The Wife Who Knew Too Much

by Michele Campbell

  “What are you waiting for?” Juliet said to me.

  “He—he’s hurt. He needs a doctor.”

  “It’s his toe, for Chrissake. He’ll live. Show me the bracelet, or no doctor is gonna save you.”

  I struggled to roll the tight jeans over the bulky black plastic device with shaking fingers. When I finally managed to work it free, I twisted my ankle to see the screws. The panic-button screw looked just like the others, small and deeply recessed into the thick plastic rectangle. Why the hell did they have to make it that way? There was no way to activate it without Juliet knowing I was up to something.

  Connor grabbed a pillow from the bed, muttering as he stripped off its case to make a tourniquet for his foot. In the process, he jostled the pile of pillows, revealing a corner of the pink leather diary, which must have slipped from the towel it was wrapped in. Juliet, leaning down to inspect my ankle monitor, didn’t notice. The next moment, we were all distracted by the door flying open, and Steve Kovacs sprinted in. For a split second, my entire being sang with relief that this ordeal was coming to an end. Then Kovacs raced to Juliet’s side.

  “Are you okay? I heard shots fired. Jesus, what’s with his foot?”

  I saw that Kovacs was in this with her, and my insides went liquid with fear. Juliet with a gun was bad enough. Add Kovacs, and we were doomed.

  “I was trying to get her to tell me where the bug is.”

  “So you shot Connor?”

  “She’s fucking crazy, Steve. You need to call the police,” Connor said.

  “Yeah, right. I’m not calling the cops. Let me see.”

  He grimaced when he saw Connor’s wound.

  “Jesus Christ. Why’d you shoot him, Lissa?”

  “Because he was rushing me to get the gun. He’s with her, and she’s a snitch and a liar. She claims the guy was just here to install that thing.”

  Juliet waved her gun at my ankle.

  “Maybe he was. I never said I knew for sure there was a bug. What the hell did you do?” Kovacs said.

  “I’m trying to protect us. We need to take precautions.”

  “Use your brain. Now he’s shot, he’s pissed off. God knows who else heard the gunshot. Any minute, Dennis or Gloria are gonna come around here and—”

  “I can handle them.”

  “They could call the police. Maybe they already did. You forced our hand. Now what do we do?”

  “We should get out of here. Now. That’s what I’ve been saying.”

  “Yeah, and go where?”

  “Somewhere we can regroup. We take them with us.”

  “What, like hostages? That’s very ambitious, Lissa. You think very highly of yourself.”

  “Are you scared? I thought you were some kind of operational genius.”

  “I am, and I’m telling you, that’s not gonna work. We’d need a remote location that isn’t tied to either of us, where we could stay for long enough, undetected, to convince Mr. Ford here to get with the program, or failing that, make plans to flee the country. You have a place like that?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  He paused, frowning. “Oh,” he said. “Right.”

  “What about that?”

  “It could work. Cover them, will you.”

  I didn’t know what Kovacs’s background was, whether it was military, or law enforcement, or organized crime. But he knew what he was doing, and he was careful. As Juliet held a gun on us, Kovacs had us turn around and lie facedown on the bed. He left the room briefly, presumably to get some restraints, then returned and bound our hands with heavy plastic zip-ties. He then ordered me to sit up, as he carefully unscrewed my ankle monitor. Hagerty had warned me that cutting through the band would alert the police that I was attempting to escape. Kovacs obviously understood that and wasn’t taking any chances. He left the monitor intact, on the bed, right where they’d expect me to be. My only hope was that, somehow, the process of unscrewing the “panic button” screw had set the thing off. If not, they wouldn’t know I was gone until I failed to show up to my lawyer’s office two days from now, as we’d agreed. By the time Hagerty and Pardo figured out I was missing, God knows where I’d be. Hell, I’d probably be dead. So would Connor. And our baby.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  Kovacs and Juliet walked behind us as we crossed the second-floor gallery and descended the staircase, Connor limping painfully and holding the banister for support. When he slowed down, one or the other of them would nudge him forward with the barrel of a gun. Kovacs warned us in a low, gravelly voice that if we made noise, he’d shoot here and now.

