The ambulance roars out with Ree inside, with my very heart riding in the back.
Mace and I are taken downtown for questioning.
They ask for the truth, and we give it to them.
Just the way we rehearsed.
Ree
We cremated my sister and my mother—scattered their ashes at opposite ends of the boat Bram hired to take us out for the day. We left the kids with Tessa. They know Lena is gone. They never understood their grandmother, and I’m thankful they don’t know enough to ask—yet, I suppose.
Bram pops a bottle of fine champagne, expensive, from France as the captain cruises us back to port. I had jokingly suggested it, a small way to celebrate my sister’s beautiful but all too brief existence and, of course, Bram didn’t hesitate to oblige me.
“To life.” Bram’s ocean blue eyes rival the Pacific with their majestic beauty.
“To life and life unstoppable,” I counter.
Peter Junior is spending the day with his uncle Mason. He looks so much like Henry did in those pictures. In a way, it’s as if Peter got a piece of Henry back, too. Little Peter loves Lilly and Jack, and both Lilly and Jack adore their new older brother.
Tessa helped us find a top-notch therapist who is working to gently untangle the knot our family had become.
We are powering through this with love, with the fuel of our newfound vindication, with the idea that we can and we will persevere. After all, it was the storms of life that thrust us together right from the beginning—with a little help from Simone, of course. There was no chance meeting that first day at the bar. That shock of red hair Simone wore like a bad wig, I remember it distinctly. I was taking yoga downtown twice a week and she made it a practice to stand next to me, her face the same, but her eyes ringed heavy with kohl. It was her I was supposed to meet at the bar that day I met Bram. She was luring me there. I can see that now. Orchestrating our every move from afar and we happily played into her hands. It never occurred to me until years later when I forced myself to look at pictures of Simone, the sweet understated face, hair as pale as straw that she could have been one in the same. And why would I? My mind doesn’t work that way, and I’m thankful for it.
“Why do you think she chose me?” I nestle into my husband’s arms, and he is my husband. Bram and I went to the courthouse and made it official. Took the kids to dinner afterwards.
“I have no doubt she handpicked you. She took her time looking for just the woman she wanted to pair me with. Simone knew me well. She knew there would be an instant attraction. And she knew our brokenness would solder us to one another. She knew we would be perfect together. I think she was hoping I’d settle down, build a family. It’s no fun to pick apart someone’s world if they have nothing to live for, nothing to lose.”
My blood runs cold a moment. “I guess in the end she was right.” I wrap my arms around my gorgeous husband. “We are perfect together.”
He presses a warm kiss to my lips, his lids hooded low as he pulls away. “To perfection.” He lifts his glass once again before draining it. “You’re not drinking.” His brows hood for a moment as he lands his glass to the table next to us.
“I can’t.” My gaze pins over his. “It’s not good for the baby.”
“The baby?” His face smooths out. Every worry line dissipates as his eyes widen with relief, with joy. Bram pulls me in tight, his chest bucking against mine as tears and laughter hit him at once. “We are expanding our family. I love you so much, Ree. Thank you for this.” He blesses me with another kiss, oven-heated and full of desire, full of hope.
Our lives hadn’t truly started, our family never truly lifting off the ground until Simone died. She was the puppet master, the false god in the wings directing our steps, casting a sun far too hot over our weary heads, so hot it incinerated her own soul to the ground. But we can breathe now. We can see the light.
Lena and my mother are both gone, two very different women who should never even be spoken of in the very same sentence. But I’d like to think in the end, my mother had truly believed she’d changed, that she wanted something real.
Lena never abandoned me like I had thought once my mother arrived. In fact, it was the opposite. It was Lena trying to fix things, taking a twisted page from my mother’s dark book, the aftermath from which we never recovered. Lena was too busy setting up my mother, setting my teeth on edge. She was willing to put our relationship on hold. I don’t know what she thought would happen, but I know that she would have killed our mother, perhaps was too afraid I would fall for the new version of the demon that raised us. And I might have. The emails were a necessary evil. She needed to remind me in a clever manner that my mother was still herself. And whether she was or not, I will never know.
Simone’s DNA was discovered on Astrid’s shoe. A single hair—just enough for us to realize it was truly Simone’s insanity that racked up the body count. In fact, Erwin Wilson is in the process of being released because of it—because of everything brought to light. The girl at the hotel, the girl at the fundraiser. Simone was responsible for them all. And her sister, Meredith. Her parents mourned her first when they learned of the devastating news. Her father called and personally apologized to me. He wanted me to understand that Simone saw people as possessions right from the beginning. It was a cute quirk at first, something he and his wife were sure she’d grow out of. But she didn’t. She never would.
Bram and I head home. We share the news with the kids, and we all go out to dinner to celebrate this new addition to our family.
Summer has crested, and we’re packing our things, moving from Percy Bay.
It was a good place. It filled a need we hadn’t even known we had. It forged us into who we were destined to be all along.
A true family.
Acknowledgments
Thank you for reading THE FIRST WIFE’S SECRET. I hope you’re willing to join me on my next adventure. I had a lot of fun peeling back the layers of Ree and Bram, and I hope you did, too.
