Before she left, Cormac got Gia’s number. He wanted to monitor the situation better than he had in the past and knew it would help to be able to reach her even when she wasn’t sitting at the pool.
He was tempted to call his father. He didn’t care how late it was. Evan was still twisting the truth; he’d said Gia had attacked him at the drive-through. Maybe he thought going on the offensive would make him appear innocent—that showing others he still felt strongly enough about his reputation to continue to fight Gia’s accusations would finally convince his skeptics.
But he was making Cormac angry. While his trust in his father’s side of the story crumbled, his trust in Gia’s grew stronger. Her insistence that he stay out of the fight solidified his belief in her basic goodness. If she were the one lying, she’d encourage him to stand up for her. And who better than Evan Hart’s own son?
Gia, the true victim in this situation, seemed to care more about what might happen to him as a consequence of getting involved than his own father, who’d bent his ear and complained for close to two decades.
Evan’s selfishness was becoming more and more apparent.
Cormac went to the window to see if the light in Gia’s room had gone on. He expected her to be getting ready for bed. But when he saw no light, he looked more closely at the pool and spotted her sitting in the hot tub.
He checked his watch. It was nearly one. Even if he called his father, Evan probably wouldn’t pick up. Chances were he’d be drunk if he did. But Cormac was too wound up to sleep and saw no point in going to bed only to toss and turn for the next few hours.
With a sigh, he peered out the window again. Then he put on his swim trunks, grabbed a couple of beers and went out the back door and through the gate between the houses.
Gia looked up when she heard him coming.
“Would you mind some company?” he asked, lifting the beers to show he had a peace offering and hesitating politely before approaching her.
“Not at all.” Her smile was genuine and natural—and therefore easy to return. It was nice to feel she was receptive to his presence and no longer tensed up or watched him with distrust.
He walked over and handed her one of the beers. “Here you go.”
“Thank you.” She popped the top and took a long drink.
After opening his own can, he got in and sat opposite her. “Do you always stay up this late?”
“It’s an hour earlier in Idaho,” she replied with a shrug.
“That’s right. But still, it’s getting late.”
“I’ve had a lot on my mind since I got here.”
“No doubt. I’m sorry about what you’re going through with your mom and...and everything else. It also can’t be easy to leave your business behind.”
The steam was causing water to bead on her face, arms and bare shoulders, making her skin look dewy and moist. Although she had her hair pulled up, small tendrils clung to her neck and forehead. “Fortunately, the business is in good hands. My partner knows what he’s doing.”
She obviously had a great deal of respect for the man she was in business with. Was there more than business between them? “Are you two...seeing each other?”
She chuckled. “No. Eric’s happily married, with a young daughter.”
He took a drink of his beer. “If my father hadn’t done what he did in high school, do you think you would’ve settled here like so many of us?”
“There’s a good chance of it. When I dropped out of college to head to Alaska, it was sort of a fluke. I’d met some other students who worked on fishing boats there during the summer and made some good money, so I went with them when they left in the spring. I just didn’t come back, like they did, in the fall.”
“How’d you like it?”
“Loved it. There’s no place like Alaska.”
“It didn’t get lonely—not even during the winter?”
“Not really. At the time, I needed the peace, the quiet, the space. Those years were very therapeutic for me.”
“So what took you to Coeur d’Alene?”
She told him how excited she’d been to learn to fly, how her current business partner had once been her flight instructor, how she’d pushed Eric to start a business with her and how they’d ended up in Coeur d’Alene because he’d just met the woman who was now his wife on the internet, and she was from there. “Did you always want to be a veterinarian?” she asked.
“Pretty much,” he replied. “I’ve always loved animals, knew I wanted to contribute to the community in some way. Growing up, the old movies where doctors made house calls made a big impression on me.”
“You make house calls?”
“When we’re talking about a horse, a cow or a pig, I do,” he said with a grin. “And I would do it for any animal, if it became necessary. Do you have any pets?”
“No. I don’t want to leave an animal alone in my condo all day while I’m working. I might get a dog at some point, though, if and when I marry and start a family.”
