To Love and to Cherish by Gina Robinson

the rumors, do you? You don't believe Sunshine Sheri and her ilk? Besides, according to them I flushed my pills!"
    I paused, biting my lip as I tried to explain. "I'm a lot of things, but I'm not totally stupid. If I was going to get rid of my birth control pills, I certainly wouldn't be dumb enough to toss them in that wicker basket where anyone could find them! For one thing, it's full of holes. They could fall out and give me away." I held the pill up between my thumb and forefinger. "Like this one did."
    I shook my head. "I would smuggle the pills out of the penthouse and toss them in the garbage in the lobby, at the very least. Or simply either flush them or wash them down the sink like the gossips are claiming. The pills are tiny. It would be so easy!"
    I grabbed her hand. "If I'm the greedy, money-grubbing girl they say I am, and billions were at stake, why would I take any chances of being discovered? Even if I had been dumb enough, or desperate enough, to hide a pill in that basket, I've had plenty of time since to get rid of it. It's almost like it was planted."
    I shook my head, still amazed. One mystery solved. "I thought I'd been part of the one percent failure rate. Now I find out it was purely accidental." I cursed myself for being a stupid drunk.
    When I returned my gaze to Magda, she was beaming. "I never doubted you, Mrs. Justin. You have to tell Mr. Justin. He's very smart. If he's believing all these rumors, this will bring him to his senses."
    I smiled sadly at her, wanting to believe she was right. And thinking he was still too hurt to listen to reason. He hadn't even responded to the text I'd sent him of Data and me looking so adorable in our matching outfits.
    Just then my cell phone buzzed. I glanced at it and frowned. "Harry, Justin's lawyer, is downstairs. He wants to come up. I wonder what he wants."
    My heart pounded as I buzzed him up, fearing that I knew what he wanted. And it wasn't good. Not at all.
    Harry arrived in the penthouse, looking handsome and put together, like always. And smelling characteristically clean and good. But there was something a little off in his usual charming, yet professional demeanor. He seemed, and I hated to say it, nervous and ill at ease.
    He was carrying a large legal folder. He made little pretense at small talk, mostly commenting on the unusually hot, dry weather. Yes, yes, a drought, certainly. That was what the weather guys were saying. The hotter than normal weather could continue into next summer. Two years of record heat and dry. Seattle was turning brown. Was it really the Emerald City anymore?
    "Justin wanted you to have this," he said abruptly. And waved the folder.
----
    J ustin
    I was holed up in a hotel room I'd rented just for private investigating purposes. My PI, Richard Spize, who went by Dick, naturally, because Dick Spize was a hysterically appropriate name for a private investigator, sat next to me. Sometimes I thought he made it up, like a pen name for an author. I really didn't care one way or the other as long as he got the job done.
    We were staring at an open laptop, watching by button camera as Dex trolled for my real little wifey, Macy. He set the bait by playing blackjack game after blackjack game. With my money. The good news was he was good. And winning more than losing. Any losing was done on purpose so the casino wouldn't be wise to him. After all this time, it was odd putting a name to Macy. For so long I'd thought about her as the ID thief, and any other number of expletives.
    Dick and I had a team of his go-to colleagues on the floor watching Dex. Dick wore an earpiece. His expression changed from blank to excited in an instant as one of his guys said something to him.
    Dick pointed to the edge of the screen. "There. There she is. We've caught her attention."
    I found myself oddly dispassionate as I stared into the laptop and watched the woman who'd stolen so much from me. And yet, in an odd way, had given me everything I'd