by Darby Kane
Her fault. He always made everything her fault. Shifted the burden and played the victim. “You get ticked off when we don’t talk about your work. Now that we are, you’re ticked off about that, too. It’s hard to make you happy.”
He let his hand fall against the tabletop with a hard slap. “Married couples talk, Lila.”
She could barely tolerate being in the same room with him. Not after those videos. “Did you read that somewhere?”
“This shit is you, not me.” He stood up and thudded across the kitchen to the refrigerator to grab another lite beer. His second. “It’s not normal. You’re closed off. Go stone-cold. You don’t care about anyone.” His words tripped over one another as he rushed to list her flaws. “We barely talk. You don’t even go outside all that much.”
“I show houses.”
He held up both hands as if he’d stepped into an impromptu religious revival meeting. “Ah yes. Your precious fucking job.”
She shoved her plate toward the middle of the table. “Is this still about Jim and whatever-her-name-is or are you really upset about my career choice?”
He snorted. “The one you barely do?”
“At your insistence!”
“Don’t blame me for your choices.”
“So now I don’t work enough? Your usual argument is that you prefer for me not to work because you don’t want all your little school and coaching friends to think you can’t support us.” She forced her fingers to unclench around the knife and set it down when she really wanted to throw it. “Make up your mind, Aaron.”
He leaned against the sink with his hands balanced on the counter on either side of him. “You are so hard to love.”
The shot bounced off her.
As if he knew what the word even meant. As if she cared if he got enough pampering and cuddling. He’d screwed up this pathetic excuse of a marriage, not her.
“So you’ve said.” She hit him with an eye roll because she knew the gesture battered his control. If he wanted to fight, then they should really fight. Scream and accuse. Dump all their personal garbage right on the floor and sort through it with a chain saw.
“Don’t do that. Fight back without the passive-aggressive bullshit. Show me you care at least a little.”
His anger bubbled and churned right below the surface. Another push or two should do it. “My personality hasn’t changed from the day we met. I’m not the problem in this marriage, darling.”
“How many times do I have to apologize for what happened?”
“Try doing it once. Just one lousy time.” The asshole got caught and lied. Insisted the videos on his phone from his damn students—intimate videos—meant nothing when they really could ruin him. She was saving him, but he conveniently ignored that fact, which was smart because she didn’t plan on doing it for much longer. “You’ve never taken one ounce of responsibility for your shitty choices.”
His mouth thinned, and a tiny muscle in his cheek twitched. He watched her, looking ready to spring, then took a sharp turn away and stared out the window above the sink, out into the darkness. “We had this fight weeks ago. I told you it was a prank gone wrong. I’m not reliving this nonsense again. Let it go.”
“Wait, was that your apology?”
“You’re blameless, I suppose. You kicked me out of our bed. You barely speak to me. Have you left the damn house in three weeks? Because to me it looks like you’re sulking rather than trying to put this marriage back together.”
She would not let him spin this back on her. He was lucky she let him in the house at all. “Still waiting for that apology.”
He turned and faced her again, breathing heavy and grabbing the counter in a white-knuckled grip as if he could no longer hold the icy edge of dislike from spilling out. “Over something minor? Something a bunch of stupid kids did? Not going to happen.”
She pressed her hand against her chest in mock surprise. “Right. How dare I suggest you’ve ever done anything wrong in your life. Silly me. It’s always the rest of us who are wrong.”
“Tell me your theory about the video.” His mouth twisted in a hateful scowl. “Say. It.”
Videos. Plural. “You’re a pitiful excuse for a man.”
He snorted. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a man.”
Every word he uttered breathed more life into her hatred. Gave it legs and a beating heart. Fueled it until it sucked all of the air out of the room. “I’m not the one who messed up.”
“I didn’t either.”
He was delusional. “How can you say that?”
He shook his head as he left the room. “Fuck you, Lila.”
Chapter Six
Present Day
This is Nia Simms and Gone Missing, the true crime podcast that discusses cases—big and small—in your neighborhood and around the country. While we usually delve into cold cases, pick apart the clues, and talk about other possibilities, and we will get back to that, we’re switching gears today. Just like last week, we’re focusing on the case everyone is talking about.
We usually don’t jump in and review an active case for fear of getting in the way, but this one is happening right in our backyard, and it’s possible one of our listeners saw or heard something that might be helpful.
We’re talking, of course, about Karen Blue, the SUNY Cortland sophomore. Campus video shows she got in her car about eight weeks ago and left school to visit her parents for their anniversary weekend, and was never seen again.
We know this case is all over the news. This is a multiagency investigation. There’s a task force. Local and state police are on it. The sheriff’s office weighed in, and now the FBI is stepping in. That’s a lot of resources with no resolution.
We’ve all seen the grainy video of Karen putting a bag in her trunk before getting in and driving away. That was sixty-one days ago. Since then? Not a word from Karen. Law enforcement have ruled out the idea of her voluntarily leaving or hurting herself. This is a case of foul play.
