The Other Woman: A psychological suspense thriller Read online

  The Other Woman

  A psychological suspense thriller

  N. L. Hinkens

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Biography

  Also by N. L. Hinkens

  Books by Norma Hinkens

  Prologue

  Bridget wedged the grocery cart between her husband’s car and the jacked up red Dodge truck parked in the slot next to her. Fumbling for her keys, her thoughts rewound to the previous evening and the elegantly dressed woman she’d seen exiting her husband’s accounting office. Bridget had been telling herself ever since that it didn’t necessarily mean what it had looked like. It could have been an appointment that ran late, right? It was almost tax season, after all. But, despite her best efforts to cajole herself, her rational self lingered in a sea of uncertainty, unconvinced of what her heart was so desperate to believe.

  Steve had been spending an inordinate amount of time at the office, and less and less time with his family over the past six months. Still, she would need more conclusive evidence that her husband of sixteen years was cheating on her before she confronted him—evidence that he wouldn’t be able to explain away with some trite explanation. An unfounded accusation would rock their already faltering marriage.

  She pressed the key fob to open the trunk of the car and reached for her grocery bags. Her hand froze midair. She frowned at the unfamiliar tartan blanket lying in there. An ominous pulse began to tap in her temple. It wasn’t the blanket as much as the contoured shape beneath it that had stopped her heart in its tracks.

  A nervous breath caught in her throat as she set the grocery bags back down in the cart and stretched trembling fingers toward the woolen blanket. With a darting glance over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching, she flicked one corner of it aside. Her ears filled with a steady thrumming of blood at the unmistakable sight.

  It was her—the other woman.

  1

  The Night Before…

  “Henry, I need you to watch Harper for a little while,” Bridget called from the kitchen doorway to her six-foot-two, fourteen-year-old son, who was busy foraging through the contents of the refrigerator less than forty-five minutes after devouring a stacked plateful of roast beef and mashed potatoes, along with an obligatory stalk of broccoli.

  “Why?” he asked, still scanning the refrigerator shelves. “Where are you off to?”

  “Dad’s working late again. I’m taking him a bite to eat. I won’t be long. Please make sure your sister’s in bed by eight.”

  Henry grunted in response, which Bridget took as an acknowledgment of his brotherly duties. His seven-year-old sister, Harper, was tucked away in her room happily preoccupied with the elaborate nail sparkle kit she’d received for her birthday last week. Bridget glanced at her phone. She could still be back in time to tuck her daughter into bed if she left now. Right on cue, Harper stuck her head out her bedroom door. “Where are you going, Mommy?”

  Bridget suppressed a grin. Harper’s hearing—not to mention her intuition—verged on supersonic. Not much that went on in the household escaped her curious little mind. “Just going to take Daddy some dinner. Be right back.” Bridget blew her daughter a kiss as she grabbed her coat from the wrought-iron rack in the hallway and slipped out the front door, balancing a foil-covered plate of food in one hand.

  As she fastened her seatbelt, she smiled to herself, remembering the look of delight on Harper’s face when she’d set eyes on her highly anticipated birthday cake—a blue-frosted two-tiered mermaid extravaganza, replete with edible glitter, starfish, and seahorses that had taken Bridget the best part of a day to bake and decorate. But she’d been determined not to disappoint her daughter’s ambitious aspirations for a mermaid pool party in November at the local aquatic center. Harper was still relatively easy to please, and quick to express joy in the smallest things, unlike her older brother, Henry, who exhibited an allergic reaction to most of what she said these days.

  Bridget grimaced as she started up the car. Henry was a good kid at heart. It was obvious he was desperate for his father’s attention. If only Steve would spend a little more focused time with him. That was the whole reason they’d moved out of the city to begin with—to slow the pace and enjoy their kids. Monday was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and, despite all her coaxing, he still hadn’t committed to taking the day off to hang out with them. On the rare occasions when he did come home from work early, he was always multi-tasking, even when Henry tried to strike up a conversation with him. Lack of eye contact told a kid you didn’t care. What part of that was so hard for Steve to understand?

  Ten minutes later, Bridget pulled up across the street from Bartlett and Hartman where her husband worked and switched off the engine. In the early days of their marriage, she’d often brought Steve something to eat at the office when he couldn’t get away from his growing accountancy practice. It hadn’t seemed like a chore back then. The chasm between them was widening more rapidly with every passing day. Granted, he was working too much, but she needed to make more of an effort too. Maybe this little gesture would remind him of happier times when simple things like splitting a sandwich had been fun as long as they were together.

