The Marriage Lie

by Kimberly Belle

  28

  I stand very still, a panicky fear roaring in my ears. “What... How did you get in here? How did you get past the alarm?”

  Corban steps out of the shadows of my front room, dressed like the lead bad guy in a James Bond movie. Indigo jeans, an ebony sweater, black sneakers, all sleek and designer and dark as the shadows outside. He looks like he could scale the walls of my house and drop through a window without making a sound. Who knows? Maybe that’s how he got inside.

  “I learned a lot from your techie husband, including how to get around an alarm.” He makes a tsking sound, and that same creepy smile pushes up his face. It scares me more now than the last time I saw it this afternoon, when I was pulling away from his house. “I told you I knew how. Looks like you should have listened.”

  It takes a couple of seconds before his words register over the pounding of my heart, and then another few for me to catch his meaning. Looks like I should have listened to what? And then I understand. Corban is referring to the text from the 678 number: FYI, I know how to get around an alarm system. “Hold on. You sent that message? You’re the one who’s been texting me?”

  He lifts both arms to indicate the space around us—my foyer, my house—and I take it as a yes, which means he also sent the other one. The first threat from that same number comes flooding back in razor-sharp focus: Tell me where Will hid the money or you’ll be joining him.

  I look into Corban’s eyes, obsidian and more than a little unhinged, and I think he’d do it. He’d kill me and not think twice.

  But why? Why send me threatening texts from one number while pretending to be Will with the other? It doesn’t make any sense. The roaring in my ears turns hollow, like I’m at the bottom of the ocean.

  “Look, I don’t know where the money is. I didn’t even know about it until a few days ago.”

  “Of course, you have no idea.” His words agree but not his tone. His tone says that I know where the money is, and he’ll make good on his threat if he has to.

  Sweat blooms between my breasts as I shuffle backward, inching closer to the alarm pad, trying to come up with a way to distract him for three seconds. Three seconds to activate a panic button! What idiot came up with that rule? Three seconds is an eternity when you’re panicked.

  I back up another half foot. “Honestly, Corban. I turned the house upside down, and it’s not here. Look for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  His eyes narrow, zeroing in on the panel over my shoulder. “You don’t seriously think I’m that stupid, do you?”

  A rhetorical question if I’ve ever heard one. I don’t answer.

  He grabs me by the wrist and pulls me down the hallway, deeper into the house, farther away from the buttons on my alarm pad.

  I stumble behind, searching for the imprint of a gun poking out from under his waistband, the shape of a knife strapped under his skintight clothes. As far as I can tell, he’s not armed, but he also doesn’t need to be. His gym-chiseled body is its own weapon.

  He shoves me into the kitchen and swings me around, pressing me up against the lip of the sink. “What’s the plan here, Iris? To mourn Will for a month or two, then collect the life insurance and leave town under some Eat, Pray, Love I need to ‘find myself’ new age bullshit?” He serves up his quote marks with a sneer, rage exploding behind his eyes. “Surely the two of you can do better than that.”

  I don’t know what to say, but he seems to be waiting for a response, and the only one I can come up with is “I...I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He makes a disgusted sound. “Where’s he waiting for you, South America? Eastern Europe? Mexico?” He snorts, and the sweat on his head glistens under the glow of the kitchen’s canned lights. “Scratch that, Mexico is too hot. We both know Will prefers cooler climates.”

  I shake my head, my heart kicking up another gear. I’m trying to do the math, to piece together the logic behind Corban’s string of eighty-seven texts pretending to be my dead husband, and the words coming out of his mouth now. He’s talking like Will is still alive.

  Yet Corban has tried to trick me before.

  For a second or two, I consider the practicalities of going along with his delusions. If he thinks I’m in on this heist with Will, then playing along might be a halfway decent stalling strategy.

  But then Corban takes two steps closer, the thick tangle of veins in his neck pulsing with what I read as rage and hatred, and I chicken out.

