I unlocked the front door of my house and let myself in, surprised by the silence inside until I remembered the children were with their father. Still, the quiet was unsettling. The TV was off. All the lights were out.
“Vero?” I called. Her name echoed back. Maybe she’d gone to the library to study.
My dress heels clicked loudly across the kitchen. I cracked the door to the garage. Vero’s Charger was there, beside the empty space where I usually parked. I’d left Ramón’s loaner car back at his shop after the incident with Feliks, and I still hadn’t gotten my van back.
I shut the kitchen door, and as the sound was absorbed by the empty house I had the sudden heavy feeling that I wasn’t alone. That I was being watched.
Something was definitely wrong. Something was very—
“Surprise!” My heart skidded to a halt. Vero jumped through the opening of the dining room with Zach on her hip. Delia jumped out after her. A bouquet of helium balloons had been tied to the buttons of her overalls with brightly colored ribbons that matched the spikes in her hair. A cake perched in the center of the cleared folding table where our bills used to sit. Streamers had been strung from the brass chandelier, and a bottle of champagne and two juice boxes were chilling in a bucket of ice.
Delia bounded into my legs, nearly knocking me over. I wrapped her in a tight hug, memorizing the shape of her—her slight weight, the feel of her soft skin against mine—wondering how old she would be the next time I saw her after Nick found Harris’s body.
“I thought you were spending the weekend with your father.” I pulled back to look in her big hazel eyes.
“Daddy had to go to work,” Delia said, her tiny hands fiddling with the diamond studs in my ears.
“Steven showed up with them about an hour ago,” Vero explained, rocking Zach on her hip. “He said there had been some emergency at the farm and he needed to go. Theresa was out showing homes and he couldn’t reach her, so he asked if the kids could stay here tonight. And considering the amazing news, the three of us thought it would be a good excuse to celebrate!” Delia handed me a balloon. Zach blew spit into the plastic noisemaker in his mouth, his toothy grin wide around it.
“What news?” I asked as Zach reached for me and leaned into my arms. I squeezed him tight, pretty sure nothing was as newsworthy as Nick’s discovery this afternoon.
Vero handed me a folded copy of the local gazette. “Bottom of the front page,” she said.
I set Zach on the floor and he toddled off. My balloon thumped against the ceiling as I let it loose to open the newspaper.
There I was.
My author photo—me with my blond wig-scarf, my eyes obscured behind dark sunglasses—had been printed in black-and-white under a headline: Local Author Scores Six Figures for Her Upcoming Crime Novel.
My heart soared for half a second before it crashed in a burning pile of ash.
I was in the newspaper. My book was in the newspaper. What the hell had Sylvia done?
I skimmed the article, my pulse climbing.
An interview with Fiona Donahue’s agent, Sylvia Barr, of Barr and Associates in Manhattan, revealed a sneak peek into Donahue’s book, due out next fall.
When asked why she felt this book had made such a splash with her publisher, Mrs. Barr said, “Fiona is a real talent. This book will put her on the bestseller charts. It’s fresh. It’s hot. I smell a huge hit with this one!”
I let out a breath. Maybe that was all she’d told them. Maybe she hadn’t told anyone what the book was actually ab—
I sank down into a chair, certain I was having a coronary as I read on.
When a professional hit woman is hired by a desperate wife to dispose of her problem husband—a wealthy accountant with ties to the mob—someone beats the assassin to the punch … and now the wife’s gone missing, too. Determined to investigate her mark’s mysterious murder before she can be framed for it, a sexy contract killer teams up with an unsuspecting hotshot cop to figure out what went wrong.
“You did it, Mommy! Vero says you’re famous. Like a TV star.” Delia squeezed my legs, looking up at me with the same doe-eyed, adoring expression she usually reserved for her father. “Can we have cake now?”
“Yes, this calls for cake!” Vero marched the kids to the kitchen as I read the rest of the article with my heart in my throat. A month ago, this news would have been every dream I’d ever had for myself. But if Nick secured a warrant to dig up that field, this press release could be the nail in my coffin.
Vero set a frosting-slathered chunk of cake on Zach’s high chair tray, and another in front of Delia. “Can I talk to you?” I whispered.
“After cake,” Vero said, carving herself a slice and dropping a dollop of ice cream on top.
I grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her with me, the ice cream scoop clutched stubbornly in her hand dripping a path into the living room.
“Ow!” She scowled at me as she adjusted her paper party hat. I resisted the urge to knock it off her head.
“Nick and I just left Steven’s farm,” I whispered.
Vero paled. “What were you doing there?”
“He found sod on Feliks’s car and traced it back to the field. He’s pulling a warrant to dig it up.”
