She sat on the glider. "The letters started while you were still--"
"Together. Yeah." He felt ill. "The letters were essentially about me not being with whoever was writing them. It didn't make sense for it to be Adele."
"But you were still playing the King of Fuck. A girl can get jealous. Especially a psychotic one. Oh, god, Dallas."
He didn't want it to be true. Hell, it couldn't be true. He'd slept with her. He'd done dark, fucked up, wicked things with her.
His knees went weak and he reached for the porch railing.
"Dallas!"
"I'm okay, I'm okay."
"Adele killed that poor dog," Jane said, then looked at him. "Are you sure? Can we prove it?"
"That's what I've been working on for the last two hours."
"And?"
"And so far we know that she flew into Vegas the day before you found the dog in your driveway. She checked into the Bellagio and had appointments at the spa. She returned to the East Coast yesterday morning."
"It's not a hard drive from Vegas to LA," Jane said. "Did she actually go to the spa?"
"Someone using her name did, but I'm betting she paid a show girl to pretend to be her, go have a massage and a facial, and not say a word. Liam's checking that out right now. But what's even more interesting, Noah had to really dig for any information on Adele that's more than five years earlier than the date she married Colin. What he did find has earmarks of being fabricated. He's verifying."
"How?"
"Computer checks, follow-ups. But I'm doing my own verification." He drew in a breath and met her eyes. "I told Quince to ask Colin one very specific question. Was the woman we know as Adele working with him on our kidnapping?"
"You've already asked?"
He nodded, then held up his phone. "I'm expecting an answer any minute. Quince has already said that the Woman may have faked her death. That's why Colin could pass a polygraph saying that she was dead. To him--hell, to her--the woman in the cell with us is dead. A brand-new woman took her place."
"That's bullshit," Jane said.
"Agreed. But it's the kind of trick intelligence officers use to fool polygraphs. We should hear from Quince soon."
They both stared at the phone as if it were a live bomb. And when it rang, Jane actually jumped.
Dallas answered before the first ring finished. "Tell me."
"She's the one. Sorry, mate. I know she was a friend."
Except of course she wasn't. Dallas had only thought she was. Adele had played him in a cell seventeen years ago, and she was playing him still.
Fuck.
Dallas closed his eyes, forcing himself to stay calm. Professional. "No, this is good," he said to Quince. "This is information. Get out to Connecticut and bring her in. Whatever you need to do, I want her in the cell next to Colin."
"You got it," Quince said. "The team's already en route. They wanted to be positioned if we got the answer from Colin we expected."
"Call me back when you have her."
"Will do," Quince said and ended the call. The minute the line went dead, Dallas deflated, every ounce of professional bravado leaving him. He leaned against the porch rail, Jane right beside him, then dragged his fingers through his hair as he tried to process all the shit that just seemed to keep swirling in his mind.
"I slept with that woman. Hell, I did more than just sleep with her. I did things--let her do things--and I had no idea. No idea at all that she'd touched me before. That she'd fucking used me. Tortured me."
How could he not have known?