There was an intoxicating darkness within her, swimming behind her eyes. He’d felt it the first time they touched, when she took his mug at the coffee shop, her eyes landing on his briefly as the spark shot between them. Electric and dark and unfathomably deep. Something secret. Something she was hiding from the rest of the world.
Remember, Chase. Remember your purpose.
He was getting nowhere. He finished his beer, tossed a five on the table. The lights of Nashville beckoned him. He decided to go for a stroll.
Music blared from speakers on every street corner. There were lines around the block to several bars: Legends Corner, Tootsies. Drunk girls weaved on too-high platforms and too-short skirts, arms around one another. Bridal parties crowded the sidewalks, none of them looking at all happy. He didn’t understand that. Wasn’t a wedding supposed to be a dream? Or had women these days gotten so entitled, so ferociously into themselves, that even the fun parts of the process were misery? Were they simply marrying because it was expected?
Was that what happened with Aubrey and Josh?
She’d told him they’d been childhood sweethearts. That she worked two jobs so Josh could go to medical school. He couldn’t help but think Hamilton was a total idiot. Clearly he’d gotten greedy somewhere along the way. He’d been up to no good.
“Watch out, asshole!”
Two drunk girls had weaved into his path, bumping his arm, spitting their vitriol his way instead of apologizing. He almost retorted, but the face of the one on the left was green, and he figured he would be safer just stepping away rather than getting puked on. He liked his Italian leather loafers, thank you very much.
The heaving mass of humanity on the Saturday night streets was endlessly fascinating. He parked himself on the rooftop of Rippy’s, ordered a barbecue sandwich and a beer, and watched.
And thought about innocence, and curly blond hair spilling carelessly across a white pillow, and his next moves.
CHAPTER 18
Aubrey
Five Years Ago
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”
Stay cool, Aubrey. Don’t get hysterical.
“My husband has gone missing.”
Aubrey felt rather than heard the sigh on the other end of the line.
“How long has he been gone, ma’am?”
“It’s been a little over four hours since anyone has seen him.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we can’t take a report until he’s been gone for twenty-four hours.”
“No, you have to listen to me. We were in a car accident this afternoon. He seemed fine, but he could have some sort of medical issue that we weren’t aware of. He’s a doctor. Please. Something is wrong. I can feel it.”
“Ma’am, our policy—”
“Fuck your policy. This is my husband we’re talking about.”
Aubrey heard the woman’s sharp “Ma’am!” before Arlo wrenched the phone from her ear.
“My name is Arlo Tonturian. I am a friend of the missing man, and I’m also a lawyer here in town. Josh Hamilton is supposed to be the best man at his best friend’s wedding tomorrow. He never showed up to the bachelor party, despite arriving on the premises of the hotel where the party was located four hours ago. We fear there has been foul play. We would appreciate being able to speak to a detective immediately.”
Arlo gave Aubrey the thumbs-up, his brown eyes soft but insistent. Aubrey mouthed a thank-you, sat on the floor with her arms wrapped around her legs, listening with half an ear.
She and Arlo had looked everywhere in the hotel for Josh. He’d vanished into thin air. No one seemed to remember seeing him. Without some sort of warrant, the hotel security people weren’t willing to look at their videotapes. Everyone—the hotel staff, their security—seemed to think Josh had just left her. Walked away after giving her a kiss, off into the sunset. They were all acting like this was nothing, that he’d probably snuck off to meet someone, a lover, perhaps, not expecting people to be looking for him. She didn’t even know how to combat that sort of idiocy. All she could do was tell them, over and over, Josh wouldn’t do that. She knew it, deep down. He was loyal to the core.
Especially since that day when she’d seen him at Starbucks, talking to a fellow med student, a pretty girl with shiny blond hair, straight as a whip, who laughed with her head thrown back and touched Josh’s hand, making him smile widely, and lost her ever-loving mind at him when he got home. In the face of her rage, he’d assured her they were just friends, he hadn’t been doing anything, he’d never loved anyone but her.
He never had. She knew that was true.
Arlo bent down to her, squeezed her shoulder gently. “I think they’re going to help. They want to know what he was wearing. Do you remember?”
She thought back to the moment she walked down the stairs at the house, Josh’s wide smile floating into her mind. She fought back tears.
“White button-down, khakis, Topsiders, dark brown with a white sole.”
“His exact height?”
“Six foot one. He weighs one seventy-five now.”
“Okay.” Arlo relayed the information, along with brown hair, blue eyes. He listened for a moment, looked at Aubrey. “Any scars? I know he doesn’t have any tattoos.”
She glanced at Arlo, coloring. “He has that scar in the shape of a U on the inside of his right leg. By his groin.”
“Right.” He relayed the information. “She put me on hold. These are good details.”
“For when he’s found dead.”
