Chương 2
Somewhere farther down the road.
Daniel opened his eyes.
The relief on his face was immediate and horrifying.
Noah saw it too.
“You thought that was for us,” he said.
Daniel said nothing.
Noah backed toward the counter where the phones lay.
Daniel moved at the same moment.
I stepped between them.
“Don’t.”
Daniel stopped so close I could smell the coffee on his breath beneath something metallic and sour.
He whispered, “You have no idea what you’re doing.”
“You keep saying that like it helps.”
“You called the police?”
I did not answer.
His gaze dropped toward my waist.
The freezer bag had slipped partly out from beneath my shirt.
For one second, neither of us moved.
Then Daniel lunged.
I twisted away.
His fingers caught the plastic.
The bag tore open between us.
Food scattered across the floor in wet clumps.
Daniel froze.
Noah grabbed my phone from the counter.
Daniel spun toward him.
“Noah, give me that.”
Noah stumbled backward and pressed the screen.
“It needs your face,” he said to me.
I turned.
The phone unlocked.
Noah dialed emergency services as Daniel reached for it.
I shoved Daniel with both hands.
He lost his balance on the spilled food and struck the cabinet with his shoulder.
Noah screamed our address into the phone.
Daniel sat on the floor for a moment, stunned.
Then he covered his face.
It was so ordinary a gesture that I nearly stopped breathing.
I had seen him sit that way after his mother died.
I had seen him sit that way after losing his job twelve years earlier.
For one dangerous instant, I saw my husband instead of the man who had drugged us.
Then he lowered his hands.
“You don’t understand what they’re going to find.”
Noah kept speaking to the dispatcher.
I said, “Tell me.”
Daniel looked toward the hallway.
“They’re already looking for me.”
“Who?”
“The police.”
Noah stopped talking.
The dispatcher’s voice crackled faintly from the phone.
Daniel leaned his head against the cabinet.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen here.”
I stared at him.
“What happened?”
He swallowed.
“There was a woman.”
Every ugly possibility arrived at once.
An affair seemed almost comforting compared with everything else.
“What woman?”
“She worked with me.”
“At the consulting firm?”
He nodded.
“Worked, past tense?”
Daniel looked at the floor.
Noah whispered, “Mom.”
I held up one hand.
Daniel rubbed his palms against his pants.
“She found transactions.”
“What transactions?”
“Payments.”
“To who?”
He shook his head.
“I can’t do this in pieces.”
“Then stop doing it in pieces.”
His voice rose.
“I moved money.”
The words landed flatly.
No thunder.
No dramatic revelation.
Just my husband sitting in mashed potatoes and chicken sauce while our son held a phone between both hands.
“How much?”
Daniel hesitated.
That hesitation gave me the number before he did.
“Over time?”
“How much, Daniel?”
“About four million.”
Noah made a sound like air leaving a tire.
I stared at Daniel because nothing in our life looked like four million dollars.
Our mortgage still had twelve years on it.
Daniel complained about grocery prices.
Two months earlier, he had made Noah pay him back for losing a thirty-dollar charging cable.
“Where is it?”
“Not here.”
“Then where?”
He looked at me with something close to pleading.
“That’s what I was trying to protect.”
“Money?”
“You.”
I stepped away from him.
He pushed himself upright using the cabinet handle.
“The woman who found it, Erin, copied records.”
“What happened to her?”
Daniel did not answer quickly enough.
Noah raised the phone again.
The dispatcher was telling him to stay on the line.
“What happened to her?” I repeated.
“She disappeared three days ago.”
Cold moved through me that had nothing to do with the freezer bag.
“Did you hurt her?”
“No.”
“Did you know she was missing?”
“Yes.”
“And the police are looking for you because of her?”
“Not officially.”
“How do you know?”
He laughed once without humor.
“Because two detectives came to the office yesterday asking where I was Tuesday night.”
Tuesday night he had told me he was having dinner with a client.
I had heated leftover soup and watched half a documentary before falling asleep on the couch.
“Where were you?”
Daniel looked at Noah again.
“Dad,” Noah said quietly, “answer her.”
“I met Erin.”
I gripped the counter.
“You just said you didn’t hurt her.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
A hard knock struck the front door.
“Police.”
Daniel’s face emptied.
Noah’s shoulders dropped with relief.
Mine did not.
Daniel looked toward the hallway, then at me.
“Claire, listen to me.”
Another knock.
“Police department, open the door.”
Daniel stepped closer.
I backed away.
“They think I took the money for myself,” he whispered.
“Didn’t you?”
“No.”
The front door shook beneath another knock.
Daniel’s eyes stayed on mine.
“I moved it because someone told me to.”
“Who?”
He reached into his jacket.
Noah shouted.
I grabbed Daniel’s wrist.
He jerked away, pulling out not a weapon but a folded white envelope.
He thrust it toward me.
“You need this before they search the house.”
I did not take it.
“Put your hands where they can see them.”
“You need to hide this.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
The front door burst inward.
Daniel shoved the envelope into my hand just as officers entered the hallway.
Everything happened loudly after that.
Commands.
Raised arms.
Noah shouting that we had been drugged.
Daniel dropping to his knees.
An officer pulling me backward while another forced Daniel facedown and cuffed him.
The envelope remained crushed in my fist.
No one noticed.
Or I thought no one noticed.
Then Daniel turned his head against the floor and looked directly at me.
“Don’t let them have it,” he said.
One of the officers ordered him to stop talking.
Daniel kept staring at me.
May you like
“It’s the only reason you’re still alive.”
The officer nearest me tightened his grip on my elbow and pulled me another step away from Daniel.
