Pretty Little Wife

by Darby Kane

A coffee cup sat in front of him, but he hadn’t taken a drink from it in the ten minutes Lila stood there, waiting in line for her turn to grab a cup of tea. He focused mostly on the small notepad in front of him. Jotting down notes then watching and writing again.

  When she was much younger, like eight or so, she’d spin wild stories in her head about the people around her. Neighbors. The mailman who lingered on the porch and talked to her mom. The teacher she saw out of context with friends, trying on a lacy dress at the mall. It was the first time she’d realized teachers had friends and gossiped, and her mind danced on that one for days.

  All that creativity and fanciful thinking died the day the police came and took her father away. Teams of uniformed men marched through their house, opening everything. Touching her things.

  The brutal violation of her privacy didn’t compare to what came next. The taunting and hitting. The woman who yelled at her as she got off the bus.

  Lila stopped dreaming. Her mind no longer had the freedom to wander. She had to be on the lookout for anyone who might be lurking, ready to hurt her. She didn’t have time for kid things.

  The daydreaming had just started to come back, decades later. At first she quashed it, not wanting to get entangled in unreal things. Survivors stayed awake and ready. Falling into fantasy invited trouble, and she’d had enough of that.

  But something about him had her staring and thinking. The dark hair, smooth and straight. The intelligent eyes that were always searching. That pronounced chin and inviting face. She’d seen plenty of pretty people, known some who other people found attractive, and probably were on some objective scale, but their blowhard personalities killed it for her.

  He sat quietly. His gaze slipped to a dog sitting on the floor, and he smiled. She waited for him to visually stalk some younger woman so she could write him off as a loser, but it never happened. The watching never shifted to anything prurient.

  “Here you go.”

  She nodded as she took her tea from the barista and walked across the room. After a few steps, the man’s gaze shifted to her. When she got to the side of his table, he stood up.

  “Lila Ridgefield?” He extended his hand. “The woman who will help me get out of my condo and into a house. I was hoping that was you. I’m Ryan Horita.”

  Not knowing where to look, she glanced around him and saw the notes on the pad. A rough sketch of what looked like a floor plan. When she glanced up again, he was staring at her.

  He smiled. “It’s nice to finally put a face with a name.”

  That’s exactly what she was thinking.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Present Day

  THEY MET AT THEIR USUAL SPOT. CORNELL’S BIRD SANCTUARY. It had a more official name, Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary, but that wasn’t the point. They’d picked it because it was away from his campus and her job and provided over two hundred acres of trails and swamps and trees for privacy.

  Over the last few months, they’d walked through the area and talked. Lila would listen to his ideas for future books. Ryan would laugh as he heard the complaints people made when looking at houses.

  Today they met because they had to. They’d had a brief talk after Aaron first went missing. She’d called him from a phone she asked to use at the bank and given him a heads-up. But today was in person, as Ryan had insisted. He’d sent an email from a dummy account and used their emergency code, which they’d picked specifically because it looked like spam.

  The overcast skies and threat of early snow had more visitors staying inside, doing behind-the-scenes tours. She rarely welcomed cold, but today she did. They needed time alone to talk, and this was as close as they could get.

  She spied him sitting on a bench near a clump of trees and speeded up her walk. She sat down next to him without glancing his way or acknowledging his attempt to move closer.

  “This is risky.” She hadn’t meant to blurt that out. She’d honed her control, her ability not to show any response or react, but having Aaron’s body disappear messed with her hard work to never panic.

  “I had to see you.”

  She picked up on the pleading in his voice and pretended to ignore it. She couldn’t afford to have him unravel. “This is not the right time.”

  “Tough.” He turned to face her, making it clear to anyone who might be watching that they were together. “Investigators came to my office yesterday.”

  “Who?” She waited as he dug the business cards out of his pocket and flashed them at her. Ginny and Pete. No surprise there. At least the investigation hadn’t expanded to state and federal law enforcement, both of whom were crawling all over the county as part of that task force searching for Karen Blue. “That’s what I thought.”

  He frowned as he tucked the cards back in his pocket. “You know them?”

  “We’ve spent too much time together lately.”

  “What the hell is going on?” He stretched an arm across the back of the bench, leaning in and casual.

  His hand hovered. Part of her wanted to shove him away, but another sensation, a slight thrum that ran through her, called out for him to come closer. The collision between craving comfort and being ready to flee left her breathless. “What did they ask you?”

  “How I knew you. If we went out. If we had sex.”

  The final sentence screeched across her brain. Sex. “They asked about sex?”

  He exhaled, tipping his head up and showing off that pronounced Adam’s apple that intrigued her so much the first time they went to bed. “Danced around it for about fifteen minutes but eventually got there.”

  Her thoughts scattered as memories mixed with fears of getting caught. Panic rose in her chest until it clogged her throat. She coughed the questions out over the invading lump. “What did you say? How did you answer?”

  “Thanks for being concerned enough to warn me, by the way.”

  The words sent the crescendo of sensations crashing down, and her mind went blissfully blank. The absolute last thing she needed in her life was one more man who worried about his life and his safety as he discarded hers. “They’re checking my phone records. How do you think they got to you?”

