Free The Edge by Catherine Coulter

napkin. When he’d finished mopping up, I said again, “Paul, tell me about Laura. Who is she?”
    Paul took a bite of his sandwich, chewed slowly, not looking at me, just chewed. He swallowed, took a long pull of beer, then said finally, “Laura? There isn’t any Laura.”
    Paul Bartlett was thirty-six, skinny as a post, at home in preppy clothes—this morning a dark green Ralph Lauren T-shirt and khaki slacks, light tan Italian loafers with tassels.
    He was a genius, Jilly had always said, simply a genius. Well, that could be, I thought, but he was a lousy liar. I wasn’t about to let this slide. “Laura, Paul. Tell me about her. It’s important.”
    “Why would Laura be important to this? How the hell do you even know her name?”
    “I heard it from Jilly,” I said. I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d come suddenly awake at the hospital, my face on Jilly’s hand, saying Laura’s name aloud. It sounded too off the wall. I leaned back in my chair and added easily, “She mentioned Laura’s name. Didn’t say anything else about her—just said her name.”
    Did Paul look relieved? I realized I’d blown it. I never should have told him that the woman’s name was all I knew. I was an idiot. I was supposed to be trained to lie and bluff well. I was losing it. But why did Paul feel he had to lie? And then of course I realized what Jilly had meant. Laura had betrayed her with her husband, Paul.
    Paul took another bite of his sandwich. Some of the mayonnaise oozed out the sides and fell to the napkin. He chewed slowly, buying time, I knew, an old ploy to gain time to think, to make the other person begin to question himself. He said finally, after a long stretch of silence, “She’s not important, just a woman who lives in Salem. I don’t even know if that’s the Laura Jilly mentioned. As far as I ever knew, Jilly never even met Laura, never even heard of her. I don’t understand why she’d say her name.” He sipped his beer, his hand steady as a rock now.
    “How did you meet her? What’s her last name?”
    “More questions, Mac, about a person Jilly only mentioned in passing? What’s this all about?”
    “Jilly said to me, ‘Laura betrayed me.’ What did she mean, Paul?”
    Paul looked like I’d socked him in the jaw. He shook his head as if to clear it and said, “All right, dammit. There was a Laura, but I haven’t seen her in several months. I broke it off. I just lost my head for a while there, but then I realized that I loved Jilly, that I didn’t want to lose her. I haven’t seen Laura since March.”
    “Laura was your lover then?”
    “You find that hard to believe, Mac? You look at me and you see a nerd who’s a decade older than you are, and not a thing like you? No bulging muscles? No big macho cop with broad shoulders and a full head of hair who goes chasing after terrorists, for God’s sake? The only thing good you can say about me is that I’m at least an evolved nerd since I attracted your sister.”
    I forced myself to take another bite of my tuna salad sandwich. So both this Laura and Paul had betrayed Jilly. I wanted to jump over the table and tear Paul Bartlett’s head off. I made myself chew slowly, just as Paul haddone. It gave me time to cool down. What I needed most of all was control. I said after just a moment, no anger at all in my voice, “Let’s get something perfectly straight here, Paul. I find it hard to believe you’d sleep with another woman because you’re a married man, supposedly a happily married man. A married man isn’t supposed to screw around on his wife.”
    “Shit, I’m sorry.” Paul rubbed his fingers through his light brown hair. “I didn’t mean all that, Mac. I’m upset, you can see that.”
    “What’s Laura’s last name?”
    “Scott. Laura Scott. She’s a reference librarian at the public library in Salem. I met her there.”
    “Why were you at the Salem Public Library?”
    Paul just shrugged. “They’ve got great science