  “I know the messages were from you. The texts and those two notes. They weren’t from Will, were they?”

  He laughs, a mean, angry bark. “I always thought it was too much of a coincidence. AppSec closing in on him at the exact time he boards a plane to the one city he detested more than any other place on the planet.” He shakes his head. “Nope, never going to happen. Though I do have to give you props. Those tears yesterday were a nice touch. You’d make one hell of an actress.”

  He steps back, and I skitter around him, moving deeper into the kitchen, but every time I put more than a foot or two of distance between us, Corban closes it with a long stride. It’s like a game of cat and mouse, a demented dance around my kitchen island. But now I’m almost to the hall, and I pause, calculating the distance to the back door. If I can get there, all I have to do is open it, and I’ll set off the alarm. Can I get there?

  He laughs at whatever he sees on my face. “Have you ever seen a black man run? Don’t even bother.”

  I steer the conversation back to safer ground. “I’m not acting. I’m a grieving widow who found out the man she married was a thief, one who stole four and a half million dollars from his employer.”

  “Five.”

  “What?”

  “Five million, and I stole it. Me. I’m the one who came up with the plan. Will only executed it.” He puffs up his chest, punching a thumb into the very center. “Do you know how complicated this deal was? How many layers I had to work through to get my hands on the CSS stock? Only someone highly skilled and dangerously intelligent could have come up with a plan that genius. Thanks to me, we walked away with five million dollars.”

  And yet nobody walked away with the money, did they? Nick caught them.

  It suddenly occurs to me that Corban is narcissistic. Probably borderline, as well. Excessive bragging is just one of the personality disorder traits but a classic one, which explains why I didn’t see it before. Narcissists are hard to spot, as they’re often skilled at hiding their disorder from the world.

  “What’s CSS?” I say, slipping my palms into my back jeans pockets. It’s a casual move, but also a deliberate one. My phone is there, cold and hard and comforting, against my fingers. I flip the ringer switch to silent. With any luck, he won’t know it’s there.

  “Crunch Security Systems. The shares AppSec acquired in a venture capital payout back in 2013. I’m the one who told Will to move the shares to a company I set up in the Bahamas, and exactly when to liquidate them. He could have never come up with it on his own. He may be a whiz with computers, but he’s hopeless when it comes to business.”

  I give Corban an impressed brow lift, even though I’m only half listening. I need to keep him talking, to put as many words between us as possible.

  “But Will must have messed up somehow, because AppSec found out. I talked to Will’s boss. He told me they had a forensic accountant tracing the money, and all signs point to Will.”

  My cell phone vibrates against my hip with an incoming call. Can I swipe to pick up without him noticing?

  Corban lifts a shoulder, a yeah, so? gesture. “We knew they’d find out eventually.”

  His indifference stumps me, enough so that my fingers freeze on my phone. I stand here for a moment, studying Corban’s nonplussed expression and pursed lips, remembering the two new life insurance policies and Will’s
list of household chores that last morning in bed, and the answer falls into place.

  I shake my head, unnerved I didn’t think of it sooner. “You were going to disappear, weren’t you? Both of you, I mean. You and Will were already planning to leave, so when the plane went down at the exact same time the money went missing, you assumed he took off with all of it.”

  My phone falls still, flipping the caller to voice mail, then starts right up again.

  “He did take off with all of it. You told me that.”

  I frown, trying to remember ever saying anything near those words. “I did?”

  Corban nods. “When you told me about the note in your drawer, remember? The one Will put there.” My heart rate spikes at what he’s implying, but before I can process his words, Corban takes two steps closer. I’d back up, but there’s nowhere for me to go. I’m already pressed against the counter. “But he made one fatal mistake.”

  “What’s that?” My voice cracks, and I hate myself for sounding so scared.

  He grins, werewolf teeth against skin black as coal. “He left his pretty wife here, all alone.”

  My skin prickles, and I swallow down a spiky ball of nausea.