  Kovacs had planned ahead. Outside, the Suburban sat in the porte cochere with the engine idling, spewing exhaust into the damp air. It was a cold night, and I shivered without my coat. Connor was barefoot, in shirtsleeves, his breath coming out in clouds, his face pale but determined in the moonlight. Given the way things had played out, I knew for certain now that Connor wasn’t in on this with them. It came as an enormous relief. Not just because there would be two of us against two of them if a moment came where we could plausibly escape, but because the man I loved had not been lying to me. As we approached the car, Connor caught my eye. We looked at each other, and for a split second, everything hung in the air between us—the love, the pain, the past, the future. He was gearing up to try to get us out of this. I could feel it. Kovacs and Juliet were right behind us, both holding loaded guns, but Connor was going to try something. Something reckless, to save us, and the baby. It made me love him desperately. Not just love him. Fear for him. I tried to warn him off with a subtle shake of my head, but he nodded back confidently, like a wordless pep talk. He was telling me to get ready.

  “Where are we going?” Connor said.

  Kovacs shoved Connor toward the car. “Shut up and get in.”

  Connor planted his feet and swung around, butting Kovacs in the chest with his head, knocking the gun from his hand.

  “Tabby. Run!”

  Juliet aimed at me just as Connor stepped between us. The gun blasted. I took off, screaming at the top of my lungs, but I wasn’t fast enough. Someone was on my heels, their shoes pounding and crunching against the drive. They rammed me from behind and I went sprawling. My hands tied behind me, I had no way to break the fall. I closed my eyes as the ground came rushing up. Gravel seared and scratched at me. All the breath left my body. I gasped for air, tasting blood and dirt, grunting with pain. Kovacs was on top of me. I twisted, struggling under his weight, turning my head frantically to see what had happened to my husband.

  “Connor! Connor!”

  “Shut up.”

  Kovacs tried to put his hand over my mouth. I bit down hard, and he yelped.

  “Get, off me, I’m pregnant, you asshole—”

  His fist came sailing toward my face.

  * * *

  I woke up with a headache so intense that I couldn’t see straight. My mouth and cheeks burned where they’d been scraped up by gravel. I was in the backseat of the Suburban, feeling cold and shaky. The car was moving at highway speed, and there was a smell. Metallic, meaty. Blood.

  I turned my head fast, and the motion made me nauseous. I had to close my eyes.

  I opened them and stifled a scream.

  Connor was beside me, belted into the seat, crumpled forward, lifeless. It was dark outside, but in the light from passing cars, I could see that his skin was deathly white, and his shirt dark with blood. Blood coated the backseat. I nudged him with my foot. He didn’t stir. I watched his chest. Did I see it rise and fall? Please, God, let him be alive. Was he breathing, or was that the motion of the car? Even if he was breathing, with blood loss like this, how long until he wasn’t?

  “Connor?” I whispered. “Connor, talk to me.”

  His eyelids flickered. He’d heard me. He was alive.

  “Baby, please. We’re gonna make it, but you have to hold on. I love you so much. I’m so sorry I doubted you. Can you forgive me? Please forgive me.
”

  Kovacs was driving. Juliet sat beside him in the passenger seat. At least now I knew who the enemy was. The two of them had framed me for Nina’s murder. Kovacs knew that I was the same woman he’d seen at Windswept that night. The reason he hadn’t given me up was that he’d had another use in mind for me.

  If I wanted to keep my husband alive, I’d have to convince him to find a doctor.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Steve? Connor’s lost a lot of blood,” I said.

  Neither of them turned around.

  “He needs medical attention.”

  Nothing.

  “Do something. If you don’t help him, he’ll die.”

  Kovacs turned.

  “Be quiet,” he said. “We understand the situation, and we’ll deal with it when we can.”

  “Deal with it now. Please, I’m begging you. He doesn’t have much time.”

  “What are you, a doctor now? Shut up, or else I’ll dump him on the side of the road.”

  After that, I was afraid to talk for fear of antagonizing him. I stared out the window, tears rolling silently down my cheeks. We were passing Springfield, heading north on 91. I’d keep my eyes open, take any chance to escape and get help.

