“Hey, hey, back off,” David warned.
Estella Rosewater had described Corley as gentle, kind; but the contractor’s face was wrenched by demonic anger, his teeth bared as though to bite. If he’d died in that supermarket, which he obviously had not, he was alive now, energized by rage, his eyes glinting like eviscerating blades. “You don’t know who she is, what she is. You don’t know anything.”
“And you don’t own her. My God, you’re old enough to be her grandfather.”
Corley shoved hard, and David staggered backward, almost fell, grabbed at the desk to steady himself. The guy was strong.
“This isn’t about sex, shithead. This isn’t about that at all. This is something bigger than you’ll ever understand, Thorne. Stay away from her or you’re finished, I’m finished, she’s finished. If she doesn’t stay focused on her work, we’re all dead.”
As he loomed closer, Corley withdrew something from beneath his jacket and thrust it at David.
Knife!
No. Evidently it was some kind of Taser. Every nerve fascicle in David’s body short-circuited. Bright pain scissored through him, and he collapsed. As he thought, The sonofabitch isn’t wearing a watch, darkness washed over him.
When he woke, he tasted blood. He had bitten his tongue.
He was alone in the office.
His strength returned. He got onto his hands and knees, rose to his feet, and stood swaying until a brief dizziness passed.
Warily, he made his way out of the office, through the storage room, outside. He went to the chain-link fence. No sign of Corley.
He passed through the gate, into the cemetery, and descended the long green slope. Whatever Patrick Corley might be to Maddison Sutton, he was not an inspiring example to the residents of the cemetery, who did not rise in imitation of his resurrection.
| 57 |
When David pulled into the garage at forty minutes past noon, Maddison’s Mercedes sports car was not in the second stall. After getting out of the shower and finding his note about an appointment with his attorney, she must have gone off on errands of her own.
After the events of the day, David felt disoriented, no nearer clarity than he’d been when his investigation had begun with a call to Isaac Eisenstein the previous Friday. No matter what Corley might insist, David belonged to Maddison, and she had given herself to him, not just physically but emotionally, and he feared both losing what he had won and somehow failing her. Yet again he would delay bracing her face-to-face with what he had thus far discovered. He hoped that further inquiries might bring a resolution of these mysteries, proof of her innocence in all things, and peace of mind.
A handwritten note lay on the kitchen table:
My sweet Davey,
I can’t be with you for a while. It’s too dangerous for both of us in the current atmosphere. I must persuade them, negotiate. Soon, but not yet. Be patient and believe in me. I promised you many wonderful days together, and we will have them perhaps sooner than later. I love you. I live for you. Please wait for me.
She had not signed the note, as though to say that he must decide for himself whether she was Maddison or Emily, or both.
As if the message must be a forgery or a prank, he went through the small house, urgently calling her name, but she didn’t answer.
Only the previous afternoon, she had left her luggage in the bedroom with the intention of moving in for at least a few days. Those bags were no longer there. No clothing of hers hung in the closet. Nothing belonging to her remained in the bathroom.
Had she left voluntarily?
Or had Corley taken her away by force?
Stunned immobile, David stood in the silence of the house, which was alike unto the hush of the ICU cubicle when he had waited there alone with Calista’s lifeless body, the silence of death, the last of all silences, and he waited for a sound that might prove that he wasn’t as dead as he felt, that might start his life moving again.
| 58 |
As he stood in the bedroom, the ringtone broke the sepulchral silence and brought him to life. He withdrew his smartphone from a jacket pocket, his link to life renewed, certain that the caller must be Maddison. However, his editor in New York, Constance, was calling to report that first-pass proofs of his next novel had just been emailed to him and that he had two weeks to read them and correct any errors that had occurred in typesetting.
He forced himself to sit on the edge of the bed and gossip for fifteen minutes, as he and Connie often did. Either he didn’t sound as despondent as he felt or she failed to hear the deep current of discouragement beneath his bright chatter.