Her parents are frantic. The police have searched her boyfriend’s house twice. One of Karen’s friends gave an interview talking about the boyfriend’s temper. This was looking like a relationship turned violent. A horrible but not unheard-of story. But notice I said “was” . . .
Let’s think about this case another way. What if Karen wasn’t the first woman to go missing in the area without any explanation over the last few years? We’ve spent weeks looking into this question and believe something bigger, more malicious, might be happening in this part of New York. We actually have a trio of missing women, and we’re going to talk about the one question the police have refused to answer: What if the disappearances are related . . .
“Lila?”
She hit pause on her tablet. The voice cut off midsentence through the all-house speakers as her brother-in-law shut the front door and walked down the hall toward her.
He leaned over the kitchen island and kissed her on the cheek. “What the hell are you listening to?”
“I was trying to keep my mind busy.” Which wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t easy to have a nice lunch when her dead husband might not be dead.
“Uh-huh.”
“You know, background noise.” When he continued to stare at her, she tried again. “It’s that true crime podcast that’s been all over the news.”
Jared’s expression went blank. “What?”
“The one started by the Syracuse University graduate student as part of a class project.” When Jared didn’t move, Lila tried again. “Her name is Nia. She’s on once or twice a week and sometimes does interim videos with updates of the cases she and her followers are reviewing. She’s been interviewed on the news.”
Still not one bit of recognition on her brother-in-law’s face, so she tried again. “She’s very determined, which is great because from what I can tell she has a big following of armchair detectives who are experts at using the internet. She’s using those minions to keep pressure on law enforcement, the media, and
this task force about Karen Blue’s case.”
Jared shook his head. “You lost me at ‘podcast.’”
Really? The guy needed to step out of his office now and then. “Karen Blue? Straight brown hair. Athletic. Really pretty.”
“Do I know her?”
“Forget it.” Lila eased the seat around and jumped off the stool. “Coffee?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Jared always said yes to coffee. If she offered water, he said yes. A cookie, he took it. He was the most agreeable person she’d ever met.
“Brent called.” He took the seat she’d just vacated and reached for the mug when she offered it. “Have you heard anything? What are the police saying about Aaron?”
The slight tremor in his voice had her glancing up. Where lately Aaron’s mood bounced around, Jared’s hummed along nice and even. He was the older Payne brother by fourteen months. Slightly shorter at six foot with a young-looking face. Perfect nose and soft blue eyes. Women in town whispered about him being the objectively more attractive brother, but not as good of a catch as Aaron. Aaron was husband material. The one they praised for grocery shopping and running errands . . . or so the town gossip went.
Little did they know.
Lila viewed Jared as stable and with a seemingly bottomless well of kindness. He’d welcomed her into the family and the community, using his contacts to help launch her real estate career.
Jared’s work ethic was the problem. It ran at 100 percent all the time. He spent so many hours in the office that no woman could compete. He’d dated a few in more than a casual way during the almost four years Lila had lived there and watched the ritual unravel. None lasted for long. They’d meet, have couples’ dinners, and then Tara would be traded in for Dawn and then Linda. Jared’s bedroom door tended to be a revolving one.
One girlfriend also shared that he liked sex pretty wild. Lila went out of her way not to think about Jared and his bedroom preferences.
She wrapped her fingers around her mug and let the warmth of the liquid seep through the ceramic and into her hands. “I expect Ginny any minute.”
He frowned. “Who’s Ginny?”
“The investigator.”
“There’s already one assigned to look for Aaron?” Jared dumped a second packet of fake sugar into his coffee. “Shit, this is happening too fast. Where the fuck is he? It’s not like him to disappear.”
“Not at all.” Aaron left a note when he went outside. It was one of the little things she’d found endearing at the beginning of their marriage. Since she’d found the videos, everything he did filled her with rage.
“So . . .” Jared winced. “Did you guys fight?”
She started to reach her hand across the counter in comfort then stopped. A foot separated their fingertips, and she didn’t want to bridge that yawning abyss. “Why would you ask that?”
“Because after two days of him sleeping in my guest room weeks ago I sent him back here to work it out with you.” He lifted the mug to his mouth but didn’t take a sip. “Did you two settle whatever that was?”
Six weeks. It had been just over six weeks since they’d gone from a tenuous peace to a showdown.
An unexpected coolness washed through her. “He didn’t come back to your house again, did he?”
Jared started to talk then stopped. It was a full minute before he tried again. “Aaron refused to give me any details. I got the sense he wasn’t over it.”
Her fault. Jared didn’t use the words, but she heard them as if he’d screamed right into her ear.
She stood up and went over to the long table stretching across the back of the sofa and separating the kitchen from the living area. She grabbed her laptop then returned to the bar. Took the open seat next to Jared. “I was going to look at our bank accounts and his credit cards to see if that would give us a hint where he went.”
“Hey.” Jared put his hand on top of the computer to keep her from lifting the lid. “You can’t think he walked out on you. He would never do that.”
Her gaze shifted from his long fingers to that sleek black watch that cost more than most people paid for six months of mortgage. Jared’s one nod to the mix of money he’d inherited, earned, and stockpiled.