Arlo looked at her in horror. She couldn’t believe she’d said it aloud. But it was true. She watched all the cop shows. They needed identifying features to match his body to the one lying in a cold steel drawer under a crisp white sheet. She knew there were no sheets, not really, but the image stuck in her brain—Josh cold and silent, unmoving, gaping wide incisions across his chest from the autopsy, his organs dumped in a plastic bag and shoved inside his stomach cavity. He’d done a rotation in forensic pathology; he’d shown her what it all looked like. She didn’t want that, didn’t want them to cut him open, mar that perfect expanse of sun-dappled skin that stretched across his strong chest. It was profane.
No, no, he was okay; she knew he was.
“I don’t want an autopsy. Tell them, Arlo. Tell them.”
Arlo hung up the cell phone.
“You didn’t tell them,” she said dully.
“Aubs, let’s cross that bridge when—if—we need to, okay? They said to call back tomorrow if he doesn’t show. They can’t file an official missing person’s report for twenty-four hours. We’re just going to have to keep looking ourselves.” He helped her to her feet. “We can go to the station, see if a personal plea will work. I can throw my boss’s name around, too.”
Arlo smelled like vomit. What if the police arrested him for being drunk in public? It would be her fault. All her fault.
“Arlo, you might want to change, maybe brush your teeth.”
He started, looking guilty. “Yeah, I’m probably pretty rank. I’ll take some gum if you have it.”
She didn’t have gum, but managed to dig out an old roll of spearmint Life Savers she’d left in her fancy bag the last time she’d carried it. She gave it to him.
“You’re a good friend, Arlo.”
She saw him shaking his head. He popped a Life Saver in his mouth and started to crunch it to pieces.
“Josh’s been my best friend for years. I’m as worried as you are.”
“I want to go home,” Aubrey said. It wasn’t so much a statement as a whimper. She cleared her throat and spoke again, stronger this time. “Let’s go to the house first, Arlo. Maybe he did leave me behind, maybe he did go home. We need to check there, too.”
Arlo hit himself in the forehead. “Yeah. Sorry, I’m not thinking clearly. We should do that before we go
to the CJC. Maybe he just got tired and decided to go home, and he’s passed out.”
Neither one of them believed that, but doing something was better than sitting around doing nothing.
CHAPTER 19
Aubrey
Today
Aubrey had the phone to her ear, listened carefully to Tyler’s story.
“All I heard was bits and pieces, braggings. Word was some med student at Vanderbilt had gotten himself mixed up with some folks who were really bad. He had access to drugs through the hospital. Oxy. Hillbilly heroin. They’d talked him into doing some work for them. Dude sounded mobbed up. That’s all I know.”
“Why do you think he was talking about Josh? It could have been anyone in the program with access to the pharmacy, right?”
“Maybe. But the timing fits. And someone did kill Josh. These men, they aren’t nice, Aubrey. It wouldn’t be the first time they killed someone who got in their way.”
“Jesus. When did you hear this?”
“Last week. I was in the temporary holding cells down at County, waiting for my parole hearing. We got stuck there overnight—remember that awful storm we had? With the tornado warnings? The guy was telling some wild stories, but this one sounded . . . plausible. Oxy is hard to get nowadays. Someone with access to the pharmacy would be invaluable.”
“Why didn’t you come to me immediately?”
“Do I look like a carrier pigeon?”
“Tyler, stop it. I’m serious. If you heard something that might explain what happened to Josh, you should have come to me right away. Or called.”
“And say what? ‘Hey, sis, I overheard some guy in the jail cell next to me claiming he heard there was a Vandy doc running drugs’? You would have thrown me out the door even faster than you did. Besides, I came, didn’t I? I told you. Not that it matters. It’s too late now. Even if he was involved, dude’s dead.”
She bit back her retort, took a deep breath. “That dude was my husband. Give me names, Tyler. Please. Who told you this? I need to know.” So I can track them down and talk to them myself. Wring their fucking necks.
His tone changed, as if one of his so-called friends had shown up and he started showing off. “No idea, beyotch.” He hung up on her.
She tossed the phone onto the table next to her and sat back onto the couch. She felt sick.
All Josh had ever wanted to do was save lives. He had a savior complex. He’d gotten a taste of what it was like to help someone with Aubrey and her awkward childhood situations, and that feeling of accomplishment had stuck.
The idea of him as a criminal was laughable. But someone had wanted him dead. That was irrefutable.
And good people didn’t murder innocent doctors.
She felt her heart speed up a bit. What if this was it, at last? What if the bragging Tyler had overheard was the key?
Aubrey had spent the past five years breathing, running, drinking, getting up in the morning and going to work, sleeping when she could, showering when she remembered. Finding out what truly happened to Josh would be heaven on earth.
A good man gone bad—a young doctor, no less—murdered when he tried to do the right thing? Was this the story no one had heard?
She’d thought she was ready to move on, to put Josh’s disappearance behind her, but felt the familiar threads of obsession beginning to pull at her. She’d searched for answers before. She’d never had any luck.
Heard Meghan’s voice in her head: This way lies madness, Aubrey. You know that.
I know. I know. This will be the last time, I promise.
She had to find out who killed her husband.
And then she’d kill them herself.
