Chapter Seventeen
With MERE hours until I have to pick up Evie, I have a shit ton to do and not enough time to do it. As I pull into our driveway, I make my mental list:
Figure out who the hell my husband is.
Learn who wants him dead and why.
Go to Costco.
But first, I go inside. I search our bedroom, his closet, paw through boxes left over from our before times, when we had our own places, our own lives, back before we combined them.
There’s nothing—only old photos that show Brian’s shining, loving gaze and my cold, calculated attempt to look like a woman in love.
When I first married him, I didn’t love him.
He was a means to an end, marriage a task to be checked off on yet another list of ways to be normal provided by none other than my gran.
Then I did fall in love with him. Which makes all of this infinitely harder.
While I’m reevaluating every aspect of our relationship—and the reality that maybe something is missing, and that something might be my husband’s true identity—I can’t help but feel the stir of excitement, the monster crawling her way up and peeking her head out, curious at this new development.
It’s the psychopath in me.
Fuck, that’s not normal.
With only two and a half hours to go, I grab my purse. Because good humans provide their own grocery bags, I head into our garage to pick up the neatly folded stack that sits on a shelf. And then I head to America’s own version of hell, a.k.a. Costco.
I may need food to keep my family fed, but that doesn’t mean I can’t multitask.
When I finally rush inside (San Antonio does love its traffic), it appears I’m not the only one with that idea—a mother with a toddler holding her pants leg and a baby in a carrier on her chest presses her phone to her ear with the hand not steering her cart.
Another mom, this one with twin girls, seems to be conducting a business meeting via Bluetooth while perusing a stack of beach toys.
Inspired to have my own business call and desperate for answers, I slip in an AirPod and murmur, “Call John,” to my work phone. When he picks up, an unfamiliar tune plays in the background.
“Uh-oh,” he says, “trouble already?” I pause, halfway down the technology aisle. How does he know there’s trouble? “Nadia? What’s up?” he asks when I stay silent.
Maybe what I really need are some fancy-schmancy security cameras. I could hide them everywhere, catch Brian in the act of—whatever it is he’s doing. Pausing in front of said camera display, I peruse the options, but none of them are small enough that Brian wouldn’t notice. Damn.
I bring my attention back to my phone. “What are you playing?” I ask casually, pretending this is just one more social call to the man who arranges for me to off bad people.
“Legend of Zelda,” he scoffs. “It’s a classic. How do you not know that, but you know Streets of Rage?”
Because I like killing people in real life.
A display of Roombas catches my attention—Bear does shed a lot. I would love for a little robot vacuum to help out with the mess.
Focus. I reorient the cart toward the back of the store where the groceries are located and cut to the chase as I head down the wine aisle. “Did you find out why they want this guy dead?”
“Uh, no. Speaking of, is he dead yet? Please say yes.”
“Did you ask why they want him killed?” I scrutinize the racks until I find the supersized bottles of premade sangria, then start filling the cart. If I’m potentially going to kill my husband, it’s going to be a long summer; I’ll need liquid fortification.
“I told you the file is closed.”
“And I told you to ask anyway,” I bite out.
As John babbles some bullshit excuse, I pick up my phone, navigate to the internet browser, and google my husband.
There has to be a crack, some tiny hole I can dig a finger into and see even the faintest evidence of who he really is.
Because the Brian I know—the Brian I married, who I depend upon to be my partner in life—he wouldn’t be in a fancy car with a woman who’s not his wife, not to mention one who had to get naked to change in said car.
He wouldn’t be at a hotel in Austin in a fancy suit while his spouse believed he was in Washington, DC. He wouldn’t be living a lie.
Except he is.
Which means he’s not who he’s led me to believe he is. There must be evidence of that somewhere.
In the depths of this shopping hellscape, a toddler’s shrill cry sends every mother shuddering with her own special version of having-a-baby-keep-her-up-all-night-wailing PTSD. I briefly consider popping one of the sangria bottles open now.
“What are you doing?” John asks. “It’s really loud.”
“Working.” A mother’s job, after all, is never done.
A beat of silence as I turn toward what I like to call Carb City. Cookies and rolls and bread and pies and bagels.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I say as I pick out whole grain bagels. A traffic jam of moms and senior citizens brings me to a halt. I go back to my phone, which has not helped one little bit—apparently, there are more Brian Davises in Texas than I could have imagined.
“You didn’t answer mine either.” He sighs. “You don’t get it, Nadia. I can’t just go asking questions of my boss.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t. They’re dangerous. And you accepted the job already.”
“You assured me he was bad.”
“You don’t trust me?”
I pause, picturing Brian the other day in socks and no shoes, looking sexy and adorable. “I have my doubts.”
“All I can tell you is that when I attempted to pry, I was assured he’s the worst of the worst. Why else would they pay so much for him?”
That’s true—half a million is nothing to sneeze at. The worse they are, the more they need to die, the more money that’s put up.
Which means Brian must be really bad.