by Darby Kane
And now he had her attention.
Chapter Twenty-Three
SHE HAD TO BE MISSING SOMETHING. SOMETHING OBVIOUS.
Aaron had hidden a phone and those videos. Once she found those, she didn’t go hunting because she couldn’t handle finding one more thing. But now Lila was convinced another piece of evidence existed somewhere in the stupid house that would point to where Aaron waited right now. A place he could crawl away to, hole up and plan. Because if he didn’t have that special location set aside, that meant he absolutely had an accomplice. The list of possible suspects for that was too short, and the people too close to her, for peace of mind.
Part of her still believed at least one other person at the school knew about Aaron’s sick games. Teen girls weren’t exactly known for being quiet. One might view him as a conquest and brag. A teacher might have seen a glance that lasted too long or struck them the wrong way. The possibilities kept her from disclosing everything right away. The conspiracy grew in her head. Brent could be in on it. Other teachers. Maybe even some of the dads.
“Peel that shirt off nice and slow. Let your hair down . . . that’s good. Just how I taught you.”
“Do you like what you see?”
“I’m rock hard for you. Sometimes it happens during last period while I’m sitting there, thinking about how good you look stripped bare. How you smell on my fingers . . . and I can’t wait until that bell rings so I can take you somewhere.”
The stray memory punched into her chest. She could go days without thinking about the videos, but then a line or a stray image would pop into her head and push her back.
Last period. He had a seminar last period. Juniors. Sixteen, seventeen. Kids. Too damn young to be making dirty videos and having sex with him.
Inhaling, drawing in one slow breath then another, she kept the anxiety percolating inside her from growing into a dark ball of self-hatred that would double her over. She needed to think. Concentrate.
She’d searched every inch of the house while Tobias was out or asleep in her renewed belief that Aaron had a secret place to hide. This was the last stop. She reached up and tugged on the cord hanging from the ceiling. One pull and the ladder to the attic unfolded in front of her. The only access was through this removable square piece in the hallway ceiling by the bathroom. She never went up there. Aaron sometimes did, if he was looking for something from when he was a kid, which was almost never.
The last time he ventured up there that she could pinpoint was almost six months ago. But if he were going to squirrel something away, it would make sense to do it out in the open and where she rarely went. The most likely spot for that—the dingy attic.
Her sneakers thumped on the rungs as she climbed. The second she stuck her head into the dark space, a wave of heat hit her. She blinked into the darkness and choked on the still air. Another step, and she ended up on her knees on the wooden flooring, which creaked and dipped under her weight.
She aimed the thin beam of the flashlight around the cramped space. The ceiling height barely measured seven feet, adding to the suffocating feel. It took a few seconds to find the light switch. She flicked it and bathed the room in harsh yellow. A thin layer of dust covered everything. She could make out lines on the floor where it looked as if Aaron had dragged boxes or furniture from one stack to another.
An old rocking chair that had belonged to Aaron’s dad sat in the middle of the space, set off from the blankets and boxes. Aaron had told her once that his dad kept it on the front porch of their house growing up. Aaron remembered him sitting out there, rocking as he waited for dinner each night. Six o’clock sharp. Aaron’s mother was expected to have it served at that time every day, and not one minute later.
She looked at the handmade rocker now. At the broken spindle on the left side. The wood reflected the years of hard use. Long gashes here. A divot taken out of the arm there. Someone had carved a tiny circle on the left armrest, right where Aaron’s dad likely rested his hand before curling his fingers over the edge. The marks inside the circle were small and hard to make out.
She picked up the flashlight and shined it straight on the carving. A bear. Not a great depiction of one, but a bear standing on its back legs with its front paws in the air. Possibly something carved to entertain the boys, even though their dad didn’t seem like the type. All irrelevant to her task now.
She turned to the boxes. Most were taped shut except for a few tops, and most of those had the word KITCHEN written on the side. Others had been ripped open, and random items like a lamp and a rusted screwdriver stuck out of one. Digging, she found old pamphlets for campgrounds up and down the East Coast, likely long closed. Papers that looked like old report cards for Aaron. As expected, he’d aced math.
Not one photograph anywhere.
What felt like hours later, her back ached from bending over, and the pounding in her head would not stop. If there was something here to find, she’d lost the ability to see it. Her eyes refused to focus, and a cup of coffee called to her.
She turned off the light and shimmied back down the ladder. As her foot hit the hallway floor again, she heard a noise. She spun around, flashlight raised as a weapon as a scream raced up her throat.
“Stop!”
Lila blinked at the sound of a female voice, trying to figure out what she was seeing. “What the hell?”
But she knew. Cassie. Her nosy neighbor stood in the hallway with her hands raised in panic. One held a plastic-wrapped bundle that looked like banana bread.
“It’s me.” Cassie repeated the phrase over and over.
“Get out!” Lila knew there were other things she should have and could have said, but that came out first.
“I . . . you . . .”
“What?” Lila finally let the arm with the flashlight drop to her side. “What could possibly explain your breaking into my house and scaring the shit out of me?”
