Page 16 of The Vanishing Wife

“Hey! You can’t just come onto my property.” Samuel Thornton’s voice closed in from behind. “Don’t you people need a warrant?”

“Mr. Thornton, I’m going to have to ask you to stay put.” Detective Moore hadn’t made a request. It was an order.

“This is ridiculous. I don’t know this woman.” Thornton’s protests fell flat. “What the hell is she doing?”

Sand turned coarse between Elyse’s fingers the deeper she dug. Oversized handfuls of dampness and earth. One after the other. But there was no phone. She started a few inches to the left, creating another hole at least a foot down. Empty. Desperation ignited the pain in her shoulder. It’d been right here. She was sure of it. She wasn’t crazy. “I don’t understand.”

A hand clamped onto her shoulder from her left. Detective Moore. “Mrs. Portman, let’s get you back home.”

“No. It has to be here. He must’ve moved it.” Elyse let the detective help her to her feet. “I’m not crazy.” Wasn’t that what crazy people said? I’m not crazy! Why won’t you just believe me?

Detective Moore guided her off the property with a firm grip and an apology for Elyse’s actions. “She’s had a very rough couple of days.”

Only the detective didn’t seem to catch Samuel Thornton’s sly smile as Elyse looked back.

Within fifteen minutes, Elyse was hiking up her front steps with Detective Moore’s attention boring into her back. Ensuring she went inside. That she didn’t try to go back to that beach house. She wouldn’t be surprised if the detective recommended a restraining order.

She’d have to catch a ride-share to collect her SUV at the trailhead, but that was the least of her problems right now. Gulf Shores PD wasn’t taking her seriously. Detective Moore didn’t believe Samuel Thornton had attacked her. But that would change.

Elyse locked the door behind her, leaning against the glass. Sand gritted beneath her fingernails. It would take a good scrubbing to get it out.

Ava’s bare footsteps thudded down the stairs. Then slowed. Her daughter took in the wet stains on the front of Elyse’s clothing, the sand that would spread throughout the house. And stilled. “You didn’t go to the library, did you?”

A hint of fear pierced that beautiful face.

Elyse pushed away from the door and climbed the two steps to put them on even ground. She framed one side of her daughter’s face—prepared to do whatever it took to get that look of fear to go away—and wrapped Ava in a grounding hug. “Not yet. There was something else I had to take care of.”

ELEVEN

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Saturday, September 21

3:17 p.m.

There wasn’t any relief from the air conditioner.

A sticky sweat Leigh couldn’t wait to wash off drove her free of the patrol car with her duffle bag in hand.

The meeting with the coroner over Ruby Davis’s body had gone as expected. More questions. Zero answers. Detective Moore hadn’t said much after they’d left the coroner’s office. Leigh wasn’t sure how she’d managed to keep her relationship to the victim secret all these years, but that wasn’t any of Leigh’s business. She was here for Elyse. Not to insert herself into a case in which Gulf Shores PD hadn’t requested her assistance.

“Thanks for the ride,” she told the officer behind the wheel. Leigh slammed the door behind her and headed for the lobby of the hotel. The massive spread of rooms blocked her view of the ocean on the other side, but right then, she was sure she’d seen enough beach and water and human remains for one day. Gulf Shores’ Hampton Inn was by far the least expensive from the beach-front properties she’d googled in the coroner’s office parking lot. Close enough to Elyse’s house. Far enough away to disassociate herself from the case. Like any investigator should be able to do. Though she couldn’t ignore she had her own personal connection. Especially considering the fact she wasn’t supposed to be here at all, and there wouldn’t be any charging her accommodations to the FBI.

The front lobby of the hotel looked like a boat had thrown up on the walls. Lavish navy-blue rugs stretched in front of a pristine white counter. Black-and-white photos of boats—large and small—hung in off-rhythm patterns on every wall. That would bother her every time she walked through this lobby. The randomness of it all. As if someone had simply nailed holes in the walls according to their fancy. Old nets and flotation donuts had been repurposed as decor. Leigh was pretty sure she could smell a hint of the beach as she approached the counter. Then again, the crime scene—and body decomposition—might be responsible for that.

A woman with a quick wide grin rounded from the large cutout positioned off to the right of the front desk that’d been lined with packaged snacks, mini fridges, and a television for guests. Her thick, textured hair refused to budge from the tight, almost glassy, top knot at the crown of her head. Dark eyes lined with even darker liner fixed on Leigh with a brightness thrown around easily. The effect was almost hypnotizing against her bronze skin tone. “Welcome to the Hampton Inn. How can I help you?”

“I need a room. Whatever you have is fine.” Leigh tossed her credit card and Virginia license down. The surgical sites across her midsection were starting to burn. Three of them. It made sense. She’d been so invested in learning as much about Elyse’s disappearance as she could since receiving that voicemail this morning, staying on top of her pain medication schedule had taken a back seat. The surgical sites weren’t large, but they hurt like hell. Seemed now she was going to pay for her mistake.

“And how long will you be staying with us?” The desk clerk’s tag said Mona. The kind of name that characterized a spunky, reliable, enthusiastic go-getter, but her uneven fingernails with the evidence of picked-off dark blue nail polish said she was a biter. Here in Gulf Shores, one of the largest tourist destinations in the country, Leigh bet the hospitality business had become more competitive than getting into an MBA program. Mona, here, would be on the constant defense for her job.

“That’s a good question.” Leigh hadn’t thought about it. Not really. Hell, this morning she hadn’t even dreamed of leaving her apartment. Let alone getting on a plane, throwing herself into a missing persons investigation, and visiting a coroner’s office over a dead teen girl. “How long would you stay if one of your friends was missing?”

Mona’s jaw slackened, but the desk clerk recovered well. She probably didn’t get a lot of surprises. At their base levels, people were all the same. They all just came in variations of personalities, mental disorders, and sizes. “A week?”

“Great. Put it on my card.” Leigh’s phone vibrated from her blazer. She was on medical leave, and she’d been released from her current caseload. Which meant it was either her brother or her father calling. Dad had been arrested and convicted for her brother’s death. In the end, that body she’d discovered under her childhood home hadn’t belonged to Troy after all, and the real killer had gone about his life for the next twenty years. She’d managed to rescue her brother from his deadly fate and ensure he grew up to be the man he was today. Though he’d had to take on a new identity to stay off a killer’s radar. He was Chandler Reed now, a federal investigator for the very unit she’d been recruited into. Her partner in searching for more victims like him. Children who’d been ripped out of their bedrooms and away from their families by a man named Chris Ellingson. But it wasn’t until victims had started surfacing in her hometown of Lebanon, New Hampshire, and she’d been asked to consult with the BAU on the case that the truth had surfaced. Her brother hadn’t been the only victim to survive Chris Ellingson. One of them had started killing anyone looking into the original investigation. In the end, the case had been reopened. But she hadn’t gotten used to it all yet. Of having her family back after twenty years of silence. She wanted to be annoyed at the interruption, but there’d been so many times in her life she’d wished she hadn’t been so alone. She unpocketed her cell. Her brother’s crooked smile lit up the entire screen as she answered. “Hey.”

“You’re not at your apartment.” Chandler was many things, but he wasn’t as dumb as she remembered him being before their lives had gone separate ways as planned. An improvement most likely about to bite her in the ass.

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