  But there was no chance. Time passed. We didn’t stop. When we passed a sign for a hospital, I could no longer remain silent.

  “Hey, there’s a sign for a hospital. You have to stop, or he’ll die. Juliet, I know you care! You wanted to kill me, not him. Look at him. He’s bleeding out.”

  Juliet turned around, looked at Connor, and blanched.

  “She’s right. Steve, we have to do something. We can’t let him die.”

  “I knew it. This is all about him for you.”

  “What do you care? It’s about the money, too. If he dies, we’re screwed. We get nothing.”

  “Should’ve thought of that before, princess. You couldn’t just stick to the plan?”

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen this way,” she said, and I heard the agony in her voice. “I never meant to hurt him. But you told me she had the place bugged.”

  “I never said that. I said maybe. And so what if the house was bugged? That’s no cause for panic. The plan could’ve still worked. We’d just do it outside, somewhere nobody would hear. A gunshot, or she walks into the ocean. Looks like suicide. She takes the blame for Nina, Connor gets the money, three-way split.”

  Jesus. When Juliet suggested back at Windswept that nobody would be surprised if I killed myself, that wasn’t some off-the-cuff remark. They had a plan. A conspiracy to kill me and blame me for Nina’s murder. If this hadn’t happened, she and Kovacs would have faked my suicide.

  They still might.

  “Fine, you’re right, okay?” Juliet said. “I don’t care who takes the blame. We need to help Connor. Just drive up to the hospital entrance and push him out.”

  “You really want to get caught, don’t you? At a hospital entrance, there are always security cameras. This car can be traced back to us. Both of us—not just you. And then he wakes up in the hospital and starts talking. No way.”

  “I don’t care. I’ll take the blame,” she said.

  “Forgive me if I don’t have a lot of faith in you at this point. Enough, now. Let’s get where we’re going, and we’ll figure it out.”

  Juliet fell silent. By now, that hospital was long gone, anyway. I shook with fear—for myself, for Connor, for our baby, who wasn’t moving. It was the dead of night, and the roads were empty. In the flash of headlights on highway signs, the place names grew ever more familiar. We were in Vermont, then New Hampshire, getting on 89, getting off at an exit I knew all too well. We passed the lake, the old country club, the defunct golf course, the ski resort. Everything was shut down tight. No lights in the houses, no cars on the road. The Suburban turned onto the road that wound up Baldwin Mountain.

  I knew where we were going. To the place it all began. I looked at Connor, slack and lifeless, and remembered him as he’d been that night, gorgeous and mysterious, his hands sure on the wheel of the Lamborghini. We arrived at the iron gate, and it slid open at our approach, as I remembered. The ski house itself was just as impressive as it had been then, surrounded by dark pines that swayed in the cold wind.

  Kovacs pulled me from the backseat and shoved me toward the house. I stumbled, and he grabbed my arm to steady me, holding it in a viselike grip. My legs were like rubber. My hands and arms had gone completely numb from the zip-tie, which had cut off my circulation. I had to be strong and look for any opportunity to get us—all three of us—out of here.

  Juliet leaned into the backseat.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, a catch in her voice.

  “He’s dead?” Kovacs asked.

  Kovacs had to grab my elbow to stop me from collapsing to the ground.

  “Check for a pulse,” he said.

  Juliet put her fingers to Connor’s throat, then looked back in horror.

  “I don’t feel it. Wait, no, there it is. Oh, thank God, he’s still alive, but it’s faint. He needs a doctor immediately.”

  “Please, Steve,” I said, my voice hoarse with fear. “I’m begging you, help him. Connor and I, we’ll tell the police whatever you want. We’ll pay you off. As much money as you want. It can still work out how you planned. But he has to live.”

  “Who’s gonna treat a gunshot wound and not call the cops?”

  “You can’t let him die,” Juliet said in a frantic tone.

  “I’m not the one who shot him, Lissa. You figure it out. Got any bright ideas?”

  “Like she said. Take him to the ER.”

  “And explain the gunshot in his gut how, exactly?”