CHAPTER 20
Aubrey went upstairs, took a familiar path: down the hall to the small, dark closet that housed a rickety ladder leading directly to the tiny storage space in the eaves above her bedroom. The boxes were in the eaves. The boxes were full of the case files: trial transcripts, newspaper articles, DVD recordings of the local news, photographs, her own arrest and trial records, everything she’d collected that had to do with Josh’s disappearance.
Aubrey had been forced to part with most of Josh’s things when she sold the house and moved to the small space off West Linden. She couldn’t afford a storage unit, so she’d compromised by packing nearly everything into plastic boxes and allowing Daisy to haul them off in her stupid Mercedes with those ridiculous eyelashes on the lights. Daisy had no idea how senseless she looked, but Aubrey wasn’t about to be the one to spring it on her. Especially since, despite the grumbling and bitching, Daisy taking the boxes, trip after trip after trip, saved Aubrey from throwing all of Josh’s things away.
Three hard-sided cardboard boxes waited at the top of the ladder. She hauled them down to her bedroom one by one.
She’d just gotten the lid off the first box when she heard Winston rouse from his slumber and start to whine.
She stopped, listened. It was a quiet night. No wind, no rain, no leaves and branches brushing up against the house. The moon had set, and the sky was very dark. She realized she hadn’t drawn the blinds; though no one could really see in through the dormer, she still liked the security of having that window dark to the outside.
She heard nothing. The light at her back meant she couldn’t see out the window to the street, either.
Winston whimpered again, and a shiver began to curl around her tailbone.
She wasn’t usually afraid to be in her own home at night. She didn’t have a gun, but she did have a large aerosol bottle of wasp spray that she kept near the bed. She figured she had a better chance of hitting an intruder with the spray than she would with a bullet. It was a trick she’d learned of in jail.
A bump now, right outside the front door. She scrambled to the other side of the bed and grabbed the spray, took the lid off, and slid to the corner of the bedroom nearest the door. No one would be able to get in without passing by her.
She adjusted the bottle, got her finger on the trigger.
Winston began barking, and each yelp reverberated in her spine. She heard him running up the stairs toward her.
Great. Even the dog was scared.
Which meant she would have to check and see what was happening herself.
She hoped for Tyler. Maybe he’d been irritated enough at her to come back and have words. No. Tyler would slam his fists against the door in anger. The only way he knew to deal with the rage that ate away at him from the inside was brute physicality.
Winston arrived in the hallway and cuddled up next to her, his tongue out, panting loudly. She set the spray down and used both hands to close his mouth so she could listen. He didn’t like that, fought back, his head wiggling out of her grasp. He woofed again, and she shushed him.
A discreet knocking started.
Quiet, soft. She swallowed hard, tightened her hold on the can of wasp spray, and decided.
She crept down the stairs. The knocking started again, then stopped.
Who the hell was knocking on her door at four in the morning?
The door was silent.
She got to the bottom of the stairs and fumbled for the phone. Dialed 9-1-1 but didn’t hit the Send key.
“Who’s there?” Her voice sounded stronger, surer than she felt. “I have a gun. Don’t even think about breaking in here.”
“Aubrey? Don’t shoot. It’s me.”
She recognized his voice immediately. Her heart gave a little bump in her chest, and she allowed herself a deep breath.
“Hold on.” She unlocked the door, opened it partially. “Chase? What are you doing here?”
The night seemed to disappear when he smiled, his brown eyes crinkling. “I couldn’t wait to see you. So I drove down.”
“From Chicago? That’s a long drive.”
“I know. Trust me, I know. I w
as going to wait until morning, but I saw the light on and heard the dog . . . Can I come in?”
She was touched, and surprised, and a little bit nervous. But most of all, she was glad to see him. So very glad.
“Of course. Please.”
She stepped back and he came into the little foyer. Winston barked once in hello and trotted back to his nest in the kitchen.
The moment she shut the front door behind Chase, he had her in his arms. The phone dropped to the floor, forgotten.
“I couldn’t wait,” he whispered. “I couldn’t wait.”
He kissed her, and she forgot she was supposed to be thinking of Josh, instead melted into him. Kissing Chase was like riding a wave, back and forth, up and down. He had a hand in her panties, and she only struggled for a moment getting his belt unbuckled.
She didn’t allow herself to think, just feel.
And it felt so, so good.
• • •
They gathered themselves off the living room floor. Aubrey pulled on Chase’s shirt, loving the feeling of the cool cotton on her bare skin, and went to the kitchen. She made tea and returned to the living room with their cups, suddenly shy. Shy and sore and dying to take him upstairs and do it all again.
She handed him the hot mug, liking how her fingers prickled when he brushed against them. She was sad to see he was wearing his jeans again, though he’d left the top button undone.
“I can’t believe you drove all night.”
He scooted over on the couch, made room for her to sit. She did, leaning back just a bit so she could see his eyes. They were the deepest brown she’d ever seen.
“I told you, I couldn’t wait to see you. There’s something about you that’s intoxicating.”
“Intoxicated, you mean.”
He shook his head. “Don’t do that. Don’t deflect. I’m giving you a compliment.”
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