“You’d like kids?”
“One day. You?”
“Definitely.”
“You’d have to settle down with someone for that,” she said wryly.
“I’d be happy to settle down if only I could find the right woman.”
Finished with her beer, she set the can aside. “From what I’ve heard, you have your pick.”
He hated the reputation he was getting, wished the people of Wakefield would mind their own business instead of showing so much interest in his love life. “Who told you that?”
“I think it’s the general consensus.”
“I’m sure you’ve had plenty to pick from over the years, too, and yet you’re still single,” he pointed out.
She eyed him through the steam. “I have a hard time falling in love.”
Cormac was willing to bet that what she’d been through in high school played a role. During the years when most people fell in love for the first time, she’d probably been too traumatized to experience it. That made him feel even worse about what’d happened. “Look at us,” he said, gesturing between them with his can. “Did you ever think we could be friends?”
She tilted her head as she studied him. Then the prettiest smile spread across her face. “Never.”
He finished his own beer. “Just goes to show...anything’s possible.”
Margot peered through a crack in the curtains of the cheap motel room she’d rented in Billings, Montana. What with bathroom breaks, food breaks and a park break so the boys could play for a bit, she’d been on the road for sixteen hours. When she’d first left Wakefield, she’d considered traveling east. There were so many more people on that side of the country. It felt safer somehow, as if she might need that big a melting pot in which to hide.
But that was panic talking. There were plenty of good towns and people in the other direction, too. Thanks to the weather, north wasn’t an option, but she could go south...
In the end, she’d decided to go where her heart led her and since she’d always wanted to live on the West Coast, she’d plotted a course through Montana and Idaho to Washington. If she didn’t find a place she liked there, she’s drive down into Oregon or even California. The coming months were going to be hard enough. Why not trade a cold, snowy winter for a warm one? At least she wouldn’t have to shovel the walks.
The back parking lot, which was all she could see from the second-story room, was almost empty. She couldn’t say what she was looking for, anyway. She was just checking her car. Besides the few boxes and bags of belongings she’d brought and the suitcase full of cash she’d wheeled into the room with them, that car was all she had. She needed to sell it and get something else—the sooner the better—but she wanted to put more distance between her and Wakefield first.
Stretching her neck to ease the tension headache that’d come on around dinnertime, she wandered into the bathroom and stared into the mirror. A wan stranger stared back at her. She couldn’t believe she was really doing this. That she’d felt desperate enough. She’d taken what money she could, her children, their clothes and a few toys and left most everything else, including her dying mother. She didn’t even have a computer or a cell phone to make things easier. She was so used to technology making it possible to search the internet, provide directions, give weather forecasts and keep her abreast of what was going on in the world—all at the touch of her fingertips—that she felt helpless without those tools.
She knew she should get some sleep. The boys would probably be up at the crack of dawn. If she wasn’t well-rested, it would be hard to cover very many miles.
But she was too uptight, too fidgety. She’d used some of the cash she’d withdrawn from the bank for gas, but they wouldn’t let her rent a room without a credit card. Before she left Wakefield, she’d opened a new account with a card exclusively in her name—and created an email address Sheldon wouldn’t know about for the digital statements—but even that left a trail. People could be tracked so easily these days.
Would the police get involved? She didn’t think so. Not from everything she’d seen on the internet. And if they didn’t, she should be okay. The average person, like Sheldon, wouldn’t be able to access her credit card data.
Besides, he and his buddies would be in the wilderness, out of cell phone range, much of the time he was gone. It was once he got back that she had to worry. Then he’d probably get a private investigator involved if the police wouldn’t help him, and she had no idea how far a professional might be able or willing to go to find a runaway wife.
Maybe to avoid using a credit card and creating that paper trail, she and the boys would have to start sleeping in the car. Or go to a women’s shelter—at least until she could buy a new computer. She was finally feeling enough panic to brave the dark web, where she’d heard she could purchase a fake ID. A simple Google search explained how, but so far, she’d been hesitant to venture into such a dangerous space.
Probably the worst that would happen was that she’d get ripped off by paying for something she never received. But it was a risk she was going to have to take.
