EDGE OF SUSPENSE: Thrilling Tales of Mystery & Murder (13 page)

Nothing ever just happens, Emma thought,
seething. It takes two selfish people to make it happen.

She flashed hateful eyes at one of them.
"How long?" she heard herself say, as if this would somehow make a
difference in the way she felt.

Had it been going on for years without her
ever suspecting?

Or had he decided practically overnight that
having another lover was just what the doctor ordered to satisfy
him?

Harrison put the glass to his lips
thoughtfully. "Is that really important?"

"How long?" Her voice rose threateningly.
She needed to know how long he had played her for a fool.

How long he had abused her love and devotion
to him.

How long he had taken everything she had
ever wanted in life and destroyed it in an instant.

"Six months," he said matter-of-factly.

Half a year.

One hundred and eighty days.

One hundred and eighty nights.

When he wasn't with her, he was with
her
.

When they made love, which wasn't very often
in the past six months, had he really been making love to
her
?

And what about when they weren't making
love? Had he been sleeping with
her
when he claimed to be at
his office or at the cabin writing?

Or when he was supposed to be on a book
tour?

Or hunting?

Had she been the first? Or was she just the
latest?

Emma felt sick to her stomach. She bent over
in pain, as if she had been on the receiving end of a punch to the
midsection. Harrison, feigning concern, put his hands on her.

"Are you all right?" His voice was coated
with sincerity. Or perhaps pity.

She would accept neither. Whatever he was
offering came too late.

She willed herself to put aside the nauseous
feeling, straightening up, and slapping his hands away as if they
were hot coals.

"Don't touch me, you
bastard
!"

He looked as if it was he who had been
crushed, betrayed, and humiliated. "I know how you must feel—"

Her eyes became razor slits. "You can't
possibly know how I feel! How could you? I've given my life to you.
I've been faithful to you. I've allowed you to lead a life often
separate of
our
life. All I ever asked in return was that
you remain loyal to me, in and out of bed. But you took advantage
of my love and naivety and I hate you for it."

Did she really hate him?

Could she ever truly hate the only man she
had ever loved no matter what he did?

But how could she ever love him again, in
spite of her feelings?

Her mouth felt dry, as if she had been in
the desert for a month. She lifted her glass of wine and took a
sip, if only to wet her throat.

Though she wanted only to drown herself in
sorrow, there were still other questions, other answers that she
needed to concern herself with. Because she'd had no experience
with a cheating husband, she had not been prepared to face all the
implications that came with the territory.

Why had he told her of his affair? To
absolve his guilty conscience?

To cruelly hurt her in the worst way
possible?

Or was he was planning to leave her for this
other woman?

The mere notion sent a shiver up and down
Emma's spine. Somehow in her shock she had not considered that it
was he who might want to dump her rather than the other way
around.

Was he even worth fighting for? Or should
she be grateful that he had revealed his secret life, thereby
making him worthless to her?

Maybe he was telling her this because the
affair was now over and he wanted her forgiveness.

Could their lives ever possibly be the same
again?

Or had his admission made trust impossible
from this day forward, no matter what else happened?

"Who is she?" Emma asked him pointblank, as
if she needed to know in order to put a face and body to this
nightmare where there seemed no escape.

Was it Doris Applegate, his editor that he
had been spending an increasing amount of time with over the last
year? She was an attractive bottle blonde, a few years younger than
Emma, and couldn't seem to find enough reasons not to see
Harrison.

Or perhaps it was Lena Richardson, the
thirty-something vivacious organizer of the nonprofit group
offering assistance to runaway children? Against Emma's wishes,
Harrison had insisted on volunteering his services in raising money
and counseling youth on the pitfalls of running away, though he
himself had come from a functional family and never saw fit to run
away. For this Lena Richardson was eternally grateful.

Then there was Samantha Winningham, their
newly widowed next-door neighbor. She was barely forty, lonely,
rich, and made no secret of her attraction to Harrison. He, of
course, scoffed at the notion, insisting that she meant nothing to
him. But that didn't stop him from feeling obliged to assist her
with household maintenance now that she was left without a husband
to do it. Or apparently the will to hire professional help.

Harrison hastily poured himself another
drink. "It's not anyone you know," he said, as if she should
somehow applaud him for this consideration. "We met at a book
signing earlier this year and we hit it off right away. Like we
were—"

He checked himself, as if the weight of his
words was too haunting for even him to say.

"Meant for each other," Emma finished for
him.

He drank more wine and sighed. "She's
young...in her early twenties. She's actually read everything I've
ever written. Even those pieces that appeared in obscure
magazines—"

He was obviously flattered by the
ego-tripping worship from his young tart, Emma thought disgustedly.
She too had once fed his ego till it had become more accommodating
than honest.

Harrison's eyes alighted as if he was
floating on a cloud of energy. "She makes me feel young,
alive...needed—"

But she needed him, Emma thought. She had
always needed him. Why couldn't he see and respect that?

When had he stopped needing her?

"Do you love her?" The words played back in
Emma's mind like a broken record. Waiting to hear the answer was
like being strapped to the electric chair and waiting to see if
there would be a last second reprieve or a violent, painful death
by electrocution.

Did she want to hear his reply?

Could she stand it if he actually
loved
this girl toy that had made him forsake his marriage
vows?

The thought of not being loved was the worst
thing Emma could think of, with the possible exception of loving a
bastard who had ripped her heart to shreds.

* * *

She should hack him up into little pieces
and send his remains to his starry-eyed little whore.

Along with the burned pages of his damned
manuscripts.