  “You know, I can see what Will sees in you. Beyond the obvious, I mean. You’re smart and you’re funny, and you’ve got this thing about you.” Corban waves a hand in my direction, his gaze dipping lower, then lower still. “Delicate. Sexy. Will is a lucky, lucky man.”

  “Was,” I say, correcting him. My mind is dull with fear and shock, and I can’t think straight. The word comes out slow and sticky.

  He crosses his arms, studying me with narrowed eyes. “You know, for a while there I was convinced you were in on his vanishing act. But then you didn’t break character, not even when you thought my texts were from him. Either you really didn’t know, or you and Will have been one step ahead of me this whole time.”

  “I’m not lying. I really didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, I’m starting to believe.” He pushes away from the counter, stepping closer, then closer still, until the smell of his cologne churns my stomach. “Let’s smoke that rat out of his hole. What do you say?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he won’t answer me.” Corban digs around in his pocket for his phone. “But let’s see if he’ll respond to you.”

  Before I can say a word, he swings an arm around my neck, pulls my temple flush to his and snaps a selfie. The flash is blinding, and I’m too shocked to do anything other than stare.

  While I blink away the white spots in my vision, Corban hunches over his phone, his thumbs typing away. He attaches the picture to an email—no subject line, no message, just a picture of a smiling Corban and a pale and wide-eyed me—and hits Send. Almost immediately, a text pings his phone.

  “Good news,” he says, flipping the phone around so I can see. “Your husband is alive and well.”

  Hurt her and I’ll slit your throat.

  Despite everything, despite my terror that’s sharp and pointed, despite this madman who knows his way around an alarm and who I believe when he says he’ll kill me, my euphoria is swift and unmistakable.

  Will is alive.

  My phone buzzes, and this time I snatch it from my pocket. Corban doesn’t stop me, just leans a hip against the counter and watches, that same creepy smile playing on his lips.

  The number is a long string of digits that look like they’re coming from a foreign country. I swipe my thumb across the screen and press it to my ear, my voice barely audible above my thudding heart. “Hello?”

  “Iris, get out of there.”

  My sob is thick and immediate. For the past two weeks, I’ve dreamed of this voice. I’ve prayed to a God I’m not entirely sure I believe in, bargained with everything dear for just one more chance at hearing it again, and now here it is, finally—finally—coming down the phone line, and all I can do is cry.

  “Will?”

  “Did you hear any of what I just said? Corban is dangerous. He will hurt you or worse in order to get to me. I’m on my way, but in the meantime, get out of there. I don’t care what you have to do, just get away and go get help. Can you do that for me?”

  Will is on his way! I know there were a lot of other words in there, but I’m on my way are the only ones I hear. My husband is on his way home.

  “H-hurry.”

  Corban snatches the phone from my ear. “Yeah, buddy. You better hurry. Your pretty little wife is waiting. Oh, and don’t forget my money. This little stunt you just pulled will cost you your share of the funds.”

  I lunge at my phone, clawing at him to get it back, but he fends me off with ease with a concrete arm.

  “She’s a spitfire, Billy boy. I’ll bet she’s a banshee in bed. I’ll bet she knocks over furniture and screams like a porn star, doesn’t she?”

  A wave of sick rolls over in my stomach as I take in Corban’s words, the unhinged glint in his eyes. I try to scramble backward, but Corban’s hand is an iron vise clamping down on my biceps.

  There’s commotion on the other end of the line, but I can’t make out any of Will’s words. Whatever his reply, it deepens Corban’s grin.

  His gaze lands on me, and a leer prowls up his face. “Don’t you worry. I’m sure we’ll think of something to do.”

  29

  The doorbell rings less than twenty minutes later, and my heart climbs into my throat. How could Will be here, already? Where was he hiding, in the garden shed? And why ring the doorbell instead of using his key or, better yet, busting through the window in a surprise attack? None of it makes any sense.

