The Missing Woman: Utterly gripping psychological suspense with heart-thumping twists

by Georgina Cross

  “Do you like them?”

  I breathe in the sweet rosy scent. “Yes, they’re gorgeous.” I smile at him. “What’s this for?”

  “To cheer you up.” He shrugs. “It can’t be fun having your name in the papers.”

  I don’t say anything in return, only press the flowers close to my chest.

  “You okay?” he asks with that Southern twang of his. “You hangin’ in there?”

  “I think so.” And I bite my lip. I’m honestly not sure.

  “Any sign of your passport?”

  My eyes shoot up. “What? You think Sabine Miller has it too?”

  He holds up his hands defensively. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. Just been reading the news, that’s all.”

  I go quiet again.

  “If I had to guess,” he says. “I think you’re getting caught up in a whole lot of nothin’. Just a simple mistake.” He shoots me a smile. “Some of those people will say just about anything to get out of trouble.”

  “You mean Monica?”

  “Or that Jacob Andrews guy. My bet is they’re still going to pin this on him somehow.”

  I squeeze the flowers tight. “Some people are starting to think it’s the husband.”

  And he snorts. “I suppose that’s what everyone wants to think. But something doesn’t add up. He wasn’t home, he wouldn’t want to hurt his wife. He still has my vote come November.”

  A buzz shakes the console inside my car. It’s my phone. I try opening the door to reach it but fumble with the bouquet in my hands. Terry shuffles around me to lift the handle. “Let me help.”

  “No, I can get it.”

  Another buzz. He lifts my phone. Another message. “Someone sure wants to get your attention.”

  “Probably my kids.” I jostle the flowers to extend my hand.

  His eyes pass over my screen, a quick glance. “Here you go,” he says.

  I stare hard at the messages—Sabine. The burner phone she’s been able to power on again since I brought her a charger.

  Come home!! Tish tried opening the shed. We need to find that USB drive before it’s too late.

  Thirty-Eight

  “I thought you said the air conditioning isn’t working,” Tish tells me when I arrive home.

  “Hmm?” I feign ignorance, my cheeks smarting at yet another lie I’m forced to tell my best friend.

  “The shed.” Tish motions out the window. “When I was outside with Charlie, I could hear it rattling against the wall.”

  I look out the window. “That’s weird.”

  “The door’s locked. And then the whole thing switched off.”

  My heart hammers hard. “Still doesn’t sound like it’s working properly.” I throw a glance in her direction to see if she’s buying it.

  Tish frowns. “Call for a service.”

  “I will.” To distract her, I show her the bouquet of roses.

  Her face brightens and she’s no longer looking out the window. “Who are those from?”

  “Terry.”

  “Wow.” A playful smile. “This could really be turning into something.”

  I pull a vase from the cupboard and add the flowers. My hands separate the stems.

  From the couch, a voice pipes up. It’s Charlie. “Mom, I’m so bored. There’s nothing to do.”

  Tish rolls her eyes at me. “He’s been like this all day. I haven’t wanted to go anywhere with the reporters.”

  Charlie flops onto his back. “How much longer?” he whines. “How much longer are we gonna stay here?”

  “Until Mom figures out what to do.”

  He kicks his feet. “Well, I want to leave. I want something to do.”

  She sighs heavily, the frustration circling her face.

  “I have an idea,” I tell him. “What about one of Taylor’s movies? She has that one you love, Trolls.” I give him an excited smile. “Why don’t you go watch it?”

  His eyes light up and Tish flashes me a thank you look. She reaches for Charlie’s hand and leads him to Taylor’s bedroom.

  Once the door shuts, my eyes rip toward the backyard. The shed. I need to talk to Sabine. Her text messages sounding the alarm even as I stand here pretending to be calm.

  Moving across the grass, I remove a key from my back pocket and unlock the shed door. She’s waiting for me—how she’s managing to sit on that bench day after day I can’t imagine, a pillow and blanket I’ve brought to her for added comfort even though it can’t be pleasant. But she insists she’s okay. She reminds me every chance she gets how determined she is.

