The Marriage Lie(87)

Next door a light flips on, illuminating at least three silhouettes just outside. I blink, and the bodies slide into the shadows.

Corban’s voice, when he speaks again, is cold as frozen concrete. “I see.”

See what? I don’t see a thing. Is it Will outside my window? Where is he? I scan the windows, study Corban’s expression, but I don’t understand anything.

Corban holds out the receiver, knocks it against my skull. “Tell the cops you’re fine, that this is all one big misunderstanding. Tell them I’m here as your guest and to get the fuck off your property.” When I can’t choke out an answer, he makes a disgusted sound. “Never mind, I’ll do it myself. Get the fuck off her property, assholes.”

He chucks the receiver onto the floor and sighs. “It seems we have a little problem.”

Under any other set of circumstances, Corban’s understatement might be amusing, but now his answer sucks some of the steam from my confusion. As far as I can tell, the house is surrounded by police, and Corban is looking at me like he doesn’t know what to do with me, which is not good. From where I’m sitting, there’s only one way out. A cornered man has nothing to lose. Whoever’s on the other side of that glass needs to shoot and do it now.

But would the police do that? Would they shoot an unarmed man? As if Corban is thinking the exact same thing, he lifts both hands into the air and does a slow three-sixty before the window. Move along, folks, his smile seems to say. Nothing to see here.

I notice every detail of what happens next in crisp, sharp focus. How the bullet hits the window with a hard pop, busting a neat hole in the center of the plate glass. How it whizzes past me with a breathy hiss, a spark of silver and air. How when it hits Corban, his head jerks back, and his blood and brain splatter like a Jackson Pollock painting on me and the wall. How the floorboards quake when his body hits the ground, a two-hundred-plus-pound solid mass of concrete bone and muscle.

And then the back door explodes open, a burst of wood and glass and boot, and an army of uniformed police swarm through. Their guns are drawn, and they’re aimed—every single one—at Corban.

One of them drops to his knees and feels for a pulse, which may be standard procedure but, in this case, completely unnecessary. Corban’s eyes are open, but he’s missing a big chunk of his forehead.

A female officer crouches next to me. “Ma’am, are you okay?” She runs her hands along my face and neck, her fingers probing into my shaking skin. When she pulls away, her hands are streaked with blood.

“It’s n-not mine,” I say, but my teeth are chattering, and the words get swallowed up by all the yelling.

A big, dark-haired man behind her is doing most of it. “Which one of you assholes fired?” His face is purple, and he’s screaming so hard, spittle sprays in a perfect arc from his mouth. “The suspect was unarmed. Who fired, goddammit?”

The female officer ignores him, reaching around me for the afghan on the sofa and draping it around my shaking shoulders. “We need to warm you up. You’re in shock.” She twists around, yells into the room. “Can we get an EMT over here?”

The EMTs trot up with a stretcher, but when they get a load of Corban leaking onto my floor, they slow down considerably. One of them breaks away, approaching me with a medical bag. He takes my blood pressure and checks my vitals while snippets of conversations float all around.

The police set up a perimeter around the house, then hunkered down to wait.

The hostage negotiator called Corban on the house line.

The plan was to talk him down.

The order was not to shoot.

And yet Corban took one bullet to the left temple.

No one here is claiming responsibility for firing it.

The answer lurches me to my feet, and I spring over the coffee table, hurling myself through the bodies crowding the room. Hands grab at me, and I shake them off, sprinting out the back door.

“Will!” The dogs start up again, and I yell it even louder. “Will!”

I tear across my backyard to the fence, my head whipping back and forth, my gaze searching in the shadows. I’m frantic, wild and hysterical, desperate to find my husband, who I know—I know—is the one who fired the shot.

I cup my hands and scream his name into the sky, even though I know he’s not here. By now, Will is long gone.

The realization is like a kick to the gut, and I double over, wrapping both arms around my middle and wailing. Fury and frustration sweep over me in waves, gaining strength on the replay of tonight’s events.

Strong hands clamp on to my shoulders and pull me up and back, turning me into a familiar embrace.

“You’re okay,” Evan says, his big arms wrapping tightly around me. “I’ve got you.”





30

“Mrs. Griffith,” a female voice says. I look up from where my face is buried in Evan’s chest to see that it’s Detective Johnson standing at the edge of the grass, the detective we spoke to last week at the station. “We have some questions for you when you’re ready.”

I’m not anywhere near ready. I’m still shaking all over, my muscles tense and slack at the same time, and I feel sick. An adrenaline hangover combined with horror and physical exhaustion. I grab Evan’s shirt in both fists and suck a lungful of crisp night air. The backyard spins. “I think I need to sit down.”