Chapter 6 - SOMEONE OUTSIDE
“DOWN!”
Hale grabbed Noah before I understood what was happening.
Officer Ramirez pulled me away from the window.
Another officer rushed through the back door.
I heard shouting outside.
A car engine screamed somewhere beyond the fence.
Then tires squealed.
Ramirez pressed Noah behind the kitchen island.
“Stay low.”
I reached for him.
“I’ve got him.”
“No,” Noah cried. “Dad!”
“I’m here!”
Hale returned thirty seconds later.
“Gray sedan. No plates.”
“Vanessa?”
“Couldn’t see the driver.”
I showed him the photo.
He took my phone.
“When did this come in?”
“Just now.”
His jaw tightened.
“They’re close.”
Police searched the street.
Nothing.
Neighbors had seen a gray car.
Nobody had a plate number.
A woman two houses down remembered a man sitting inside it for almost an hour.
Baseball cap.
Dark glasses.
Maybe forty.
Maybe fifty.
That description was useless.
By noon, Hale told me we needed to leave the house.
“For how long?”
“Until we know who we’re dealing with.”
“Where do we go?”
“A hotel under another name. Officers nearby.”
Noah heard the word hotel.
“Can we go to Grandma’s?”
My mother lived forty minutes away.
Hale shook his head.
“Too predictable.”
Noah’s face fell.
I packed one suitcase.
As I pulled clothes from drawers, I found one of Vanessa’s sweaters.
For some reason, that nearly destroyed me.
Because it smelled like her perfume.
The same perfume she wore on our wedding day.
I sat on the bed staring at it.
How could someone share your home, your food, your bed, and still be a stranger?
I remembered the first time she met Noah.
She had crouched down and asked about his dinosaur shirt.
He loved her immediately.
So had I.
Now I wondered whether any of it had been real.
“Dad?”
Noah stood in the doorway.
I shoved the sweater aside.
“You okay?”
He nodded.
Then he pointed.
“What?”
“The closet.”
I turned.
“What about it?”
“She doesn’t let me go in there.”
My skin prickled.
“Why?”
“She said there are grown-up things.”
Hale was downstairs.
I called him.
Within minutes, he and another detective were searching Vanessa’s side of the closet.
Shoes.
Boxes.
Old handbags.
Nothing.
Then an officer tapped the back wall.
“Hollow.”
They removed a section of thin decorative paneling.
Behind it was a narrow compartment.
Inside sat a metal lockbox.
Hale forced it open.
There were passports.
Cash.
Several IDs with Vanessa’s photograph.
But different names.
Vanessa Miller.
Vanessa Brooks.
Emily Lane.
Rebecca Hart.
And underneath them was an old newspaper clipping.
The headline read:
LOCAL WOMAN AND SON DIE IN SUSPICIOUS HOUSE FIRE.
Hale studied the photograph beneath the headline.
Then he looked at one of Vanessa’s fake IDs.
“Daniel.”
“What?”
He handed me the clipping.
The dead woman’s husband stood beside investigators in the photograph.
He was younger there.
But I recognized the shape of his face.
I had seen him before.
At my wedding.
Vanessa had introduced him as her cousin.
Mick.
May you like
Except according to the newspaper, his real name was Michael Lane.
And his first wife and stepson had died twelve years ago.
