Chapter 15 Katie Morrow
Katie Morrow
“Everybody thought that Mark and Willow were the perfect couple, but I always knew there was something off about them. It was like they hated each other and loved each other, all at the same time. I think he killed her. I think she pissed him off one day and he snapped.”
The pond behind Mark and Katie’s house was large and stocked with fish, the bluegills purchased online and delivered from an aquarium company on a Tuesday in April while Mark had been at work.
Katie hadn’t understood the reason, given that they never went near the pond and it only served as a buffer between them and the golfers, who liked to stare at her in her bikini on the days it was warm enough to lay out poolside.
The pond was Mark’s baby, a good part of his weekends dedicated to balancing the PH level of the water, planting starwort and waterweeds, and installing a UV filtration system and underwater lights.
Katie could have put on her skimpiest two-piece, but unless she posed with a fish in her teeth, he preferred to focus on the pond.
There were many amazing things about her husband and their relationship, but his attraction to her had always been, at least in her mind, in question.
It had been that way from the very beginning.
Katie had been on shift at the coffee shop, pulling a double, the place packed with its normal lineup of oat-milk-latte-drinking Silicon Valley tech heads.
She had been hungry and irritated, the former triggering the latter, and when the hot man in the thousand-dollar suit had ordered a mocha latte, she accidentally rang it in as a matcha latte instead.
When he had hesitated, raising his eyebrows at the green liquid in the cup, she had realized her mistake. “Drink it,” she’d snapped. “It’s what you really wanted.”
“I really wanted that?” he’d asked, looking at the color with skepticism. “I don’t think—”
“Drink it,” she’d interrupted, with a confidence she didn’t feel, her anxiety rising at the heat of her supervisor’s stare, the woman easing closer, ready to jump in and assist. Exactly what she didn’t need, given that she’d been written up three times already for similar mental snags.
Staring in Mark’s eyes, she willed him to understand.
He had taken the cup from her and pulled the straw cover off while holding eye contact with Katie. It was a good stare, a sort of tractor beam that made everything else in the crowded room disappear for a moment.
He’d paused, his mouth an inch from the tip of the straw. He had nice lips. A clean-shaven jaw. A little bit of a butt-crack chin, but the rest of his face made up for it. Good eyes—blue, with the kind of thick lashes a girl would kill for.
“You should work for me,” he’d said, right there in front of Becca. “I’ll pay triple whatever you’re earning here.”
“You want to try the drink first?” She’d broken their eye contact to glance at the line, which was beginning to wrap around the end of the muffin display, a cardinal sin in the world of Loop that was how big the limit was.
He’d closed his lips around the straw and sucked. There was a pause while he swallowed, and then he frowned. “It’s disgusting.”
She had laughed. She hadn’t meant to. It was an involuntary vomit of a reaction, one born from stress and anticipation and the agreement that matcha really was gross, but surely he could have pretended, especially with Becca right here, staring at them both.
He had smiled, and she reached up and untied the neck of her apron. “I’d like to accept your offer of employment if it still stands.”
His grin had widened. “It does.”
And they had left together, right then, riding up the elevator to his sports agency on the forty-eighth floor, where he introduced her to the contracts’ manager, who gave her a desk right next to Mark’s assistant’s.
Her new role was to organize and execute the mountain of paperwork involved with each new client or contract that Mark secured.
The manager had shown her the ropes and advised her to expect long hours.
Mark was, as the woman had put it, the busiest sports agent in California.
The accolade had been accurate. The office phone rang constantly, and it was exhilarating, hearing the names his assistant would mention.
Mark represented the biggest stars in basketball, football, and golf.
Katie had mentioned a few of them to her father, and he’d made her repeat them, on speakerphone, so that his coworkers could hear them.
Her life, within a week, had changed completely.
She started to visit Loop she’d just been one of the only employees bold enough to voice them.
“Katie.” Mark disentangled her hands from his shirt. “I have to make a call. You’ll get everyone dinner? I want it here before it gets dark.”
I’m pregnant. It was a horrible time to share the news, especially given her vow to wait until the second trimester, but the statement almost fell out. She swallowed the urge and nodded. “Sure. Fausto’s?”
Her husband nodded and looked down at his phone, scrolling through the contacts as he backed away. “Don’t talk to them,” he repeated as he turned to head toward the house. “Let Andrew handle it.”
She glanced back at the police officers. The two detectives she’d spoken to earlier were standing side by side, facing her, on the other side of the pond. “You’ve never spoken to or met Willow Morrow?”
“They’re looking for a body.”
It wasn’t Willow. It couldn’t be.