Read Online Third Degree by Greg Iles - Free Book Online

possible that he’d found the letter many hours ago. Found it, read it, and then begun tearing the house apart looking for more evidence. Probably the only reason he hadn’t snatched her out of bed and confronted her last night was because the letter wasn’t signed (except for the word “Me,” which on the day Laurel had received the letter made it sound like a note from a junior high school boy, but which she now thanked God that Danny had done).
    “I’m surprised you kept that,” Warren said. “You’re usually such a detail person. I guess that letter means a great deal to you.”
    Laurel stood frozen, her eyes on the letter. Other than outright panic—squashed by survival instinct—her mind was blank. She gazed at the green letters, trying to keep the muscles of her face motionless. She felt Warren staring relentlessly at her, not blinking, and blood rushed into her cheeks. Nothing could stop that. She could blame it on Warren’s confrontational posture, but that would only postpone the inevitable. From the moment Warren found that letter, the truth was bound to come out.
    “Well?” he prompted, his voice exquisitely controlled. “Are you going to stand there and lie to me?”
    Laurel knew what his exaggerated control signaled: rage. Danny had always warned her to be prepared for this moment. For getting caught. Anyone might have seen them on any day, without their even knowing it. Danny had told her that people who had affairs behaved as though they were invisible, as though passion created some sort of force field through which common people couldn’t see. But this was a chemical illusion, and it took only a single unexpected glance to destroy it. Danny’s letter was much more than that. It was as deadly as a shot fired through the heart, and it had probably destroyed Warren to read it. Worse, that shot had triggered an avalanche from the frozen heights above their marriage. Even now, mountains of denial and repression were hurtling down upon them at two hundred miles an hour. The silence in the room was the prelude to the roar of being buried alive.
    “You’re not going to say anything?” Warren demanded.
    Her mind grasped at the nearest concrete detail. “I’m getting a migraine. That’s why I came home early.”
    “You poor thing.”
    “Whatever,” she said, turning away. “I’m going to try to find the Imitrex.”
    “Don’t try to walk away from this.”
    As she looked back at him, Danny’s voice spoke softly in her mind:
Never admit anything. No matter what he confronts you with, deny it. Deny, deny, deny. It may seem ridiculous, but he’ll be desperate for any excuse to believe you. If you admit cheating on him, you’ll regret it later. Think before you act.
She knew Danny was right, but looking at Warren now, and knowing what was in the letter, she saw how impossible that advice was. She had no option but to tell the truth, even if it meant living alone forever. But first she needed the Imitrex. She couldn’t complete the destruction of her marriage while having a migraine.
    “I’m going to find the Imitrex,” she repeated firmly, and walked away before Warren could respond. “Will you give me the injection?”
    “Come back here!” he shouted. “Don’t walk away from me! Laurel!”
    She waved acknowledgment but kept walking, her eyes brimming with tears.
    “I said turn around, goddamn it!”
    It was his tone that turned her, not the “goddamn.” There was something in it she had never heard before, a fury that bordered on madness, and she could imagine nothing more alien to Warren Shields than madness.
    Facing him again, she saw that he’d gone pale. His right hand gripped the edge of the coffee table like that of a drowning man clinging to the gunwale of a lifeboat. The sight triggered something deep within her, something far deeper than thought, an impulse concerned with her survival alone. And then she saw why: Warren’s other hand was holding a gun. A black