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

by Georgina Cross

  She didn’t answer, and I continued standing, letting the bottle hover as I glared at her.

  Frank, Monica’s husband, broke the silence. “What the hell is going on between you two?” His eyes zipped around the table. “With everyone?”

  No one answered. No one knew quite where to start.

  But after a moment, Mark brought his glass to his lips. “We’re fine,” he answered him. “Just figuring out our allegiances.”

  “Allegiances?”

  Mark looked coolly at Frank. “How much do you trust your wife?”

  The question was abrupt, startling Frank. He turned to his wife. “I trust Monica more than anything.”

  Mark rewarded him with a calculated smile. “Interesting,” he said. And then added, “I do too. She is loyal.”

  I clenched my hands around the bottle, silencing a voice inside my head that was screaming. My cheeks burned. Monica cracked a smile, basking in their attention. She had yet to meet my eyes.

  “A one-of-a-kind wife,” Mark continued. “You’re so lucky.”

  “She is, isn’t she?” Frank exhaled and reached for her hand.

  But I laughed. “You can’t possibly trust her.” The bottle swayed in my hands—I was certifiably drunk, drunker than this afternoon. Angry and hurt. The fight with Mark still ringing in my ears after he accused me about the video camera.

  Frank turned to me. Monica’s eyes swiveled to me next.

  “She only looks out for herself.”

  “Sabine, that’s enough!” Mark shouted.

  But I didn’t flinch—not this time.

  Through drunken lips, I said, “No, you started it. Talking about Monica and how amazing she is. How loyal.” I laughed again. “If you only knew, Frank. If you only knew how much she doesn’t love you anymore. The men she’s sleeping with behind your back—”

  “Sabine!” Carol shrieked.

  Monica frantically turned to her husband. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  Another laugh. “You guys want to talk about allegiances…” I stared hard at Monica. “How you can cheat on your husband with…” I let my eyes trail to Mark, and at the last second, let them slip away. “… with these men… and you’re the one who’s called loyal.” I pressed a finger against my chest. “I’m the one who’s loyal. I’m the one who’s been putting up with everything.” I glared at Mark. “I’ve been nothing but a good wife to you and you know it.”

  Mark slammed his hands on the table, every plate and glass rattling, one of the wine glasses spilling red. “But now you’re the one who’s talking about leaving. Getting out of here.” He pursed his lips. “You can’t leave. And if I find out you’ve been up to something—”

  “Up to what? I’ve never cheated on you!”

  “Your own little surveillance…” He let his sentence drift.

  My heart pummeled in my throat.

  The silence broke when Mark’s cell phone rang. It was coming from inside his pocket and he ignored it at first, only continued to stare, the moment lasting painfully long until everyone in the room looked ready to jump from their skin.

  The ringing stopped, and what was left was silence.

  Until it started up again.

  “Answer it!” Ted pleaded, and Carol jumped, this time gripping her husband’s arm.

  With a yank, Mark pulled the phone from his pocket. He looked ready to hit end but after taking another look at the caller ID, his jaw set, some sort of surprised recognition, and he moved the phone slowly to his ear. “Mark Miller speaking.” A steady crease streaked across his forehead. Whatever the person was saying to him grabbed his full attention until he stood from his chair.

  “Jacob, what are you talking about? Don’t you dare threaten me!” The color in Mark’s face drained from his forehead to his neck. “I would never do anything like that. Campaign funds—no, absolutely not. You’ve got it all wrong.” A glance at the rest of us before he marched to the other room.

  I excused myself and ran for the hall. Hands shaking, I felt Monica’s eyes on me while everyone else craned their necks listening to what Mark was shouting into the phone.

  I bolted straight for the bathroom. With the door closed, I tried shutting out the noise. Holding my hands against my ribcage, I leaned against the wall and took several deep breaths.

  This was not how I wanted tonight to go. Not when I was this close to escaping. Me, drunk and stupid and thinking I could show Monica and Carol the camera and they wouldn’t run and tell on me. My stupid self blabbing and talking about leaving.