  “We usually stuck to coded texts that sounded house-related.”

  “There were other times I called. Times when I used my cell or contacted you from work.” He was right that as his real estate agent contact made sense. She’d figured the few stray calls would get lost in a series of other ones. “They have all of those records and are likely following me, so I couldn’t exactly stop by your house to warn you.”

  He glanced over her shoulder. “Following you?”

  “No one did today.” She’d doubled back and took random turns. “And it’s not my car.”

  “I didn’t admit to the affair.” His fingertips brushed against her shoulder then off again.

  “Maybe not the best move. They already suspect, Ryan.” She wanted to grab his hand and shake it, make him understand. “If they talked with you, called you in, then they’ve figured it out or are close to doing so.”

  “Witnesses told them about us having coffee. They didn’t mention us meeting at my house or about that hotel in Syracuse, but we both know we used both.” He shrugged. “Paid cash at the hotel, thank God.”

  He might think they were home free. She knew better. Ginny would pick and poke. She’d get it in her head there was something to find then hunt it down. Lila knew because that’s exactly what she’d do if she were Ginny.

  Lila fell against the back of the bench. “Discovering that, or most of it, is likely coming.”

  “To throw them off I told them about the ongoing water issue.” He played with the ends of her hair. Wound it around his finger. “Made it clear there was a perfectly good reason for us to keep meeting.”

  So sure. Real or not, only a man would find solace in such flimsy excuses at a time like this. Women were programmed to fight to be believed.

  She sat up straight again as she batted his hand away. “Tha
t investigator, Ginny? She’s smart.”

  “I’m smarter.”

  So much ego. She hadn’t seen that in him until the end.

  He understood violence and familial destruction. He listened and seemed to get it. Didn’t judge. She could keep him over there, away from her daily and mundane life and just enjoy. Then she ruined it.

  As her plan to deal with Aaron came together a few weeks ago, she merged the pieces of her life. Ryan had priceless intel she needed, so she began asking questions. Going deeper. When the topic dipped into his expertise, his ego flared. It was all about him and how he “got” things his contemporaries didn’t.

  The hubris burned through the zing, leaving her bored and itching to get out. What she’d felt for him flickered and died. For the last month, she’d been going through the motions. With him. With Aaron.

  She was not good with men.

  Despite how important he thought he was, she needed him to let her lead now. There were things he didn’t know. Things that could get them in trouble if he shared because he thought they were innocent instead of her calculated attempt to remove Aaron from her life.

  She poured every ounce of concern and anxiety into her voice, silently begging for him to get it. “Please listen to me.”

  “Where’s Aaron?”

  “I have no idea. Honestly. None.” That pissed her off, but it was true.

  “Did he find out about us and take off?”

  “No.” There was no way Aaron could have hidden his fury at being replaced in the bedroom, even temporarily. “I mean, not the ‘us’ part. Could he have left for some other reason? I guess, but I can’t imagine.”

  “You can’t know he didn’t figure it out.”

  “He would have mentioned stumbling over my adultery. Trust me.” He’d choked her for finding the videos. The punishment for embarrassing him would have been a campaign of destruction that burned through every part of her life.

  “Did you talk about being unhappy in the marriage, maybe give a hint that you might leave him?”

  Interesting how he assumed she’d messed up, as if she were lost in some sort of romantic stupor and let the incriminating information slip. “Never.”

  “Wait.” Ryan’s head shot back as if he’d been slapped. “Never?”

  Not this. Not now. “That wasn’t the plan. You know that. We agreed on no commitment.”

  He moved back, putting a few more inches of space between them. “Seven months, Lila. That’s a long time to have sex and meals together and meet and not have some feelings for more develop.”

  Not for her. Not ever for her. “Stop talking like that.”

  With him, at the beginning, for these amazingly bright flashes, she hoped it would be different. Better. That she could be normal and seek what other people sought. The sex was exciting, not just a set of moves she’d done for years.

  Then their differences, once faded in the background, pulsed to life. He liked people and going out. He bought tickets to events and dragged her to see live music. Being trapped in swaying rooms that reeked of liquor and dripped with the sweat of a heated audience ignited her anxiety. Even if she weren’t married and in a frenzy of panic about being seen, his constant need to be fed by a sea of people would have drained her.

  At least with Aaron she had hiking and a mutual respect for quiet. Ryan tried to coax her “out of her shell.” She was married and dating and dreaded both. It was the ultimate nightmare.

  Ryan’s arm dropped to the bench. Without moving, the chasm between them expanded. “You’re unbelievable.”

  Did he really not get it? This was not the time to talk about seeing each other more or bigger feelings. “I’m trying to save both of us.”

  He stood up. “Try harder.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  BEING IGNORED PISSED GINNY OFF. SHE’D TRIED CALLING LILA, but she didn’t answer. With a squad waiting around the block and the forensic team ready to go, she stood on Lila’s front porch and verbally wrangled with her attorney and friend. Probably her only friend.

