The Rule of Three, page 26
“Hemmings did give off major small-shoe energy at the barbecue.”
“We thought we heard a car coming so we got out of there as fast as we could,” Vicky says, annoyed.
“I guess Little Miss Texas was not such a sharpshooter after all,” I grumble.
“Laur. It worked out. It’s over, isn’t it?”
“Easy for you to say. You’re free of Terry. You got your wish. Gil is going to haunt me for the rest of his life, especially with his comeback.” I groan.
“At least you got your divorce, and with the prenup that he fought so passionately against, he can’t touch our money, or you, ever again.”
“It would have gone better if it had been just you and me.”
“What do you want me to say?” Vicky says, frustrated. “It needed to be the three of us, Laur. It kind of was her idea anyway.”
I balk. “You’re giving her way too much credit. Way before Monica blew into town, we knew what problems Gil and Terry were. I wanted to kill them both after Libby died.”
Vicky’s brow furrows. “I don’t know if you ever said the word ‘kill’ back then.”
“You wanted to get rid of Terry at the first whiff of him taking kickbacks,” I say.
Vicky’s face turns a deep shade of red.
“Well, you wanted to put a hit out on Gil after the video went viral. And all of the payoffs that followed when the other women started coming out of the woodwork.”
My adrenaline shoots up at the reminder.
“What about Terry siphoning our family’s trust money into offshore accounts?”
“How about Gil’s line of nutrition shakes that caused kidney failure and all of the ensuing lawsuits?”
A small smile cracks Vicky’s sour expression and I can’t contain my own grin breaking through.
“Terry’s beer,” we say in unison.
“We should have killed him as soon as he said the words ‘dry hops.’ ”
We lean on each other, trying not to laugh too hard.
“Anyway, Monica was the catalyst,” Vicky brings us back.
“Palm Springs was the catalyst.”
“Are you really going to argue about who should get credit for this?”
“I’m not arguing. I’m just setting the record straight,” I say.
“Then I was the catalyst. I knew we had to do something after Palm Springs, when I heard Terry tell Hemmings about his plan for Spencer’s implant tech,” Vicky recalls, reliving the horrific day. “Hemmings was bragging about his ‘members only’ dating site being the number one source for Kingsland husbands to find their wives and mistresses. ‘One-stop shopping,’ ” she recounts bitterly. “He compared the women getting nano implants to pets getting microchips for when they run away from their owners.” Her eyes are on fire.
“What Terry said wasn’t any better,” I say, still in disbelief from the first time I heard it.
“ ‘The women of Kingsland will be the perfect case study for the new tech before we roll it out to the girls,’ ” Vicky imitates Terry, and we both cringe. “ ‘This is the ultimate upgrade.’ ”
“Thank God you heard that part of it and figured out he was already tracking us,” I say angrily as we reach the summit and stand before the massive chiseled door to the crypt.
“I know, Laur. I still can’t believe it. We were the first. Terry’s guinea pigs.”
“And Gil fucking knew the whole time,” I spit. “That’s why he always seemed to know where I was,” I scoff. “And I used to think at one time we were so in sync.”
“I know. Me too. I thought the same about Terry.”
“We were just the first generation of Terry’s tracked women. Once he got wind of Spencer’s technology, it was only a matter of time before he upgraded us. Think about all of the wives of Kingsland who didn’t even know they were being tracked.”
“Or the husbands who paid Terry for the tracking access to their own wives.”
I squeeze my sister’s hand.
“To think, if I had never forgotten my copy of The Rule of Three in the hotel room, I never would have found out what Terry was involved in,” Vicky says. “Where would we be now?”
We both pull Terry’s crown keychains from our purses at the same time and hold them in our hands one last time before Vicky enters 0505 into the electronic keypad of the tomb and the heavy door slowly swings inward.
“The safe combo?” I ask, and she nods. “That figures,” I say.
We step inside the frigid structure and gasp when we see the pile of Cartier crown charms piled on top of his crypt.
“Look.” Both our eyes fill with tears.
“How did they get in?” I sniffle.
“Clearly, the women of Kingsland are resourceful, no matter how much their asshole husbands underestimate them.”
In one synchronized motion, we place the Kingsland key charms atop Terry’s final resting place. We stand in silence, breathing together, the dark holding us in cold stillness.
“You’ll never be able to keep tabs on us ever again, you fucker,” I say.
Vicky stares at the dark marble slab. I can’t decipher her face.
“Vick? Are you okay?”
A smile breaks through. It is a beautiful, freeing sight.
“And we’ll always know exactly where you are, Terbear.” She pats the top of the vault.
“I get it, Laur,” Vicky says as she turns to me slowly.
“What?” I say.
“ ‘Depends on how you look at it.’ ”
I look at her expectantly.
“It isn’t over. It’s just beginning,” she says, smiling.
“Exactly right, sis.”
“And wherever Monica Nichols is,” Vicky says with a hand on her heart, “I hope she’s finally found some peace.”
