Husband by Choice

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  She wondered if something had happened to change him. If maybe this really was just about moving on. About apologizing and letting go.

  “You married a doctor. I knew I was going to have to up my ante if I was going to continue to have any hold on you....”

  He was not changed enough.

  “I’ve spent the past four years taking whatever job had the highest pay, doing some things I’d rather not have done. But I’m the best at what I do, a lot of people know that, and now I can offer you more than your doctor will ever be able to.”

  He couldn’t. But she didn’t bother trying to explain that it wasn’t about the money. Or that he’d never have enough of anything else to suit her.

  “So that’s it? You think I’m just going to leave Max and our son and get back with you?”

  She’d be flabbergasted if she hadn’t done so much reading over the past couple of weeks.

  “I know you will. Because you know what I will do if you don’t. And you know I’ll get away with it, too.”

  “You’re pretty sure of yourself.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  Not like he thought. Not at all like he thought. She had to keep reminding herself to stay one step ahead of his domineering personality.

  “And you want me that way? Knowing that you had to threaten me to get me here?”

  “I only have to threaten because you have your own issues, sweet Meredith. You needed the family that I wouldn’t give you. I understand that now. So I’m prepared to give it to you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m going to impregnate you,” he said as though the answer was obvious. “Then your Max won’t want you. You’ll divorce him. And you’ll have to marry me again. Because you want a family more than anything. And you can’t stand to be alone.”

  He knew her so well.

  And not well enough anymore.

  A flash of Lynn Bishop’s startled face when Maddie blurted out that she was pregnant sprang to her mind. Meredith would like to have told Steve that he couldn’t impregnate her because she was already pregnant.

  But even if she had been, she wouldn’t have told him. He’d just do whatever it took to get rid of Max’s baby inside of her and replace it with his own.

  And if she was pregnant, she wouldn’t be there. She’d have had to protect that baby. She’d probably be in another state. Another country. Still on the run.

  And God knows, part of her wished she was.

  * * *

  AS SOON AS Chantel left, Max called the woman he knew at The Lighthouse and arranged to bring Caleb to their day care. All of the staff knew and adored Meri and would keep Caleb safe for as long as it took to get Meri back home.

  “We’ll be praying for you, Max,” they told him in triplicate as he dropped off his son and a diaper bag with, he hoped, anything Caleb might need, and raced out the door.

  The police thought Meri had gone after Steve Smith. That she’d known he was there and that she’d gone to take him on, all by herself. That woman Meri had befriended at the shelter, Renee, certainly thought so. And Meri had confided in her more than she had in Max. Apparently she’d given Renee details about the day her family had been killed.

  He’d always assumed Meri, a twelve-year-old girl at the time, hadn’t remembered much from that day. He was a pediatrician. He knew how doctors took care of traumatized kids. And had imagined the normal kinds of injuries, physical and mental, that she’d probably suffered.

  Never once had it occurred to him, or had she let on, that she’d been completely conscious and aware as she’d fought to get into the mangled car and save her family.

  Sitting under a tree on the edge of the beach across the street from the little house that Smith owned, Max chomped on a blade of grass and tried to pretend that he was strong.

  That he didn’t feel like crying.

  How he and Meri were going to get through this, he didn’t know. They had a lot to work through. But first, he needed her safe. Home. In his bed. In his arms. Or even just...safe.

  A car he didn’t recognize pulled up and he sat up straighter.

  “What in the hell are you doing here?” He identified Chantel’s voice before he saw her get out of the passenger side of the car. Another woman, also dressed in jeans and a black leather vest was behind the wheel. He recognized the holster on her belt as a department issue.

  “It’s about time you showed up. Do you have any idea what he could be doing to my wife in there?” There’d been no sign of life. But that didn’t mean anything. The shades were drawn.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Max.”

  “Did you get the search warrant?”

  “Yes.” She held up an envelope. “But Bailey and I go in without you.”

  “I didn’t expect to go with you. But when you bring her out, I will be here.”

  Or they could arrest him. He stared her down.

  “Fine, but you’re staying over here, across the street.”

  He nodded, not wanting to waste another second arguing over a moot point. He’d stay put until he didn’t.

  Period.

  * * *

  “WHAT DO YOU want to name our kid?” Steve didn’t seem to be in a hurry as he took side streets and then drove along the ocean, outside of Santa Raquel.

  “I...Steve...you...we haven’t seen each other in four years. Don’t you think we should talk?”

  “What’s there to talk about? You had your fling to get back at me for having mine and now it’s done. You pledged your life to me forever and I’m holding you to it. I already know your favorite color is purple, that you don’t like squash, but love peas and that your lucky number is eight. What’s there to talk about?”

  She and Max never seemed to stop talking. They’d see a house and be off discussing something they liked or didn’t like about it. Or drive by a family and discuss the pros and cons of their mode of transportation.

  They talked about his work.

