“What?” The word popped out involuntarily. Now Ethan was confused, because he knew he hadn’t imagined seeing her at the big window in the back of the house, cleaning the countertop like she used to at home. Maybe he could be convinced that he hadn’t seen her leaving the grocery store in Boyle Mills, that he’d seen someone that looked like her, Raleigh’s doppelganger, her unknown twin, whatever. But Ethan couldn’t accept that the woman he’d seen inside this A-frame’s big window wasn’t Raleigh.
He stared out the front window, watching another agent in a blue jacket with the three yellow letters on its back carry a couple of boxes out of the A-frame replica shed to an unmarked Sprinter van.
Klein snapped his fingers. “Ethan, stay with me.”
And then there was also her hand on his shoulder in the boathouse. The smell of her. The sound of her voice as she urged him to stay still. He knew his wife, her voice, her touch. Ethan knew with every ounce of his being that it had been her. Knew it.
“Trust me, Ethan,” Klein was saying. “I looked.”
“Like I said, she must have left.” Her vehicle was gone, so that made sense. She’d left when things started heating up, when she’d looked out and seen the SWAT team swarming the property, pouring out from between the trees as they surrounded the boathouse and then eventually overtook it, killing the maniac holding him hostage. Any sensible human being would want to avoid getting caught up in that kind of gunfight, right? Raleigh included.
But how would she have known when to leave?
Klein shook his head as if he could read Ethan’s thoughts, and then his eyes looked sad. “Ethan, there’s absolutely no indication that a woman ever lived here.”
“But I saw—”
“A woman,” Klein said, his voice coming out deflated as he nodded. “Yeah, you saw a woman.”
“I saw Raleigh.”
“Describe her, Ethan. I mean, she must look different after all of these years, right?”
Agreeing with a nod, he closed his eyes and thought back to when he’d seen her at the window, the moments leading up to her lips moving, telling him that she still loved him. And with that image frozen in his mind, he described her.
When Ethan opened his eyes, he saw that Klein was massaging the edges of his mouth with a thumb and finger. “Yeah, that’s what you saw.”
“Raleigh.”
Klein shook his head, reached back and opened the office door. Motioning for Ethan to follow, Klein walked through the busy house to the kitchen area at the back where Raleigh had been cleaning up. But instead of Raleigh, Ethan saw a bunch of police officers, FBI agent milling about the room, taking photos, gathering evidence in the same kind of boxes he’d watched the agent carry away from the shed.
And then he saw another man in a suit, standing at the counter and taking notes while speaking to the only woman in the room. Klein and Ethan approached her from behind.
From that angle, the woman matched Ethan’s description—height, hair color, clothing. Ethan felt his heart accelerating inside his chest. He couldn’t believe he was finally being reunited with Raleigh after all of this time.
“That’s her,” he whispered under his breath.
“No,” Klein said, and that was when the woman Ethan had just described turned around, her eyes red and puffy, her face pale. She had a rounder face than Raleigh’s, her lips were plumper, her nose shorter, and her teeth smaller.
Ethan felt the color flush from his face as the woman’s eyes met his. Like she recognized him, but didn’t know where. When Ethan finally tugged his attention away, he asked Klein who this woman was.
Steering him away from the kitchen, Klein explained why the woman was there. “She runs an online grocery delivery service, services these cottages outside of Boyle Mills and all of the outlying areas.” Klein scratched his head.
Ethan stopped. “But that wasn’t Raleigh.”
“I know.” Klein seemed to struggle with suppressing a chuckle.
“She’s not the woman I saw.”
“Uh huh.” Klein escorted him to the front door and opened it. “We’ll have one of the locals drive you back into Boyle Mills, Ethan.”
“My car’s at the McAdam McCabin,” he said, waving off the offer.
“Beg your pardon?”
“Nothing. I’m good for the ride.”
“I suggest you head straight home, Ethan. You’re banged up real bad. Alright?”
