Chương 6
Sophie stopped in the doorway.
Nathan waited behind her.
She did not move.
Then she said, “I hate that chair.”
“We’ll get rid of it.”
“I liked that chair.”
“We can keep it.”
She looked at him.
“Excellent decision-making.”
He nodded.
“I’m adapting.”
She stepped inside.
Her handbag sat on the console where she had left it. Her laptop was gone.
Nathan’s stomach dropped.
“Sophie.”
She saw the empty space.
For one second neither spoke.
Then Nathan called the officer in the hall.
Within minutes, they confirmed the laptop had not been logged into evidence.
Nathan called building security.
Sophie stood perfectly still.
“Maybe I moved it,” she said.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Then don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Help someone explain this away.”
She looked at him.
He heard his own earlier words turned back toward him without either of them saying so.
The building manager came upstairs with access logs.
No one had entered the penthouse after police cleared it except authorized cleaning staff, and the cleaners had been escorted.
But there had been a window before police fully controlled the scene.
Vanessa had remained inside for almost twelve minutes after Nathan left in the ambulance.
One officer had been interviewing her near the elevator. Another had been photographing the living room.
No one could say with certainty where her handbag had been during all twelve minutes.
Detective Morales arrived forty minutes later.
She did not look surprised enough for Nathan.
“You think she took it,” he said.
“I think a laptop is missing.”
“She was here.”
“So were police, paramedics, building employees and you.”
“I left with Sophie.”
“I know.”
“Vanessa knew what was on it.”
“We are looking at that.”
Nathan put both hands on his hips.
Sophie sat on a bench near the entry.
Morales looked at him.
“Mr. Cole, if you push every fact into the conclusion you already want, you make my job harder.”
“My wife was drugged.”
“Yes.”
“My wife’s laptop disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“Vanessa asked which financial records she had reviewed.”
“Yes.”
“And Vanessa is on an audio recording saying, ‘Double the dose. He’ll think she did it herself.’”
“Yes.”
Nathan stared at her.
Morales did not blink.
“Then why is she walking around?”
“Because suspicion is not the same as lawful custody.”
Sophie said, “Nathan.”
He looked at her.
“Stop.”
His first instinct was irritation.
Then he saw her face.
Not fear.
Exhaustion.
He backed away.
Morales asked Sophie whether the laptop had remote tracking enabled.
“Yes.”
“Can you access it?”
“Maybe.”
They tried.
The device appeared offline.
Nathan watched the spinning icon and felt something nearly childish rise in him, as if technology had violated a contract.
Morales asked whether Sophie had backups.
“Some things are in cloud storage.”
“The invoices?”
“Yes.”
“The underlying attachments?”
“I think so.”
“You think?”
Sophie’s face tightened.
“I wasn’t planning for this.”
Morales nodded.
“No one does.”
That evening, at the hotel, Sophie took a shower while Nathan sat at the small dining table with room-service soup going cold in front of him.
He opened his messages.
Vanessa had texted.
Three times.
The first had arrived at 5:42 the previous evening.
Please let me explain.
The second, at 7:16.
I would never hurt Sophie.
The third had come twenty minutes ago.
You need to understand what she found before you decide what you think I did.
Nathan read the last message four times.
He did not answer.
Sophie came out of the bathroom wearing a hotel robe, her wet hair combed straight back.
“What?”
He handed her the phone.
She read the messages.
“Call Morales.”
“I will.”
“Now.”
He called.
The detective asked him to send screenshots and not engage.
Afterward Sophie sat across from him.
“That sounds like she knows.”
“Yes.”
“What I found.”
“Yes.”
“And she thinks it changes what happened.”
“Yes.”
Sophie looked at the soup.
“Is that mine?”
“Probably.”
“You ordered tomato?”
“You like tomato.”
“I hate tomato soup.”
Nathan looked at the bowl.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You order it at the club.”
“That’s gazpacho.”
He stared at her.
She stared back.
For the first time in twenty-four hours, she laughed.
It was small and tired and turned into a cough.
Nathan pushed the soup away.
“This has been an educational marriage.”
“You’re doing great.”
He ordered grilled cheese.
For ten minutes they did not discuss Vanessa.
Then Sophie said, “She paid for my mother’s funeral flowers.”
Nathan looked up.
Sophie twisted the robe tie around two fingers.
“I couldn’t pick anything. She did it. White roses. I hated them.”
“You never told me that.”
“I hated all flowers that week.”
He waited.
“She stayed in my apartment for nine days afterward. She slept on that horrible green sofa I had.”
“I remember the sofa.”
“No one who didn’t experience that sofa remembers it fondly.”
“I didn’t say fondly.”
Sophie looked down.
“I keep trying to make the person who did this separate from her.”
Nathan knew what she meant.
Vanessa laughing in their kitchen.
Vanessa kneeling on a hotel carpet the morning of their wedding, sewing a broken strap on Sophie’s shoe.
Vanessa buying Nathan’s mother a birthday present because Nathan had forgotten.
Vanessa kicking a medicine bottle beneath a chair.
The images would not coexist.
Yet they had to.
Two days later, laboratory testing gave the police something firmer.
The tablets recovered from Sophie’s bottle were not the dosage printed on the label.
They were the same medication, but at a higher strength.
Several tablets from the bottle carried manufacturing markings inconsistent with Sophie’s current prescription.
Sophie’s pharmacy confirmed her legitimate refill had contained the lower-strength tablets.
Someone had changed at least part of the bottle’s contents.
The finding did not identify who.
It did, however, make accident much harder to believe.
Nathan read the update in the hotel suite while Sophie watched a home renovation show she was not actually watching.
He handed her his phone.
She read silently.
May you like
Then set it down.
“That’s it?”