  My mind whirled again—Monica is nothing but a backstabbing friend. Carol will always take her side. My husband is a cold maniacal bastard and—

  I kicked the wall—dammit, he will try to destroy that video, I just know it. He’ll think he’s gained one over me. He’s furious, but he’ll rest assured the moment he’s wiped the tape clean. He’ll be furious I tried setting him up in the first place which means more hell will be coming my way when everyone leaves this evening.

  But then I think of what I heard Mark saying on the phone—talking to Jacob which can only mean it was Jacob Andrews. Questions about Mark’s campaign funds. Mark desperately refuting them. What did Jacob know? Was he closing in on my husband too?

  When I returned to the dining room, Mark appeared also. He was quiet and looking sick to his stomach and I remember thinking, good. Someone else knows what a scumbag you’ve become. They might also have evidence.

  Everything about that night seemingly went from bad to worse—a vicious fight between Frank and Monica. Frank demanding to know who she’d been sleeping with before demanding the rest of us tell him. Monica swallowing another glass of wine until a screaming fight broke out between us too.

  Mark sat at the head of the table and clutched a glass of whiskey in his hand. He didn’t say much but was clearly shaken by what Jacob said. The net closing in. At one point, he shattered his glass. Frank slumped beside him as Carol and Ted gathered their things and headed for the door. Monica pleaded with Frank not to listen to me, that she only loved him.

  And when they left, Monica’s hateful letter—the words I read in one fell swoop, my eyes swimming with tears, before balling up the letter and throwing it in the trash. Her hurtful threats, how she wanted me to die. Our friendship, ruined. Although I knew it was ruined a long time before. I just didn’t think she’d put it in writing.

  I reminded myself, only a few more days and then I’ll be rid of them. All of them. A new life. A chance at starting over. I’ll let Erica know when it’s time to pull the trigger. But not yet… we’re getting close but not yet…

  Except nothing ever goes to script, I should have known that. No plan is ever solid. Changes are made, surprises come up. Some of them so frightening I never saw them coming.

  And we’ve been making up for it ever since, Erica and myself. Scrambling to catch up. We’re not sure what will happen next.

  Because what happened Saturday night after the pool caught us both by surprise.

  Part Seven

  Present

  Forty

  The heat in the shed is overwhelming. Even though Sabine ran the air conditioning earlier, the cooler air is gone—all of it sucked from the room when the door opened and we found ourselves standing face to face with… Mark Miller.

  How did he find us? How did he know we were here?

  But here he is, menacing and towering over us. Standing in the shed. Blocking our path with absolutely no indication he’s backing down. Veins pulsing in his neck. A frightful tightening around his eyes.

  He’s trapped us and he knows it.

  Daggers of fear rip through my heart.

  “You thought you could get away with this,” he says, clenching the baseball cap in his hands.

  Sabine falters against me, almost fainting, and I reach one arm to lift her, my other arm crossing in front of her body as a shield. But that only makes him sneer.

  “What? You think that’s going to h
elp any?” He snorts in my direction before his eyes worm their way back to Sabine. He takes a long, good look at her. “Here you are, sweetheart. Safe and sound. And to think I feared you’d been kidnapped. Hurt. Killed. The crazy idea you might have already fled. When all along, you’ve been right here. You’ve been hiding…” He shakes his head but the look on his face is nothing but bone-chilling. “You’ve been hiding in plain sight.”

  I see it in his eyes: the once-familiar look he gave me across the table at the bar sitting as Terry Prescott, the eyes that turned away and pretended to be shy when I snapped a picture of him during our hike. Those eyes as Mark Miller, the consummate politician who once appeared so warm and welcoming—trusting—and promising transparency for a better tomorrow, for every time we would reward him with our votes. Those eyes are now nothing but cold and full of foreboding.

  His stare roams the length of each of our bodies until my skin crawls.

  Turning to me, he says, “You. Pretending to date me when you’re really only helping my wife.” He cocks his eyebrow, a strange form of amusement curling his lips. “It was clever, I’ll give you that. I didn’t suspect it at first, didn’t think. Not until Monica said she found out about your link to Sabine as teenagers. When we went hiking, your questions about hiding video cameras.” He jeers. “You were just trying to rattle me, weren’t you? Get me thinking about”—he points at Sabine—“that camera you hid.”

