Dear Wife(47)

I slip into my office and shut the door, going through my normal morning routine. Power up the computer, plow through my email inbox. Delete, delete, delete, ignore.

A knuckle raps against wood, and a second later, the door pops open. Eric’s head pokes around the corner. “What are you doing here?”

I lean back in my chair, eyeing him over the top of the computer screen. Eric is dressed in his usual gear—pastel button-down, lightly rumpled khakis, suede saddle bucks. He looks like a frat boy playing boss man.

“Working.”

His brows slide into a frown. “I thought I told you not to come in.”

“No, you told me to take however much time I need, but I don’t need time. I need to work. That mailing I did last month is finally starting to bear fruit, and I have a million things to do.”

This place is set up for a roving sales department, with company-issued laptops and a VPN that can be accessed from the road. Both of us know I could just as easily work from home as from here. Easier, probably, because I could do it without ever leaving my bed.

He glances into the hallway, and I catch a flash of something in his expression—surprise? annoyance?—before he looks back at me and steps inside.

He shuts the door behind him. “Jeffrey, people are starting to talk...”

“What people?”

He makes an are-you-kidding-me face, a minuscule lifting of his shoulders. “The point is—”

“Who, Eric? What are they saying?”

I know what they’re saying. Sabine cheated. She was in love with another man. Jeffrey Hardison is a fool. A stooge. A sucker.

My desk phone buzzes, and I tap the Do Not Disturb button. The system flips the call through to voice mail.

“People are worried about your wife, Jeffrey,” Eric says evenly. “They’re worried about you.” His words toss yet another coal onto my belly-fire.

I slam both fists onto my desk and lean in. “They’re worried? How do you think I feel? Today is day six. Six days since Sabine went wherever she went, and there’s still no sign of her. The police think—” I stop myself just in time. I inhale long and slow, trying to put a damper on my tone, on my temper. “This whole situation is crazy intense. I’ve barely slept. I’ve lost my appetite. You can’t even imagine the stress I’m under.”

“I can imagine. Which is why I suggested you take some time off. Nobody expects you to be here, least of all me.”

I choke up a chuckle, an attempt to laugh it off. “I gotta tell you, Eric, I never thought I’d hear you tell me I’d done enough work. I thought your motto was ‘more is more.’ I barely know what to do with this laid-back version of you.”

He doesn’t share my joviality, not even a little bit. The silence stretches, long and painful. He leans a shoulder against the door. “Are you really going to make me say it?”

I cross my arms, lean back in my chair. Wait.

He sighs, stepping to the edge of my desk. “Look, if it was just the staff talking, that’d be one thing, but the clients are starting to ask questions, and not just of me. They’re talking to each other, and already the gossip is swirling out of control. I can’t have potential customers getting wind of this. Business is already bad enough.”

I clear my throat. “So this suggestion of yours for me to take some time off. It wasn’t a suggestion, really? More like an order?”

“Both.”

“Are you firing me?”

He lifts both hands into the air, frustrated. “Come on, you know I can’t do that. We work in HR, for crap’s sake.” There’s a knock at the door, which we both ignore. “I’m placing you on paid leave so you can go home and worry about your wife in private. Just until this thing blows over.”

I take a deep breath. Sit here calmly, at my desk across from him, while his words boil under my skin. Until this blows over. Meaning what, until Sabine is found safe and sound, and I’m proven innocent? Or that I’m carted out of here in handcuffs and he has reasonable grounds to fire me? Which one?

There’s another knock, this time louder. More forceful. Florence’s voice works its way through the wood. “Jeffrey? I tried to call but your phone is on DND.”

I roll my eyes, but Eric’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Are we agreed?” he says, his voice low and filled with meaning. I give him a brisk nod: fine. In fact, fuck this place. A paid vacation sounds like just what the doctor—Nope, not going there. Fuck Trevor, and fuck Eric, too.

Eric steps back and opens the door, and Florence swipes the air with a knobby fist. She sees him, and her arm falls to her side. “Oh.” Her gaze bounces from Eric to mine. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Sorry.”

My jaw aches from the pressure creeping up my neck and shoulders, from keeping my molars clamped together. Of course she meant to interrupt, every time she banged on my door as well as however many times she tried to call. The Do Not Disturb button exists for a reason.

“It’s fine, Florence,” Eric says. “Jeffrey and I were done.”

Florence’s gaze cuts me like a knife fresh from the freezer. “There’s a detective here to see you.”



MARCUS

Jeffrey’s office smells like coffee and expensive cologne, but it can’t disguise the stink of his panic when I step through his door. I thank the receptionist and his boss, close the door in their faces. I picture them standing on the other side, pressing their ears to the wood. A detective dropping by an office for an unexpected visit is always a showstopper. They were equal parts captivated and horrified.