  And hers.

  Even hampered by having to preserve patient confidentiality privileges.

  “I got my degree. I’m a speech pathologist now.” She couldn’t just sit here. She’d go nuts. And ruin her plan before she’d had a chance to fully implement it. She’d play right into his plan, get frightened and give in, become his hunted possession again.

  “So?” he said, not taking his eyes off the road. “You won’t have to work anymore. You always said you wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and that’s just what you’re going to be.”

  “Are you going to be working?” She was just curious. He hadn’t changed much in the four years since she’d seen him. Still in his late thirties, he wasn’t going gray yet. Hadn’t gained any weight.

  Yet he looked...smaller.

  Or maybe she’d just set her sights higher.

  “I’ll work as I please,” he said easily enough. “It’s the beauty of going private. You don’t answer to anyone but yourself.”

  “And your clients.” She was beginning to wonder what his client base looked like. There were a lot of high-rolling hoodlums in Las Vegas. And Steve had rubbed arms with a lot of them when he’d been on the force.

  “I take the jobs I want and leave the rest,” he said.

  So maybe he was on the up and up. From what she understood, when you worked for the big boys, you did what they wanted when they wanted or you didn’t do anything for anybody ever again.

  Not that she cared one way or the other.

  She wasn’t going to be having his baby. Or living his life.

  It would be her life, or none.

  That point was nonnegotiable.

  Steve just didn’t know it yet.

  * * *

  PACING THE SMALL grassy area between th
e beach and the road, Max had barely worked up a sweat on his first level of panic when Chantel reappeared.

  Alone.

  Oh, God. The blood drained from him and he braced himself.

  They’d been too late. His throat closed up.

  “She’s not there,” his friend called from the other side of the street and for a couple of seconds all Max could hear was the roaring of the waves in his ears. And then, from a distance, the faint sound of her boot heels clicking on pavement as she crossed toward him. “No one’s there. But someone’s been there recently, Max. There’s fresh milk in the fridge.”

  “Do you think she’s been there?”

  “There’s no sign that a woman’s been there. And nothing that would identify the male. Just men’s clothing, a disposable razor, a can of cheap shaving cream.”

  “Let me in there and I’ll tell you if Meri’s been there,” he said. “I can smell her.”

  Animalistic, maybe. But also true.

  Chantel must have believed him, or just took pity on him, but she walked him through the house. And with a heart that felt like lead, and was thankful, too, he shook his head. “You’re right, she hasn’t been here.”

  The place was small, two rooms, plus a bath. Old wood floors that were splintered from lack of care. Cracked Formica cupboards. It seemed fitting for a detective turned private eye on the lam. But not for Meri.

  Not at all for Meri.

  He followed Chantel out and asked his friend, “So what now? If he didn’t bring her here is it feasible to believe that he doesn’t have her?”

  “It’s possible that he doesn’t,” she said. “Anything’s possible.” Her glance was pointed.

  Meri could be dead in the woods, Max. He read the message in her eyes.

  “He could be headed to Mexico with her,” he said. Because it was preferable to the other vision he’d just had.

  “He’ll never get across the border.”

  Nodding, he stood, hands in the pockets of the jeans he’d thrown on before leaving the house.

  The man was history. It was just a matter of time.

  “So now what?” He repeated his earlier question.

  “We’ll have someone on this place and keep scouring the area. Mostly, we wait for him to turn up someplace. A bus station, a gas station, doesn’t much matter, we’ve got the area covered.”

  And if he took Meri out of the area? The other officer, Bailey, exited the house and climbed back into her car.

  “It doesn’t do any good to ask what-ifs,” Chantel said gently, her face turned up to Max’s. “You have to think positive and let us do our job.”

  “I am thinking positive. You’re going to get him.”

  He just prayed to God Meri would be alive when they did.

  “Good, now go home, and I’ll call you when I hear something.”

  He was staying put.

  “Someone needs to be at your house, Max. Meri might turn up there. She might be in trouble. Need help.”

  Okay, he’d go home. But he wasn’t going to like it. Not one damned bit.

  “Oh, and Max, when they went through Meredith’s room they found a diary. It’s been entered as evidence right now. A detective is reading it, to see if there are any clues there to Meredith’s whereabouts. But from what I’ve heard, you’re going to want it. She loves you, Max. She did it for you, just like you thought. She knew about Smith and she left so that he wouldn’t get near you and Caleb.”

  Max nodded, too choked up to respond. And went to climb in his van and drive home as he’d been instructed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE HOUSE WAS...NICE. One floor, marble tile throughout, except for the bedrooms that had newish carpet, plush in a neutral tone.

  The walls were soft beige with accents in appropriate places. A dark red wall in the living room alcove. One deep gold wall in the master.

  There were two other bedrooms. One painted a light purple and one painted light green. Her favorite color and one of his.