Curious about what was truly going on here, Ethan agreed with Klein’s advice and took a step outside before glancing back inside the A-frame cottage.
“I’ll be checking in with you, Ethan,” Klein said as he started closing the door. “Mid-week.”
Nodding dismissively, Ethan remembered the photos in the office. “Hey, Agent Klein, who was the guy who lived here?”
Klein seemed to hesitate. “Rented to a guy named Travis Maltby.”
Not Damien Parker. Ethan pointed toward the office. “Was that his picture in there?”
Klein nodded. “Medic Three, according to the description you gave the composite artist seven and a half years ago.”
I knew it. Despite the sensitivity in his nose and the acute pain in his head, Ethan had to suppress the satisfied smile that wanted to push through to the surface.
All three of the medics who’d participated in Raleigh’s disappearance were now dead. As much as Ethan had dreamed about revenge, the kind that would see all of those men dead, something felt horribly off. And not only because their deaths meant any information they had about his wife was now gone with them.
Standing just outside the front door to Travis Maltby’s rented A-frame cottage, Ethan realized that these deaths still didn’t answer one vital question: Where was Raleigh now?
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Back home at 121 Cobalt, Ethan indulged in a delicate, careful shower, donned his bathrobe and then settled at the kitchen island with a cup of coffee and the two copies of the Trib he’d found on the front porch when he returned. After everything he’d been through, his body was sore and bruised, and he was exhausted, probably suffering from a bit of shock; it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet, but he was ready for bed and the kind of defeated sleep from which most people never wanted to wake.
Knowing that the three medics from Raleigh’s last night with him, seven and a half years ago, were now dead gave him tremendous peace, but there were still gaps. Big ones. And he still didn’t know what role had Damien Parker, the man Raleigh had been lunching with at the Signature Room, played in all of this.
As if some greater force was listening in on Ethan’s thoughts as he sipped his warm coffee and read a headline he couldn’t remember reading, he heard a noise.
It sounded like feet shuffling on the hardwood floor, but then it stopped.
Frowning, Ethan pushed away from the counter and the newspaper. With his coffee in one hand, he grabbed the only weapon he owned, a carving knife from the J.A. Henckels block next to the stove. He knew from cutting through roast—and the insane amount of packing tape they used whenever he ordered something online—that if the knife came into contact with human flesh, it would slice through meat and bone without much effort, especially after the steaming coffee immobilized that intruder.
As he left the kitchen area and slipped into the main hallway that linked the back of the house to the front, Ethan heard creaking in the floor next. An old house like this made those kinds of noises frequently, but the sound he’d just heard wasn’t from the house. He’d lived here for over eight years, he knew his house the way a dog would. And someone was here, someone was inside his house, and the house was warning Ethan of their presence.
Damien Parker?
Easing down the main hallway toward the front door, he held his breath. He knew where to step, which boards to avoid, and when the floor creaked again, he knew exactly where the intruder was hiding, waiting for him.
The renovated room.
It made sense. The dual plastic sheets afforded the intruder
something of an advantage; before Ethan could storm inside that room for a confrontation, the intruder would see him all tangled up in the plastic sheets and attack.
So Ethan decided to stand still. He would wait, instead, and use those dual plastic sheets to his advantage.
With his pulse racing and the adrenaline-laced thumping in his ears, Ethan allowed himself to rest against the wall that ended at the entrance to the room he’d been renovating.
I’ve got all day, I’ll wait here all night if I have to.
And it sure seemed like he might have to.
The house started getting darker. Every so often, the intruder would move around inside the room, the plastic sheets never moving. Often, when there was no movement for what felt like several minutes—probably just a few seconds, otherwise I could call 911 and report the intruder—Ethan wondered if he’d possibly imagined the noise, but then the intruder would shift and the house would urge him to be patient.
But it was getting dark, and Ethan began to wonder if he’d even be able to see the intruder leaving that room. Without the hallway lights on, there wasn’t a whole lot of light pouring into the hallway.
