Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
“Then why are you here?”
Adrian's voice was dangerously quiet.
Celeste stood in the bedroom doorway, her eyes fixed on the ultrasound photograph trembling between his fingers.
“I heard you calling security,” she answered. “I thought something had happened.”
“Something did.”
Adrian placed the photograph on the desk beside Mia's wedding ring.
“My wife left me. She's pregnant. And the last thing she heard me say was that I didn't love her.”
Celeste's expression changed.
“How do you know she heard?”
Adrian looked at her.
He hadn't told anyone about the conversation.
Not yet.
Celeste recovered quickly.
“Because you're acting like a man who said something terrible.”
Adrian stepped toward her.
“What exactly did you think I meant this afternoon?”
She frowned.
“You said you owed Mia your life, not your love.”
“And?”
“And I thought you were finally admitting the truth.”
Adrian looked away.
Six years earlier, Mia Harper had been twenty-six, working as a rehabilitation nurse at a private Chicago hospital.
She had been warm, stubborn, and entirely unimpressed by his money.
She had also saved his life.
Not in the romantic way strangers imagined.
She had pulled him from a burning vehicle after a shooting outside a charity event, dragging him across broken glass while another car exploded nearby.
A collapsing metal beam had injured her spine.
He had spent the following fourteen months watching her learn how to live with the consequences.
Then he had married her.
Everyone assumed he had done it out of gratitude.
Including, Adrian suddenly realized, Mia herself.
Celeste approached him.
“You've spent six years taking care of her. Maybe she finally understood that pity isn't marriage.”
Adrian turned sharply.
“Don't call my marriage pity.”
“Then what was it?”
He couldn't answer.
Because the answer he had given Celeste earlier had been intended to end a conversation about love.
Instead, it had destroyed the one love he had never learned to explain.
Celeste studied his face.
“You're actually going after her?”
“She's my wife.”
“She left voluntarily.”
“And she's carrying my child.”
Celeste folded her arms.
“Adrian, Mia survived before you. She'll survive without you.”
Something about the statement unsettled him.
“You sound remarkably certain.”
Celeste hesitated.
Then she made her mistake.
“She always said she had somewhere to go if things became unbearable.”
Adrian stared at her.
“When?”
“What?”
“When did Mia tell you that?”
Celeste's lips parted.
For six years, Mia had been polite to Celeste.
Nothing more.
They had never been friends.
Adrian knew because Mia had once described Celeste as a woman who could make a compliment feel like an insult.
Celeste looked toward the hallway.
“Women talk.”
“Not those two women.”
The silence lasted several seconds.
Then Adrian noticed something protruding from Celeste's handbag.
A narrow strip of pale blue paper.
The same shade used by the stationery company Mia ordered from every Christmas.
“What's in your bag?”
Celeste stiffened.
“Excuse me?”
“Show me.”
“You don't get to search my personal belongings.”
“No,” Adrian replied. “I don't.”
He stepped aside.
“But you can leave.”
Celeste's face flushed.
She reached into her handbag and pulled out a folded invitation.
“A charity luncheon. Mia helped organize it last month.”
Adrian recognized the paper.
And the handwriting.
Mia had written a note across the bottom.
Please seat Mrs. Ellison near the windows. She gets dizzy under bright lights.
Typical Mia.
Remembering something nobody else bothered to notice.
But underneath the note was another line.
Written in different ink.
Ask C. about the accident.
Adrian went still.
“Who wrote that?”
Celeste glanced down.
“I don't know.”
“Why would someone ask Mia about an accident?”
“Adrian, I organize dozens of events.”
He examined the handwriting.
Then he remembered something from six years earlier.
The police had never recovered the surveillance recording from the parking garage where his car was attacked.
The official explanation had been equipment failure.
Mia had never questioned it.
At least, that was what he'd believed.
Adrian folded the invitation.
“Leave.”
Celeste looked genuinely frightened now.
“Don't do this.”
“Do what?”
“Turn an unhappy marriage into an investigation.”
Adrian said nothing.
After she left, he returned to Mia's desk.
Her ring lay beside the ultrasound.
He picked it up.
Inside the gold band were seven engraved words.
Where you go, I will follow.
He had chosen them himself.
He remembered Mia laughing when she first read them.
“That's an awfully big promise for a man who hates traveling.”
He had kissed her forehead.
“Then don't make me travel.”
Now he closed his fist around the ring.
At 11:36 p.m., his security director, Marcus Reed, entered the room.
“We located the rideshare driver.”
Adrian stood.
“Where did he take her?”
Marcus looked uncomfortable.
“Union Station.”
“She's leaving Chicago?”
“Possibly.”
“Find the train.”
“Sir, there's something else.”
Marcus placed a printed security photograph on the desk.
It showed Mia approaching the side entrance at 7:04 p.m.
She was alone.
But somebody had already opened the gate.
Adrian leaned closer.
The person was mostly hidden behind the stone column.
Only a hand was visible.
On its wrist was a silver watch.
Adrian recognized it immediately.
He had given that watch to Marcus five years earlier.
He slowly raised his eyes.
“Tell me why you helped my pregnant wife disappear.”
Marcus didn't deny it.
May you like
Instead, he said something that made Adrian's blood run cold.
“Because six years ago, sir, I was ordered to let the men who attacked your car through that same gate.”