  “Where is she?” Ginny asked in a tone that suggested this was not the time to play.

  Tobias closed the door behind him and stepped out into the cold, wearing black pants and a sweater but no shoes. “She had errands.”

  Ginny nodded in the direction of the driveway. “Her car is here.”

  “She has mine.”

  This guy had an answer for everything. He was smooth, but Lila hid her constant assessing better than this guy did.

  “So she made sure to take the car that’s not being followed by my office. That suggests she has something to hide.” Ginny made a mental note to pull more records.

  “Or that she needed a minute of peace.”

  “You’re in a rental. We’ll track the GPS on it.” They’d find out where she went. Check cameras in the area. See if she had the suspected check-in with her supposed not-boyfriend.

  Tobias crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back against the front door. “It sounds like you’re convinced Lila has done something wrong.”

  “She’s not exactly an open book.”

  “She’s not that hard to figure out either.”

  From what Ginny could tell, no one in town agreed. Literally, no one. They all described Lila as pretty but pointed out how she didn’t seem to support Aaron’s career. That was her big sin in many people’s eyes. “You’re alone in that assessment.”

  “When we were in practice together and would have a case involving a felony, like drugs or murder or whatever, Lila would give this speech. She’d talk to clients and their families and sometimes their friends about how she didn’t have any ethical responsibility to tell law enforcement where to go find evidence, but if someone moved the evidence and gave it to her so that the police couldn’t find it, then there was a problem.”

  “Sounds like a criminal defense attorney way of rationalizing the law.” And she didn’t mean that as a compliment. “I’d argue she’d have a moral responsibility to do the right thing in either case, but okay.”

  “One day a man comes in with a gun. He’s not our client. He’s our client’s brother, and he’s heard the speech, but the police were closing in and he couldn’t hide the weapon his brother used to kill his wife for fear of being exposed.”

  “He sounds lovely.”

  Tobias flashed a smile. “You don’t always get to pick who you defend.”

  She didn’t think that was true in a private firm, but she let it go. “So, he brought it in to you . . . and?”

  “Lila left the room and called the police.” His arms fell to his sides, and he smiled. “Cost us our case. The client and his brother had to plead. They tried to sue us, but Lila had followed the rules.”

  He acted like he’d shared some big morality lesson with her. “I’m not clear on the point of this story.”

  “A lot of other attorneys would have reminded the person about their earlier speech and made a big deal of going to the bathroom or taking a call, giving the person the chance to fix their mess.”

  Lawyers. “I don’t know how you do what you do.”

  “Criminal defense is more interesting than probate work. Trust me.” He waved a hand as if to dismiss the moment of amusement in his voice. “But my point is that you’re dealing with the same Lila. She follows the rules. She does not flinch.”

  That last part they agreed on . . . so far. But Ginny believed everyone had a flinching point. “Is that really the moral of your story?”

  “You think it says something else about her?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t like men who break the law. Or maybe she likes being in control. Or, like me, she hates when people don’t listen to her.” Ginny understood all of those. She also thought they fit Lila, either due to her father or in spite of him.

  “Like I said, doesn’t flinch.” He pointed to the street. “And here she is.”

  Lila turned into the driveway in the big SUV rental. She didn’t look surprised or sc
ared. She didn’t look like a woman who was worried about her husband either. No, her blank expression didn’t give away much at all.

  “Where have you been?” Ginny asked before Lila got to the porch.

  “Are you my babysitter now?”

  “Lila,” Tobias said, the warning obvious.

  “Fine.” Lila rolled her eyes. “I needed a drive to clear my head.”

  “From what?”

  “Her husband is missing,” Tobias said in a dry tone.

  “Right. That reminds me.” Ginny reached into her inside jacket pocket and pulled out the official document. “This is a search warrant. In about a minute, a whole lot of forensic types will descend on your house and start looking around. Anything you want to tell me first?”

  Tobias swore under his breath. “Interesting how you saved that bit of information to spring now and didn’t tell me while we were waiting for her to come home.”

  Ginny couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t flinch either.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE NEXT MORNING ABOUT A HUNDRED PEOPLE GATHERED AT the southern end of Cayuga Lake. Members of the sheriff’s office and a few police from some of the smaller communities in the area circled before handing out instructions. Two local television stations sent camera crews out.

  Ginny shut her car door and walked through the packed parking lot, searching for Pete. He came bounding away from the crowd and headed for her. “Looks like we got some extra law enforcement help. I heard the Ithaca Police Department is sending a few officers as well.”

  “They volunteered, and Charles said we couldn’t say no.” Ginny didn’t agree, but whatever.

  Pete watched Charles pick up a megaphone. “But when did he give the okay for a public search?”

  “He decided it was a win-win. Get the public looking and talking and make it clear the case is a priority.”

  Pete rolled his eyes. “You’d never know he’s about a year out from the next election.”

  “He’s always running. Pleasing people is nonstop.” It was a requirement of the job, which was part of the reason Ginny did not want that desk. “He’s also getting some pressure. Brent’s been calling in and getting the press to ask questions.”