In the Deep

by White, Loreth Anne

The app for the CCTV cameras alerted the Watcher with a ping—the motion sensor had detected the subject had breached a critical area in the house.

  The Watcher reached for the phone, clicked open the app, and watched the live footage being streamed from the Cresswell-Smith house.

  Ellie Cresswell-Smith entering her husband’s office.

  She must have found a key.

  The Watcher zoomed and watched closely as Ellie opened a drawer under the office desk. She was visible through the open office door. Wind from a fan blew her long dark hair. She glanced over her shoulder, looking back into the living room, her eyes large and dark. She was afraid she’d be discovered—she knew she shouldn’t be in there. But she didn’t know about the camera in the wall clock that could see her through the open office door. Nor did she know about the camera in the clock in her studio, or in the digital weather clock beside her bed.

  Ellie returned her attention to the drawer and located a small box. She set the box atop the desk and opened it. From the box she removed some keys. She went over to the file cabinet and unlocked the drawers containing files. She riffled through one folder after another, then took a folder out.

  The Watcher zoomed yet closer. The label on the file was just visible: AGNES HOLDINGS.

  Ellie set the Agnes Holdings file on the desk and opened it. She tensed and quickly bent her head closer as she appeared to scan columns of figures with her finger. She looked up. Sweat gleamed on her face. She returned her attention to the spreadsheets, and stiffened. Her finger paused. Quickly she turned the page and scanned the next sheet. She moved faster and faster, flipping through the pages. She ran both her hands over her hair as if catching her breath, as if trying to comprehend what she’d just seen. She went back to the cabinet and removed another manila file folder. She opened it. A document fell to the floor. She picked it up.

  Her whole body went still. Dead stone still. Blood drained from her face.

  Hurriedly she began to scramble through the other files, being untidy now as she flipped through them. She found another document that halted her. Holding the document in her hand, she sank slowly onto a chair and covered her mouth with her hand.

  THEN

  ELLIE

  I stared at the rental agreement I’d found for a luxury villa in the Cape Verde islands. In Martin’s name. For two adults. The rental period for a year, with option for renewal. The date of occupation was next month. The wind from the fan chilled my sweat. Goose bumps pricked along my arms.

  With the agreement was a folder from a travel agency in Sydney. According to an invoice, Martin had bought two one-way plane tickets to Cape Verde via Singapore, then Frankfurt. The flight from Sydney Airport departed in just over two weeks.

  Two weeks?

  I glanced at a calendar on the wall. Perhaps he was keeping it as a surprise for me—there was enough time to still tell me that the two of us were going somewhere. But even as my brain sought for an alternate answer, I knew there was only one. This ticket was not for me.

  My breathing became shallow. I felt dizzy. Panic clutched my stomach. My mind spun toward thoughts of medication, but I’d given my pills to Willow. And on some deep-down survival level I knew I needed every ounce of clarity to deal with this. Understand it. Comprehend and process this.

  Hurriedly I flipped through the other papers . . . I stalled.

  He’s mortgaged this house?

  To the max. Blood drained from my head. I—we—had paid outright for it. What had he done with the money he’d borrowed on it? We’d closed the sale at $4.56 million. I’d put the money up for it, but we’d purchased the property in our company name. Yet according to these papers, he’d taken out a mortgage on the house in his personal capacity? I read the document more closely—as closely as I could, given that my vision wasn’t registering the details.

  The new mortgage agreement included insurance. On my life.

  A sick cold leaked into my gut. I glanced up and stared out the window. I didn’t want to think what this could mean.

  A crack sounded in the living room.

  I froze. Listened.

  But nothing more came.

  It was probably another branch cracking off one of the gums outside—I’d left the sliding glass door open due to the heat. When the weather got too dry, the gums shed branches as a means of survival. The trees were called widow-makers, I’d learned, because they so often killed people with the sudden dropping of massive limbs.

  I glanced over my shoulder through the office door into the living room. I could see the clock. It was almost 3:00 p.m. I had no reason to fear Martin would suddenly walk in. He wasn’t due back for at least another nine days.

