Ethan felt the familiar rush of hate and fear. Bile rose in his stomach. Wilde’s goal may have been to terrorize Sutton, but Ethan had not been left out of the charade. It had started with him. The mistakes he’d made were going to haunt him forever, and he’d come to terms with this. He’d been silent for so long, though, that Ethan actually thought they were free of Wilde, of his knowledge and accusations.
He did know that bowing down wasn’t the way to make things come to a head.
“You have one minute to share everything you know, and if you don’t, I’m going to call up the very nice police officer who’s been hanging around and tell her to come arrest you for obstruction.”
“Oh, pu-lease. You won’t. You’ve never had the balls to do anything. That’s why Sutton hated you so much.”
“You don’t know where she is. You’re just playing with me.”
“Fine. Believe that if you want. But I saw her leave your house in the middle of the night, and I saw her get into a car. I have a license plate. Call the cops, and I will deny it all. Give me $50,000 and I’ll tell you the rest. There’s a place, Gentry’s Farm. It’s...”
“I know where it is, you sick fuck.”
“I figured you’d remember. You have half an hour. And leave your phone at home.”
The line went dead. Empty air. Nothing.
Ethan laid his head in his hands, allowed the feeling of complete and utter hopelessness take him over, stealing through his flesh like opium. What had he done? What had he done to their lives?
This was all on him, and he knew it.
When he finished the self-flagellation, he stood, went to the safe in Sutton’s office, pulled out the stack of cash they kept on hand in case of emergencies and, from under the couch cushions, an old World War I–era trench knife, the only weapon he allowed in the house, and an antique to boot. He wished he was a hunter, wished he had a gun. He wouldn’t hesitate to shoot the bastard who was making his life a living hell.
He put on a pair of hiking boots, grabbed a Maglite from the shelf in the pantry. Flicked it on to make sure the batteries were strong. The beam of light shone bright as day. Of course it did. Sutton would never let the batteries die.
He glanced out the front window. The media scrum was gone for the moment, all finished with their nonexistent story and off to dreamland. The cops weren’t taking him that seriously.
He put his mobile on the counter. Why have him leave the phone? That was a bizarre request.
All the while, his brain screamed, Don’t do this, call the bloody police, let them know. And his ego said, You can handle this. Be a man, for once. Stand up for her. Stand up for your wife. Get him in your sights and you can force him to tell you what he knows.
He enjoyed the sense of blood rising, the anger—scratch that—the rage building inside him. He felt alive. He felt strong. He felt dangerous.
He was going to teach Colin Wilde a lesson. It was time.
A CORROSIVE BEAST
Blackmail.
It is such a simple, easy act. Find someone’s weak spot, put them in a compromising position, get proof that can be used against them, and launch the attack.
I am an expert at this. I don’t employ the tactic often, but when I do, there are serious consequences. Real people get hurt. Which is what I like the best.
People panic when you threaten all they hold dear. I have absolutely no doubt Ethan will follow suit. He will listen to my instructions to the letter. When things don’t go the way he expects, he’ll scurry to call the pretty little towheaded cop, and then I won’t have any excuse to hold back.
The cop is catching up, I will give her that. Ethan is acting as predictably as always: panicking, freaking out, shutting down, worrying. Inebriated and sloppy. He’s so banal, I simply don’t know what anyone sees in him. He is almost too dull to play with. Almost.
But the cop. The cop is interesting. She’s an acquired taste. Blunt. Very blunt. There’s no elegance to her, no finesse. That will be learned as she grows into a real investigator. Right now she’s easily led, a perfectly manipulatable puppet who can be shunted off in any direction I please. A bumper car. She’s a bumper car, fumbling through all the information provided, trying to stay upright. Trying to keep her head above water.
There’s an image. The sweet towheaded cop, water lapping at her sharp collarbones, the naked, pink flesh getting crepey and wrinkled from the soaking wetness. Dipped in silver wet and slippery green algae. The water rising higher and higher as the shadows deepen...
Sorry, we shouldn’t go there. Not just yet.
Smash cut to Sutton Montclair.
That’s better.
Here’s the deal. Brass tacks. If you give a society enough information, lay down enough threads, someone will have to follow the right one. It’s human nature. It’s the way our minds work. In a linear fashion, point A to point B to point C. So few of us have the capability to go from A to Q to H. It takes a special person to think that way.
I’m that special person.
But you already know that.
LET’S GO FOR A DRIVE
In the garage, the perfectly straight, organized, nary a spider or speck of dust in sight garage that attached to the back of their house through a covered walkway, Ethan stopped cold.
Her car. He’d forgotten to check her car. She’d left her keys...
A brief flash, an image formed, sending his heart to his throat, choking him with its intensity: Sutton, slumped in the front seat, engine running, a tube from the exhaust pipe into the front window. But when he got up the courage to look in her front seat, there was nothing. No one. The cupboard was bare.
Ethan drove a BMW 335i convertible, black with gray interior, latest model. He traded in his cars dutifully every two years. Sutton had a more practical forest green X5, or as she called it, the Official Williamson County Soccer Mom car. Not that they were keeping up with the Joneses. Not really. Ellen Jones drove an I3. Electric, sustainable, practical—Ellen to a T.