  Mark lifts his hand, and roughly, he pushes aside a gardening shovel, then tips over a box of nails, the sound of hard metal clanging to the floor, each nail slamming against concrete and setting my teeth on edge. Sabine lets out a small whimper.

  He checks behind the shelf. He looks beside a bag of mulch, but nothing. And I know what he’s looking for: Sabine’s getaway bag and my passport, the items that are tucked beneath the reading bench. A stack of cash that will help Sabine start her life over. Everything, I’m painfully aware, that is hidden inches from our feet.

  I hold my breath. The temperature in the room is stifling.

  Mark knocks over a bottle of fertilizer. He shoves against the lawnmower, shaking it, as he looms closer. He’s narrowed the distance to five feet.

  Sweat beads across his upper lip. His jaw tightens and more sweat trickles down his neck. On my own skin, a clamminess that spreads the width of my back. The constant banging of my heart against my ribcage.

  Mark glares at me. “Your phone. I saw it today. I brought you flowers as a bullshit excuse since I wanted to get near you and confirm that you’re really this Erica person from high school, Sabine’s long-ago friend.” He laughs and turns his eyes at his wife. “Your messages couldn’t have come at a better time, my love. My God, it was perfect.” He mimics her voice. “Tish tried opening the shed. We need to find that USB drive. And I thought, no way. Could it be that easy? Is that really you sending those texts? You’re hiding at her house?”

  He rakes a hand through his hair, pausing to let his words sink in. We’ve been so careful. We’ve tried to be so methodical, and yet, Sabine’s panicked messages came at the most awful time. How could she have known?

  Every part of me is shaking to my core. Sabine’s body bristles against my arm, the dampness of her skin pressed against mine.

  “And, honey,” he says, his words dripping with sarcasm. “Here I was thinking something bad really happened to you. That you’d been taken. There was even a poll about whether you were alive or dead. Did you see it? So many guessed you were long gone. Dead in a ditch somewhere…” He curls his lips upward. “I had no idea I’d get that many answers.”

  My breath rockets from my lungs. “You created that poll? You’re Trevor Blankenship?”

  He provides a ruthless grin. “Guilty.”

  “You sick son-of-a-bitch,” Sabine whispers.

  “I was just feeling the pulse of my constituents,” he says. “Always a good idea to get poll numbers, right?” He tilts his head at Sabine. “But you had us fooled. You really had me worried.”

  “You should be worried!” Sabine spits out. “You should be—”

  But Mark holds up a hand. “Tell me how you did it. I’m stunned, I really am.” He says this with an eerie chuckle. “I’d love to know.”

  “I left.”

  Mark rolls his eyes. “No shit you left. But how? What happened? After a hell of a Friday night, you managed to go to the pool with your friends. Everything seemed okay.”

  She doesn’t answer, and I’m wondering if she’s trying to figure out what to tell him—or how much she wants to tell him.

  Mark prompts. “You made up with Monica and Carol…” Still no word from Sabine and he tries again. “Which surprised the hell out of me after that letter… wow… something so spiteful. But all three of you hugged and said you’d forgive each other.” He rubs his chin. “I had no idea you’re such a great liar and could lie to my face too. And who knew how much that letter would come in handy? Taking the investigation off me for a little while with big thanks to Monica.”

  Sabine jumps. “You found it in the trash, didn’t you? You wanted to show it to the police and pin it on her.”

  He smiles. “Like I said, it came in handy.”

  Her voice breaks. “Monica has always had this sick loyalty to you, choosing you over me I don’t know how many times even when…” She trembles. “… even when it meant sleeping with you. Sneaking behind my back. How could you do that to me? To her? After all she’s done, this is how you repay her? You keep using her? You use everyone!”

  Mark says dismissively, “She makes her own choices.” He eyeballs her once again. “But back to Saturday, all that nonsense about making up and not just with Monica, but with me too, it was all just for show, wasn’t it? You wanted us to move on and think we were moving past our fight. Everyone’s fights. The girls said you were managing.”

