It’s not what it seems, I want to tell him. I need to get to that camera. I need to get to my husband. Thoughts spin. Emotions churn. I feel like a tinderbox.
Rowan studies me longer. He knows something’s off, but it would be strange if it wasn’t after the morning we just had and the day we had yesterday. A man is stalking me. Stalking my children. And we aren’t any closer to finding him.
“Okay,” he says. He takes a clean sheet of paper and puts it down between us. Then he stands and finds a red Sharpie and starts to write. He makes a list of the dead ends.
First, the name Wade Austin. Not only was he not Wade Austin from Shield Insurance, he wasn’t any Wade Austin we could find.
Second, missing persons. No one matching his description has been reported missing in any jurisdiction that feeds into the FBI database.
Third, there were no matches with criminal complaints—stalking, domestic violence, and the like. We’ve had prosecutors and PDs throughout the state looking through their case files for male suspects matching Wade’s description.
Fourth, none of the tips called in about the facial composite have led to a positive identification of the 404 or the blue truck.
The list goes on—no cell phone to trace, no license plates, no tips that panned out, and nothing of use from any of the security cameras at Nichols or the parking lot. Just that one image as it drove away.
Rowan sits back down, and we stare at the red ink and the list that looks very long.
“He really is a ghost,” Rowan says. Then he leans forward and stares at something on the page. “Why an insurance company?” he asks me. “Wade Austin from Shield Insurance. He could have used any alias that was hard to search, but he chose this guy.”
I know where this is heading.
“I think this asshole works in insurance,” Rowan continues. “Or used to. That way he could talk about his job if you ever asked and not raise suspicion. He must have thought this through. He had two weeks from the time of the shooting until he approached you. Two weeks to come up with a false identity.”
Rowan gets up once more and begins to pace. “So let’s assume he’s local, since he was shopping for pants here. That’s not something you do on vacation. And now let’s assume he works in insurance or used to.”
I listen to my partner and I’m right there with him, sharing his thoughts, remembering what I used to love about my life and how desperately I want it back.
“So we check with every insurance agency and broker within, say, thirty miles. If we don’t get a hit, we expand the radius.”
It’s genius, and I tell Rowan this.
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s get on it!”
I help him gather the papers from the file, lingering longer than I should on the facial composite of Wade. I think about that face and the hundreds of expressions that moved across it on that back road. I think about that face standing in my house, watching me sleep. I think about that face in the woods watching my children play. And I think about that face standing just beyond the young man I was about to kill.
I tell Rowan to go back to the desk without me. I’ll be right behind him. “Just need to make a call.”
I take out the burner phone and read the message he sent with the video of Mitch and the photo of our team at the Ridgeway.
Now there’s a new photo. It’s Rowan, sitting at his favorite bar, a beer and a shot on the counter in front of him. The same shirt he had on yesterday. This case is getting to him, triggering things from his past.
And then the same message as before.
They don’t deserve you.
I assume implications from this. Mitch is a cheater. Rowan and my colleagues are unable to protect me. But I think now, as the weight of my crimes grows heavy, that maybe he means something else entirely.
Maybe they don’t deserve me because of the secrets I keep and the ways I now deceive them.
Chapter Eighteen
I make excuses to Rowan about errands and picking up the girls early from school, and instead I drive to the new site where Mitch has been working. I don’t warn him I’m coming. I fantasize about the conversation, which is crazy. Just as crazy as my thoughts about Briana and whether she’d found that spot on his ear and caressed it with her finger. Brushed her lips across it as she whispered something sweet, or dirty.
I thought I would be stronger than this, but I’m not. I can’t find it in me after everything that’s happened. Wade has unearthed this scar from our past—but then she wasn’t really in the past, was she? The video is from a scene that was missing a before and after. There is no time stamp. No context. No audio. It’s impossible to tell what preceded it or what followed. She looked upset. He was comforting her. Their embrace was brief, but it was in the open. In her driveway.
This is the problem with discrete pieces of evidence. They can be misleading, create misperceptions and then reactions that can cause damage. Dominoes falling.
Mitch had been home every night since the shooting, and before that he’d never given me any reason to think he was still seeing her or anyone else. It had not been like that before. The signs I missed. The distraction from having a newborn and a toddler, and then the sudden death of his father.