EPILOGUE
GIL
“Welcome to the Help Yourself in-conversation speaker series. Tonight we are joined by two incredible authors and internationally recognized giants in the field of inspiration and self-improvement.
“Please give them a warm welcome as they come to the stage: Sawyer Selwyn, the author of the multimillion-copy bestseller The Rule of Three: How to Radically Change Your Life with the Law of Action, and Gil Mathers, motivational speaker and bestselling author of numerous books, including his just-released self-help memoir, Dying to Become Me: Transformative Lessons from the Other Side.”
I step out from the wing and into the light while the opening strains of Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight” blast. As I glide to my seat at center stage, I wave in the direction of the wildly clapping fans.
Draped in lace and gauzy white robes fringed with feathers, Sawyer Selwyn looks ridiculous as she enters from the opposite side to thunderous applause and a standing ovation. All the starstruck women in the front row with dream catchers around their necks swoon when she walks to the edge of the stage to acknowledge them.
Finally, after a few minutes of endless applause, she makes her way to center stage, where I am waiting.
I take Sawyer’s extended hand, her hundred silver bangles on each wrist twinkling in the stage lights. She beams at me and I break from her extraterrestrially dark eyes and peer around the twenty-five-hundred-seat theater. Being back onstage is electrifying and I feel confident that the people who have come to see Sawyer Selwyn tonight will leave as fans of mine.
“So, Gil,” Selwyn purrs in her hard-to-place European accent, “it has been two years since your wife tried to suffocate you to death after a shooting attempt by her friend landed you in a coma. That is quite a life path you’ve been on.”
The crowd murmurs excitedly.
“It sounds like a made-for-TV movie when you spell it out, Sawyer, but it is all true.”
“There is no question that you’ve been to hell and back.” She takes my hand. She makes me extremely uncomfortable and not just because she’s currently occupying the top spot on the bestseller list, which is rightfully mine.
“It has been a long, hard journey to be able to sit here with you right now, but dying twice was not the most challenging part.”
Sawyer takes a sip of water. “Evidently, you are a hard man to kill.”
“I’ve got six lives left. I plan to use them wisely.”
The cat lovers, of which there are many apparently, clap wildly.
“Just a few short years ago, you lost your only child in a horrific school shooting. The nation rallied around you and your family, and you kept up the work you’d been doing in spite of that tragedy. But not long after, you had a pretty public takedown. You were revealed to be misogynistic, hypocritical, offensive to your most loyal followers, and some say predatory. Your biggest critics have accused you of using your fame, wealth, and influence to live above the law.”
“That is all true. I needed to be exposed. I wasn’t just living above man’s laws, Sawyer. Your book showed me that I was living above universal law as well,” I pander.
“And the second rule of The Rule of Three tells us that whatever energy a person puts out to the universe will come back to them threefold.” She lets this hang.
I clear my throat.
“So, my question for you, Gil, is what energy had you been putting forth that came back to you so extremely? And are you still living in that energy, or have you truly changed? Or is your book an attempt to exploit public sympathy?”
“That sounds like three questions, Sawyer.” The audience laughs lightly.
I smile through my rage. Sawyer looks at me sanctimoniously, waiting. I feel no remorse about the private investigator I have digging into her past. It would only take one or two little seeds of doubt about her background leaked to Twitter to get her canceled.
“We reap what we sow. I am living proof of that universal law in action,” I say, taking my time. I’m relieved to see the front row attentively nodding. “I was definitely projecting terrible energy out into the world, and with my extramarital choices especially. I have deep remorse about my acts all those years ago. I was a man in grief and pain and not fully awake to my own human defects.”
“Do you believe that you deserve public redemption? After your video leaked, a number of women came forward and alleged that you abused your power for sexual favors. It is a big leap for people to start taking advice from you again after those revelations.”
“I just want to say that most of those allegations were categorically false. But if I ever made anyone uncomfortable, I am truly sorry. I realize now that I wasn’t really listening to the women in my life.”
Sawyer looks ready to pounce. I’m not surprised that she’s brought me onstage to humiliate me, but I’ve been preparing for this.
“Sawyer, believe me. I am fundamentally changed. My heartset, which is like a mindset, but much more powerful”—I place both hands over my chest—“has fundamentally shifted. I am no longer the self-centered, low-frequency man that was on that video.”
Scattered applause peppers throughout the space.
“How does it feel that no justice has been brought against your alleged perpetrators?”
“Well, before I talk about that, I need to thank you. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for your powerful book. So, I guess in a large way, you are responsible for my life-after-death experiences.” She can ask about the trial as much as she wants, but I will continue to weave around the things I don’t care to talk about.
“Another satisfied customer of the universe’s infinite wisdom.” She puts her hands in prayer formation. I hope the entire hour isn’t this whack-job bowing and praying. She is as fake as the hard-to-place accent she is hiding behind.
I scan the sea of smiling fans who are watching us with a desperate intensity, waiting to be altered.
The same old energetic pulsing in my throat and chest begins to hum hard and I know I can win them over.