  Focus.

  I returned my attention to the papers and opened a manila envelope with the word CONFIDENTIAL marked on it. Inside was a consultants’ report. Commissioned by Agnes Holdings. It was not the report Martin had shown me. I scanned the summary, my heart beating faster and faster with each sentence. This report had determined that digging canals into the mangrove swamp would lead to acid sulphate in the soil, which would create acid problems in the groundwater, which in turn would mobilize arsenic in the soil and result in massive habitat destruction. Fish—all sorts of marine life—would die on an epic scale. An example of similar destruction in another development was cited. Limestone walls in the channels would be required to neutralize the acid. The cost of the development would skyrocket. I flipped the pages. Words blurred. Habitat destruction . . . population of fish eagles decimated . . . environmental impact . . . yellow-bellied gliders . . . frogs . . .

  I sat back, breathing hard. The development was dead if this report got out. But Martin had quashed it, hidden it. He’d commissioned a second, newer report—the one he’d shown me had downplayed any potential problems. If the shire council had seen this, or the prospective buyers had known, those presales would have dried up completely. We could be legally liable. This was fraud. I lurched to my feet, paced, then dragged my hands over my hair. What was Martin doing? Was he going to get on a plane and run? Leave me holding the bag? Had he ever intended actually going through with constructing this project? Or had it just been a way to fleece buyers out of deposits—the proverbial swampland-in-Florida scam?

  No. That couldn’t be.

  I sat myself at his desk and powered up his desktop. His computer was password protected, but I’d watched carefully when he’d shown me what now appeared to be fake spreadsheets. The monitor flared to life and I typed in the password I remembered seeing him use. It failed. Because I was nervous. I’d missed uppercasing a letter. I tried again.

  The system booted up.

  My heart thudded as I accessed our online banking accounts—Martin had the sites bookmarked, and his computer remembered the access code. A security question came up.

  “What town were you married in?”

  I typed “Las Vegas.”

  It denied access.

  I typed “Vegas.”

  It failed.

  My hands hovered over the keyboard. I had one more attempt. If I failed again the site might lock me out. I frowned. Then opted to ask for another question instead.

  “Where was your father born?”

  I typed “Melbourne.”

  The banking accounts opened. Sweat pearled and dribbled down my stomach. The fan ruffled my hair. I could not believe what I was seeing. Our Agnes Holdings account contained a total balance of five thousand dollars and eighty-five cents. My temperature rose. I began to shake. The last time he’d shown me, it had registered over thirty million in short-term investments, and a good portion of that had come from presales deposits.

  I clicked on Recent Transactions.

  I stared, aghast. Since the day he’d shown me the bank balance, he’d been siphoning off funds in chunks at regular intervals. I clicked on the details of those transactions. The monies had been transferred to a numbered account offshore. I was unable to access that account.

  I sat back. My head spu
n. I’d been lured into a web and sucked dry. More than thirty million gone. I’d been cleaned out. Willow’s words flooded into my brain.

  “We want to believe what a con artist tells us, Ellie. They manipulate our reality. And if this is truly what you think it is, a long con, the kind that takes weeks, months, or even years to unfold, it requires manipulation of reality at a far higher level, and it plays with our most basic core beliefs about ourselves.”

  The memory of Dana’s warning sliced through me. I cast my mind back to the orange Subaru parked outside my apartment in Vancouver. The same model and color in the underground parking garage. The “doppelgänger.” Who had kissed a woman with long, wavy auburn hair whose face I couldn’t see.

  I felt dizzy. I was going to throw up.

  I cast my memory back further, to that winter’s night ten months ago when I’d literally tripped into Martin’s arms at my father’s hotel.

  Drunk. Vulnerable.

  I’d been so loud in arguing with my father. I’d felt people all around our table listening. Someone could easily—likely—have heard my father offering me capital for a project, any project I wanted. Could Martin himself have been seated behind us and overheard? Or had someone at the bar eavesdropped on me telling Dana how much money my father would give me? An image struck me—The Rock making a call on his phone, his dark eyes fixed on me. I felt sick. Someone in that bar could have arranged for me to fall into a trap later that evening. Could Martin have been waiting, like a spider, with a fine web of false narratives with which to trap my heart?