  “I’m from around here,” I said. “I know people at the local hospital. Let’s bring him there. I can ask them to keep it quiet.”

  Kovacs gave a short, barking laugh. “Bring him to your friends? You think I’m stupid? No.”

  “Then, what? Do you want him to die?” Juliet said.

  “Of course not. If he dies, we’re screwed. Two dead bodies on our hands and no cash.”

  Two dead bodies—Connor, and me.

  41

  Kovacs unlocked the front door and shoved me through it. The cold, musty smell of the ski house brought back the nights I’d spent lying in Connor’s arms, talking, making love. I was not going to die here, in the place our baby had been conceived. Neither was she, and neither was her father.

  He led me through the great room to the hall on the other side. There were three bedrooms off this hallway, I recalled. The first door led to the room where Connor and I had slept. Kovacs pushed me inside and examined the door handle. It had no lock. I could’ve told him that—there were no locks on any of these bedroom doors. He checked the en suite bathroom, which did lock, but from the inside, with one of those flimsy push-button things. Even with my hands zip-tied behind my back, I’d be able to undo it. Kovacs realized that, because he brought me out to the bedroom and started looking all around, presumably for something to tie me to. I remained docile and compliant, my eyes cast down, so he wouldn’t think that I was plotting my escape.

  He pushed me down face-first onto the bed, and I heard him stripping off his belt. Was he going to rape me? Beat me? Adrenaline surged, my body tensing for a fight. Instead, he threaded his belt through my zip-tied hands and yanked me to my feet, dragging me toward the gas fireplace. He pushed me to a sitting position on the hearth, running the belt through the handles of its wrought-iron doors and buckling it so I was lashed to them by my zip-tied hands. The motion forced my arms up behind my back. I cried out in pain.

  “Please, that hurts so bad. Can’t you tie me in front?”

  He stormed out and slammed the door.

  I was alone. I caught my breath and took stock of my situation. I had nausea and double vision—probably a concussion from being punched in the head. I was on the edge of hysteria with worry about Connor. I was terrified to try to escape. But I had no idea whether the
y’d follow through and get medical attention for Connor. If they didn’t, he would bleed to death for sure. And then they’d come right back here and get rid of the witness—murder not just me, but my baby. I had to get free of the restraints and get out of here. It wouldn’t be easy, and I couldn’t be sure that I had the strength or the cunning. But there was no other choice. And there wasn’t much time.

  Although my hands were tied in back, Kovacs had left the tension on the belt relatively loose. I was able to stand to a crouching position, with enough leeway to move side to side about a foot in either direction. I turned sideways to examine the fireplace. The surround was made from rough-hewn stone, with a sharp edge. It took some maneuvering, but I was able to get myself into position to rub the zip-tie on its corner. That hurt like hell on my swollen wrists, but I kept going—for three minutes, five? Sweat broke out on my forehead and ran down the side of my face. Nothing was happening. It wasn’t working. I was using up my strength and getting nowhere.

  I needed a different plan. These ties could be broken if you applied enough force. I’d need to slam the tie hard against the stone, but I’d be doing it blind, with my hands behind my back.

  On the first attempt, I missed and slammed my hand into rock by mistake. The pain made me dizzy. I waited for my vision to clear, then looked over my shoulder, trying to memorize the distance to get the trajectory just right. I swung. Success. The zip-tie popped open and fell to the floor.

  There were deep gouges on my wrists and cuts on my hands, but first aid would have to wait. I put my ear to the closed door and listened. The house was quiet, but that didn’t mean it was empty. They’d probably both left with Connor, but it was possible that one of them had stayed behind to guard me. I moved silently into the hall, where I stopped and listened again, struggling to focus my attention given the pain and fog in my head. I didn’t hear anybody. I had the advantage of knowing my surroundings. This house and Baldwin Mountain were both imprinted on my memory. I bypassed the great room and hurried to the kitchen, where I grabbed a carving knife from the block before slipping into the laundry room. From here, I could access the garage. I couldn’t open the garage-bay doors without attracting attention, but I recalled that the garage had a pedestrian door. I wasn’t exactly sure where it led, but it had to come out behind the house somewhere. From there it would be a short dash to the woods.