Our Wicked Lies by Gledé Kabongo (books for new readers TXT) 📕

morning, fit into the puzzle? If he did at all. Would Eliot freak out if it was Nathan who’d called during dinner? She needed to find out.

She pulled out the suit and a crisp white shirt. After she finished packing two large suitcases, she walked over to the open bedroom window and stuck her head out. The sun warmed her face, and a light breeze ruffled a few strands of her shoulder-length hair.

She closed her eyes for a moment before drawing her cell phone from her pocket, holding it in one hand. Her index finger hovered over the screen. What are you doing? She filled her cheeks with air and then let out a long puff.

She locked and unlocked the screen, mumbling to herself for another minute or two about what to do. But she was determined. She had to know. She would make the call and put her paranoia to rest.

She dialed the main line for Tillerson Brenner. After only a couple of rings, the receptionist picked up.

Alicia cleared her throat and mustered up her most confident voice. “Nathan Hunt, please.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Hunt no longer works at this office.”

“Oh, which office does he work out of?”

The receptionist’s voice was stern, but not quite impolite. “Sorry, ma’am, I’m unable to give out that information.” Then she thanked Alicia for calling and hung up.

Alicia turned the information over in her head. Did the receptionist mean that Nathan Hunt was merely based out of another location or that he no longer worked for Tillerson Brenner? Besides Boston, the firm had U.S. offices in New York, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Washington, DC. Would she have to call all six to locate Nathan?

A brilliant idea unexpectedly occurred to her. She sat down on the bed and placed the call, putting the phone on speaker to free up her hands. She grabbed a pillow and squeezed it to release the nervous energy building inside her.

“Is your LinkedIn profile still active?” she asked.

“Well, hello to you, too, Alicia. And, yes, I’ve still got LinkedIn. Why?”

“Yes, sorry, Rina. I need a favor.”

“What kind of favor? We only saw each other a couple of hours ago.”

“Something came up. Can you look up someone on LinkedIn, anonymously?”

“Yes, sure. I would have to tinker with the profile privacy settings, but I can do it. Who are you looking up, and why can’t you do it yourself?”

“I don’t have a Linkedin account,” she answered.

“Oh,” Rina said, coming to her senses. “You know there is a thing called Google.”

“Can you just do me this favor, please?” Alicia pleaded. She double punched the pillow.

“Okay, you’ve got me, I’m intrigued,” Rina said. “Who are you spying on?”

“Are you going to help me or not?”

Rina’s three-year-old screamed in the background.

“Oh, here we go. He’s been screaming since I picked him up from preschool. I’ve got to go, Alicia, but text me the name and I’ll see what I can do,” she said before hanging up.

The next twenty minutes were excruciating as Alicia busied herself with the last of the packing. When her phone pinged on her bedroom dresser, she stuffed the passports she had been holding into her handbag and grabbed the phone. A text message displayed.

Rina: Check your email.

Breathless with anticipation, she opened up her email account. The message from Rina appeared at the top. She clicked on it. The body of the email simply said.

Hope this is what you’re looking for.

Cheers.

There was an image attached. It was a screenshot of the LinkedIn page; Nathan Hunt looked to be in his mid-thirties and his profile stated he was a litigation attorney with Tillerson Brenner out of New York. He had attended New York University and Cornell for law school.

Alicia couldn’t work out why she was disappointed. What else did she expect to find? The Linkedin profile only confirmed that Nathan Hunt worked for Tillerson Brenner. So why had Eliot looked so afraid the other night? Unless Nathan wasn’t the one who’d called. She hadn’t seen his phone’s screen, so she had no idea whether or not it was Nathan. Recalling that Eliot had claimed that the dinner interruption was work related, this morning she’d assumed that the call had been from Nathan.

Oh, this was hopeless. The two calls might have absolutely nothing to do with each other, which put her right back where she started, with out-of-character suspicion and paranoia. What if she was making something out of nothing?

But then, Eliot wouldn’t have placed the phone face down on the table if it were Nathan or another colleague calling. She would bet money on it.

CHAPTER 9

When Alicia stepped into the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel George V, her worries and concerns vanished. The opulence and beauty of the place took her back to her wedding day. Eliot had given her a fairytale wedding at an antebellum mansion near Atlanta, and Alicia had been blown away by the beauty of it. But now, she stood in the lobby of this luxury hotel, once a 1928 art deco building, in Paris, that made their wedding venue seem ordinary by comparison.

Magnificent works of art hugged the walls. The polished marble floor shone so beautifully she almost felt bad for standing on it. The laughter of guests milling about, waiting to be checked in—mingled with the fragrant aroma of the fresh floral arrangements of stunning peach, pink, and fuchsia in towering glass vases—produced a euphoric feeling.

Everywhere she turned, a rush of excitement swooshed through her veins.

The hotel itself stood at the heart of Paris’ Golden Triangle with its high-end boutiques, fashion houses, and the most iconic sites in the city. She could see herself whiling away the few afternoons she had to herself in this fabulous city.

As if the lobby wasn’t luxurious enough, when they arrived in their room, Alicia gasped. The lavish duplex suite boasted a Louis XVI theme: romantic, elegant yellows and creams, rich fabrics, fine art, and a colossal four-poster bed. Two huge