Big thank you to Ashley Marie Daniels, Shay Rivera, and Lisa Markson for being my early readers and making this book sparkle and shine.
Thank you to Kathryn Jacoby for proofreading. I adore you and your amazing kids.
A special thank you to Jodie Tarleton, Kaila Eileen Turingan-Ramos and Donna Rich for your proofreading services as well.
And to the amazing Paige Maroney Smith, without whom this book wouldn’t nearly be as shiny—thank you from the bottom of my heart.
And last, but never least, thank you to Him who sits on the throne. Worthy is the Lamb! Glory and honor and power are yours. I owe you everything.
Deadly Detour
A Sublime Casualty
Addison Moore
Edited by Paige Maroney Smith
Cover by: Lou Harper of Cover Affairs
Copyright © 2018 by Addison Moore
This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.
All Rights Reserved.
This eBook is for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase any additional copies for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright © 2018 by Addison Moore
Created with Vellum
Prologue
They say to commit murder is a crime against your soul as much as it is another person’s body—an everlasting burden. I say it was a relief—like lancing open my own throat just to breathe for the very first time. But one corpse led to another, and soon I left my own life to step into someon
e else’s. I never meant for things to go so far. I never meant to leave a trail of bodies in my wake. I never meant to keep a secret so dark that it held the key to another hell entirely.
I never meant to say I’m sorry.
Ten Months Earlier
They say if you’re going to hide you should do it in plain sight. Sort of like those childish books my brother and sister were obsessed with, the Go Find series. You search in a sea of thousands of miniature cartoon-like faces hoping to scout out some squirrely looking man with a mustache, or in my sister’s case, a pink cat with a wizard’s hat. It was all fun and games back then with Peavey and Devyn seated on either side of me. Peavey is six years younger than me—formal name, Paul Richard. Don’t ask me how it evolved to Peavey. Nobody is actually certain about that. Devyn is three years younger than him, and they’re both my half-siblings according to biology, full siblings according to my heart. Hell, they are my heart. I live for them. I’d die for them. I’d kill for them, and did.
My feet come to an abrupt stop as I steal a moment to gaze at Conrad University in all its Gothic marble and limestone glory. Sort of an odd sight in smack-dab-middle-of-nowhere Idaho. But with enough money to back it, you could make just about any delusion happen, and I’m staring at the biggest eyesore of them all right now. Architecturally, it’s breathtaking, but it’s remarkably out of place in this reality. Wakefield is a small, one cow town. Conrad feels Disney-eque, something so wonderful you wish with all your heart it was true—not to mention the fact the price of admission will set you back a couple hundred paychecks. And for a drifter like me, there will never be enough of those to land me in a place like that. As it stands, I have my boss Joe to contend with at the Hideaway Café. He needs things I can’t give him right now—driver’s license, social security card. The tips of the iceberg for a place like Conrad who will want to delve deeper into my history and fish out report cards dating back to preschool. A private school like that probably requires dental records. A couple of letters of recommendation would be a given. They would want blood. And oddly enough, I could give them that last one. It wouldn’t even have to be my own. I had a body I could milk for that sanguine liquid once upon a time. Yes, I could give them blood. It just wouldn’t be mine.
The fresh scent of pine fills my lungs on this heavy blue sky day as summer gives way to fall. It’s a quick turnover here in this part of the state, the changing of the seasonal guard. One day it’s balmy out, the next the sun is but a dream and jags of lightning spear down in every vacant field. It’s as thrilling as it is terrifying to watch, let alone live through if you’re seeking shelter behind a dumpster at the Hideaway Café. But that’s no longer my home. I take a few brazen steps closer to Conrad, still tucked several hundred yards away from the prestigious university. Gabby, my dumpster savior, invited me to sit in on a class, but I don’t think I’ll go. Instead, I soak in the palpable academia of it all in the nearby woods—an entire verdant world is landscaped around the school like an emerald fortress adding to its Ivy appeal. You couldn’t even call it a poor man’s Ivy because the cost of tuition is up there with the real deal. No. Conrad doesn’t play second fiddle to anyone. It’s top-notch. Nothing but the best and the brightest. Which begs the question why someone as bright as Gabby Foxworthy would open her doors to a sewer rat like me.
The ever-expanding pines press in around me as I jog deeper into the woods along a well-worn dirt trail with a smattering of pine needles to cushion the sound of my worn tennis shoes as I beat them over the ground like a heartbeat. A bright red square catches my eye near a late-blooming dogwood and I steal the moment to head over and bury my nose in a white starry bloom.
Ah. Smells like heaven. God’s perfume, my mother used to call it. I remember the bush from Strafford. We had one just like it outside of our apartment. It’s the only good thing from that sorry town other than my brother and sister. My mother sold us for her next hit, so she disqualified herself from the memory. I pull back and eye the small red square before pulling my sleeve over my hand and picking it up.
No fingerprints. It’s something you learn along the way in ex-con U. But if you want to get technical, there is nothing ex about this con. Not so sure I’m a con either.
I bring the leather square forward and gasp at the treasure in my hand. A wallet. Oh my shit.