  I swallowed as Martin’s impassioned words crawled up from the depths of my soul.

  “When we step into a magic show, we arrive actively wanting to be fooled. Magic is . . . It’s a kind of willing con. You’re not being foolish to fall for it. If you don’t fall for it, the magician is doing something wrong.”

  He really had conned me. He’d baited, hooked, and played me over months—taking me to Europe on a wild whirlwind trip. Paying for everything. Then vanishing for weeks at a time and suddenly reappearing. He’d tricked me into giving him everything, including my hand in marriage.

  And I’d been eager for it. I’d wanted what he’d offered. I felt sick. I glanced at the life insurance policy attached to the mortgage. And a darker thought struck like a hatchet. Could he kill me?

  Something sounded in the living room.

  I stilled. Listened. I heard it again—footfalls on tiles.

  Martin.

  I scrabbled to gather up the papers on the desk, cramming them back into folders and envelopes. Pieces wafted to the floor. I bundled the files into my arms and lunged for the filing cabinet. A shadow darkened the doorway.

  I froze.

  “Ellie?”

  I spun around.

  THEN

  ELLIE

  Willow.

  She stood in the doorway, her gaze flicking over the mess, the papers and folders in my arms.

  “What on earth are you doing?” she asked.

  I couldn’t speak for a moment. I’d thought she was Martin. I hurriedly finished replacing the papers and files and locked the cabinet. “You surprised me,” I said. “I . . . I didn’t hear you coming in.”

  “That fan is loud,” she said. “The slider was open. I knocked first.”

  I held my arm out. “We can talk in the living room.”

  But she remained in the doorway to Martin’s office, looking at me. My face felt beet hot. I was sweating, shaking.

  “Is everything okay?”

  No, it’s not fucking okay. “Yeah. Fine. Please, I’d like to lock up here.” I stepped closer to her, into her space, attempting to usher her out.

  “I thought you told me he didn’t allow you in here.”

  “He’s been different since I’ve quit the medication. Our . . . our relationship has improved.” My voice cracked.

  “Ellie—”

  “Look, I haven’t forgotten that he struck me, okay? I . . . Can we please just talk outside of this office?”

  I backed her into the living room and shut the door and locked it behind me. I slipped Martin’s office keys into the pocket of my shorts. Her gaze followed my hand. I noticed only then that she carried a big bag and that a manila envelope stuck out of it.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “You spooked me.”

  “I told you—I did knock. But no answer. The sliding door was open, so I figured you had to be in here somewhere.”

  “Yeah, well.” I pushed my damp bangs off my brow. “I told you I wanted proof. I was looking for . . . stuff.”

  “What did you find?”

  “It’s nothing.” My brain reeled. I was trying to process, trying to decide how much to tell her, how it might help or hinder me. “What have you got in there?” I nodded at the manila envelope sticking out of her bag.

  Her mouth tightened. “It’s from the private investigator. I thought you’d want to see it stat.”

  “What is it?”

  Willow wavered. “Are you sure you’re okay, Ellie—you want to see this now?”

  “Yes,” I snapped.

  “Shall we sit down?”

  I glanced around the white cage of this “architecturally designed” brand-new home on the banks of the Bonny River—the house that now belonged to the bank, unless I died; then it was all paid up and went to Martin. I pressed my hand against my stomach.

  She touched my arm, eyes wide, gentle. “Ellie?”

  “My studio,” I said. “Let’s . . . let’s talk in my studio.”

  I still felt watched in here—I couldn’t explain it. I’d read, however, that this sensation was real. And after I’d seen what was in Martin’s files, my paranoia couldn’t stretch far enough. I trusted nothing. And right now I felt like this room had eyes.

  “It’s looking good in here, Ellie,” Willow said as she entered my studio behind me. I slid open the glass door that led onto the little dock. I shuddered as I caught sight of the river mouth where it fanned into the sea—the channel where we’d navigated the waves breaking on the bar.

