Read Of Loss & Betrayal (Madison & Logan Book 2) for Free Online Page B

beg him to give me a plausible explanation for his contact with Kristina that wouldn’t make me feel like my heart was being shredded into a million pieces. But I kept silent as I watched his retreating back.
    I somehow kept up the charade until Logan left, but the moment the door closed behind him, I collapsed onto the couch, feeling exhausted from the strain of having to pretend my world wasn’t crumbling right before my eyes. I lay on the couch for a while as I mentally prepared myself for the task at hand. I needed to take emotion out of this and be methodical. I could be hysterical later, when I actually had all the facts before me. Right now, I needed to snoop.
    I started with his laptop, which was easy enough because he always left it on. I opened his browser and typed in the webpage for his email, hoping that it would automatically log him in, but I was rewarded with a blank login page. I hadn’t gotten a chance to look at his emails as in depth as I wanted to earlier on his phone, and now I cursed myself for not having taken more time to do so. I tried a few possible passwords, but stopped before the account got locked. I decided to just look through his computer and clicked on every file I could find.
    Two hours later, I had found nothing. I wasn’t sure whether I was frustrated or relieved. I had one more folder to go through, and the instant I clicked it open, my heart stopped. Dozens of thumbnail pictures popped up and, as small as they were, I could still tell who was in the pictures. Despite it all, I still held onto desperate hope that I was wrong, but that vanished once I clicked open the first picture. Then the second. And third. And so on, and so on.
    They were all pictures of Kristina. Some were by herself, others with people who I assumed were friends back in California. The worst ones were the pictures of Logan and Kristina together. The one word that kept pounding into my head was happy. They looked happy. Happy, happy, happy. A godawful happy couple who loved each other. I was pretty sure these pictures were old, since Logan’s hair was lighter in them, and his golden locks had darkened again since being back in Chicago, but that didn’t make it sting any less. Sure, this wasn’t evidence that Logan was cheating on me, but why the hell did he still have them on his computer?
    I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head. The one good thing about these pictures was maybe I could figure out who Marcus was.
    I studied all the pictures with males besides Logan in them, hoping to find some clue as to who Marcus was. I was feeling more hopeless the longer I went through them, because it wasn’t as if Marcus was going to be standing there with a nametag emblazoned across his chest.
    Just as I was ready to give up on the pictures, I opened one up where Logan and Kristina were posing in front of a lake with another couple. Logan had attended law school at the University of Michigan after undergrad, and the other guy in the picture was wearing a University of Michigan Law sweatshirt. It triggered a memory of Logan telling me that one of his law school buddies lived in L.A., and he had struck up a friendship with him again when he had moved there. I was almost positive that he had said his name was Mack, which could be a nickname for Marcus.
    I took a deep breath as I opened Logan’s contact list to see if I could find his name. For what was probably the hundredth time today, I reached up and touched the gold heart hanging on the chain around my neck. Cassie’s necklace, which I always wore, helped to ground me and make me feel not so alone. The irony wasn’t lost on me that I was experiencing a betrayal that I had committed against Cassie, but I had made amends with the past.
    I scrolled through the list of names until I got to Mack Wallers. There was no address but he had an L.A. area code, so it had to be him. I reverse searched the number but it came up as unlisted, although it was identified as an