“God, let there be money in it,” I whisper as I bury my left hand in my sleeve and get to work. I count out three ten-dollar bills and balk as I slip them into my pocket. Of all the damn rich girls running around this place, I find the one with a pittance. A couple of cards sit snug in a leather pocket just behind the bills and my adrenaline kicks in. A driver’s license, a social security card, credit cards, debit card, but I don’t dare add theft to my repertoire. No thank you. Murder suits me just fine. And I have no remorse about it either. Therefore, according to psychology today—per the spare library card my aforementioned dumpster savior lent me—I also qualify as a textbook sociopath.
“Well then,” I pant as I slip the license and papery social security card into my pocket. I shouldn’t feel too bad about this minuscule heist. I’ll simply give the goods to Joe, and when it comes back to bite me in the ass, I’ll say I input the wrong information. Mix-up. Bat my lashes. Show some tits. Guys like Joe don’t believe a nice girl like me could be rotten to the core. Deep down, a nice girl like me doesn’t believe it either.
I drop the square back to its bed of pine needles and start in on my jog once again, this time with a spring in my step. Thirty dollars might as well be thirty million. This is already shaping up to be a banner day.
A silver spear glows against the dark ground just a few feet ahead. Another find no doubt. Some stupid coed must have lost the contents of her purse doing the walk of shame this morning. Can’t complain. Her loss is my financial gain. I head over and stop abruptly with my back hunched, my right hand already lurched out, greedy to steal another treasure from the ground, but I’m frozen solid. That’s no silver spear, nothing even remotely close to something I want to touch. The soft buzz of insects lights up the air as a swarm of flies dance over an open red gash. Muscles. The form of human legs—a girl’s, a woman’s—steals the light from the world and all I can see is the heavy bruises, the gray lifeless limbs of somebody’s daughter, their sister. I take a cautious step forward, six inches and no more, and then I see it, opened eyes staring vacantly at the sky, blonde curls unsettled around her face like a bad Halloween wig.
Something akin to a gasp hiccups in my throat, mixed with bile, assuring me I could vomit on cue. Call someone. Dead people need help, don’t they? Oh my God. Can’t move. Can’t breathe.
A bubbling laugh comes from somewhere behind me and I hop over a clearing of fresh dirt and onto a bed of pines before breaking for the other side of the woods, pausing momentarily only to hear a pair of shrill screams.
There. Body discovered—and not by me. I shudder as I slip into a stream of coeds walking north from campus, blending in seamlessly. I didn’t step in the mud. A part of me is relieved. There are no markers that I was anywhere near another crime scene. My hand floats over the contents in my pocket. I had patted myself on the back too soon. I may not have been responsible for that particular dead body, but we would forever remain inextricably connected.
Present Day
Charlie
It happened finally. Death had found me in my bed. In a fit of agony, I wrestled with a sudden tightness in my chest, excruciating and violent. But others will assume I’ve gone peacefully in my sleep. Oh hell, let them think it. I’ve lived out my ninety-six years on the planet with bliss, with trials and triumphs, and now my soul rises to the ceiling, floating as effortless as a helium balloon as I drift through the rafters into the night sky, already milky with the promise of morning. The sky recedes like a scroll, and a bevy of familiar faces surrounds me as I soar ever higher. Here I am on parade for all my former acquaintances to see. Oh my, there’s Randal! My husband of sixty-five years. My mother and
the father I never knew already with their arms extended. Their mouths cheering, but I can’t hear them. Instead, music fills the air. My God, is that Abba? “The Winner Takes It All” vibrates through my being, beautiful and melodic as I fly higher, ever so higher to this brilliant destiny.
A shining being, so full of light and love, offers me an easy smile, his enormous hand and I take it.
And just like that, I wake with a jolt, sitting up in my bed as if ready to lurch right out of it. The old radio alarm Gabby gifted me is blaring the song that haunted my dreams, and I slap it silly until the room is bone quiet.
Randal. What the hell kind of name is Randal?
I shower and dress and meet up with my roommate in the kitchen with her fingers knotted up in her wild curls as she hovers over her laptop.
“Geez”—Gabby groans into her coffee, her eyes never leaving the glowing screen—“a cop was killed in Hunter last night after responding to a domestic dispute. It truly is the most dangerous job in the world.”
I grunt as I pull out the creamer from the fridge because, ultimately, I know where this is heading. “I’m pretty sure those guys that install cell towers, some lumber, and/or steel workers might disagree with you on that.”
“Nevertheless.” She lifts her coffee my way, and those glowing mossy green eyes of hers twinkle. Gabby is beautiful, with her chestnut-colored hair and vibrant backlit eyes. She could easily be a model, and she has been in one of her many incarnations. At twenty-two, she’s already had more career changes than your average forty-year-old. That’s what happens when your grandfather is the hotel god who introduced the country to affordable overnight stays six decades ago. And now the entire planet is pimpled with enough Foxworthy Inns to put a dent in the homeless population if he wanted. But he’s dead, and dead people often don’t get a vote, unless parties represented by a donkey or an elephant are involved. I’m not exactly a fan of politics.
Psychological Thriller Boxed Set Page 15