Garages take time to grow a customer base. Cars are complicated. Sometimes things are misdiagnosed. Sometimes you have to stock parts that you don’t use because you might need them.
She didn’t understand that, and he shouldn’t have had to explain it, because it wasn’t really her business. She should have just stayed in her world of Pilates classes and reality shows and stopped trying to input her opinions and her“research” and her financial spreadsheets and employee pep talks and—
“Hello? Hello?”
He realized he was gripping the phone book so hard that the spine was cracking. “Um. Hi. I’m calling to see if a woman was admitted there? My wife.”
That stupid picture was why he had decided to get rid of Rachel. Ever since they’d had to close the garage, she had held that failure over his head. Just last month, he’d overheard her say to their accountant that “Jake was bad at numbers.” And every time he wanted to buy anything, she’d do that little sigh thing and pinch her lips together.
It was ridiculous. He’d found one of her bank statements in the trash once, and she’d had over $7 million in just one of her trust accounts. So why did it matter if the garage had lost a million? Was that worth treating him like he was stupid and unable to wipe his ass without her permission?
The hospital receptionist returned to the line with a negative report, and he hung up, then repeated the process with five other hospitals. None had her in-house, and he hung up the phone and returned the book to its spot.
He stared at the phone, then checked his cell. No missed calls, no strange texts. A ransom demand would have come by now, right?
Maybe they knew that Rachel kept him on a strict budget. That would be a humorous call.Oh, I’m sorry. I’d love to pay your $1 million ransom, but my wife has limited my ATM withdrawals to $500 per day.That allowance was another reason he’d first started talking to someone about getting rid of Rachel.
If it wasn’t a kidnapping for ransom, maybe it was just a home invasion / abduction. Some psychopath who took her to rape and kill her or keep her as a pet. One upside to that—Jake would save the twenty-five grand he’d been about to pay for the job.
Hiring a hit man had been a more complicated endeavor than he’d originally anticipated. When he and Jules had come up with the idea, it had seemed simple and mess-free. The one thing Jake had learned after two years in this lifestyle was that money opened all doors. Some doors led to some pretty dark shit, which was why Jake needed to come up with two hundred grand in the next month, or else his bookie had threatened to start chopping off some limbs. He’d learned his lesson and stopped gambling, at least on sports. He still attended the weekly poker game, which is where he’d met Ray, who was in construction and had put him in touch with one of his guys, who he used whenever he needed dirty work done.
Jake met the guy in a burger joint in the desert and had been pretty impressed with him. He had been quiet and organized, had pulled up his calendar and scrutinized the dates, penciling in the kill between a family vacation and a project Ray needed him for. He also coached Jake on the need for an alibi, which is why they’d planned it to happen while Rachel was at a spa retreat in Palm Springs.
The doorbell chimed and Jake looked at his cell, expecting to get the pop-up video that always came with their motion-activated entrance cameras. Nothing happened and he groaned at the reminder that the system was down.
Maybe the person would go away. Probably just a delivery driver or the mosquito control people.
The doorbell rang again, more incessantly this time, and he sighed, heaving his feet to the floor and standing. Hey, maybe it was the police, who had found her somewhere. Or maybe her body had been found. On his way out of the room, he opened the minibar and grabbed a fresh beer. Twisting thelid off, he jogged up the stairs and toward the front of the house.
Unfortunately, it was just a delivery driver, one with a touch pad who wanted a signature. He winced against the burst of cold outdoor air and quickly scrawled his name on the screen. Taking the box, he glanced at the name on it as he pulled the door closed against the elements.
His mood brightened at the sight of his own name on the front. In theSenderbox, a jewelry store. Oh, that’s right. The coin. The coin for the ...
He paused in the middle of the marble entry hall as a light bulb went off in his head.
Maybe that’s where Rachel was. Maybe she went out to feed the damn rabbits and fell in the well.
He walked to the two-story wall of windows that separated the entranceway from the gardens and looked out into the yard. Dusk had fallen and the edges were dark. In ten minutes, it’d be pitch black out there.
A well. He hadn’t paid much attention to her description of it, but if she hadn’t shown up yet, she was likely stuck. He thought of earlier, when he’d gone to grab the pizza and pulled on a jacket against the cold. She was likely in some yoga set and submerged in water, which had to be freezing cold.
There was no way of knowing until he looked.
But should he do it now?
Or wait until morning?
Chapter 11
Rachel
The initial shock of the water was terrible, a frigid ice bath that immediately permeated through every cell in my body. Now, after at least an hour in the water, I had gone almost numb from the cold.
It was too deep for me to touch, but I still tested it, sinking down, and my feet eventually touched the bottom. The floor was slick, but I could push off and bob back to the top.
The water stank. It smelled like a wet dog, and there were clumps of algae and other slimy things. When I first hit the water, some got into my mouth, and I tried to spit it out. But my mouth was tingling, and all I could think about was the bacteria that must be spreading through my body.
But the cold was the biggest problem. My teeth wouldn’t stop chattering, and my clothes were heavy, dragging me down. I untied the jacket, and I worried over if I took the sweatshirt off, I’d be even more cold, and couldn’t decide whether the thick fabric was making the chills worse or helping to stave off hypothermia. Every time I stopped swimming, when I floated, when I attempted to relax, my body trembled.
