Dear Wife(6)

I slide a shiny Wells Fargo card from the side pocket of my bag and push it across the table. “I want you to spend my money.”

He doesn’t say anything, but he picks up the card, running a thumb over the shiny gold letters across the front—my real name, definitely not Beth. When he looks back up, his expression is unreadable.

“For the record, I don’t mean spend it as in booking a first-class ticket to Vegas and going nuts at the roulette wheel, but spend it as in ten dollars here, twenty there. I want you to move around a lot. Never the same ATM, or even the same city, twice. The farther away the withdrawals are from each other, the more varied the locations, the better. Think of me as your ATM fairy godmother.”

“You want me to lay a trail.”

I tip my head, a silent confirmation. “Assuming you don’t withdraw more than a hundred dollars a week, which you can’t because I’ve set up the card with a weekly limit, you’ll get five weeks of money off that card.”

“And my fee?”

His fee is five hundred dollars, an amount he made very clear on the phone is nonnegotiable. Whatever it is I’m hiring him to do comes on top of that, which means this is a job that comes with a hefty cash bonus, one that’s double his fee. Probably the easiest money he’s ever made.

“Your fee is on there, too. You can withdraw that today. The weekly limits kick in as soon as you do.”

He hikes up on a hip and slips the card into the front pocket of his pants. “You want me to go east or west?”

I know why he’s asking, because he assumes I’d want him to head in the opposite direction. Or at least, I think that’s why he’s asking. But I’m still stinging from my slip-up, and thanks to the card in his pocket, Nick now knows my real name. No way I’m telling him—a criminal, a stranger—where I’m planning to land. Not that I think he’d come after me, but still. If there’s one thing I’ve learned these past ten years, it’s to trust no one, not even the people you’re supposed to trust the most.

“East, west, north, south. I don’t care, as long as your withdrawals are erratic and your stops unpredictable. I’ll be watching the transactions online, and if I don’t like what I see, I’ll put the brakes on the account.”

“You do know there are cameras at every ATM, right?”

I roll my eyes. Of course I know. I didn’t spend the past ten months planning this thing to have not thought about something as basic as security cameras. But it’ll be days, maybe even weeks before you find the withdrawals, longer before you see Nick’s face on the tapes instead of mine. I’m not worried about the stupid cameras.

“Make sure to smile pretty.” I pull my bag onto my shoulder, a sign that this conversation, an interview and marching orders at the same time, is over. “The pin is 2764.”

Nick reaches for his coffee cup, still full but no longer steaming, then thinks better of it. He leaves it on the table and stands. “I bet that happens a lot, doesn’t it?”

“What does?”

“That people underestimate you. That they think you’re greener than you actually are. And before you roll your eyes at me again, you should know that’s not a bad thing. If things get hairy, you can use it to your advantage.”

Now, finally, he gets a grin from me. “I’m counting on it.”



JEFFREY

I jerk awake on the couch, and the crystal tumbler balancing on my stomach pitches over a hip. I roll away from the spill, shifting to one side, but I’m too late. The liquid has already seeped through my jeans, dripping a good two fingers of expensive bourbon down my leg and into the fabric of the cushion. With a groan, I plunk the glass on the floor, push myself upright and try to get my bearings.

The half-eaten pizza I ordered for dinner sits cold and congealed on the coffee table, and I flip the box closed. Images of a house fire flicker on the television on the wall, a handful of figures in slick yellow gear under a dripping arc of water. I reach for the remote and hit the button for the guide. Tiny numbers at the top of the screen tell me it’s 11:17 p.m.

Shit. When I stretched out on the couch, it was quarter to nine. The four days of travel, of being ‘on’ all day at the conference, must have worn me out more than I thought.

“Sabine?”

No answer, but then again, she’s probably sound asleep. I picture her upstairs in bed, her long hair like silk across the pillow, and a familiar fire burns in my chest. Why didn’t she come in to say hi? Why didn’t she wake me?

I click off the TV and stand.

The downstairs is quiet, the lights still burning bright in the hallway. I flip them off on my way to the stairs, pausing at the doorway to the kitchen. The counter is still spotless, and the three matching pendants over the island light the air with a golden glow. Sabine might be a slob, but she hates wasting money as much as I do. If she were here, if she’d sneaked past me on her way upstairs, she would have turned off the lights.

Unease tightens the skin of my chest.

I jog across the kitchen tiles and yank open the door to the garage, getting a faint, heady whiff of gasoline. My car, right where I parked it. In Sabine’s spot, nothing but an oil stain on the concrete. My heart gives a painful kick.

I take the stairs by twos and threes, sprinting down the hallway runner and into the bedroom, even though I already know what I’ll find. The comforter, still unturned from where I’d made it. The pillows, still stacked and fluffed.