“I knocked and—”
“I did not answer.” Tension and frustration whipped up into a full, frothing fury now. “That is the universal way of saying you’re not welcome.”
“I knew you were home and tried to call first.” Cassie bit her bottom lip. “I was worried.”
She had to be kidding. “Worried?”
“Your husband is missing. Your lawyer friend is out.”
Lila stared because she honestly had no idea what to say. The sheer bullshit this woman was spewing to justify coming into her house uninvited had Lila sputtering. She couldn’t think of a single coherent sentence that wasn’t a profanity-laced tirade.
“Lila?”
“Get out.”
More lip crunching. “I know I should have—”
“Now, Cassie.” Lila found her voice and was fully prepared to use it.
“You don’t—”
“You know what, Cassie?” Lila started walking, which forced Cassie to back her way down the hallway or get mowed over. “I’m sick of people walking all over my life, thinking they can do whatever they want, when they want.”
“I get that. I really do.” Cassie glanced behind her as she headed for the door.
All the years of Cassie peeking in the windows and showing up unexpectedly backed up on Lila. At least before this Cassie honored the sanctity of the door and didn’t walk inside unannounced. This time she’d gone too far. Her nosiness butted up against Lila’s need for privacy in the worst possible way.
“Hear me, Cassie. You aren’t welcome in my house.” When Cassie held up the bundle in her hand and started to say something, Lila talked over her. “No. You may not speak or explain. You may not come inside my house unless I escort you. I don’t even want your feet to touch my driveway unless I call and ask you to come over.”
Cassie’s back hit the front door. “I can help you.”
“I don’t want your help.” Lila reached around Cassie and tugged on the doorknob until the door opened a bit. “Ever.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. I’m leaving.”
Lila let Cassie scurry out with the bundle before slamming the door in her face. “Damn right you are.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
GINNY SHUFFLED THE PAPERWORK PILED IN FRONT OF HER ON the desk. She looked through bank statements and phone records. Reread the statements from Brent and Jared, the neighbors and the people at school. They all echoed the same refrain—Aaron was not a guy who would run away from his responsibilities. And Lila, well, she was different, but Aaron never complained.
She glanced up at Pete on the other side of her desk. “Did you get through to anyone from Aaron’s last job?”
He shuffled his notes. “The good people of North Carolina aren’t being very forthcoming. All my calls to the school were rerouted to the school district’s attorney, who gave me a one-liner about Aaron being a highly regarded teacher, but they understood his preference to be closer to family.”
She sat back in her chair. “That’s interesting.”
“Something is wrong there, and no one is talking.” Pete flipped the page in his notebook. “I talked with a Greensboro neighbor who said they were quiet but fine. Aaron more friendly than Lila. So, the usual.”
“Nothing helpful or new.” It had only been a few days, and Ginny had hit a wall of frustration. “There’s no sign of a girlfriend or someone he might have run off with in the credit card or bank records.”
“No motive for anyone to kill him.” Pete shrugged. “Money, I guess. That would point toward Jared, not Lila.”
“And that ticks you off because you think the answer is Lila?” She understood but she also knew that jumping to conclusions was a huge job danger and Pete needed to learn that before a career-ending disaster happened.
“Don’t you? She’s the only one who doesn’t seem to care that he’s gone.”
She couldn’t argue with that, so she didn’t try. “Her being odd isn’t evidence.”
“You sure?”
“We have Jared, who was at a conference when his brother went missing.” She closed a file in front of her containing Lila’s cell phone records. “But he could have left or come in and out, so it’s not airtight. Do some more digging on that.”
“Okay.” He leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. “Lila was at home sleeping. Brent was alone at his place doing the same. Those are pretty shaky alibis, too.”
“But we have video from the neighborhood, and there’s no sign of Lila’s car going in or out. All we have is Aaron’s car leaving, hours before his usual time, driving to school, and vanishing.”
“So what does that mean?”
“We need a deeper look around Lila’s house.”
JARED WASN’T AT home. Lila had called, and he told her to let herself in. He’d given her the code for emergencies years ago and to help out when people came to do work in and around the house. A few weeks ago she was there to make sure the guys cutting down a dying tree didn’t crash it into the house.
His willingness to give her open access to his most private space was exactly what she wanted, but taking advantage felt wrong. She knew Jared wasn’t hiding Aaron, but maybe Aaron had stashed something here, where it would be out of her reach.
She typed in the security code on the number pad and opened Jared’s back door. While Aaron had insisted on owning a big, fancy house, Jared didn’t. His needs were more understated.
If he was trying for a swanky modern bachelor pad, he’d missed by a mile, but the place was very him. A gray midcentury modern one-story house on a hill. Surrounded by trees and very few neighbors, it had a carport, a small stone patio in the back, and a distant view of Cayuga Lake out the front.
The furniture inside matched the outside aesthetic. Simple with clean lines. A little sparse and impersonal for her taste, but the décor fit Jared. He’d picked out every piece himself and declared the place his refuge. It also had a separate building on the other side of the carport that the previous owner had used as an art studio. Jared used it as a home office.
