you think she would have felt had she been alive to see her son’s name finally cleared?” “She would have been thrilled, and it’s a tragedy she didn’t get to witness that.”

“A federal jury in Virginia awarded you thirty-two million dollars for the wrongful conviction and execution of your husband Adam Morgan. Are you happy with that settlement?” “Not really. How could that make me happy? It doesn’t undo what they did. It doesn’t bring Adam back.”