Leaving the mirror, she wandered back into the hotel room and covered up her sleeping children. Had Sheldon already tried to call her?
Typically, he didn’t call home that often, not while he was hunting. With Cece back in his life, maybe he’d be calling her instead. The longer it took before he realized something was wrong, the more time she’d have to get situated and prepared.
Stepping back, she watched her boys. She’d figure everything out. She had no choice.
She just had to take it one day at a time.
Something was wrong. Gia hadn’t heard from Margot at all on Saturday, even though she’d said she’d call after Sheldon went hunting. And she wasn’t returning Gia’s many calls and texts Sunday morning. Given their mother’s situation, Gia would’ve expected Margot to call her back regardless of what she was doing.
So, after breakfast—and at her mother’s urging—Gia went back over to Margot’s house only to find both cars were still gone. And the view in the window hadn’t changed one bit. If Margot had been home since Gia last stopped by, the boys would’ve left out a toy or their shoes or something. Although Margot kept a clean house, children were children. They made messes.
But if Margot had been gone since yesterday, where was she now? She wouldn’t take the kids and go hunting with Sheldon, would she?
Gia got out her phone, searched for her brother-in-law’s contact information and nearly called him. She wanted Sheldon to allay her fears. But the memory of her last conversation with Margot gave her pause. Margot had asked her not to call Sheldon. Gia had assumed she was just trying to protect him from the dressing-down he deserved—she was all about keeping the peace—but...what if there was more to it?
Because of the possible affair, Gia decided to hold off to see what she could learn on her own and walked around to the backyard.
The back door was locked, too. So were the windows. If she wanted to get in, she was going to have to break some glass. She hated to go that far, but she was feeling enough panic that she decided it’d be worth paying for any damage she caused—just in case.
After removing the screen, she used a rock from Margot’s backyard and smashed the laundry room window. Then she took off her sweatshirt and wrapped it around her arm to keep from getting cut as she reached through and opened the latch so she could climb through.
“Margot?” she yelled as soon as she’d managed to get down off the dryer.
With the Subaru gone, she wasn’t likely to get an answer, but she kept trying. “Margot? Matthew? Greydon?” she called.
Silence greeted her. The house was eerily quiet as she walked toward the bedrooms. Surely, Margot hadn’t confronted Sheldon about the affair and—
She wouldn’t even think it. There was no way he’d physically harm his wife.
Except, under the right circumstances—and if he thought he could get away with it—maybe he would. He was a controlling bastard. A self-absorbed one, too.
“I swear to God I’ll make sure you rot in prison for the rest of your life,” Gia whispered, and held her breath as she reached her sister’s bedroom to find the door standing halfway closed.
As she gave it a push and it swung inward, the first thing she noticed was that the bed wasn’t made. That was unusual. Margot prided herself on her homemaking skills; that was the only thing she had to feel good about since Sheldon wouldn’t let her do anything else.
“Margot?” After poking her head in, Gia moved on to the boys’ room. She was moving fast. She could take the time to look closer on her second pass, if a second pass proved necessary.
The boys’ beds weren’t made, either. And their drawers were hanging open.
Gia moved closer. Not only were they open, they were empty. What was going on?
Adrenaline pumped through her system as she hurried back to the master bedroom to check her sister’s dresser. Those drawers were closed, but when she opened them, she found the same thing. Margot’s closet was empty, too. And all of her makeup and toiletries were gone.
The strange thing was... Sheldon’s stuff was still there. His side of the closet was so full Gia couldn’t even tell that he’d taken anything with him when he went hunting.
Needing answers faster than they seemed to be coming, she lifted her phone to call him—and once again forced herself to hold off.
Instead, she tried to reach her sister. If Margot didn’t pick up this time, Gia would leave a message stating that she needed to hear from her or she was going to call Sheldon.
“You have fifteen minutes,” she said aloud as she waited for the call to go through. But once it did, she could hear the jingle of her sister’s peculiar ringtone in the house with her.
Closing her eyes, she listened carefully. It was coming from the kitchen.