Husband by Choice

“We don’t think she’s running anymore.”

Max needed to sit down. He was a strong man with healthy muscles. They just weren’t holding him up well. He swayed a moment and found a counter with his backside, letting it bear his weight.

“The Santa Raquel police force put out a missing person’s alert on her, though technically, she’s still considered to have left on her own.”

“The entire police force is looking for her? That’s bad, isn’t it? They think she’s in danger. Serious danger.”

“Don’t you?”

He didn’t want to think. He wanted to get in his car, go find his wife, bring her home and lock her inside with him and Caleb. For the rest of their lives.

“Maybe she’s on her way home,” he said. “Did anyone think of that? It’s not like Smith could waltz in here and get her. You said police have been watching the place and if she was at a shelter there’d be security and cameras and every cop in two states is aware of an arrest warrant out for him.” Why wasn’t she thinking of all of these things?

“She left three hours ago. She’d have made it home by now. And if you want to know the truth, I’d been hoping, all the way here, that I’d walk in that door and find her sitting here with you two. I was going to give you hell for not calling to let me know she was home, and then enjoy your apology....”

The scenario was a good one. He wanted it.

She was telling him something else, too. She was ready to join him in welcoming Meredith back into his life if that was what he wanted. She wasn’t holding him to whatever promises she might have hoped for in his kiss. “Maybe she stopped someplace. A store. To pick something up. Meri liked to plan moments, you know like themed dinners to celebrate little things. So, yeah, she’s probably hard at work on some kind of homecoming thing. She’d do it up big, thinking she owed me an explanation or an apology....”

Or was it him thinking that?

Chantel’s brown eyes softened for the briefest moment and his stomach started to churn in earnest. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

The woman in his kitchen nodded. “I just didn’t want to have to consider it,” she said. “A team is processing her room now, Max, looking for anything that might help us understand what was going on with her, where she might be and why, but we’ve already got an idea.”

“What?”

She watched him. And he could hear the clock ticking down the seconds on Meri’s life. “Tell me.”

“An older woman...the note she left her said something about the woman having become one of her only true friends...her name’s Renee...she said that Meredith had been doing this research...about the minds of abusers....”

Chantel was struggling for words.

And Max understood that she was trying to prepare him for the fact that Meredith was probably already dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

STEVE WAS DRIVING an older green economy car. The same one she’d seen him in the day she’d left Max and Caleb. She couldn’t make out the license plate number as they approached, and it wasn’t as though it was going to matter in any case.

Either she’d succeed with her plan and the plate wouldn’t matter. Or she wouldn’t and wouldn’t be able to tell anyone the plate number anyway.

“Where are we going?” she asked, playing her part.

“I have a house not far from here.”

“You rented it, you mean?”

“No. I own it.”

“You bought a house in Santa Raquel.”

“Yes.”

“When?” Talking helped pass the time and block out emotion.

“Four years ago.”

“When I married Max.”