Glancing the other way, toward the back of the house, he saw that the light from the kitchen would be at his back, but of course he hadn’t turned that light on, he’d been too exhausted, too depressed.
Shit.
Feeling like he was at a slight disadvantage, Ethan wondered if he should just storm into the renovated room, slicing through the plastic sheets and swinging his arms, and hope to catch the intruder by surprise. But he knew that he’d only be ambushing himself. He’d fail. He’d die.
Best to wait.
When the floor creaked again, he could tell the intruder was on the move. The shuffling of feet seemed to be approaching the plastic sheets, getting closer to the main hallway.
Ready. Steady.
And then the sheet ballooned out into the hall, just a little like a soft breath blowing into a tissue, but it was enough to let Ethan know the intruder was making his move.
Ethan was ready to pounce.
Glancing down at his two weapons, he realized his coffee probably wasn’t a very good weapon; even though it was hot, thought not scalding-hot, he couldn’t imagine he’d come close to hitting is target once he launched it at the intruder. And the knife was shaking so badly that if the intruder threw an onion at him, he’d have a mess of diced onions at his feet.
Ethan’s odds were horrible.
Shit.
At last, he cleared his throat.
The plastic sheet fell back into the place and the floorboards went mute.
“I know you’re here,” he said, his voice tight and high-pitched with apprehension. But the intruder wouldn’t know better. An intruder might think he was crazy; a voice like that didn’t belong to sanity, to someone who possessed nerves of stone. “And I’m armed. So make your next move a smart one.” Then he added, “Asshole,” as if that might underline just how insane he really was.
There was a moment of silence. And then, “Are you alone?”
The coffee cup fell from his grip and shattered on the hardwood floor.
Raleigh.
“Ethan?” Now it was her voice that came out high-pitched. “Oh, God, Ethan, are you okay?”
The plastic sheets billowed out into the hallway as if he might be dreaming, and then Raleigh rushed into the hallway, veering towards him to make sure he was okay.
Chapter Seventy
In the hallway, Raleigh held him so tight that Ethan quickly started to feel numb. The entire drive back to Chicago from Boyle Mills, he’d questioned whether Agent Klein had been correct in his suggestion that he’d imagined Raleigh. It certainly made sense. After all of these years, he’d questioned his own behavior, questioned whether he’d been abusive toward his wife and simply blacked those memories out like he had blacked out the moments leading up to him beating Thomas Braun in the alley off of Congress.
It made sense that he’d mistaken the grocery lady as Raleigh at the A-frame’s big windows, that some part of his brain had simply refused to let her go. That stuff happened, he was sure of it.
But here she stood, in the hallway of their first home, her arms wrapped so tight around him that he could no longer feel his fingertips or the burning pain in his face. At last, he reached up and squeezed back, one hand clutching her short hair, the other planted firmly between her shoulder blades.
I’m not imagining this.
He didn’t want to let go, because he remembered what had happened the last time he’d let her go; he’d watched her climb into that ambulance.
He didn’t want to open his eyes, either. He was afraid that if he did, her scent might evaporate and he’d find that he was holding nothing but empty air.
“I missed you so much,” he said, his voice cracking. He could feel the wet path of tears on his face. He really was a big pussy, wasn’t he? What kind of man cries as hard and as frequently for a wife who’d possibly orchestrated her own abduction as a way to get away from him? Made sense, especially if he’d been abusive like the police photos had suggested.
Am I really a bad husband?
“No,” Raleigh whispered into his ear. He hadn’t said the words out loud, had he? “You’re a bad scientist, but never a bad husband.”
And that was when he decided to see for himself whether she was real or he really was hallucinating her presence. So he released his grip and pushed her away from him.
Yup. Still there. When he squeezed his grip on her arms, he felt the hardness of her muscles in his hands.
Tilting her head, she said, “Ouch, Ethan. Don’t you remember how easily I bruise?”
“You’re not real.” It was the only thing he could choke out before succumbing to the tears again. “You’re not real, you can’t possibly be.”