  At her feet, a large basin of water she’s been using to bathe. A stack of towels I’ve been taking with me to wash.

  “Tish came too close,” she says as soon as I shut the door.

  “I’ll figure out a way to encourage her to go home. We can’t risk—”

  Sabine sets her hands firmly on her knees. “I need to move soon.”

  I stare at her face. Tish in my house. The reporters that routinely swing by. Neighbors outside.

  “But we still need to get that USB drive,” she says. “The video is damaging. We need it.”

  Her eyes widen, and so do mine. It’s the one piece of evidence we’ve been discussing, the one crucial item we haven’t recovered. One of the many parts of this ordeal that’s been troubling us most: on Friday night before the dinner party, she checked the camera. But the USB drive was gone.

  A noise at the door and I jump—I didn’t lock it behind me, didn’t think to—and the hinges creak open, the sound of the door rattling closed again. A wave of fear shoots across my body as my eyes lock in on the sight of Sabine’s face plummeting. She looks stricken, her cheeks turning ghost white.

  I whirl on my feet.

  I’ll come up with excuses. I’ll explain it to Tish. I’ll tell her what Sabine is doing here.

  But it’s not Tish.

  Standing in the shed, a mere ten feet away, is Terry.

  “What are you doin’ in here?” he asks. But then his eyes flick to Sabine. “And what is she doing here?”

  Sabine rises to her feet and instinctively I move closer to her. But she’s shaking—I am too. Her hand trembles as she clutches me.

  The shock in Terry’s eyes as he stares at Sabine, his gaze turning and roaming the rest of the shed—what is undoubtedly her hiding place.

  But then he sneers, a smile stretching across his face until the effect is nearly sadistic.

  Chilling.

  Like he’s caught us in something big and he knows it.

  Sabine and I cower back. But this only makes him step closer.

  “Hello, Erica,” he says to me coolly, and I jerk where I stand—like magic, his Southern accent is gone.

  What’s replaced it is the voice I’ve heard a hundred times before. Calm and confident. The man speaking from a podium, the man we’re supposed to trust.

  His eyes return to Sabine—menacing. A predator who’s trapped his prey.

  “Hello, my love,” he tells her.

  Lifting the baseball cap from his head, he smooths one hand along his hair and ruffles the strands into place. With his other hand, he reaches for his mouth and peels the mustache from his skin in one slow excruciating tug. The mustache, golden with flecks of brown—the one I watched him pat absent-mindedly with his fingers while he was thinking, the subtle tic he displayed while speaking to me—is now ripping from his face. He crumples it in his hand.

  I can’t breathe—the air sucked out of the room. Sabine can’t either.

  But of course I knew. Sabine did too. We’ve known for weeks.

  Standing in front of us, and far too close for our comfort, the very man we’ve been trying to get away from, a sickness ratcheting in my throat until my knees threaten to buckle, is… Mark Miller.

  Part Six

  Two weeks earlier

  Thirty-Nine

  Sabine

  My plan to leave my husband should have worked perfectly. I thought I had it figured ou
t, I really did. I would escape from Mark and nail him in the process.

  They always suspect the husband, isn’t that what I told Erica? Most of the officers will try to clear his name, but one of those detectives will latch on. They’ll have to. I’m banking on it, and I’m hoping to God I’m right.

  But if they don’t press charges and Mark comes after me, I’ll have my backup plan.

  Erica’s help is a godsend. Our friendship has returned to what it used to be and I’m so thankful to have her once again in my life. Not only because of her passport but for everything else she’s doing for me.

  Hiding my belongings inside her shed.

  Keeping our secret.

  And something else: Dating Terry Prescott when we know he’s Mark Miller.

  Because with the many other sordid details about my husband, here is another one: he gets a thrill disguising himself to date other women. He’s broken my heart a thousand times. It’s sick and enough to make me scream.

