Chapter 12 – Morgan
Twelve
Of All The Dead Husbands in All the World…
Morgan
Get some answers he said. It’ll be easy he said.
The following night while Gwen and Atticus were out for a date night, Micah and I went back to the scene of the crime.
The place where I’d lost everything.
The loft felt like the tomb it was.
I'd been sitting in the dark for over an hour, waiting, wondering if I was about to discover my husband was alive or confirm that I was losing my mind.
The silence pressed against my eardrums like cotton, broken only by the distant hum of city traffic twenty floors below and the occasional creak of the building settling into the night.
This was either the stupidest thing I'd ever done, or the most important.
Every shadow seemed to move with purpose, every small sound made my heart race like I'd been mainlining espresso.
The familiar space, our space, felt foreign in the darkness, transformed into something alien and dangerous.
I could make out the silhouettes of furniture we'd picked out together during those first months of married bliss, the artwork we'd argued about, the life we'd built before it all exploded.
Literally exploded, in Lance's case.
The couch where we'd spent lazy Sunday mornings reading the paper and pretending the outside world didn't exist. The kitchen island where he'd made me coffee every morning before work, always adding just the right amount of cream without asking.
The dining table where we'd planned our future over takeout and wine.
..and where he'd bent me over more times than I could count when conversation had turned to something more primal.
When was the last time you felt safe anywhere?
I wasn't sure what was scarier, the idea that I might be right about Lance being alive, or knowing for sure I was wrong and having to accept that my grip on reality had finally snapped completely.
Micah was set up in the vacant unit next door, the one Lance had been planning to buy before he died, back when our biggest concern was whether we wanted an open floor plan or more defined spaces.
He was monitoring the surveillance equipment we'd installed earlier: motion sensors, infrared cameras, enough tech to catch a ghost if one decided to show up.
If anyone shows up at all.
My phone had been buzzing periodically with updates, each vibration making me jump like I'd been electrocuted.
Micah: All quiet on the western front.
Micah: Motion detectors are active. Heat signatures clear.
Micah: You absolutely sure you want to do this alone? Because I'm having serious second thoughts about letting you play bait.
I'd responded the same way each time, my thumbs moving across the screen with mechanical precision:
Me: I'm sure.
Me: If it's really him, I need to handle this myself.
Micah: If it's really him, you might need backup when you kill him for putting you through weeks of psychological torture.
Me: That's what the gun is for.
Micah's gun. Complete with what looked suspiciously like a professional-grade silencer, sat in my lap, its weight both comforting and terrifying.
I'd have to ask him later what the hell he needed a silencer for, and why he had one just lying around like it was perfectly normal equipment for a computer programmer to own.
But first, I had to survive whatever was coming.
I didn't want to use it, but I'd killed before. The memory sat in my stomach like lead, heavy and poisonous. What if it wasn't Lance but someone else, someone dangerous enough to require putting a bullet through their chest? Could I do it again?
You did what you had to do last time. You'll do what you have to do this time.
The bile rose in my throat anyway. I'd taken a life once, and I never wanted to relive that moment, the weight of the trigger, the way the body had crumpled, the absolute finality of what I'd done.
But I wasn't naive enough to think the world was a safe place, especially not when you were married to a DuLac.
Lance's voice echoed in my memory, patient and professional: "Safety first. Finger off the trigger until you're ready to fire. Aim center mass, never shoot to wound. Don't hesitate. Hesitation will get you killed."
Don't hesitate. Right. Easy for him to say when he wasn't potentially in my crosshairs.
I checked the magazine of the gun Micah had given me with hands that trembled only slightly, chambered a round with the mechanical precision he'd drilled into me during countless practice sessions. Fifteen bullets. More than enough for whatever was coming through that door.
If someone was playing elaborate psychological games with the grieving widow. If this was some sick form of torture designed to push me over the edge, they were going to discover that I wasn't going down without a fight.