  As she reached for the plate of food on the passenger seat, a flicker of movement caught her eye. She glanced up to see a dark-haired, willowy woman in heels exiting the building where Steve worked. The woman wrapped a fuchsia scarf around her mouth, partially obscuring her face, and threw a furtive glance up and down the street before briskly descending the steps and disappearing into parking lot behind the building. Bridget’s chest tightened. Even in the shadows, she could tell it wasn’t Steve’s five-foot-two assistant, Melissa. So who was this mysterious woman, and why was she stealing out of the office like she had something to hide?

  Bridget picked anxiously at the foil covering on the plate of food for a moment or two before setting it back down on the passenger seat. What had she just witnessed—was it anything at all, or everything? Was this woman the reason Steve was spending endless hours at the office of late, purportedly working?

  Skin prickling, Bridget waited to start her engine until the woman pulled out of the parking lot in a dark-colored Land Rover. There was no way she could compose herself enough to bring a plate of food to her husband now. She was shaken to her core and her mood had soured. Steve would know immediately that something was wrong, and she wasn't ready to confront him. Not yet. First, she needed to clear her head, think about what she’d observed, and then decide what to do about it.

  For a while, she drove aimlessly, losing all track of time and sense of where she was going. The smell of the warm meat next to
her grew increasingly nauseating, and she rolled down the window, shivering at the icy edge to the night air that matched the chill in her bones. It was well after eight-thirty before she’d collected herself sufficiently to make the return trip home. She couldn't accuse Steve of anything without more evidence. What she’d seen wasn’t enough to be compelling. She would make it her business to find out what, if anything, was going on before she confronted him. If what she’d witnessed was what she feared it was, then it was over between them.

  Harper's bedroom light was still on when she pulled back into the driveway. Biting back her frustration, she let herself into the house and tossed her purse and keys on the hall table. She opened the door to her daughter’s room quietly on the off chance that she’d fallen asleep with her light on. But Harper was still engrossed in her nail kit, the contents of which were scattered across her desk and bed, while a healthy dose of purple glitter twinkled up from the carpet.

  “Honey!” Bridget exclaimed. “It's way past your bedtime. Didn't Henry let you know?”

  “Nope.” Oblivious to her frustration, Harper jumped up and ran to give Bridget a hug. “Look at my nails, Mommy! Do you like them?”

  She reached for her daughter’s hands and held them in her own, making a show of admiring the sticky, glittery rainbow of color that meandered unevenly over Harper's fingertips.

  “They're beautiful,” Bridget said. “And now it's time for you to wash up and get off to bed. Don’t forget, you have to be up bright and early for ballet in the morning.“

  After supervising Harper's efforts to scrub up and clean her teeth, Bridget tucked her into bed and then knocked on Henry's door. When there was no response, she opened it and peeked in. Her son was stationed in front of his computer playing Fortnite, yet again, his over-priced headphones successfully drowning out any surrounding sound. Bridget sighed as she looked around at the unkempt space littered with dirty clothes and dishes. He wouldn't have heard as much as a cheep if someone had broken into the house. She might as well have left Harper unsupervised for all the care he’d taken of her. She marched over to him and squeezed his shoulder.

  He yanked his headphones halfway off and frowned at her. “Hey! What’s up? I’m in the middle of a game with Quinn.”

  Bridget bit back the reprimand on the tip of her tongue. She didn’t want to get dragged into an argument with Henry. Her nerves were too frazzled by what she’d witnessed at Steve’s office. Besides, she generally liked it when Henry hung out with Quinn. They’d become friends at the beginning of the school year. He was a good kid, an honors student like her son, and never in trouble. “Just wanted to let you know I’m back, that’s all.”

  Henry gave a thrust of his chin in her direction and adjusted his headphones before turning his attention back to the screen, slipping right back into his ongoing conversation with Quinn.

  Bridget closed the bedroom door behind her and was about to head to the kitchen to make a cup of tea when it occurred to her that now might be as good a time as any to do a little investigative work. She slipped into Steve’s office and sank down in front of his desktop computer. Her eyes drifted to the silver-framed family photograph on his desk. She picked it up and studied her husband’s face. What are you hiding, Steve?

  With a resolute sigh, she pulled the keyboard toward her and typed in his password. Maybe she was jumping to a baseless conclusion about the enigmatic woman at his office. After all, Steve had never hidden anything from her throughout the course of their marriage. Surely people who had something to hide from their spouses wouldn’t share their passwords, would they? But she and Steve had never kept those kinds of secrets from each other.

  While she waited for the computer to power up, she began pulling open his desk drawers and rummaging through the contents. There was nothing of interest inside—miscellaneous cables, stacks of old receipts, cartons of paperclips, business cards, a couple of old calculators. Next, she turned her attention to the cabinet behind the desk and began working her way through the file folders. In his usual fastidious manner, Steve had organized all their household paperwork into categories. He handled most of the bills online, but he liked to keep a hard copy of items such as appliance manuals and contact information for repair services.

