Chapter 1 - The Name Mark Never Mentioned
At County General, Mark had six stitches above his left eyebrow and a concussion.
The doctor said he was lucky.
I did not feel lucky.
Ethan sat beside me in the waiting room wrapped in a hospital blanket, his bare feet tucked under my thigh. Every few minutes he looked toward the double doors and whispered, “Is Daddy okay?”
“He’s okay,” I kept saying.
But when a detective named Rachel Owens walked toward me, I knew “okay” was about to become a complicated word.
“Mrs. Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“I need to ask you about Daniel Shaw.”
“The man at my house?”
She nodded.
“He says he went there to confront your husband about his daughter, Chloe Shaw.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“I’ve never heard of her.”
Detective Owens watched my face carefully.
“Your husband has.”
My stomach tightened.
“How?”
“Chloe worked at Merritt Property Services, the company where your husband was operations director until last year.”
That I knew.
What I did not know was why Mark had gone pale outside our house.
Owens continued. “Chloe disappeared fourteen months ago.”
I stared at her.
“Disappeared?”
“Her car was found at a bus station. Her phone was found three days later near the river.”
Ethan pressed closer to me.
I lowered my voice. “What does that have to do with Mark?”
Owens hesitated.
“According to phone records, the last person Chloe called before she vanished was your husband.”
The double doors opened behind her.
Mark stood there in a hospital gown, pale and exhausted.
He had clearly heard the last sentence.
I looked at him.
“Who is Chloe Shaw?”
Mark’s eyes dropped to Ethan.
“Laura, not here.”
“Then where?”
He said nothing.
I stood.
“Fourteen months, Mark. A woman disappeared, and you never once said her name.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“I was trying to protect you.”
I laughed once, because there was nothing funny about it.
“From what?”
Before Mark could answer, Detective Owens’s phone buzzed.
She read the screen.
Her expression changed immediately.
“What?” I asked.
She looked at Mark.
“Officers searched the room where the confrontation happened.”
Mark went still.
Owens continued.
“They found blood under your desk.”
I swallowed.
“His blood?”
“No.”
May you like
She looked straight at me.
“It belongs to Chloe Shaw.”
