The not knowing is familiar and has brought me back in time.
I had not seen the change in Mitch four years ago. I had not smelled her perfume on his clothes or felt her touch lingering on his skin. I found out through an acquaintance, someone who’d seen them in her car at a time when Mitch said he was still at the jobsite. And then I waited. And I watched. I investigated my own husband for six days—the way I would a suspect in one of my cases. The moment I finally caught them never leaves me.
I hadn’t seen it coming. Even with all of my training, I ignored the signs that were right in front of me. Just like I ignored the alarm bells sounding off as I followed Wade to that back road. I wanted to believe my husband would never stray. I needed to believe Wade would save me from myself by giving me the answers I needed about the shooting. Human want. Human need. They can be unstoppable.
Rowan doesn’t want me to meet Wade today, but Aaron has approved the operation, and he’s the boss. We have to call Wade’s bluff. Force him to come out of hiding or move on to his next demand and see if that can tease out more information. More clues. There is nothing to be gained by staying in this stalemate, forcing him to escalate his behavior because I refuse to meet him. Aaron has assigned two units to stand by—one in the kitchen of the diner, one in an unmarked car parked outside.
None of this will matter, though I keep this to myself.
Wade knows how we work. The things to look for. He knows how to spot us and get around us because I posted it online and now he has it. All of it. Beyond this, we still have no idea who he is, where he’s from, and what he might have learned before he ever met me.
I hadn’t seen my own husband having an affair. I would be foolish to think I can see Wade for what he is.
Not yet.
I pick up my daughter and set her down on the floor. “Go tell Amy to get in the shower. I’ll get breakfast.”
I give her a big kiss, and she runs off screaming her sister’s name, knowing it will annoy her to be woken so abruptly. Years from now Amy will remind her of what a pest she was. Maybe at a graduation or a wedding, and with the laughter of shared memories and endearment. They will have that. Whatever I have to do now, I will make sure they see that day.
I take my horrible thoughts about my husband with me to the bathroom and try to scrub them off as I wash my face and brush my teeth. I barely notice that the bruises have changed color. I’ve become used to them, accepting that they’ll remain a part of me until this is all over. I’m still in my sweats from the night before, so I put on some deodorant and return to the bedroom. I’ll shower later, after I get the girls on the bus. I’ll need to choose my clothes carefully so I can cover the wire, and I can’t think it through until they’re gone. Until the house is quiet.
Mitch is still in bed when I open the door.
“What?” I ask him because his eyes follow me as I walk across the room.
He smiles. It’s sincere but sad. “Nothing,” he says. But then, “I’m just happy you came back up last night. I miss you.”
I crawl beside him and kiss him and say all the right things back. And he pulls me to him, thwarting my escape from the bed and the room and the thoughts that did not wash clean.
He brings me into a giant bear hug, and I want to disappear, melt into his body. I am no longer steeled to what I have to do, and my breath grows short and erratic as I hold back a swell of emotion. Mitch can feel it. We’ve been here before.
“Hey,” he says, lifting his head to look at me. “You don’t have to do this.”
He doesn’t want me to meet Wade. He doesn’t want me used as bait.
I exhale long and hard. Then I answer him with as much truth as I can spare. “I can’t take much more of this. I have to find him and stop him.”
He squeezes me tighter, and I think he’s about to say something comforting and consoling. But he doesn’t. Because there’s nothing he can say that isn’t just wishful thinking.
The Ridgeway Diner is clearing out by two. It’s in between lunch and dinner. I sit at a booth across from the counter with the red leather stools. A waitress has poured two cups of coffee.
Tape pulls at my skin where the wire is adhered, and I think that Wade will know it’s there. He’ll know everything about today because he is thinking backward, just like I taught him. He’s pictured himself in an interview room, in custody. Me and Rowan across from him. A folder on the table between us. He’s thought through how he got there. The unmarked car in the parking lot. The unit in the kitchen, Rowan probably among them. He’s thought about the thing he said that went through the wire and into Rowan’s ear and the recorder stuffed into my bag—the thing that was enough for them to make their move. A confession. A threat. And then back before that, he’s seen me at the table by the window, across from the counter that leads to the kitchen. Halfway to the front entrance and halfway to the back. No easy way in or out.
And so I wait, letting the coffee get cold. Knowing he won’t show. That he never planned to.
And yet he needs to see me. Whatever his motivation, he isn’t done with me. We won’t catch him today, but it will provoke him. Something will come of this.
I could have waited to contact him. Told no one. I could have made promises that I would meet him alone. And he would have no choice but to assume I was lying. The time in between the making of the plan and the execution of the plan would make it impossible for him to know for certain. Whenever there is time, there is doubt.
The element of surprise is a criminal’s best weapon.
I remember the examples I wrote about in that case study. The woman walking alone in a parking garage with her keys laced between her fingers, glancing over her shoulder, ready for anything.That’s not your victim.It’s the one who’s forgotten about the danger, the one who hasn’t pictured herself trapped in the trunk of a car on the way to that notorious second crime scene where she is sure to die—that’s the one youwant.
I had written all of this down.Trust and distraction are common mistakes.
Wade isn’t coming. But planning this without Rowan, without Aaron, would have eroded their trust in me. I need that trust so I can continue to deceive them. The thought sounds crazy and rational all at once.
Wade isn’t coming—because he can never be certain I’m being honest when I say I’m alone. He will always assume there is a car in the lot and cops in the kitchen and a wire on my back.