  After a few minutes, Bridget closed up the cabinet and sat back down in front of the computer. She clicked on the finder icon and studied its contents, her finger hovering over the Dropbox folder. What if she opened one of the files and Steve tried to access it at the same time from the office? It was too risky. She didn’t want to get caught meddling with his files if she could avoid it. She’d rather wait and take a look inside that folder when she knew for certain Steve wasn’t working on his computer.

  Gritting her teeth, she moved the mouse away from the Dropbox icon and clicked on the Recents tab instead. She threw a scant glance over the Excel spreadsheets and miscellaneous screenshots and notes—all work-related as far as she could tell. She wasn't sure what she’d expected to find. It's not as if Steve would keep a file of evidence on his computer attesting to an illicit affair.

  She spent a few more minutes browsing through some old vacation photos before turning her attention to Steve’s email. Once again, she came up short—nothing incriminating or even hinting of impropriety. She tapped her sensibly trimmed fingernails on the desk and closed up the computer. Truth be told, she was only partly reassured. Steve was a smart man. Exacting in all his ways, like any good accountant. If he was having a fling, she had no doubt he would make very sure to cover his tracks.

  Bridget exited the office and headed to the kitchen to brew a much-needed cup of peppermint tea. As she sipped on it, she browsed on her phone for ways to cover your trail while conducting an affair. She was genuinely shocked to discover the lengths some people went to, and how clever they were about deceiving their partners. Evidently, she was living in a bubble. Cheating 101 involved setting up a separate email account. And saving your lover’s number under an alias on your phone was another common strategy to avoid detection. Some went as far as to set up a separate bank account to fund their taboo activities.

  Bridget frowned at the screen as she considered this possibility. Steve handled most of their finances—he was the accounting wizard, after all. He could very well have his own bank account for all she knew. An account that would be next to impossible for her to locate. Other things, however, were within her reach. She made a mental note to check his car at some point to see if he was carrying around a change of clothes in a gym bag or something. According to the article she’d pulled up, that would be telling—as would a sudden interest in dressing smarter. She drew her brows together contemplating Steve’s attire of late. To the best of her knowledge, he wasn’t dressing any differently, but then he’d always dressed well—suits, or sport coats at a minimum. Hardly surprising. He was a professional. She could disregard that particular indicator as irrelevant.

  When she’d exhausted all of the websites detailing the myriad warning signs that your spouse was being unfaithful, she began reading an article about what cheaters were really looking for when they went outside their marriage. Her stomach knotted. Was Steve unfulfilled? She’d always thought they had a good marriage—decent at any rate—until recently. Granted, Steve was a workaholic and he sometimes complained about her nagging him about the need to spend more time with his family, but it was entirely justifiable. She was only trying to improve his relationship with his kids, and with her. They had been close at one point. The truth was, they had drifted apart and she missed him.

  She was lost in a story about a particularly enterprising husband who used a drone to catch his cheating wife when she heard the front door open. Heart lurching in her chest, she hurriedly closed up the browser on her phone and reached for her cold cup of tea, cradling it in her hands.

  “Sorry I'm late,” Steve said, setting his briefcase down on the kitchen counter. “Getting into that busy time of the year again.”

  Bridget raised her br
ows a fraction. “Already? I thought it only kicked up a notch after Valentine's Day.”

  “Seems like we’re off to the races in January this past couple of years.“ Steve cast a hopeful look around the kitchen. “Anything to eat?”

  “Yours is in the fridge,” Bridget replied tersely, swirling her cold tea around in an effort to avoid his gaze.

  He pulled out the plate of food she’d driven to his office and back earlier, uncovered it, and set it in the microwave.

  “Anyone working late with you?” Bridget ventured.

  Steve pinched the bridge of his nose and stifled a yawn. “Just me. That’s what happens when you make partner.”

  “Did you have an after-hours appointment or something?”

  He shook his head. “No, just wading through some paperwork. I can blast through it more quickly when I’m alone.”

  Bridget stood and emptied the remainder of her tea into the sink with shaking fingers. If the other woman wasn't a client, then why was Steve hiding the fact that she’d visited his office after hours?

  2

  Bridget smothered a yawn as she tumbled out of bed on Saturday morning. She’d slept in later than she’d intended, which would necessitate a frenzied dash to get Harper dressed in her ballet gear and out the door in time for her mandatory practice for the Valentine’s Day performance. Her mood plummeted as her thoughts returned to the strange woman she’d seen exiting Steve’s office the previous night, the woman Steve had selectively neglected to mention when he’d told her he’d spent his evening perusing paperwork. Alone.