He Thought His Wife Had Left Him—Then a Nurse Revealed Her Secret

Mara had never heard of the company.

Ruiz showed her the registration anyway. It listed her full name, her old address, and a signature copied from the lease she had signed for her apartment.

“If this payment goes through, it will look like I hired the driver,” Mara said.

“That appears to be the plan,” Ruiz answered.

Celeste was still on the phone.

“You could save your wife a lot of trouble, Dominic,” she said. “Bring me the files.”

“Where?”

“I’ll send you an address.”

The call ended.

Ruiz immediately put in the request to freeze the transfer. The bank needed to verify the account trail. There were forty-three minutes until noon.

Dominic wanted to go to the address. Ruiz wanted officers there first.

Mara looked between them. “Celeste knows he’ll be working with you. She’s counting on him showing up.”

“Then we use that,” Ruiz said.

The address led to a vacant office above the old ferry terminal. Police searched it while Dominic stayed at the hospital. They found a phone on a table and a note with four words:

ASK YOUR FATHER AGAIN.

The phone rang as an officer photographed it.

Ruiz answered. She listened, then passed it to Dominic.

“You made a mistake,” Celeste said. “I asked you to come alone.”

“You sent me to an empty room.”

“I wanted to know whether you’d follow instructions.”

“What do you want from Mara?”

“The files Peter gave her.”

“Why?”

“Because your father didn’t tell you who else received a copy.”

Celeste hung up.

Dominic called Vittorio at the precinct, where he was still giving a statement. His father hesitated when he heard about the note.

“Who has the other copy?” Dominic asked.

“A federal investigator Mara was working with.”

“Name.”

Vittorio gave it to him. Ruiz called the investigator’s office and received a troubling answer: the woman had been missing since the night before.

Mara listened from her bed as Ruiz relayed the news.

“She called me yesterday,” Mara said. “She wanted to meet at the hospital.”

“Why the hospital?” Ruiz asked.

“Because she knew I had an appointment here and thought Celeste wouldn’t expect it.”

Dominic checked the time. “What appointment?”

“A scan.” Mara glanced toward the NICU down the hall. “I was supposed to see our daughter on a screen this morning.”

For a moment no one spoke.

Then Ruiz’s radio crackled. An officer at the ferry terminal reported movement in a locked storage room. He forced it open and found the missing investigator, shaken but alive.

She had a message for Mara.

Ruiz put her on speaker.

“Mara,” the investigator said, “I know who Celeste has been working for.”