  His deceit is something I discovered after one of his recent trips to DC. The disguises he keeps in his suitcase. The charges he makes on our credit card for bars located miles from his hotel. The pictures I took of him visiting a rundown bar and grill in Scottsboro, someplace I’d never heard him talk about going before, and somewhere he didn’t think I would trail him.

  But I did. And my husband—the man who usually dresses neatly in pressed khaki pants, sports coats, and an American flag pinned to his chest—has changed into a T-shirt and jeans, a baseball cap kept low across his forehead.

  When he left, the bartender described someone who meets with a different woman every few months. Who the women are the bartender doesn’t care. And as for the man, he doesn’t care either. Out here and in a different Alabama county, no one, including the bartender, recognizes him as Mark Miller, the great Madison County commissioner.

  At this hole-in-the-wall, most of the people couldn’t care less about the man’s dating life: someone who keeps a low profile, occasionally parking in the lot in an everyday run-of-the-mill truck he uses when no one’s looking. He doesn’t cause any trouble. And when he leaves, he tips modestly, doing nothing to catch attention. The bartender says he makes a point of keeping out of his customers’ business as long as they keep out of his—adding, the man spoke with a heavy Southern accent just like about everyone else out here. “He sounds like my Uncle Joe,” he tells me.

  But my husband doesn’t speak with a strong Southern accent. And he shouldn’t be meeting with other women. He sure as hell shouldn’t be dating them either.

  As Erica now knows, my life is nothing like anyone imagines. Many believe that what I have is remarkable, that I’m so lucky. I would never want to leave. But they couldn’t be more wrong.

  Mark beats me. He blames me for not bearing children. And he’s controlling, forcing me to live in a highly engineered marriage where nothing is of my own choosing. I’m a puppet in his own election campaign. Divorce, he reminds me, is out of the question.

  But while I’m faithful and uphold our marriage vows, he can’t be bothered to do the same even with as high-profile as he is. It must be the thrill of the game. Something distorted and twisted, a break from the tension and pressures of his life. His job. Alternates for me—women he meets in seedy hotel rooms. Beating me must provide him with the insane power trip he needs.

  Once Erica granted me permission to travel with her passport, the rest of my plan fell into place. She will be my confidante, someone I can talk to during my final days existing as Sabine Miller. She will help me escape and drive me away, and I’ll catch a flight somewhere—anywhere. Anywhere but here.

  But before that, Erica will also do something else, something critical. She’ll reach out to Mark through a dating app. I found out he goes by the name Terry Prescott to pick up other women and he’ll never be able to connect the two of us. I’ve never mentioned to him Erica’s name.

  Erica will meet with him and take pictures with her phone. When he’s not looking, close-ups of his face. She’ll record their conversations too. Further proof Mark Miller is an adulterer.

  She’ll also sneak into my house. When she knows he’s on his way to meet her, she’ll come through the back door and use the alarm code I’ll share with her. She’ll be free of the police and their watching eyes as Mark will make excuses for them to leave. He’ll want them to go so he can get out of the house and meet Erica for their dates.

  But besides photos of Mark dating Erica, something huge is missing. We still need that USB drive—the critical evidence of Mark beating me. The camera is still in his office where I hid it, but the USB drive is not there and it’s not in his desk drawer. Maybe he’s crushed it… Maybe he’s gotten rid of it… Erica looked everywhere she could but came up empty.

  The horror Friday night when I first realized it was missing. It was just before the dinner party started, the rest of the night blowing up in my face too.

  Monica and Carol stopped by earlier to check on me. They were dropping off desserts while simultaneously complaining about their marriages, how bored they were, although Carol was thrilled about a trip Ted booked for their anniversary. Monica teased that maybe she could sneak away and meet up with the concierge boy, and Carol laughed, saying, “That’s exactly something you would do.”