  I was 100 percent certain now that Martin had been trying to terrify me. He was a sociopath. A glib liar. A trickster. A cruel and power-tripping sadist who got off on control. I was certain, too, that he’d raped me more than once while I’d been drugged. And yes, I was pretty certain now that he had been drugging me, and he’d stopped when I’d declared my abstinence and given all my pills away—I’d made it difficult for him to con me into thinking I was addling my own brain.

  I motioned for Willow to sit on the daybed.

  Before she sat she peered closely at some of the photos I’d framed and hung on the wall above the bed.

  “Who’s with you in this photo?” she asked.

  “My friend Dana,” I said flatly.

  She glanced at me. “The one who doesn’t like Martin?”

  “Yeah, the friend I lost over him.” Dana had been right about Martin. She’d sensed the changes he’d wrought in me right off the bat.

  “Yet you still hang her photo here.”

  “She finally returned my calls,” I said. “She accepted my apology. We’re working on being friends again.”

  Dana and I had spoken for over an hour across the oceans while I’d stared wistfully at that photo of the two of us shot in the Mallard Lounge on the night I’d met Martin. While I had listened to her voice, a dissonance had started crackling along the edges of my subconscious again, something about that image of Dana and me at the bar that night—a just-hidden sense of something important, overlooked—but I couldn’t place it.

  “So what’s in the envelope?”

  Willow seated herself on the daybed. I sat across from her, a small coffee table between us. She opened the envelope and extracted several glossy photographs. She hesitated. “Are you sure, Ellie?”

  “Just show me.”

  She placed the photos on the table and spread them out to face me. Glossy. Big. In my face. I couldn’t seem to make my bra
in register what the photos depicted. Time stretched. Hung. A buzzing sounded in my ears. A spider ran along the edge of the table, and Willow smashed it.

  I didn’t flinch.

  “Redback,” she said. “I hate those things. The females kill their mates after mating.”

  Her words circled around and around my head as I stared with vile hatred at the images of Martin, my husband, my business partner. With Bodie “Rabz” Rabinovitch. There he was, getting out of a rental car in Sydney with Rabz. Martin’s hand resting at the small of her back. A gesture I knew well. Rabz’s face thrown up to the sky as she was laughing. Him grinning. Light dancing in his eyes. Sunlight gold on his hair. I drew one of the images closer. Martin and Rabz kissing. In what appeared to be an underground garage. Another photo captured them entering a hotel, his arm around her shoulders. Another had snared them eating ice-cream cones as they strolled near the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the iconic opera house in the background. I picked up a print that had been shot from outside a building, clearly with a massive telephoto lens. Through the hotel window Martin and Rabz could be seen in an intimate embrace. Rabz partially undressed.

  I swallowed and set the photo down. “So . . . Rabz also went to Sydney.”

  “I’m sorry, Ellie.”

  I inhaled deeply.

  “At least you know, El.” Emotion glittered in Willow’s pretty blue eyes. Her jaw was tight. “At least you have proof.”

  I moistened my lips, trying to realign everything in my head. The puzzle pieces, the odd little niggles—they were all slotting tightly into place, and the big picture emerging was terrifying. He’d been gaslighting me, no doubt. Was he trying to kill me—or trying to make me kill myself? Was that his endgame—some final plan before he left for the Cape Verde islands in two weeks?

  “There’s something else, Ellie.”

  “What?” My voice came out papery.

  “The PI also learned that Rabz has sold the Puggo. The new owner is taking over next month.”

  I put my face into my hands and rubbed hard. “He used me, Willow. He’s taken everything from our bank account. He’s fleeing with the presales deposits. He’s mortgaged our house. He’s totally sucked me dry, and he’s going to leave me holding the bag of this Agnes Holdings mess. I could go to prison. And she’s going with him?” I surged to my feet, began to pace. “That’s what the sale of the Puggo must mean. Rabz is going to the Cape Verde islands with my husband. There’s no extradition treaty there, I bet. I—”