Apocalypse Stockpiler: My Ex-wife gets nothing

Chapter 4

Jayden did not go to work.

He sat in his car at the end of the block with the engine off, watching the entrance of his own building through the windshield. His hands were steady. His stomach was not.

He had called Hank and told him he was sick. Hank had cursed for a full minute and then, grudgingly, told him to get some rest.

Twenty minutes later, Summer walked out of the building.

She had changed into a tight black dress and her good heels. Her hair was curled, her lipstick fresh. She did not resemble a woman running to her mother's house or her father's restaurant.

She dressed like a woman going on a date.

She did not glance back at the apartment. She did not check her phone for messages from her husband. She did not even glance at the window where he usually stood and waved.

She simply left, as if the place had already stopped mattering.

She slid into the white coupe. Jayden waited three seconds, then started his car and followed.

He remembered the day he had found her messages. It had been the fourth day of the blackout, when the power failed and her phone had finally lit up on the kitchen table with one last notification.

Trevor: I can't wait to have you in the shelter. Bring everything you can.

He had read it standing in the dark. Then he had put the phone back exactly where she left it and cooked dinner anyway.

In his last life, he would never have dreamed of doing this. He would have trusted her words, apologized for his suspicions, and gone to work like a good husband.

That man was dead.

The coupe led him across the city, past the bridge and the river and the glass towers of the financial district, and stopped in front of a boutique hotel with a green awning. The same logo as the keycard.

Jayden parked half a block away and slid down in his seat.

A man stepped out of the lobby.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, in a charcoal coat that probably cost more than Jayden's monthly rent. His hair was dark and perfect. His smile was the kind that made waiters stand up straighter.

Trevor Russo.

A black van with tinted windows rolled up to the curb behind him. A thin man in a gray suit hopped out and began unloading long steel cases from the back, handling each one with great care.

On the side of the van, in neat white letters, were the words RUSSO CONSTRUCTION. REDWOOD SITE.

Jayden's mouth went dry. In his last life, the rumor had claimed that Trevor's shelter was finished only weeks before the sky turned red. But here was the man, a full year early, already moving steel.

Either Trevor was just a paranoid billionaire.

Or he knew something.

Jayden's hands tightened around the steering wheel until his knuckles went white.

He had never met the man. He had only known the name from the messages he had found in the last life, and the rumors afterward. The billionaire developer who owned a construction empire. The man who had built a private underground shelter before anyone else even imagined needing one.

The man who had taken Summer in while Jayden froze to death.

Summer ran to him.

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, long and hungry, right there on the sidewalk. Trevor laughed and lifted her off the ground. A doorman glanced away politely.

Jayden watched, and he waited for the pain.

It did not come.

What came instead was a strange, cold clarity, as if a fog had finally lifted. He saw the two of them clearly for what they were. Two people who had decided to take what they wanted from the world and never ask how much it cost.

He raised his phone and pressed the camera button.

Click.

Click.

Click.

He took ten photographs, each one clear. Her hand on Trevor's chest. His arm around her waist. The hotel sign above them. The time stamped in the corner of each picture.

Evidence.

**********

He was about to lower the phone when Trevor turned his head.

It was a small movement, almost lazy. He swept his eyes down the street the way a man looks when he feels someone watching him. His gaze passed over the parked cars one by one.

It stopped on Jayden's.

Jayden did not breathe.

Trevor murmured something to Summer. She laughed and shook her head. Then Trevor patted her arm, added something else, and began to walk.

Straight toward Jayden's car.

Jayden's mind raced. He could start the engine and drive away, but that would seem guilty. He could stay where he was, but then Trevor would see his face.

He did neither.

He slowly set the phone on the seat, took a coffee cup from the holder, and rolled down the window just as Trevor reached it.

"Excuse me," Trevor murmured, leaning down with a polite smile. Up close, his eyes were an unusual shade of pale gray. "Forgive the interruption. Do I know you?"

"I don't think so."

"Funny. You look familiar."

"We've never met."

"No?" Trevor tilted his head. "I never forget a face. It's a bad habit of mine. And yours has the strangest expression, as if you're staring at a man you've already buried."

Jayden's pulse spiked, but he kept his voice flat.

"Maybe you should get your eyes checked."

"Maybe."

His hand did not shake, and he was proud of that. He had spent six years learning to hide his feelings from Summer. It turned out to be excellent training.

Jayden took a sip of the cold coffee. "I get that a lot."

"Do you?" Trevor's smile did not change. "You've been sitting here for twenty minutes."

"I'm waiting for a friend."

"Of course." Trevor straightened and glanced at the dashboard, at the empty passenger seat, at the phone lying face down on the cushion. "Well. Sorry to bother you. It's just that in my line of work, I've learned to notice who is watching me."

"Your line of work?"

"Construction." The smile widened. "I build things that last."

Jayden met his eyes.

For a second, neither man spoke.

Then Trevor tapped the roof of the car lightly with two fingers, as if sealing a deal.

"Have a good day, sir."

He walked back to Summer.

Jayden sat motionless until his hands stopped shaking. Then he dropped his gaze to the phone on the seat.

The screen had lit up with a new message from an unknown number.

It was a single line.

I know you came back.