Fool Me Once (First Wives #1)

“Can you hear me?” Rick asked through the tiny earpiece.

“Unfortunately.”

“This is a nice place. Might need to take the Mrs. here.”

“You’re married?”

“Best woman ever. Okay, log into the Internet.”

Reed removed his phone, kept an eye on those coming and going from the hotel as he multitasked.

“Type this in.” He rattled off a series of letters and numbers that made little sense. But once he pressed enter, Reed found himself on a secure site.

“It’s asking for a password.”

Rick started laughing. “The number four and the words fire ants, capitalize the last letters.”

The earworm Avery had placed started to sing again. “Very funny.”

“We thought so.”

The password brought on a video from inside the hotel bar.

An elderly couple walked out of the hotel, and he immediately dismissed them.

“I’m moving you around. Let me know if anyone looks familiar.”

The camera swiveled around the room. Not one patron had a feature worth remembering. “Nothing.”

“Okay . . . keep the webpage open but save your battery. I’ll clue you in when someone new walks in.”

It was Reed’s turn to laugh. “So I stand on the corner and you act like the crazy man talking to himself in a fancy hotel.”

“I’m bigger than you. People ignore crazy when you’re bigger than them.”

Reed couldn’t argue that.




“Does this street ever close down?” Reed asked his unwanted partner through the mic.

“If you sold shoes at a grand a pair, would you close the door?”

“That’s just crazy.”

Reed glanced back down Rodeo Drive, his eyes landing on the storefront of Jimmy Choo.

A woman walked out carrying bags in both hands. Apparently buying one pair at a time wasn’t acceptable in some circles.

He was about to look away when his eyes fell on a woman with olive skin, dark hair, big sunglasses . . . she carried herself with poise, her head just a little higher than everyone around her.

“I think I see her.”

“Where?”

“She’s headed into a shoe store.” Reed looked at the opposing traffic. No way to jaywalk with so many cars buzzing by.

“Keep your distance,” Rick instructed him.

“Do you think I’m new?” Reed crossed the street and blended into the crowd.

It didn’t take long before she walked out. The woman looked left and right before putting her sunglasses back on.

Reed released a sigh. “Not her.”




“We draft up everything. Consider every possible scenario before you file.”

Lori watched as a nervous Ana Maghakian paced her office. “He won’t know I’m here?”

“Not until we tell him. By then we need to have you out of the house.” Preferably with some kind of restraining order, but that wasn’t likely, since the wife wasn’t willing to press charges.

“If I move my stuff out, he’s going to notice. He’s controlling.”

“Most abusers are.”

“I’ll have to move when he’s out of town.”

“Do you have a house staff?”

“Yes.”

“Do they have regular days off?”

“Of course.”

“So which days of the week are the most quiet?”

“Tuesday is my housekeeper’s day off, and the groundskeepers are there every day but Monday.”

“Cook, driver?” Lori rattled off a few more occupations.

Mrs. Maghakian mapped out her household routine while Lori took notes.

It felt as if she were in the thick of a crime in progress. Then again, her life had turned into some sort of a soap opera of late.

“Do you have someplace secure you can go?” Lori asked.

“I have money. I’ve managed to put enough away for this day.”

Lori leaned forward on her elbows. “I’m not talking about a hotel. I’m talking about someplace he can’t get to you.”

“What’s more secure than a hotel with witnesses and cameras everywhere?”

Lori placed her pen on her notes. “What do you anticipate your husband doing when he learns that you’ve left him and filed for divorce?”

Sheer fear filled the other woman’s face.

“We need you safe. I know people that can help you.”

“I can’t go to some shelter.”

“Do I look like I work with a shelter?” Lori didn’t mind pulling strings for women like Ana.

An hour later, with more billable hours than any psychologist, Lori managed to plant the seed that Ana would survive her current situation, she just needed the right resources, resources that Lori could recommend.

It was empowering to have something to focus on other than her life, even when she knew it wasn’t the healthiest of practices to put all her energy and emotion into one client. Truth was, Lori had placed all of her focus in the whole of her practice. Yet at the end of the day, when she was alone in her bed and her brother’s snores drifted to a low roar . . . Lori sensed him. Reed was embedded in the walls of the room, the scent of him in her bed, her pillows. A doctor would tell her she was imagining him there, but she’d deny the doctor’s logic. Reed had left an imprint on her life that lasted beyond any relationship she’d had before him.




The knock on Reed’s door at six in the morning didn’t even shock him.

There was only the groggy walk to the door resulting from the dreams that had haunted him most of the night. He opened it with a push and turned his back on the man beyond.

“Coffee?” Rick asked.

“Please.”

“Great idea. Get dressed.”

Twenty minutes later they were parked outside of the signature green and white storefront.

Rick had put the car in park and stared at the coffee shop across the street for ten minutes before Reed asked, “What are we doing here?”

“Yesterday, while we were playing cloak-and-dagger on Rodeo Drive, your friend used her credit card here.”

Reed glared at the entrance to Starbucks with a groan. “This doesn’t make sense. She’s too smart for this.”

“How so?”

“She picked the lock on my apartment without leaving as much as a speck of evidence. The wineglass was clean, the cell phone was about as traceable as a hooker’s case of VD. She’s not this stupid.”

“You think it’s a setup?” Rick asked.

“She’s leading us here. The question is why? Is she trying to distract us?”

Instead of answering, Rick made a call.

“It’s me. Everything good there?”

Reed heard the male voice on the other end of the phone but couldn’t make out the words.

“Alert level up one. Notify Neil.” He hung up.

“Who was that?”

“Cooper.”

“At Lori’s.”

Rick took his time answering. “Yes.”

Reed focused his attention out the window. “How is she?”

He was slow to respond . . . like a metronome on a piano.

“She’s spending a lot of time in her office.”

“Work is good.” And if she was working, she wasn’t in tears over him.

As the morning drummed on, the coffee shop across the street started to take on a life of its own. It didn’t help that Reed hadn’t managed even one cup before being dragged out of bed.

“This is a waste,” Rick said.

“She’s leading us around,” he agreed. “Tell you what, one pass through and we backtrack.”