  What Monica said next made my blood boil. And maybe it was the wine I was drinking while cooking, the wine I’d been sipping all afternoon. My nerves, lately, getting the better of me with everything I’m planning.

  Monica said, “You’re so lucky, Sabine. At least you have someone who is still gorgeous. I’d sleep with him all the time.” And I wanted to scream. The fear I have recently—one of so many—that Mark is reaching out to Monica behind my back, that he’s wanting to rekindle their relationship from college. The two of them always flirting, but to make matters worse, my belief she’s been actually reciprocating.

  “He’s so perfect,” she told me.

  And I snapped, the rage rushing through my lungs. “But he hurts me! You know this. You can’t think he’s a good person.”

  They only stared at in disbelief. They didn’t want to hear me tell them… again.

  Carol looked away, muttering softly, “It’s not true.”

  Monica insisted, “He wouldn’t do that to you, Sabine.”

  And I was back to having no one believe me. My two supposed best friends not wanting to think Mark could ever hurt another person, least of all his wife.

  Describing Mark’s violent ways was something I’d shared with them once before, but they hadn’t supported me. Without proof, Carol made excuses and thought we both got carried away in our argument, both of us at fault. Monica reminded me of how much pressure he was under. “It’s a small price to pay for being with the men we’ve married,” she’d say.

  I couldn’t believe what was coming out of their mouths—the shock wave racing its way through my stomach until my cries stayed trapped inside my throat. Their sickening dismissal. Their very defense of Mark, and even their own marriages.

  What do they put up with? I wondered. Their marriages to Ted and Frank. They’ve never told me, and truth is, I shouldn’t have been afraid to ask. The nausea spread through my stomach.

  But before the dinner party, here was a chance for me to show them proof about Mark. The bruises from the last beating had faded, but there was something I could do—I could show them the video. Proof their beloved Mark Miller was a monster and lashes out at me.

  I led Monica and Carol to his office and reached high on the shelf where I knew the camera was hidden, the device still charging. But when I cradled the camera in my hands and pressed play, nothing showed. No video. The women stared blankly. When I checked for the USB drive, it was gone.

  A pulsating fear pumped through my chest—I’ll never in my life forget that feeling. Terror raced up and down my spine as I could only imagine what happened: Mark. He found it. He’s on to me.

  Monica and Carol didn’t understand. “What video?
Why would you hide a camera? He doesn’t hurt you. You’re under a lot of stress too. You should relax—"

  I was trembling all over. “But he has, and he does. And if I don’t leave soon, I’ll regret it.” Spinning from the door, I was beyond freaking out, the words spewing from my mouth. “I should leave this place. Get away.”

  Monica’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t go anywhere.”

  “Not while he’s running for election,” Carol said. “You know this. Not while you have engagements scheduled for months.”

  “A vacation. Later.” I tried to recover, but Monica watched me carefully. She crossed her arms and stared at me pointedly.

  An alarm went off, a hideously loud shriek, and our heads whipped in the direction of the kitchen. It was another second before I realized it was the oven going off.

  I broke free from the women and moved quickly down the hall, hoping—praying—they would ignore my random mumbling. But Monica did not. Once again, she betrayed me. She went in search of Mark and told him everything I said.

  With the table set, every single one of us moved steadily through bottle after bottle. The mood so tense that several times Monica and Carol’s husbands darted their eyes around the dining room asking if everything was all right. Mark could hardly look at me, and when he did, he only asked me to bring more wine. But his words came out as a bark.

  I jumped—Carol did too—but another glance at my friend and she was changing tack, plastering a reassuring smile on her face and commenting to Ted about the delicious beef tenderloin. Anything to distract him, and herself I imagine. For Carol, it’s better to pretend everything is going to be fine. Sweep it under a rug. She only wants to get through this evening, and so do I.

  I poured my husband another glass of pinot noir. Turning to Monica, I asked her if she’d like more too but what I really wanted to do was fill up her glass so I could throw it in her face.