Chapter 2
The fluorescent tube above the conference table had a flicker in it, a tiny arrhythmic pulse she could see in her peripheral vision.
The walls were the color of nothing. She sat across from Langford in her gray suit jacket and slacks, clothes she’d pulled from her locker that morning, and watched him flip through the file.
He’d been flipping for two minutes. She waited.
“Thirty-seven days,” he said. “Clean arrest. The buyers?”
“Fedotov and his son. Bonito kept the correspondence on a laptop in the kitchen. Password was his mother’s maiden name and the year she died.” She paused. “The laptop’s tagged. It’s with the evidence team.”
Langford closed the file. “Good work.” He said it like he was reading it off the wall behind her. Then he stood and offered his hand. She shook it. “Take a week. We’ll schedule a full review when you’re back.”
The parking garage was three floors down and smelled like concrete and old oil. Her car sat in the southeast corner where she’d left it five weeks ago, a thin film of dust on the hood. She unlocked it with the fob, and the chirp echoed off the low ceiling.
Inside, the air was stale and warm. She started the engine and let the AC run for a minute before pulling out.
The highway was mostly empty. Mid-morning, midweek.
She drove with both hands on the wheel and the radio off.
The suburbs thickened around her as she moved north, strip malls giving way to gas stations, giving way to trees and sidewalks and houses set back from the road.
She knew this route; had driven it hundreds of times.
But thirty-seven days in someone else’s zip code made the familiar look slightly wrong, like a room where the furniture’s been moved an inch.
She pulled into the coffee shop on Briar, the one with the green awning she’d been going to for years. The girl behind the counter had a new piercing. She ordered a large cold brew and stood in line with her phone out.
Stopping for coffee. Want anything?
The cold brew was dark and bitter. She hadn’t had one in thirty-seven days. At Bonito’s, it was espresso from an expensive machine, served in cups so small she could close her hand around them.
Her phone buzzed. No.
She sat in the car with the cup sweating against her palm and the AC blowing and tried to remember what it was like to be Margot Schultz.
Not Miranda, the woman who wore dark nail polish, slept in thousand-thread-count sheets, and knew the names of Bonito’s bodyguards’ children.
Margot Schultz, who liked cold brew and—she laughed—90s honky-tonk.
She turned on the radio, found the station, let Dwight Yoakam fill the car. She sipped her cold brew, the taste and the sound working on her like a combination lock falling into place.
Too much of her was still Miranda. She could feel it in the way she sat, the way she’d ordered the coffee, the careful smile she’d given the girl behind the counter. Thirty-seven days was a long time to wear someone else’s face. It didn’t come off in a government shower.
But she knew who would help her with that.
She turned onto their street and pressed the garage door opener clipped to the visor. The door rolled up. She pulled in beside his truck, cut the engine, and sat for a moment in the sudden quiet.
The mudroom smelled like laundry detergent, shoes lined up by the door. Her running shoes were still there, right where she’d left them. She dropped her bag on the bench and walked into the kitchen.
He was standing at the counter. Jeans, green V-neck, a dish towel over his shoulder. He looked up.
She smiled, set the cold brew down, and walked straight into him, pressing her face against his chest. His shirt was soft and warm, and she could smell him underneath it—soap, warm skin, and home. The hair at the neck of the V was mostly black, a few grays she hadn’t counted yet.
His arms came around her. She breathed him in. His hand found her hair, fingers moving through it slowly.
She looked up at him. He looked at her. His thumb traced her cheek, the skin under her eye.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“Do you need to sleep? Eat?”
She shook her head. “I just want to take these clothes off.”
His eyes searched hers for a moment. “Go upstairs and get ready.”
The smile came from somewhere deeper than Miranda had ever reached.
She grabbed the cold brew off the counter and took a long pull as she climbed the stairs, the ice rattling against the cup. The banister was smooth under her free hand.
She dropped the gray jacket and slacks into the hamper without folding them. The bra, the underwear—all of it. Agency clothes. Nobody’s clothes.
The bedroom was ready. Heavy curtains drawn across the windows, blacking out the midday sun. It could have been midnight.
Clamps on the nightstand. A ball gag, red, the one she’d picked out herself. Rope coiled in neat loops on the dresser. She looked at the bed, and her eyes traveled up. A wooden panel hung from the ceiling by two chains, three holes cut into it, padded at the edges.
She laughed. “Stocks.”
Those were new. But he knew best.
The butt plug was on the bed beside a bottle of lube. She picked it up, turning it in her hand. It had been almost six weeks. He was going to want everything.
She walked to the bathroom, set the plug and lube on the counter, and looked at her watch. 11:42. She unclasped it and set it beside the sink. He always gave her exactly the time she needed, but she still wanted to be fast for him.
She cleaned herself, worked the plug in slowly, and then stood at the sink, letting her breathing settle. The mirror showed a woman she half-recognized. No mascara, no red nails, no expensive sheets behind her.
She brushed her teeth and dragged a brush through her hair a few times but didn’t bother with more than that. He wasn’t coming upstairs to admire her styling.
She looked around the bedroom—their bedroom. The quilt his mother had made folded at the foot of the bed. The stack of paperbacks on her nightstand. The window that stuck in summer.
She was naked in her own home. Breathing her own air. And she was about to kneel for her husband.
She lowered herself to the floor, settled back on her heels, and spread her knees apart. Wrists on her thighs, palms up.
She smiled, closed her eyes, and waited.