  Out back he’d put in a swimming pool, kidney shaped, with a Pebble Tec bottom and waterfall. There was also a built-in gas grill and kiva fireplace.

  All of the things she loved.

  “I told you I know you,” Steve said, grinning like a kid as he followed her from room to room. “And wait until you get to the kitchen....”

  He’d installed a double wall oven, glass top stove, and convection microwave. The countertops were granite and the island was big enough for a couple of bar stools.

  “And look.” He opened the cupboards. All of them. And she recognized everything in them.

  Her pans. The dishes she’d chosen when they’d moved from the apartment to their house in a nice desert community outside of Las Vegas.

  She stood there and stared. All thoughts of a plan, of abuse and life and even death...just stood still. “You kept it all.”

  “Of course I did!” Steve came into her peripheral vision. He opened a couple of drawers. “Here are your favorite black utensils,” he said, “right next to the stove where you like them. And over here are all of the others.” The drawer was twice the size of the drawer she’d had in Vegas.

  He’d paid attention to the finest detail.

  And knew her far better than she’d ever realized.

  Or maybe she had known and hadn’t been able to accept the disturbing ramifications, the fact that his intimate knowledge gave him power over her. “I did good, didn’t I?” He was a little boy in a grown man’s body.

  “Yeah.” The word was drawn out of her. “You did good.”

  “Now do you believe how much I love you?”

  He came closer, walking that walk. The one where his hips swaggered a bit and he was going to grab her by the hips and press himself against her.

  “I never doubted your love, Steve.” Turning, she dug into the cupboards. Buying herself time. Doing her desperate best to keep control of her mind.

  And take control of his at the same time.

  The task was much harder than she’d imagined. She wasn’t even positive she’d be able to handle her own thoughts.

  He was a bad man. A very bad man.

  “Look, here’s my baby cup!” Someone had given it to her when they’d cleaned out her folks’ house. It was sterling and had her name on it.

  She’d thought she’d lost it.

  “And my set of Corelle.” They’d quit making the pattern she’d liked best.

  “I brought your clothes, too,” he said. “Everything’s in the closet and drawers just like you like it.”

  “You plan to have us live here?”

  “It’s where you want to be, isn’t it? Since this is where you came. You love the ocean. I could tell when I saw you there all those Sundays.”

  Her stomach cramped again as an eerie sense of death washed over her. He’d been watching her with Max and Caleb.

  For a long time.

  Probably since before the baby was born. The whole time she’d been pregnant....

  Oh, Max, I need you! The cry tore from her heart and reverberated through every pore in her body.

  Please! Be here! Remind me that I belong to you, not him. That you are real.

  But she didn’t belong to him anymore.

  She’d left him.

  * * *

  MAX PRACTICALLY BROKE the chair he’d been sitting in as he raced to grab his cell phone from the counter Sunday afternoon. Caleb was still at the shelter. They planned to keep him for the night because Max needed to be ready to leave the house on a second’s notice.

  “Have you found her?” he asked, as soon as he saw Chantel’s number come up.

  “No, Max. And it’s not good news.”

  His chest caved. “What?”
r />   “The house isn’t Smith’s, Max. The owner just got home. It’s a guy from LA who got divorced a couple of years ago and comes up here to use his metal detector on the beach. The business, Pepper, Inc., was a venture he and his wife started together. They spent their weekends up here in that little house experimenting with making different foods out of peppers. Pepper jelly, etcetera. The business went under before it took off because of the divorce.”

  “So we have nothing?” He’d spoken louder than he’d intended. And knocked his hand against the counter. Over and over. What was he going to do? How was he going to find Meri now?

  “We have an APB out for her, Max. And they’re going to run his photo on the evening news. Hers, too, if you’ll allow it.”

  He’d given a photo of Meri to Chantel, who’d given it to Wayne in the very beginning.

  “Of course I’ll allow it,” he said. Meri needed all the help he could give her. And the evening news was an hour away. That gave him sixty minutes to call his folks and anyone else he could think of who would be traumatized to see the news on TV.

  “In the meantime, we need you there, in case she shows up. Keep your phone charged. Your computer on. We don’t know how she might try to contact you.”

  Or if she’d contact him. He could hear the doubt in Chantel’s voice.

  “And I’ll be out with Bailey, canvasing every beach neighborhood we can find for any sign of a green car, or any other distinguishing characteristics. We’re checking on more of the homes purchased in the last four years and have others on that task, as well. We’re going to find her, Max. I promise you.”

  “We don’t know for certain that she’s with him.” He had to put it out there. To remind everyone not to assume the worst. Not to write her off yet. “Meri’s resourceful and damned good at keeping herself safe.”

  He wasn’t sure if the reminder was for her or for him. But he took it to heart.

  And kept it there while he made some very difficult phone calls.

  * * *

  MEREDITH HAD TO get Steve to talk to her. Had to take him back to the boy who’d wet his bed. She had to be methodical. Cruel.