Patricia Mickler no longer exists. I made certain of it.
I thought back to my conversation with Irina in the gym. She’d never come out and stated Patricia was dead. Only that there was nothing of Patricia Mickler left to find.
He has friends that can make almost anyone disappear … new name, new passport, and wipe them off the map as if they’d never existed.
What if Patricia Mickler wasn’t dead after all? What if Irina had only helped her friend disappear? What if they’d dumped her car and her personal effects in the reservoir and staged her death? What if Patricia was just someone else now, living someplace else, with someone else? Someone who would take care of her and make her feel safe.
The car I’d seen in her garage must have been Aaron’s—the stick figures on the rear window must have been them and their family of dogs. What if they’d driven off into the sunset in his Subaru? Aaron and Patricia could be anywhere. Wiped off the map, as if they’d never existed. Which left me—soon to be the only suspect in Harris Mickler’s death, my word against the mountain of evidence against me.
Numb, I stepped down from the stool.
My phone buzzed relentlessly in my pocket. I fished it out, surprised to see I’d missed a dozen calls: my parents, Georgia, Sylvia … All of them probably to congratulate me on the article in the newspaper. I couldn’t stomach the idea of talking to a single one of them.
Tires screeched into my driveway. I whirled, flinching as a silver bumper stopped inches from my knees. Nick’s face was furious through the windshield of his sedan. He pointed at me with a hard finger, then at the passenger seat. “Get in,” he mouthed.
I looked longingly at Vero’s shadow in my kitchen window before opening Nick’s car door and sliding in. He put the car in reverse and hit the gas, fishtailing out of my driveway, silently seething as we peeled away from my house. He made a hard turn into a cul-de-sac down the street and jerked to a stop at the curb, refusing to look at me.
“Funny thing happened when I left your place. I called my commander,” he said, “to tell him I was onto something big, that I had news. He informs me he has news, too. Then he tells me all about some press release in the local rag.” Nick pulled a newspaper from the glove box and tossed it in my lap. “Apparently, I’m the unsuspecting hotshot cop, and my investigation has just been some big research project for your book.”
“It wasn’t like that … It’s not what you—”
“I’m on suspension.” The words stole all the air from the car. “Pending a review by my superiors. They took my piece. They took my badge. And now I have to wait until Monday to walk into my boss’s office and explain why I let a novelist with a personal stake in the case work my investigation. By then, the whole damn thing may be over.”
My mouth went dry. “What do you mean, over?”
“My boss took over my case. He’s coordinating with Fauquier County PD to move forward with the request for a warrant. If they can get it tomorrow, they’ll have that field torn open and have Feliks and Theresa in custody by the time I get my badge back.”
“I’m sorry.” My apology spilled out on a panicked breath. “No one was supposed to know what the book was about. I only sent it to my agent. She got carried away and—”
He turned to face me, rage and betrayal flashing in his eyes. “Did it ever occur to you that I was trusting you with sensitive information? That if anyone knew how much I’d let you see and hear, I could lose my job?”
“That was your choice, not mine!” I unlatched my seat belt, turning in my seat as my panic yielded to anger. “You came to me, remember? You offered to help me with research for my book.”
“You used me!”
“And you used me! Because you wanted to nab my ex-husband’s fiancée on some trumped-up kidnapping charge and you thought I could get you information you couldn’t get yourself. Because you didn’t have enough evidence to justify questioning her, much less search her office or her house. So don’t talk to me about using people!”
He looked away, letting loose a long breath as he stared out his window. “Answer me one thing.” He reached into his coat, withdrawing something from the inside pocket. He dropped it in my hands. My wig-scarf—the beautiful disguise I’d been hiding behind, the successful person I was pretending to be all this time, the identity that was supposed to keep me safe and out of trouble—was a tangled mess in my lap. The scarf was torn, the blond tresses coated in a layer of dust. Nick’s eyes met mine across the car.