Moving On

Chapter 18 - Part 1

Tyler watched while Kate returned to her room to complete her work. He knew she was short of a team at work, but she'd only missed three days. Surely there couldn't be so much backlog that she had to bring back work each night.

Over the last week, whenever he'd asked her out for lunch, she would tell him that she was busy with a client.

He never questioned further, but he couldn't help getting worried.

Something was wrong.

He couldn't help feeling that she was hiding something from him, and it was making him uneasy.

Then there were the lacerations on her arms.

She'd brushed it off when he asked, saying she was careless and had fallen at work.

The more he thought about it, the more his mind started gearing in one direction; she was helping Lydia to dig further into Detective Cooper.

It could be something else, but whatever it was, he was determined to speak to Kate about it.

The next day, without calling her, he went to look for Kate in the office. Like the past week, she wasn't in the office.

But Joanne was.

"Ty!"

He nodded before asking, "Where's Kate?"

Joanne smiled—an ominous sign. There was no reason for Joanne to smile when talking about Kate.

"She has been leaving work every afternoon and doesn't come back until we're supposed to end work. Maybe she got herself a new boyfriend."

That explained her smile.

"Evelyn said she was with a client," he said.

"I'm her assistant. I don't see her scheduling lunchtime with clients, and she's crazy organized. If she has a meeting with a client, I'll know."

"And she has an insanely good memory. The meetings happened to be at lunchtime, so she didn't see the point of recording them. She knows she'll remember anyway," Evelyn suddenly said. "And she's your boss. If you want to gossip about her, don't do it in the office or you're fired."

Joanne pouted. "I was simply saying that I don't see her working on any other projects except on the Winsors."

"You're new here. We don't tell you everything," Evelyn replied. "I'll tell her that you dropped by."

Tyler nodded and headed out of the office with Joanne's conjecture nagging at him.

That idea never crossed his mind. But now that she'd mentioned it, it seemed like a reasonable explanation for Kate's behavior.

Regardless, he was in no mood to return to work, so he drove back to the mansion.

When he turned into the mansion, he frowned when he saw Evelyn's car parked outside.

He had just seen her back in the office. He was sure she couldn't have beaten him back.

He walked into the house with the same confused look, expecting to find Evelyn in the house. Instead, he saw Marianne and her hasty retreat into the kitchen when she caught sight of him.

"What's going on?"

Marianne pretended that she didn't hear his question and hurried into the kitchen.

Raising his voice, Tyler asked, "Is Kate here?"

"I think so. Somewhere in the house, I'm sure. I need to prepare dinner. I'm making her favorite dessert."