Ethan didn’t know why he was thinking about Ellen, other than he hadn’t looked in Sutton’s car on day one, which struck him as a Very Stupid Move. Clearly he needed to read more mystery novels; he would know better what to do to find his wife. Amateur sleuth he was not.
Steeling himself, he unlocked the door—they always locked their cars even in the garage, a theft deterrent—and looked inside. Empty.
Oh, the relief. What would he have said if she’d been here the whole time? It would have looked bad for him, very bad.
His search of the X5 was brief. Her car was as clean and organized as she was. Nothing out of place, no stray receipts or empty peppermint wrappers or barrettes. Everything in its place. There was nothing amiss.
He glanced at his watch, cursed, and jumped into his own vehicle. When he got back, he’d look at the GPS, see where she’d been last. Maybe that would give him a clue, though she usually walked most places during the day.
He tore out of the garage. Gentry’s Farm wasn’t far from their house, about a ten-minute drive in bad traffic. Which was always in Franklin. It was one of the reasons they walked everywhere, the constant traffic jam of locals and tourists. Tonight was no different—the roads were busy, the lights were barely synced, and his quick ten-minute jaunt was inching into twenty before he broke free of the melee and flew west down Highway 96.
He tasted bile every time he thought about Gentry’s Farm. Wilde knew exactly how to punish him.
It was their first trip out after the baby was born. They’d taken Dashiell to look at the pumpkins. Halloween was past, but there was still plenty of fall flora around, leftovers from the recent holiday haunted hayrides. Sutton couldn’t resist the idea of a baby in a cornucopia, à la Anne Geddes.
He had to agree, “Dashiell in the Field” was an unexpect
ed pleasure. They’d almost filled the memory card on the camera, they’d taken so many shots. It was how they announced the birth of their boy, a photo of him snuggled in an angelic white sleep suit, surrounded by green-and-yellow gourds and bright orange pumpkins and a small haystack Sutton had laughingly constructed, the whole tableau dotted with the red-gold maple leaves they’d found in a tidy pile nearby. Their bountiful babe. Their bounty.
Colin Wilde knew about the photos. They’d put them on their social media accounts gleefully, racking up likes and comments. Surely that’s why he’d picked this place, to stick the knife in a bit farther, twist it inside Ethan’s intestines, make them jump and roil.
Ethan was going to kill the bastard. He knew this as certainly as he knew the moon dictated the tides.
It was simply a question of when.
TAKE A WALK ON THE WILDE SIDE
Ethan parked near the main entrance to Gentry’s Farm. The gate was closed, but he knew that wouldn’t be allowed as an excuse for missing this meeting. The darkness was severe, clouds blotting out the moon, so he switched on the Maglite and climbed over the metal railings. The farm hadn’t tried very hard to keep people out, trusting the good area and their tony, well-heeled neighbors. And really, what were people going to do in a field?
His mom’s face floated in front of him, and he remembered the stupid joke she’d told him when they’d sat him down to talk about the birds and the bees. They, because the Montclairs did everything together, including explaining how sex worked to their teenage son, who knew everything already, but humored them because this was a rite of passage and he wanted to see how they handled it.
Frankly, as it turned out. They’d spared no detail, and had done it with good humor, tag-teaming him with embarrassingly detailed descriptions. They even had a book with diagrams, so he’d be able to identify all the right parts when the time came. At the end, his mother had chucked him under the chin and said, “One last thing to remember, son. Don’t ever make love near a cornfield.”
Red-faced and mortified—not only had his mother used the term making love in a sentence, she’d talked openly about erections and vaginas and pleasuring a woman first and all sorts of other things he would just as soon forget—he’d played along.
“Why not?”
“’Cause that corn has ears!”
He’d been so caught off guard he’d started to laugh, and the three of them had howled together, then companionably gone out for curry.
He missed them. He missed Sutton. When he’d told her that story, she’d fallen over laughing, then suggested they find themselves a cornfield straightaway to test the theory.
They hadn’t, though he’d wanted to, that day with the baby. With his loves, together and perfect.
He hoofed it deeper into the field. There was a track, beaten dirt, for the hayrides, he supposed. He followed it in.
Arrived deep in the field at thirty minutes past the call, on the dot.
He stopped by a hayrick. Wilde had said to wait. The money was heavy in the bag. Ethan ground his teeth and said what passed for a prayer in his nonbeliever’s mind. If he gives me Sutton, I won’t kill him. I swear.
Not right away, that is. I’ll wait, then kill him when he isn’t looking for me. And I’ll do it slowly.
Footsteps. He ducked down instinctively, the trench knife out of his pocket, brushing his knuckles, the heavy metal blade open.
A light flashed in his eyes, momentarily blinding him.
“Whoa! What the bloody—”
“Who the hell are you and why the hell are you sneaking around here? This is private property, and you’re trespassing.”
Ethan stood, stowing the knife, though the blade flashed in the man’s light, and he heard a little gasp. “I have a gun, you idiot—”
“Sir, I’m sorry, I’m putting it away. You scared me. I’m supposed to be meeting a friend.”
