Page 9 of Never Lie
“Oh!” Her black eyelashes flutter as her hand flies self-consciously to her eyes. She automatically reaches into her purse to search for a compact, but in the process, her phone slips from her left hand and clatters loudly to the wood floor. “Shit…”
She scoops up her phone—there’s a spiderweb of cracks imprinted on the screen. She looks like she’s going to burst into tears.
“Oh, dear,” I say. “It looks like your phone got cracked.”
“Shit.” She runs her index finger over the screen as if she might magically fix it with her touch. She swears again and yanks her finger away. The glass has sliced right through the pad of her finger. “Just my luck, right?”
“Maybe it’s a sign,” I say. “Perhaps you should spend less time on your phone.”
Paige laughs like I made a joke. She doesn’t know me well enough to know that I don’t make jokes.
Her smile is strained as I lead her to the door, and once she gets outside, the smile drops off her face altogether. I watch from the window as she makes her way back to her car, this time avoiding the treacherous loose brick. As soon as she slides into the driver’s seat, she twists her body to look at her reflection in the rearview mirror. She touches the corner of her eye, frowning as she searches for the mascara I had assured her was caked in there.
She’s having a bad day. But it’s going to get much worse when she gets the email from me terminating her as my agent.
I turn away from the window and look down at the manila envelope that Paige left me. My book. Two years of blood, sweat, and tears.
I carefully lift the clasp and open the envelope. I pull the proof copy of my book from within. The corners of my lips twitch. The book is exactly the way I envisioned it. My name is in bold block letters: Adrienne Hale, MD, PhD. The publisher balked when I suggested the knife dripping with blood on the book cover, but after the success of my last book, I got to call the shots. They must realize now what a brilliant decision it was—how striking the image is. I trace the letters of the title as I read the words out loud:
The Anatomy of Fear.
Chapter 4
TRICIA
Present Day
I don’t have much hope for the kitchen. If this house hasn’t been lived in during the three years Adrienne Hale has been missing, how can there be any food in the refrigerator? The best we can hope for is some stuff in cans that we can heat up.
The refrigerator is at least twice the size of the tiny one we have stuffed into our kitchen at home. Everything here seems to be orders of magnitude larger than what we have back in the city. About ten copies of our kitchen could fit into this one kitchen. I wonder if Dr. Adrienne Hale was a skilled chef. She seems like the sort of woman who could whip up a gourmet meal.
Ethan throws open the refrigerator and peers inside. “Well, we can make ourselves sandwiches.”
“Really?” I look over his shoulder into the fridge. There’s a loaf of bread in there and a bunch of cold cuts. There’s even a jar of mayonnaise. My stomach turns and I almost gag, thinking about how long that food has been sitting in there. “I’m not eating that. It probably expired years ago.”
He picks up a packet of bologna. “Nope. It doesn’t expire for another week. Judy must have bought it.”
I try to imagine Judy purchasing a packet of bologna for one of the houses she is showing. I can’t seem to do it. She’s more of a caviar-and-smoked-salmon type of person. “Are you sure? Are you looking at theyear?”
“Yes. Here, look.”
He hands me the bologna. Sure enough, the date on it is from the current year, one week in the future. I open it up and sniff it, and it doesn’t smell rancid. The color looks okay.
“I’ll make us sandwiches,” he says.
Ethan lines up a loaf of bread, the bologna, and a jar of mayonnaise on the counter, and he gets to work making us sandwiches. He likes to cook for me. It’s sweet. Not that I can’t make a simple sandwich on my own, but it’s romantic the way he enjoys pampering me. Yet another thing I’ve quickly learned to love about him.
I just hope he feels the same way about me after he finds out about my revelation. I feel ill every time I think about it. But I can’t keep it from him much longer.
“Is there anything I can do?” I ask.
“Why don’t you grab us something to drink?”
I can handle that. I walk to the other side of the kitchen to find a couple of glasses. I’ll just fill them up with tap water—I’m sure it’s fine. But when I get close to the sink, something makes me stop in my tracks.
It’s a cup right by the sink. Half filled with water. The outside dripping with condensation.
“Ethan?” My voice sounds shaky.