Vero looked down at the newspaper like she might be sick. It was one thing to have your fictional murder mystery featured in the local news. It was entirely another when someone actually found the body. “Why the hell didn’t you stop him?”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know!” Drips of vanilla trailed down her hand and scattered across the carpet. “Distract him! Use your feminine wiles, like you did before!”
“For all the good that did me!”
We glanced back into the kitchen, both of us probably thinking the same thing.
“What the hell are we supposed to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” We could take Irina’s money, pack up the kids, and flee the country. But where would we go? And how long would it take Andrei and Feliks to find us once Irina told them we’d stolen it?
“How long will it take him to get a warrant?” Vero asked.
“No idea.” I couldn’t very well call Julian and ask him. “Nick said it wouldn’t be easy to track down a judge on a weekend. Maybe a day or two.”
“Okay,” Vero said through a deep breathing technique that reminded me painfully of Lamaze. “Okay, that’s good. So all we have to do is move the body before he finds it.”
A shrill laugh exploded in the kitchen. Vero and I turned to see Zach smearing cake frosting into his hair. Delia watched him with a look of mild disgust, her pout stained with blue food coloring. There had been enough sugar in that cake to keep them awake for the next forty-eight hours. This was not going to be easy.
“It could be worse,” Vero said.
“Really? Tell me exactly how this could get any worse.”
“They could have brought home a dog. Whatever you do, don’t mention it to Delia. I just got her to stop crying.”
“Why was she crying?”
“Steven took them to the shelter this morning, but Sam was already gone.”
“Someone else adopted him?”
“That guy Aaron—you know, Patricia’s friend. The shelter worker told Steven he took Sam home after work last week. She said it was odd, because he’d just adopted two dogs a few weeks ago, and three dogs aren’t easy to travel with.”
A sinking feeling dipped low in the pit of my stomach. “Travel? What do you mean travel?”
“He left that afternoon. Said he was going on vacation, but he never came back. No one knows where he’s gone.” Our eyes caught. Held. “You don’t think…?”
That must have been right after I’d met him, when I’d asked him all those questions about Patricia. I’d filled out the application using Theresa’s address. Theresa and I lived on the same street. If he’d seen that street name before—like the night Harris died—Aaron could have recognized it and figured out who I was. And why I was searching for her.
Rescues make great companions.
Had that been it? Had Aaron closed the garage door, determined to save Patricia from her abusive home, just like he’d done for Sam and the rescue dogs at the shelter, not realizing she’d already made plans to handle it herself? Had I abducted Harris from the bar before Aaron had a chance? Had he followed me here, then taken the opportunity to finish the job I was too afraid to?
I couldn’t hear much of anything over the dogs down the street … They seemed to quiet once he was gone.
Barking dogs. I’d heard dogs barking in the parking lot that night at The Lush as I’d loaded Harris into my van. And again later that night, while I’d been on the phone with my sister. According to the news report on the night she went missing, Patricia didn’t own any dogs. But Aaron had adopted plenty.
Had Molly and Pirate been with him in his car?
I thought back to the brown Subaru I’d seen in Patricia’s garage, with two human stick figures and two stick-figure dogs. In the photo in the break room at the shelter, Patricia had been sitting beside Aaron with Molly and Pirate, and she hadn’t been wearing her ring. Had Aaron been more than a friend? Had he been a boyfriend? A lover? Had they planned a future together? Was that why they were both so eager to be rid of Harris? And if so, who’d helped Aaron shut Harris in my garage?
If he really had been alone, like Mrs. Haggerty said, how would he have kept the garage door from slamming closed without being close enough to … hold it?
I turned to Vero and took the ice cream scoop from her hand, dumping it in the ice bucket. “Give me your belt,” I said.
“My belt?”
“Just trust me.”
Vero unbuckled her leather belt and pulled it through the loops in her jeans. It was thinner than the one Aaron had been wearing the day we saw him at the shelter, but it looked just as sturdy. “Stay with the kids. I’ll be right back.”
I hit the remote button on the wall of the garage. Late-afternoon sunlight poured over the concrete and I stood in the middle of it, staring up at the tracks, searching for a way to use the belt to keep the door from falling, the way Aaron had used his to prop open Sam’s kennel.
In the front corner of the garage, at the top of the tracks near the curve where they turned, two metal bars intersected. I grabbed the step stool, climbed up, and looped the belt around them, securing it just below the bottom of the open door. Then I moved the stool to the center of the garage, climbed up, and pulled the release cord.
There was a soft snap as the door disengaged from the motor. It sagged, suspended in place against Vero’s belt.
Aaron had killed Harris.
Not Theresa and Aimee. Not Feliks and Andrei. Aaron had done it alone. He knew the door would slam and I would come running, the same way the self-closing kennels had wreaked havoc in the shelter when Vero set the animals loose and let the doors bang closed. Aaron had tied his belt to the track. Then he’d pulled the cord to free the door from the motor. Quietly, he’d unhooked his belt with one hand, and he’d gently lowered the door.