“Ethan . . .”
He lowered himself to the floor, his back sliding down the length of the wall until he reached the spot next to where he’d dropped his coffee cup and the carving knife. Burying his face in his hands, Ethan sobbed. He knew he was tired, but now he feared he was legitimately losing his mind because even the pain from the boathouse didn’t seem to bother him as much as it had during the long drive home.
“Ethan, please stop.” Raleigh’s empathetic voice had a trace of its own pain. “I’m home now.”
Lifting his face out of his hands, he stared up at her, saw that her eyes were red and puffy too. She was tougher than he was, always had been. Ethan knew that. One of the tests she’d endured during the journey to the diagnosis of Essential Thrombocymethemia involved collecting bone marrow, and the anesthesia hadn’t worked properly. Plus, the pills had been difficult, Ethan remembered. The Mythea prescription had lowered her platelet count way too much at first, which had caused her first episode. They’d messed with her temper, had the psychiatrist at the hospital throwing words like psychosis around.
Jeez, the pills . . .
Raleigh lowered herself into his lap. “Look at me, Ethan.”
He was staring right at her, his view blurred by tears and fear and regret that even if she were real, and she was indeed back, they’d lost seven and a half years.
“Is this real enough for you, Ethan?”
Before he could even contemplate her question, he felt Raleigh’s lips press against his. What started off as a simple kiss quickly evolved. Within seconds, they were groping each other, Ethan’s hands stripping Raleigh out of her shirt; her hands unbuckling his belt and opening his pants.
“This is real,” he said, pulling his mouth away from hers and standing up. He stepped out of his pants, lifted her into his arms despite the sensitivity in his ribs, and started toward the stairs at the end of the hall.
“If it’s not,” Raleigh said, chuckling as he awkwardly carried her up the stairs, “let’s make this the best hallucination either of us has ever had, okay, mi todo?”
Her code word for wanting intimacy.
Ethan gulped.
“I will.”
At the top of the stairs, he lowered his wife to the floor. Everything he remembered about Raleigh fell back into place—the places she liked to be touched, where she wanted to be kissed, and how she liked to be taken.
They didn’t make it to the bedroom.
Not the first time they made love, anyway.
Chapter Seventy-One
Ethan no longer felt sleepy and exhausted. They’d made love three times before midnight, so consumed by their sexual hunger that they hadn’t had much time to say much about what had happened seven and a half years ago, or what had transpired in the time since.
Later that night, once their appetite had waned and they were ready for bed, Ethan and Raleigh settled into bed. Her side of the mattress didn’t sag like his, he noticed; in fact, Raleigh’s side of the bed was still, technically, brand-new. Nobody had ever slept there, including Ethan himself.
It felt perfect to have her in that spot on the mattress, to have her back home.
It feels too perfect.
At last, he couldn’t keep his denial afloat. As it started to sink in, reality became a lot clearer for Ethan.
“Who was Travis Maltby?” he asked, the question blurting out. He had many, and that one was at the top of the bin. Before she could answer, Ethan asked a follow-up question. “And why were you living with him in Boyle Mills?” But he couldn’t stop there, either, even as her head rose off of his shoulder and her eyes cut through the darkness and latched onto his, slightly accusatory, slightly frightened. “And Thomas Braun, who was he? Why did he get pushed in front of that train, Raleigh? Why did I beat him so badly I thought I killed him, what was all of this for? And Paul Hyatt, a guy with a wife and a boat with your name on it, why did all of this happen, why did I get stuck here without my wife, without knowing what happened to you and—”
Raleigh pressed her lips to his. She kissed him, hard.
But Ethan knew what she was doing, why she wanted him to shut up, to stop talking, so he pushed her away, maybe a little too hard, a little too aggressively, and how could he not wonder if he was about to black out and lose his mind and hurt the woman he’d loved for all of these years?
The Last Night (The Last Series Book 2) Page 27