“In my field? Get the hell out of here.”
Ethan put both hands up. “Right. Brilliant. I’m on my way out. Sorry for the confusion.”
He hurried toward the road. The old farmer stood, watching impassively, until Ethan could no longer see the lights behind him, could hear the whiz of the cars on the pavement.
He couldn’t go back into the field without being shot, or at least reported. He had no way of contacting Wilde without heading back to the house. He was scared and angry and carrying fifty grand in a sack and he decided, Fuck it, I’m going to get a drink.
THE TIES THAT BIND
Two hours later, hopped up on excellent old-fashioneds from Grays, he found his way back to the house. His phone lay untouched on the counter: no calls, no messages, no texts. Wilde had been screwing with him. Playing the same sort of games he always had.
Ethan called the number back, but it was blocked. Of course it was.
He put the money back in the safe, went to his office, tripping a little as he walked down the hall. He was very tipsy. He felt safe again in his lair, but the feeling fled when he turned on his computer. The New York Times piece had run, despite Bill’s assurances he’d get it quashed, and the internet was abuzz with the news about the sudden runner of Sutton Montclair.
Ten minutes of peace, and then Ethan’s mobile started ringing again, nonstop, reporters from all over trying to get a quote. How did they find his number? It was unlisted, and he and Sutton had always been so careful about giving out their numbers, but someone had found it and passed it around, and they were hunting him now. Bill. He’d bet Bill gave it to them, hoping for a juicy quote and a backlist sales bump. Or Wilde, torturing him, posted it somewhere.
He didn’t know which was worse.
It was all too much. He couldn’t take it. He felt the familiar chest squeeze, the worry and concern turning into a monster of anxiety. The media encamped on his front lawn, the police driving by, Wilde calling and threatening to blackmail him, Sutton’s friends shrinking away from him—Dashiell’s ghost, don’t forget your boy—it was too much.
He felt the desperation creeping in, the walls in his office getting close. He needed to leave. He needed to get on a fucking plane and depart for environs unknown, like Sutton, and not for the first time, the anger redirected toward her, at her selfishness. For leaving him to clean up her mess.
Maybe he needed to go for a run. Yes, that was the right thing to do. He’d wave to any reporters lurking in the shadows and run in the moonlight, the liquor sloshing in his stomach, then hole up again and ride out the storm.
If only. Ethan from another world would do that. Ethan now would sit quietly and let the panic overtake him, pour a fresh drink, and wallow while obliquely staring out the windows.
What to do about Wilde? He would call back, Ethan knew that much. He’d probably been scared off by the farmer with the gun, too. Paying him off would be a mistake, he knew that in his bones. How could Wilde really know where Sutton was? It was a ploy, he was sure of it, and Wilde would simply come back again and again and again until the well was dry.
And yet, Ethan had trotted out to the field with the money in the bag to see.
Isn’t that love, wife? The risks I’m taking for you?
And then it hit him.
The missing $50,000, the money Sutton had taken.
It was the same amount Wilde asked for.
He stopped moving, sat down hard. Thought it through.
Wilde, claiming he knew where Sutton was.
Wilde, asking for money in order to share that information.
Wilde, threatening him not to go to the police.
Wilde had already hurt Sutton. It wasn’t hard to imagine him doing it again.
With a sigh, Ethan went to the phone and called Officer Graham.
She answered on the first ring. “Have you heard from her, sir?”
“No, I haven’t. I’ve been searching through our financials again, though, and I think I’m missing some money. It’s well disguised, but Sutton has withdrawn $50,000 from our accounts over the past three months.”
He could hear Officer Graham blow out her breath. “You’re sure? We’ve been running your financials and nothing stood out.”
He let that go for the moment. Having strangers poking around in his world made him more than uncomfortable. But he had to find Sutton. He knew now this wasn’t a stunt. This was a cry for help. She’d run from Wilde. Not from him.
“I’m sure. The withdrawals are coded, and each one has a T in it. T is her tax code for travel.”
“If your wife was trying to take money out of your accounts unnoticed, why would she bother coding them? Wouldn’t that give her away?”
“Yes and no. Withdrawals without a code, though, would set off all the alarms. She’s simply following her usual pattern, hoping it will cover her tracks.”
“Has she not been traveling, Mr. Montclair?”
“No, she hasn’t. She hasn’t been on the road at all since our son died. Nor have I.”
“T could stand for something else.”
“It could. Certainly. But my wife is a meticulous person. It’s almost as if she wanted me to find this and not be worried about her.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Montclair. Especially in light of this new information, perhaps we should just let things play out. Perhaps she has just removed herself from the marriage for a time.”
“Or perhaps she was pressured to remove the money, in payment of some kind, and when she couldn’t satisfy the demands of her kidnapper, she was killed.”
“That’s entirely possible.”
Ethan stopped breathing for a moment; his heart thumped once, hard, then ceased to beat. It took him a minute to catch his breath. “What are you saying? Have you found something? Do you know something you’re not telling me?”
“No, sir. But my job is to look at all the angles. I appreciate this information, and I’ll keep in touch. As soon as I have something, I’ll let you know.”
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