“So.” Selwyn leans in to me and uncrosses her long legs before recrossing.
“Let’s talk about your resurrection.”
* * *
“You’ve got a seven a.m. pickup tomorrow for the Today show, followed by Kelly and Ryan. Then the car will take you to JFK for the five p.m. to La Jolla for the Super Soul Sunday taping. Did you get my email about wardrobe options? NO purple.”
I barely look up from the stack of my books I am signing backstage as Margarite, my assistant, runs through tomorrow’s schedule.
“Got it,” I say as I shake the numbness out of my hand. “No purple.”
Margarite clears her throat.
“New York magazine still wants a comment on your wife and sister-in-law’s mistrial. I told them ‘no comment’ two times already, but they are relentless.”
“Ex-wife,” I say curtly.
“Sorry.”
“I still have no comment.”
“It’s crazy,” she says under her breath. “Jury tampering by the prosecution? And mishandling of evidence by the district attorney’s office? Does that shit really happen outside of the movies?”
“Anything can happen when you have the Terry Barnes legal team,” I say.
“That’s what I mean. How did the legal team that represented both of the victims end up defending the accused?”
She’s a sharp kid, even if she doesn’t know when to shut up.
“They were the ones with the money all along,” I say, sotto voce.
“And what about their missing friend? Do you think your ex-wife really killed her?”
“Margarite, enough.”
I sign the balance of books and hand my pen to her.
“Your next interview is waiting for you in the lounge,” she says.
“Fuck me. Can we move it?” I rub my temples.
She shoots me an exasperated look. “It’s Vanity Fair.”
I perk up. “I thought they turned us down.”
“They did, but then I got a call yesterday that they were sending someone to the event and for a sit-down with you afterward. Could be a feature if it goes well.” She exhales loudly. “I really wish you would read the updated itineraries when I send them.”
I feel my second wind setting in at the thought of a feature story “Just get me a lot of caffeine and I’ll be good as new.”
“Nuh-uh, I’m clocking out. I’ve been up since five a.m. You are perfectly capable of getting yourself coffee.” She gives me an impatient look.
“Fair enough.” I know better than to push her.
As we walk to the entrance of the lounge, Margarite says, “See you bright and early!” before booking out of the revolving doors.
I scan the crowd at the bar and the people seated on cushy chairs and couches at small candlelit tables. There is the usual mix of suits and a few loud women in their cups next to a roaring fireplace. I don’t see any men sitting alone or looking in my direction.
I haven’t paid any attention to the details of this journalist’s name or any other basic information that might aid me in finding him.
I am about to send an annoyed text to Margarite and pull up the itinerary when I feel a tap on my shoulder. When I turn around, I am face-to-face with a gorgeous woman with breast-length straight black hair, stylish dark-rimmed glasses, enormous hazel eyes, and stop-sign-red lips. She is so close to my face we are in kiss-or-kill territory.
“Mr. Mathers,” she says confidently, and I feel an ancient stirring below the belt. My libido has been one of the slower biological returns post-coma, and I’m invigorated by the sensation.
“You are a woman.” My foot is in my mouth faster than I can close it.
She frowns. “Does that matter?”
I blanch at my insensitive outburst, and to a reporter, no less.
“Sorry. I’m Gil Mathers.” I extend my hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“I know. I’m Dawn Graham.” Her grip is strong.
Dawn takes a small step back from me and I take in the full view of her body. She frowns again and I lock my gaze to her face.
“Shall we find a place to sit?” I offer.
Three grinning women walk past us, each holding my book, and wave at me as they make their way to the bar.
“I was hoping we could talk somewhere quieter. I don’t think we’ll get any privacy here.”
“Good call. We can go to my suite . . .”
Dawn nods and leads me to the elevator bank by the arm before I can finish. When the doors open and we step inside, we are surrounded on all sides by dark mirrors.
“Have you noticed how dark this hotel is? I can barely see two feet in front of me.”
“Hmm,” she says as I press the button for the top floor. We stand in a thick silence, the energy sparking between us like socks dragging on a carpet.
Our arms bump against each other as we walk down the hallway and to the door to my room, where I retrieve the key card from my suit pocket and wait for the satisfying click and green light. When we enter I see a bottle of Dom Ruinart that I assume is a gift from the hotel or my publisher.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I tell her as I put my wallet and phone on a side table next to an enormous aquarium filled with bright-colored angelfish. “I’ll just be a minute.”
“I’ll admire the view.” She holds my eye before she crosses to the large windows overlooking Central Park.
“I’m assuming we aren’t doing any photos tonight. I’m a little worse for the wear.” I look down at myself.
“You look great to me,” she says smoothly.
In the bathroom, I grin at myself in the mirror. I strip and do a quick shower to rinse the day off and douse myself in cologne and fresh deodorant. From my toiletry bag, I pull out the bottle of Cialis and place one in my mouth.
Back in the suite, Dawn has made herself comfortable and is seated on the couch with two glasses of champagne poured. She has an iPhone on the table with the audio recorder ready to go.
