Dead Even - Mariah Stewart [109]
On the other side of the fence, the dog continued to growl. Damn nuisance. He never did like dogs.
He stepped back into the shadows and moved along the outside of the fence, walked cautiously behind first his old garage—noting that it sported a new coat of paint—then slunk behind the garage belonging to the next-door neighbor. He was met by a fence there, too. What was it with all these fences?
He poked around and was surprised to find that a portion of the fence closest to the garage could be moved aside quite easily. Poor construction, or had someone deliberately snipped the wire that held the end piece to the corner post?
He shrugged, not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so to speak, and slipped between the post and the garage, then paused to review his surroundings. The grape arbor the old lady had planted years before had really taken off since he’d been gone. The vines were a thick tangle, and the last of the brown and yellow leaves clung halfheartedly to the branches.
“Great shelter,” he murmured as he eased between the arbor and the side of the garage. A man could hide here for hours and never be seen from the house.
Or, he realized, from the house next door.
He worked his way to the front of the arbor, then studied the house he’d shared with Mara for eight years. It seemed like a lifetime ago. He barely remembered what it had been like, living there. Over the past few years, he realized how totally unimportant his life with Mara had been. Teaching advanced math at Miller College there in town—now that had been a plum gig, he snorted. He wondered how he’d ever tolerated it. Mundane students, mundane salary, mundane life. And a wife who just couldn’t hold his attention for all that long.
The only thing that had made that time in his life tolerable was that endless line of ladies, all who were willing to play with a handsome professor. Of course, once Mara caught on to that and demanded a divorce, his hand had been pretty much forced.
It still rankled that she had told him how it was going to be. That she had called the shots.
She’d never cheated on him, she’d told him, and she wasn’t going to accept his cheating on her. The fact that she’d accidentally run into him while he was in the middle of romancing a fellow professor had made it pretty difficult to deny. Still, all in all, he was supporting her, wasn’t he? He was the one who went to work every day so that she could have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom. You’d have thought she’d have shown a little more gratitude.
But no. It was, “Jules, it’s over. I’ve already talked to a lawyer. He’s filing the papers on Monday. . . .”
He’d begged and pleaded, of course he had. Who wanted to get booted out of the house he’d worked so hard to buy? But in the end, it had turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
The best day of his life had been the one on which he’d decided to walk away from it all. He’d gone along with Mara’s request that the divorce be amicable, agreeing to share custody of Julianne, agreeing that the best thing for her would be to have both parents in her life, parents who were friendly and respectful of each other.
Like that was going to happen.
He’d had his game plan completely laid out right from the start. Phony identifications, in a multitude of names. Phony credentials. Stock certificates cashed in. Bags packed. A car purchased in the name of one of his new aliases, credit cards in the same name. He’d been planning for months to leave Mara and take Julianne with him, knowing there was nothing, nothing, he could do to Mara that could possibly hurt more than taking her daughter from her.
So that was what he did.
The hardest part had been the tears he’d felt obligated to make himself shed when he told his daughter about how her mommy had died and gone to heaven.
The easiest part was hitting the open road with