She walked past the kitchen and down the hall to the extra bedroom. Aaron slept here for a short time after the fight that started all of this. If he hid something this might be where. But the furniture in the room consisted of a bed, a chair, and a dresser. The search took all of five minutes. She even stomped on floorboards and looked under the mattress, thinking those might be places Aaron thought Jared wouldn’t look.
Anxiety bubbled up inside of her as soon as she finished digging. She could hold the churning sensation off for long periods of time and get through the day, but another night without knowing where Aaron was or what game he was playing pushed on her reserves. Every time the sun went down, her nerves unraveled. The only thing that saved her was having Tobias in the house.
She peeked through the curtains. Her gaze bounced around before landing on the studio office. If she were Aaron, she’d hide whatever he needed hidden in the one place he knew she viewed as off-limits—Jared’s private space.
She bit on her bottom lip as the urge to peek built inside her. Without thinking, she shot down the hall and out the side door in the kitchen. A few minutes later, she stood at the entrance to the office and engaged in an internal debate over whether it was okay to invade her brother-in-law’s privacy. Her patience snapped, and she typed in the code, surprised when it worked here, too, and the lock clicked open.
She stood there, taking her time looking inside the open room. She had no idea what made her so hesitant to breach this one last space. It wasn’t as if she’d been playing nice and following the unspoken rules in the weeks since she’d found Aaron’s secret cell phone. But this was Jared, and he wasn’t her target.
“Screw it.” She forced her legs to move.
Once inside, a new sense of dread filled her. The drumbeat of her heart in her ears muffled all other sounds. She felt achy and a little nauseated. A voice in her head screamed at her to turn back. Blocking it proved impossible, so she tried to ignore it, letting it morph into a steady beat in her head.
The desk chair creaked as she sat down. She tried not to notice the shake in her hands as she opened one desk drawer after another and rifled through the contents. The task didn’t take long. Jared had everything organized. A place for every paper clip and pen. Labeled bins and files. The only thing without their own bin or drawer were a few stray coins. He had a jar of coins across the room on top of a cabinet. She thought about combining the ones in the desk with them, then decided she shouldn’t move anything.
She scanned the bookshelves and sighed at the file cabinets, unwilling to go through every bit of paper. Chalking this up to a bad idea, she shifted to stand and kicked something. Shoving back in the chair, she looked down and saw a small fireproof lockbox—the kind she had at home and used for things like passports and important papers.
Jared had a built-in safe in the closet. She knew because he told her that’s where she should look if anything ever happened to him. So . . . this? She scooted back and reached for the handle. She maneuvered the heavy box to the desktop just as she saw a flash as a car turned into the driveaway.
“Come on. Come on.” She begged the box to open, but it was locked. She rummaged through the top desk drawer but didn’t see a small key.
Jared’s car eased to a stop, and he turned away from the house, reaching into the back seat for something.
She had only seconds. She grabbed a paper clip and unbent it.
Jared’s car door shut.
Right as she put the end of the open clip into the lock and started wiggling it around, a wave of guilt hit her. Her hand dropped to the desk. “What the hell am I doing?”
She stood up and quickly sat back down again, debating what to do next. After she dumped the box on the floor, she slammed the desk drawer shut. She was up and out of the chair as Jared passed by the carport, heading for the front door.
After a few deep breaths, she opened the door to the outside office and put on her best smile. “Hi.”
Jared spun around to face her. Between his look o
f surprise and the way her heart slammed against her rib cage, she was not far from losing it.
One swallow then a second. “I thought maybe we got our signals confused and you were in this office, waiting for me.”
His gaze toured her face, and his expression went blank. “No.”
“Sorry.”
He walked over to her. Stopped right in front of her, still wearing his suit and tie and holding his briefcase. “Are you okay?”
She was a mess. Not her style at all, and she didn’t like it. This whole lost-body thing had her rattled and making mistakes. Maybe that was Aaron’s plan. His way of letting her expose herself.
Jared slipped past her and into his office. He scanned the room until his gaze landed on the desk. A second later, he looked at her with a question in his eyes.
She realized she’d never answered him. “Not really. Okay, I mean. I’m not.”
Not her smoothest moment, but at the sound of her voice his expression changed. Now he looked like the Jared she knew. Open and welcoming. A little wistful as he watched her.
“What can I do to help?”
Guilt pummeled her. “Find Aaron before the entire county comes after me.”
He stared at her for a few extra beats then put down his briefcase. “You should be at home, out of the fray, until we figure this out.”
“It’s hard to stay still.”
“You know I’m here for whatever you need.”
Typical Jared. She could depend on him. “A few minutes of quiet where I don’t have to think about any of this?”
He just smiled. “Done. Let’s go inside and I’ll make you dinner.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Seven Months Earlier
LILA APPRECIATED AN ATTRACTIVE MAN AS MUCH AS THE NEXT person. This one had deep brown eyes that seemed to watch everyone around him. He sat in the coffee shop on the edge of campus, right by the window. The position gave him a view of the sidewalk and almost every table inside.