After a few seconds, they fell back on comfortable, unflinching eye contact.
“He should be at school. I don’t understand why he’s not.” And that was the truth. The SUV should be where she’d parked it. He should be in it. Dead but there.
She’d turned the mystery over in her head. Spun it around, flipped it over. Nothing she did, no matter how much she reasoned it out, led to a comprehensible answer. Was he alive? Injured? Playing with her?
“I called everywhere I could think he might go if he needed to clear his head,” Jared said.
That stopped her from fidgeting. She rubbed her hands together under the safety of the bar overhang. “What did Aaron tell you about the fight?”
“That you both said some things. I know he regretted however it rolled out. I’m sure he told you that.” Jared started to say something else but stopped when his cell buzzed. He pulled it out of his jacket pocket and read the text on the screen. “Brent wants to take the afternoon off and drive around.”
“Doing what?” She’d assumed Brent would be the kind to fade into the background if things got tough. That’s how he’d mismanaged his marriage until it finally sputtered to a halt. He’d put more into his friendship with Aaron in five hours than he had with caring about his ex-wife’s obvious unhappiness and spiraling depression during the last two years of their marriage. Lila knew because she’d had a front-row seat to that disaster.
“Looking for Aaron.” Jared shrugged. “Brent thinks he might have driven to the lake. There are places he likes to go there, like that one hiking trail.”
Her mind blanked for a second. “You think that instead of going to work Aaron took off on a drive and went hiking?”
“I don’t know, Lila.” Jared pushed the mug away from him and shifted until he faced her. “Look, you can talk to me.”
She could hear the thread of concern in his voice. See it in his eyes. “About what?”
“Anything. I know Aaron can be tough. People think he’s outgoing, but we both know he’s not emotionally very open.” Jared hesitated for a few more seconds before sitting up straight again and leaning away from her. “Are you going to be okay with the detective on your own?”
“Investigator.”
Jared snorted. “Is there a difference?”
“I guess we’ll see.” She’d gone out of her way not to know anything about the intricacies of New York law enforcement, both because she didn’t plan to take another bar exam and because she didn’t intend to ever return to a courtroom.
“Okay.” He stood up and adjusted the waistband of his dress pants on his waist, trim from hours of running each morning. “I’ll do a quick drive with Brent then circle back here to help out and make some calls. I’ll have my cell. Text if you hear anything.”
The second kiss landed in her hair. It was quick and brotherly and comforting in a way she never expected. She wasn’t exactly one to relax and let someone else share the load, but from the moment she’d met Jared they’d clicked. They understood each other and never needed to verbally vomit their life details to each other.
They were reluctant survivors. Angry and unwilling to open up and invite more pain. Aaron bonded them, but most days—and especially recently—she preferred spending time with Jared over Aaron.
She glanced at the tablet and the podcast site. “Jared?”
He turned around in the doorway to the hall and stopped. “Yeah?”
The hopeful expression, all wide-eyed and waiting, pulled at her, but she let it go. She wasn’t even sure what she intended to say when she’d called out to him. It wasn’t as if she had anything encouraging to offer. No hope. No empty words about finding Aaron safe.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
Aaron wasn’t coming
back. But if he did, she’d finish what she started.
Chapter Seven
GINNY CALLED TO SAY SHE’D LEFT THE OFFICE AND WOULD BE there soon. That was thirty minutes ago. She showed up with a younger man. No uniform on him either. Just dark pants and a bright white shirt. When he asked to use the bathroom, she directed him to the one down the hall and told him to do whatever he needed to do. She had nothing to hide. There was no reason to pretend she did.
“This is a big house. No kids?” Ginny ran her finger along the fireplace mantel, hesitating only when it landed on the frame of the one photo sitting there.
Lila standing between Aaron and Jared. The picture was a little more than a year old and captured a rare moment in time when all three of them looked genuinely happy. It was taken only a few minutes before they headed out on a boat on Cayuga Lake. The bright blue sky and late-summer sun had them looking tan and rested.
“No.” Kids or no kids was the one marital decision she and Aaron had made together.
Ginny set the photo back on the mantel and turned to face Lila. “Walk me through this morning again.”
This was a game. Lila didn’t feel like playing. She sat down in the middle of the couch and opened the laptop she’d carried into the room after Jared left. “I got up, and he was already gone. That’s normal, by the way.”
“Normal?”
She didn’t look up. Just kept typing. “Do you object to the word?”
“What are you doing?”
“Checking Aaron’s bank accounts.”
Ginny sat down next to her, leaving only a sliver of space between them. As far as pressure moves went, it had its benefits. It likely worked on some. Lila appreciated the intimidation tactics, but she’d learned in her old legal life when to jump and when to ignore.
“Joint or individual accounts?” Ginny asked as she took a pair of glasses out of her jacket pocket and put them on.
“Both.” Lila glanced over. “You should wear them. They look good.”
“I’d fall on my face. They’re just for reading.” Ginny never broke eye contact with the screen. “And what are you finding?”