  Corban checks his watch and frowns. From the looks of his expression, he’s thinking much the same.

  There’s a smattering of sharp knocks, followed by Evan’s muffled voice. “Hey, Iris, you still up? I think I left my wallet.”

  “Busy night,” Corban quips, but he’s talking through gritted teeth.

  I lean my head into the adjoining den, spot a patch of shiny leather sticking out from the stack of court record printouts on the coffee table. Evan’s wallet. He took it out of his back pocket to sit down, then must have tossed it there and forgotten about it.

  “Now what?” I say.

  Corban watches me for a few seconds, working out what to do, how to fix this problem. He’s not worried about Evan; I can tell that much. He’s worried about me somehow alerting Evan. I’m the problem.

  “Disarm the alarm from your phone. I don’t want you anywhere near those panic buttons.”

  Evan knocks again, this time harder and with his fist. “Iris, are you in there?”

  “Never mind, I’ll do it.” Corban pulls up the alarm app on his phone—his phone, which explains how he got past my alarm—and the pad by the front door gives a trio of staccato beeps. He grabs me by the biceps and pulls me close, his fingers clamping down hard enough to leave a bruise. “Give him his wallet and get rid of him, do you understand? Otherwise I’ll break his neck and make you watch.”

  I nod, swallowing. I don’t doubt he could do it, too, despite Evan’s size.

  “Good girl.” Corban turns me around by the shoulders and gives me a hard shove. “Now, go.”

  There are a number of things I could do here. Slip Evan a sign. Use the distress code when I rearm the system. Bolt out the door and run for my life. But I believed Corban when he said he would hurt Evan and make me watch, and I couldn’t bear either. Besides, leaving or alerting the police means I won’t get to see Will again.

  Which is why I fetch the wallet, plaster on a smile and head down the hallway, tossing as casual a wave as I can manage to Evan through the glass. He looks relieved to see me, though his shoulders stay up by his ears like giant humps swallowing his neck until I pull open the door.

  “Where were you?” Evan say
s. “I tried to call.”

  “Sorry.” Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a flash of movement in the front parlor. Corban slipping into the shadows. “I had my ringer turned off.”

  “Oh.” He lifts a foot as if to take a step inside, but I don’t move out of the doorway. I stand there stiffly, holding the door and blocking the entry with my body.

  There’s a long pause.

  I push his wallet into the space between us. “Here. I found it on the table.”

  He takes the wallet with a curious look, then leans far left and peers through the front room window. My heart stops. Other than the beige sofa, the room is practically empty. If Corban is still standing there, pressed against the opposite side of the wall, Evan will surely see him.

  But then Evan straightens, blinking down at me like the only thing he saw was an empty room. “I talked to Zeke. The 678 number is a dead end, unfortunately. A prepay with no name or address attached. There’s no way to trace it.”

  I scrunch up my face, feigning disappointment. “Oh. Okay. Well, thank him for trying. Good night.” I push against the door, but Evan stops it with a palm.

  “What’s up with you?”

  I make sure to hold his gaze as I shake my head. “Just beat. I was getting ready to head upstairs to bed.”

  He cocks his head, frowning slightly. “You look like you’ve been crying.”

  “It’s been a rough day.”

  “Oh. Well, if you want to talk...” He lets the rest trail while his gaze fishes over my shoulder, craning his head into the house as much as I’ll let him, which is not far. Besides my staircase and the lit-up hallway behind me, he probably can’t see much. “All right, well, I don’t want to keep you. Thanks for this.” He holds up his wallet, wagging it as he mouths two words: You okay?

  I push up a reassuring smile. “You’re welcome. Call you tomorrow.”

  And then I shut the door in his face, flip the dead bolts and head back down the hall.

  I’m shaking all over by the time I step into the kitchen. Corban slides from the shadows, holding up a finger. We listen for the sound of Evan’s car door banging shut, his motor starting up and the growl of his engine as he drives away.