  “They fell for it,” Sabine tells him.

  “Yes, they certainly did. It turns out you had us all fooled.”

  “Well, so did you.” Her voice goes cold.

  “Saturday afternoon,” he begins. “You went to the pool. A couple of hours later you told the girls you were running home for a few minutes… and then what? You smashed in the back door? The police have been trying to figure out who broke in and attacked you, but it was you who staged it, wasn’t it?” His face once again contorts. Amused disbelief. “You broke the glass—”

  “I’m not the one who smashed it.”

  His eyes flare. “I don’t understand.”

  “The door was smashed by the time I got there.”

  A hiccup in his voice. “What?”

  No longer needing my protection, Sabine pushes against my arm and lets it drop gently. “There must be someone who’s really gunning for you,” she tells him. “Someone who’s dangerous and coming after you like Jacob warned.”

  A nerve below Mark’s eye twitches.

  “It scared the hell out of me,” Sabine says. “Someone breaking into our house. It had to be a threat. A warning for whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself into. And I wasn’t going to stick around and wait for them to try something again. That door, when I saw it, it sped up my whole plan. Everything I was going to do accelerated in minutes because I wasn’t planning to go away so soon. It wasn’t supposed to happen that night, but it did.”

  Sabine continues, “When I saw the back door broken, I told myself to take advantage of it. This was one extra detail where I wouldn’t have to break the door myself. I drew blood”—his eyes bulge—“something I’ve done before, something I’ve practiced many times, and dripped it on the floor. Made it look like someone attacked me, make them think it was you who attacked me. I needed to call Erica and let her know the plan had been ramped up, that it was go-time. But my phone was dead.” She pulls the burner phone from her pocket and flashes it in his face. “My link to Erica, except”—she frowns—“I didn’t have it charged. A horrible mistake.”

  My heart pounds viciously, Sabine recreating this tale for her h
usband while I listen. She’s trying to keep him talking. But I’m also staring at the door, our only exit. Calculating our chances for escape. A steady glance at the window we might be able to break through. The tools I could use to beat Mark’s head in if only the shovel was in arm’s reach. I need to get past him. Distract him, figure something out—

  “I thought I had more time,” Sabine says. “I thought I could find the charger and quickly send Erica a message. But then you came home. I heard your car pulling into the garage and so I ran.”

  “Through the woods?”

  “Of course. I cut through those woods like a pro. It wasn’t exactly how I’d practiced but it was close enough, tearing off a piece of my coverup and drenching it with blood. Breaking my bracelet and leaving it on a part of the golf course that would make it look like I went in the opposite direction. No one saw me. Most everyone, it turned out perfectly, was waiting for the fireworks and I cut my way back to Erica’s house, to this shed. To where I could wait here and rest and was safe.”

  Mark stares blankly at her. It’s what he asked for, the details, but his look soon turns into a heinous grin, his wheels turning. “Bravo, my girl. I had no idea you were this capable.” His eyes laser back at me. “And you found her out here? You’ve been hiding her ever since?”

  My mouth opens, and to my dismay, my voice comes out as a croak. “Yes.”

  But the truth is, I didn’t know at first. Sabine had stopped answering my messages. All I knew was she feared Mark had swiped the USB drive from the camera and her last text to me was about Jacob Andrews.

  When I saw her at the pool, it was a relief knowing everything was okay. A fight with Mark the night before hadn’t escalated with another beating since she was lying out in the sun and sipping a cocktail. I assumed she was laughing at the pool with her friends as another part of her ruse, another way to make things look like they were fine. But I sure wished she would have answered my texts.

  But then there was that look—the look that left me stumped, not knowing what was going on inside her head. She wasn’t supposed to leave yet. It wasn’t supposed to happen for a few more days. And I sat at the pool, waiting for her to return. I found her bracelet by the gate—the Lake Tahoe charm that means so much—and my heart fell, wondering what this meant. A sign? A clue? Was she leaving her bracelet in my safekeeping? But she never returned to the pool.