I leave the gun where it is, return the sandwich stuff to the fridge, and then go to my laptop and open the news tab. It takes me exactly two minutes to come across a headline that’s less than an hour old.The New York Postis reporting that the CEO of a Fortune 500 company was gunned down outside of his townhome on the Upper West Side just hours ago. I recognize the building, now cordoned off with police tape. Investigators are lingering around the front doors. A quick skim of the article tells me that no perpetrator has been identified and the only thing they know about the crime is that the CEO was shot at close range with a handgun. A handgun that hasn’t been found.
I close my laptop, not bothering to read more as a chill of awareness works its way through me.
I don’t need to read anything else because I have a feeling I know where the missing handgun is: in my sink. I just don’t know who it belongs to, or who put it there.
The only thing I know for sure is that someone is trying to frame me for the kind of crime that will dominate the headlines for weeks.
I suddenly wish my husband was here for a hug, to tell me that everything is going to be okay. That I didn’t do this and that there is some reasonable explanation for a handgun to find its way into my sink in the middle of the night. But even if he did tell me what I want to hear, it would all be lies. Because there is no reasonable explanation. My door locks automatically witha keycode required for access. It’s unlikely someone let themselves into my apartment just to plant a weapon and leave. No, the most obvious explanation is that I was sleepwalking and found the gun somewhere. I remember waking up to the sweat-soaked sheets, my heart pounding as if cortisol had been shuttling through my system for hours—almost as if I’d been out running a midnight marathon.
I go to the bathroom, taking in my reflection in the mirror. I look disheveled, strung out—ike a junkie who hasn’t slept in days. I flip on the cold water and splash my face again, hoping to wash away the stress, hoping that the next time I look in the mirror, the girl I used to know will be standing there looking back at me. The one with an easy, boring life.
But when I look up, there’s only me. With blood on my hands.
Thirty
Ellie
I can’t stop thinking about the gun in my sink.
Every time I close my eyes I see the shiny gunmetal as if it’s tattooed on the back of my eyelids. My knees feel weak and my hands won’t stop shaking. The knowledge that I could have done something criminal is too much. Was I sleepwalking again? Did I have a blackout?
Maybe... maybe I really did kill the CEO.
The thought crashes through my chest, hot and wild.
The news said he was shot execution-style as he was stepping out of the lobby—like a professional hit. No security footage. No suspect. And now a gun—this gun—is in my sink, like a calling card I don’t remember writing.
Am I breaking?
Just like my mother?
I think of Jack’s accusations that I’m unraveling. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I can’t tell what’s real and what’s imagined.
“You need professional help, El.”His tone cold and detached, like he was already mourning who I used to be.
But now I know better. Jack isn’t mourning. Jack is lying.
Every nerve in my body flares like a siren at the memory of all that money in the Grand Cayman accounts. And now there’s a gun in my sink.
I clutch the countertop until my knuckles ache. The kitchen is dark except for the streetlight bleeding through the blinds, casting illuminated stripes across the cabinets. Everything in me is begging for logic, but there’s nothing logical about this. I can’t help but wonder what other secrets are hiding right under my nose. I begin searching the apartment.
Every drawer. Every crevice. I start with the usual places—front closet, shoe boxes, bedside tables—but it’s Jack’s things I’m drawn to. His home office. His leather laptop bag. The filing cabinet he never gave me the passcode to. For hours, I tear through his life, page by page.
Tax returns. Contracts. Dry-cleaning slips. All normal. All expected. Except it’s not.
I know there’s more. I just have to find it.
Around 5:30 a.m., just as dawn spills across the sky, I find it—hidden behind his Columbia diploma on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. A small black safe, bolted into the wall. I almost miss it, until the light catches the edge of the keypad.
I stare at it, pulse hammering. My mind starts running through possible codes he might have used.
His birthday. Our anniversary. The date he started his first job. It clicks open on the third try: the day of our first date. Inside is a passport and a sleek, unfamiliar laptop.
The passport photo is him—but not his name.
Julian McCallister.Canadian. Born in Montréal. Forty-two years old.
It takes a full minute before I can breathe again.
