Reid
I’ve never seen you act more emotional in my life.
He had been objective. He knew he had been objective. He had a commendation in his desk drawer and Sullivan's approval and years of a career that backed him up.
The thought should have settled something in him. He didn’t understand why he still felt like this.
He had the unpleasant sense of having left something critical undone. A signature missing from a file. A decimal in the wrong place. Some small, fatal error waiting patiently for him to notice it.
He had followed the evidence. He had done the thing other men were too weak to do. He had looked at his own wife and refused to flinch.
That was integrity.
Reid lifted the cardboard cup and took a sip. He barely tasted the coffee.
Across the street, the scaffolding climbed the side of the building. Reid stared at it for a long moment, then looked away.
He looked down at the coffee in his hand. He was still wearing his wedding ring.
Reid turned his hand slightly, watching the light catch along the surface. It was a simple band. He remembered the moment Maya had slid it onto his finger.
Her hands had been trembling. She had laughed about it after, embarrassed, and he had caught both her hands in his before she could hide them.
He was a man who did not commit to things lightly.
It was his wife who had proved false.
His analysis proved she lied. His analysis proved she had stolen from the charity. He had not guessed. He had been logical. He had been objective.
If the woman he knew wouldn’t have done those things, that only proved that he didn’t know her at all.
Maya had fooled him.
Maya had fooled everyone.
He took another sip of coffee.
It was bitter.
He thought of her at the sports center, standing in front of a crowd she had inspired. He thought of the way she had moved through the world, adjusting things, making everything better, giving so much of herself.
He had always admired that.
If something was wrong, she tried to fix it. If she didn’t understand something, she asked.
But that woman had been a lie.
I’ve never seen you act more emotional in my life.
His eyes opened.
The thought sat there, absurd and immovable.
The woman he knew didn’t build elaborate financial scheme. She built ramps.
She argued with contractors over two degrees of slope because two degrees meant the difference between independence and asking for help.
She stayed up too late writing grant applications she hated because it meant one more building could be made accessible.
She made people care. She made them show up.
Reid looked across at the scaffolding.
He rubbed at his ring.
So what if the woman he knew wouldn’t do those things? That just meant he didn’t know her.
Or…it could mean…
I’ve never seen you act more emotional in my life.
What he knew about Maya was not nothing.
It was years of behavior. Years of choices. Years of patterns.
If something was wrong, she fixed it. If she didn’t understand something, she asked. If money was missing, she panicked over the spreadsheet until she found the error.
The woman he knew… And he did know her.
That was evidence too.
He stared at his ring.
If what he knew about Maya was evidence, then he had excluded the largest piece of evidence in the case.
The city noise seemed to dull slightly, as if something had shifted out of alignment.
Was he being objective if he ignored everything he knew about Maya Lawson?
If he had started from the truth of Maya—if he had let himself ask what an objective man should have asked—
He felt a chill spread through him.
His hands felt clammy. His heart was racing.
He had not been objective.
He knew. He knew what his analysis would have concluded.
He knew what a truly objective man would have known immediately.
Maya was innocent.
His wife was innocent.
The coffee cup slipped from his hand.
It hit the sidewalk with a dull, papery thud, the lid popping loose as dark liquid spread across the concrete.
Reid stared at it.
He had put his innocent wife in handcuffs.
He burst out of the stairwell onto the office floor, his phone against his ear.
The call went straight to voicemail. He was breathless from the stairs, the words coming out in a rush. “Maya. I need—call me back. Please.”
He hung up and typed a message. Call me when you get this.
Then sent another immediately: Please.
Maya was innocent. She was innocent!
A laugh broke out of him, sharp and disbelieving.
Of course she was.
This had all been a nightmare but it was over now.
She could come home. They would sort it out together.
He tried calling again, but again it didn’t even ring before the voicemail message kicked in.
Reid ended the call before it finished. Her last message to him was from the night he had been misled. The night his world had collapsed.
Love you. Be careful driving home.
He dropped the phone on his desk.
He couldn't sit still. He needed to do something. Anything.
His phone lit up.
He reached for it—but it was just a work notification. He threw it back down.
He needed to tell Maya it was all going to be okay now. He needed to see her.
The intercom crackled. Then Owen’s voice, flattened by the speaker. “Yeah?”
“I need to talk to Maya.”
A pause.
“She’s not here.”
Reid felt an odd surge of panic. She wasn’t here? Where was she? “What do you mean she’s not there?”
“She’s not staying here,” Owen said after a moment.
Reid’s stomach dropped. “Owen—wait—”
The line clicked off.
He ran his hand through his hand. Where else would she go? Who would she call? Her mom?
He had told her to leave. He had stood in the doorway of their home, her home, and closed the door in her face.
Reid exhaled slowly, the breath unsteady. He dragged a hand down his face, forcing himself to think, to stay functional, to not let the rising panic take over completely.
He scrolled through his contacts until he found his mother-in-law, and hit call as he strode back to his car.
"It's Reid,” he barked out as soon as the call connected. “Is Maya with you?”
"Oh," Maya’s mother said. “No. She phoned, was it yesterday, David?" A muffled exchange. "She did ask if she could come here, actually."
Reid's felting a sinking sensation. "And you said she couldn’t?” he guessed.
“Well, we’re not really set up for company right now,” she said apologetically. “We’re not even anywhere near an airport.”
Reid closed his eyes for a second, pressing his fingers hard against them. “If she calls back, can you pass along a message,” he said. “Tell her—”
He stopped.
Tell her what?
Tell her to come home to me, he thought. Tell her she must come home.
“Tell her to call me,” he finished.
“Sure thing, sugar,” his mother-in-law said.
The call ended.
Reid curled his hand into a fist, the edge of his wedding ring biting hard into his palm.
Where was she?
He needed her. He needed her in his arms. He needed her safe.
He just had to figure out where she was.
Maya had no access to money. The thought was like a knife sliding into his gut.
He’d always thought of himself as a smart guy. Careful and competent. The kind of agent who saw three steps ahead, who caught details other people missed.
And yet somehow he had managed to arrest his own wife without once considering what happened after the cuffs came off.
Jesus Christ.
This wasn’t some unforeseeable complication. This was basic, the kind of thing a first-year agent should have anticipated.
He had understood on some level that her accounts would be frozen. Of course he had. He just hadn’t bothered to think about what that would mean in real terms.
He had been too busy feeling like he was the victim.
Now Maya without access to money, without a home. And he had no idea where she was.
He didn’t know where his wife was and he had no way to find her.