Chapter 14 Sara Batcher
Sara Batcher
“I was Sara’s executive assistant for three years. During that time, I never once saw David in the office. We knew she had a husband, we just never saw him. I think they were both workaholics. She definitely was. She ate, slept, and breathed InkRose, all the way up to the day she sold it.”
Sara considered canceling her evening plans but didn’t. She stepped into the garage, surveyed the options, then opened the door to the Bentley coupe. Settling in behind the wheel, she raised the left bay door and started the engine.
David had been quiet that night, his smile slow to come, his distraction evident as he half-heartedly participated in the conversation.
Her irritation had grown as the meal went on, and she considered, in the long pause between the third course and dessert, excusing herself to the restroom and leaving him there.
The David she had met, the pharmaceutical sales rep who had wooed her, the man she had fallen in love with .
. . it had been so long since she had seen him.
The night they’d met, she was twenty-six, at a sales conference in Laguna Beach.
He was a handsome and charismatic stranger who’d had their entire table in hysterics over a story involving him, two strippers in Reno, and a semi full of rotten fish.
She hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him, and she wasn’t the only one.
Every woman at that table—and half of the men—had been in awe of him.
Later that night, the conference had hosted a meet and greet on the upper-level deck.
Waiters passed by with stems of champagne and tiny strawberry-topped brownie bites, and David had gently pulled on her elbow, steering her away from the women she’d been talking to, and they all gaped in jealousy as he maneuvered her to the side and put a glass of champagne in her hand and said, “Sara, what would I have to say to close the deal with you?”
All he’d had to say was her name. She hadn’t even realized he knew who she was, or had any interest in her at all, and there he was, staring deep into her eyes, his mouth crooked in a smile.
That version of David, she’d fallen head over heels for. She’d married that David. Had planned to have a family with that David. And then had lost him twelve years later to Vicodin.
That was what she had wanted to say to the detectives. David hadn’t disappeared on May 5.
He had been gone long before that.