Or perhaps it would be more appropriate and
painful if it was he who burned to death. Emma was surprised by the
wickedness of her thoughts. She could imagine pouring gasoline or
cooking oil over him
and
his mistress while they were asleep
after making love. She would wake them so they could see the
revulsion in her eyes, just before she dropped the match.

Their inflamed bodies would light up like a
torch. Deathly screams would roar from their mouths while the flesh
melted on their limbs. Soon they would be reduced to nothing more
than charred bones and ashes.

All the while Emma would watch this horror
unfold and curse Harrison for turning her into an unforgiving beast
who no longer cared about life, living, and compassion.

"I hope we can still be friends," Harrison
told her.

He was putting clothes in a bag atop the bed
two days after telling Emma that he was in love with another woman.
She had slapped him, but felt as if it was she who had been hit
harder than she could ever have imagined. She had told him to get
out, hoping that he might somehow come to his senses, tell her it
was all a mistake, and beg her forgiveness.

But it was not to be.

He had left without so much as a meager
attempt at reconciliation, having clearly anticipated such, and
even making plans for living arrangements.

Plans that no longer included Emma.

"The moment you walk out that door," she
told him, "you end any chance of us remaining friends. I have no
intention of going from your wife and lover to someone you think
you can come to for comfort when your little bimbo decides you are
too old, unsatisfying, and too much of an asshole for her."

Harrison flung several pairs of slacks into
the bag, and hit Emma with a contorted glare. "Sorry you feel that
way. I was really hoping we could somehow end this more
civilized."

"No you weren't," she challenged him. "You
were hoping to get the best of all worlds, just like the characters
in one of your damned novels. But it doesn't work that way in the
real world. You made your uncivilized bed, Harrison. Now I hope you
and your mistress lie in it and rot!"

Emma found that it had become increasingly
easier to vent her feelings. She knew that she couldn't simply go
away like the good wife who had been taken advantage of and
mistreated. He didn't deserve to get off that lightly. She had
worked too hard at making their marriage work to watch it come
apart at the seams and dismiss it as if swatting away a fly.

Harrison zipped his bag, grabbed it, and
said colorlessly, "I'll pick up the rest of my things in a few
days. I'm sure we'll be able to work out a satisfactory arrangement
regarding property and such. Goodbye, Emma—"

She said nothing, wanting only to hear him
leave, for she could no longer stand the sight or smell of him.
When she heard the front door click shut, Emma knew that the world
she had come to know and love had changed forever.

And for the worst.

She sank down to the hardwood floor and
cried for the first time. The tears stung her cheeks and seemed to
embody all of the feelings that raced through her like a locomotive
out of control. She no longer had a husband. Or a lover. Or a
confidant. Or a best friend.

Another woman had inherited the man she had
dedicated herself to in body and spirit.

But instead of being engrossed with
self-pity, Emma found herself absorbed with anger.

Loathing.

Discontent.

Revenge
.

She wanted to kill him.

It was the only way to free her from the
feelings of betrayal and anguish.

And prevent him from taking what was hers
and giving it to another woman unjustly.

She contemplated the many ways in which she
could carry out the deed.

Carbon monoxide poisoning.

Strangulation.

Asphyxiation.

Castration.

That last thought clung to her like a second
skin. She wondered how long it would take him to bleed to death
from the source of his abandonment.

She hoped it would not come too swiftly, for
it would only be equitable to what she felt if he were forced to
suffer for some time before the end came unmercifully.

* * *

The woman sat impassively at the defense
table beside her court-appointed attorney. She was on trial for the
murder of her husband and the attempted murder of his lover. He had
been shot ten times at pointblank range. His lover had been shot
three times, miraculously surviving the assault though left a
paraplegic.

Across the room, the prosecutor fidgeted
nervously at his table, glancing occasionally at the defendant.

The jury sat tensely, carefully avoiding
direct eye contact with anyone, as if to do so might tip the scales
one way or the other.

The judge took all this in, sighed, and
looked at the jury foreman. "Have you reached a verdict?"

"Yes, we have, Your Honor."

The verdict was passed from the bailiff to
the judge, who glanced at it with no indication from her facial
expression of what it said, before sending it back to the jury
foreman.

"Will the defendant please rise," the judge
ordered.

Her attorney stood first, and urged his
client to stand. The prosecutor joined them.

The judge knew this was the moment of truth
when life and death hung in the balance. She considered this raw
power for a moment or two before regarding the foreman.

"You may read the verdict—"

The foreman licked his lips, refraining from
eyeing the defendant, as if to do so would result in some form of
punishment. "We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of first
degree murder and attempted murder—"

Judge Emma Kincaid quickly restored order to
the court and immediately directed the newly convicted woman to be
remanded to the county jail to await sentencing.

Emma gazed down at the woman as she was
being led away by sheriff's deputies. For a moment, their eyes met
and Emma felt empathy that she could never express to the woman or
anyone else.

In court she was a judge, sworn to uphold
the law to the best of her ability.

Outside of court, she was a woman. One who
had all the frailties and vulnerabilities of a woman scorned.

This was the woman that possessed her
now.

Emma left the courthouse a short while later
and went directly home. She was still thinking about the case she
had just presided over when she pulled up into her driveway.
Waiting there beside a dark sedan were two men dressed in cheap
suits. By their demeanor and respectful but uneasy expressions,
Emma knew instinctively that they were police detectives.

She got out of her silver Lexus. They
approached her.

"Judge Kincaid," said the older of the two,
removing his identification from his pocket, "I'm Detective
Buchanan and this is Detective Jefferson. We need to talk to
you."

She lifted a brow, wondering if they had
somehow been able to invade her thoughts.