The Sapphire Brooch Katherine Logan (best beach reads TXT) 📖

record. She would have to dig through the trial transcript, witness list, and find the evidence used against him. The thought of him languishing in prison, wearing the ghastly hood, and being horribly tortured, made her sick at her stomach. She gagged, leaned over the trash can, and threw up the little bit of food in her stomach.

No amount of struggling helped her control her emotions. She rolled into a fetal position on the rug and sobbed until her fists were sore from pounding the floor and she had no more tears to shed.

74

Richmond, Virginia, Present Day

When Charlotte woke on the floor of her office, it took only seconds for her to plummet from conscious awareness into profound sorrow. She made a strangled noise and froze, paralyzed by stiffness and pain. She drew her knees tightly up to her chest, sobbing.

I’ll get you back. I’ll undo this mess. I promise.

She staggered to her feet. What time was it? Her eyes were dry and scratchy, and she couldn’t read the small numbers on her phone. She blinked and blinked until finally the numbers one-two-one-three came into focus. Just after midnight. Her stomach complained, reminding her she hadn’t eaten in more than twelve hours. First, though, she had to schedule a flight to Kentucky. Then she’d go to the all-night market. She scrolled through her contacts and found the number for the private airline she had used before. Jack wouldn’t be around to pay the bill for this trip, but she’d get the money out of savings. It didn’t matter what it cost. She was sure they would accommodate her travel plans. Which they did. She had an itinerary confirmed within minutes, with an early departure time of 7:00 a.m. She sent Meredith a text of her arrival time.

After a trip to the market, she chowed down on a late supper of chicken and a spinach salad with sliced almonds, cranberries, and chopped eggs. With a full stomach, she set about making plans. She had four months of sabbatical left, and the accountant was still paying her bills. For this trip, she wouldn’t need a Confederate uniform, and since she’d left all her dresses at Braham’s house, she didn’t need to pack any clothes. Assuming the brooch would take her to Kentucky as it had taken Braham, she would have the same two-day trip to Washington. Traveling unaccompanied, she’d be safer dressed as a man, and arriving in the city incognito would give her time to investigate whether or not the government suspected her of participating in the conspiracy, using guilt by association reasoning. She would need to order men’s clothing or possibly buy trousers and shirts off the rack in a costume store.

Suddenly, she gasped at an aha moment. Maybe she’d even arrive before Jack’s arrest. Which would be perfect. But then she shivered, not only from fear of what she’d find when she arrived in Washington, but from fear of going through the dizzying fog again. Each trip had made her life in the present worse.

Her eyes darted as her mind wrestled desperately to see through the maddening maze which had become her life, and Jack’s, too. The irony was they had become characters in the story he was writing.

With a plan for rescuing Jack percolating, she sat at her desk and spent the next several hours reading the transcript of the conspiracy trial. When her eyes began to glaze over, she showered and packed an overnight bag. At six thirty she drove to the airport. Flying private, she avoided a long check-in line and possible delay at the gate. The plane soared into a dark sky within minutes of boarding, leaving the twinkling lights of Richmond behind, and made a smooth landing in Lexington an hour after sunrise.

Parked outside the TAC Air Terminal at Bluegrass Airport were two limos and a Mercedes, all with tinted windows. The driver’s door of the Mercedes opened and Meredith emerged looking as if she had just walked off a photo shoot for the cover of Vogue—dark hair blowing in a gentle breeze, black leather jacket, skinny jeans, Kentucky blue turtleneck, and boots. Her face brightened when she saw Charlotte and her pink mouth turned up in a brilliant smile.

How could anyone look so beautiful this early in the morning?

Charlotte slipped on a pair of sunglasses, not to shield her eyes from the bright morning sun, but to keep Meredith from seeing how puffy and bloodshot they were.

Meredith’s strong arms embraced Charlotte with gentle kindness, as if she already understood her pain without knowing the cause. Meredith was not only beautiful, intelligent, and successful, she was also kind-hearted.

And if Charlotte truly was pregnant with Braham’s child, the baby would be Meredith’s six-times-great-grandmother’s first cousin once removed. Try saying that ten times fast, or better yet, understanding the convoluted relationship. Charlotte didn’t even have a cousin, much less one so far removed.

She tossed her bag into the back, settled into the front seat, and fastened her seat belt. “Thanks for picking me up, and thanks for having me on such short notice.”

Meredith smiled, her blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “Wherever we are in the world, our friends are welcome to join us. Elliott and I keep the door open.”

“I can’t imagine having so much flexibility in my schedule. Having friends show up on the doorstep would send me into a blind panic.”

Meredith drove out onto Man O’ War Boulevard. “Elliott thrives on having people around. He’s a problem solver. He’s in his element when he takes charge and bullies his way through a situation. Lord knows he bullied me through chemo. Our life has become so calm, even I’m getting bored. I’m thinking about launching another wine.”

“I was feeling sort of antsy when the brooch arrived.” Charlotte swallowed, forcing her voice to steady. “Now I’d give anything to just be antsy again.”

“Instead of?”

Fat tears gathered in the corners of Charlotte’s eyes. “Scared.”

Meredith’s eyes were on her now, soft and warm