And if it really was Lance... well, he might wish he'd stayed dead after I finished with him.
The thought should have been reassuring.
Instead, it made my chest ache with the familiar grief I'd been carrying for six weeks like a physical weight.
Because even if my desperate theory was right, even if he was somehow alive, that didn't erase the damage.
Didn't undo the nights I'd cried myself to sleep or the mornings I'd woken up wishing I hadn't bothered.
Didn't undo the part of me that had died in that explosion along with him.
I thought about Dr. Chen's office, about her rational explanations for everything I'd been experiencing. Hyper-vigilance after trauma. Grief-induced hallucinations. The mind's desperate attempt to create meaning from chaos.
Maybe she was right. Maybe you're sitting in a dark apartment with a loaded gun, waiting for a dead man who exists only in your fractured psyche.
Another buzz from my phone made me nearly jump out of my skin.
Micah: Movement on the external cameras. Two figures approaching the building.
Two figures. My heart rate spiked, adrenaline flooding my system like liquid fire. I'd been expecting one person. Lance, if my desperate theory held any water. Two people suggested something else entirely, something potentially very bad.
Something like enemies who'd tracked down Lance's widow for their own purposes.
I thought about all the people Lance had mentioned in passing, all the business associates with grudges and family members with their own twisted agendas. Criminals who wouldn't think twice about using me as leverage or simply eliminating loose ends.
Or maybe it was exactly who I hoped it was, and he'd brought backup because he wasn't sure how I'd react to discovering he'd faked his death.
Smart man, if that's the case.
I moved to the kitchen island, taking cover behind the marble countertop with the gun raised and ready. The position gave me a clear line of sight to both the front door and the balcony entrance, plus solid cover if things went sideways fast.
Please be Lance. Please don't be random criminals who picked the worst possible apartment to break into tonight.
The minutes crawled by like hours, each second stretched elastic and thin like time itself was holding its breath.
My phone stayed silent, no more updates from Micah, no alerts from the motion sensors.
Either the figures had decided against breaking in, or they were being very careful about how they approached.
Professional careful.
I controlled my breathing the way Lance had taught me, kept my grip steady on the gun, and tried not to think about all the ways this could go catastrophically wrong.
If I was right about Lance being alive, confronting him at gunpoint probably wasn't the healthiest way to start our reunion. If I was wrong...
If you're wrong, you're about to have a complete psychotic break with a loaded weapon in your hands.
But I couldn't shake the feeling that I was right, that all the little details, the dreams that felt too real, the sense of being watched, the way my body had been responding to phantom touches in the night, weren't signs of mental illness but signs of truth.
Signs that the man you love has been lying to you for nearly two months.
Then I heard it, the soft whisper of metal against metal, the barely audible sound of the balcony door being manipulated. Not broken, not forced. Opened with the kind of skill that came from either extensive training or intimate familiarity with the mechanism.
Or both.
The door opened so quietly I almost missed it, sliding on its track like it was floating.
Two shadows slipped inside, moving with the fluid coordination of people who'd worked together before, who trusted each other completely.
They communicated through hand signals I recognized from movies, stayed low to avoid the windows, and avoided the areas where moonlight would reveal their silhouettes.
Military precision. Professional precision.
But more than that, familiar precision. I knew those movements.
One of them was the right height, the right build. Even in the darkness, even distorted by shadow and distance, his silhouette was burned into my memory from countless nights of lying beside him, of memorizing every line and angle of his body.
The breadth of his shoulders. The way he held his head when he was concentrating. The careful, measured way he moved through space like a predator who owned every inch of territory he crossed.
If that's you, Lance, you're about to wish you'd stayed dead.
They moved through the living room like ghosts, avoiding our furniture with the kind of spatial awareness that came from knowing a place intimately.
The taller figure, the one who moved like Lance, who had Lance's build and Lance's deadly grace, gestured to his companion, directing him toward the bedroom while he headed straight for the kitchen.
Straight for me.