But if Aaron had killed Harris to be with Patricia, why bother leaving town now that Patricia was dead? I was the only person who knew the truth about Harris’s death, and, as guilty as I looked, I wasn’t any more inclined than Aaron to report what I’d uncovered. With Patricia gone, Aaron could just as easily have stayed here in town and moved on with his life. Unless …
Patricia Mickler no longer exists. I made certain of it.
I thought back to my conversation with Irina in the gym. She’d never come out and stated Patricia was dead. Only that there was nothing of Patricia Mickler left to find.
He has friends that can make almost anyone disappear … new name, new passport, and wipe them off the map as if they’d never existed.
What if Patricia Mickler wasn’t dead after all? What if Irina had only helped her friend disappear? What if they’d dumped her car and her personal effects in the reservoir and staged her death? What if Patricia was just someone else now, living someplace else, with someone else? Someone who would take care of her and make her feel safe.
The car I’d seen in her garage must have been Aaron’s—the stick figures on the rear window must have been them and their family of dogs. What if they’d driven off into the sunset in his Subaru? Aaron and Patricia could be anywhere. Wiped off the map, as if they’d never existed. Which left me—soon to be the only suspect in Harris Mickler’s death, my word against the mountain of evidence against me.
Numb, I stepped down from the stool.
My phone buzzed relentlessly in my pocket. I fished it out, surprised to see I’d missed a dozen calls: my parents, Georgia, Sylvia … All of them probably to congratulate me on the article in the newspaper. I couldn’t stomach the idea of talking to a single one of them.
Tires screeched into my driveway. I whirled, flinching as a silver bumper stopped inches from my knees. Nick’s face was furious through the windshield of his sedan. He pointed at me with a hard finger, then at the passenger seat. “Get in,” he mouthed.
I looked longingly at Vero’s shadow in my kitchen window before opening Nick’s car door and sliding in. He put the car in reverse and hit the gas, fishtailing out of my driveway, silently seething as we peeled away from my house. He made a hard turn into a cul-de-sac down the street and jerked to a stop at the curb, refusing to look at me.
“Funny thing happened when I left your place. I called my commander,” he said, “to tell him I was onto something big, that I had news. He informs me he has news, too. Then he tells me all about some press release in the local rag.” Nick pulled a newspaper from the glove box and tossed it in my lap. “Apparently, I’m the unsuspecting hotshot cop, and my investigation has just been some big research project for your book.”
“It wasn’t like that … It’s not what you—”
“I’m on suspension.” The words stole all the air from the car. “Pending a review by my superiors. They took my piece. They took my badge. And now I have to wait until Monday to walk into my boss’s office and explain why I let a novelist with a personal stake in the case work my investigation. By then, the whole damn thing may be over.”
My mouth went dry. “What do you mean, over?”
“My boss took over my case. He’s coordinating with Fauquier County PD to move forward with the request for a warrant. If they can get it tomorrow, they’ll have that field torn open and have Feliks and Theresa in custody by the time I get my badge back.”
“I’m sorry.” My apology spilled out on a panicked breath. “No one was supposed to know what the book was about. I only sent it to my agent. She got carried away and—”
He turned to face me, rage and betrayal flashing in his eyes. “Did it ever occur to you that I was trusting you with sensitive information? That if anyone knew how much I’d let you see and hear, I could lose my job?”
“That was your choice, not mine!” I unlatched my seat belt, turning in my seat as my panic yielded to anger. “You came to me, remember? You offered to help me with research for my book.”
“You used me!”
“And you used me! Because you wanted to nab my ex-husband’s fiancée on some trumped-up kidnapping charge and you thought I could get you information you couldn’t get yourself. Because you didn’t have enough evidence to justify questioning her, much less search her office or her house. So don’t talk to me about using people!”
He looked away, letting loose a long breath as he stared out his window. “Answer me one thing.” He reached into his coat, withdrawing something from the inside pocket. He dropped it in my hands. My wig-scarf—the beautiful disguise I’d been hiding behind, the successful person I was pretending to be all this time, the identity that was supposed to keep me safe and out of trouble—was a tangled mess in my lap. The scarf was torn, the blond tresses coated in a layer of dust. Nick’s eyes met mine across the car.
“What are they going to find in that field when they dig it up?” He looked at me like he didn’t know who I was, as if he were seeing me for the first time and he didn’t like the face staring back at him.
When I didn’t answer, he started the car. We didn’t speak on the way back to my house. He didn’t say good-bye when he left me in my driveway.
Vero was wringing her hands by the door when I finally came inside. “What’s going on?”
A balloon drifted across the ceiling. The children played in the next room. Vero’s uneaten ice cream had melted into a puddle on her plate.
“We have to move Harris’s body. Tonight.”