Little Secrets(88)
It’s a photo of Derek’s mistress, all right. But it’s not a selfie. She’s not nude. She’s not smiling. She’s lying on a bed, on her right side, on top of a flowered quilt, in a bedroom that looks dated and sparse. She’s dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, and her wrists are bound behind her back, her feet tied together at the ankles. Her face is angled awkwardly toward the camera, as if whoever took the photo told her to look up.
What the hell is this? Some kind of bondage thing? Have she and Derek gotten into something kinky? Is this the kind of shit that turns him on?
Then Marin notices how stringy the younger woman’s hair looks. Her pink waves are limp and greasy, not damp. Also, something doesn’t look right with her face. She zooms in on the picture to get a closer look, and she gasps when McKenzie’s features come into focus.
Derek’s lover has been beaten. It’s not makeup. The swelling is obvious. One eye is purple and nearly swollen shut. Her bottom lip is split, and there’s dried blood on her chin. There’s a cut above her eyebrow. Zooming in even closer, Marin can see the wet line trailing from the corner of her puffy eye all the way down her cheek.
Tears. She’s crying.
And then the Shadow app receives another text. This time, it’s all words.
We have your girl. $250,000 cash, small bills, tonight. You don’t pay, the same thing will happen to her that happened to your son. You don’t want it to happen again, do you, Derek? We’ll be in touch later with the address.
Marin’s knees give out. She clutches the desk as her head spins, a thousand feelings bubbling up all at once as she tries to make sense of what she’s just read. She wills herself to breathe, to stay calm, because having a panic attack will not help.
“Oh god, Derek,” she whispers into the quiet office. “Oh my god. What have you done?”
Her phone pings again. Marin is almost afraid to look down.
She does, anyway, to find her husband has responded to the ransom demand. Only five words.
I’ll get you the money.
Chapter 28
If it were anybody else, Marin would be calling the police herself. It’s a ransom demand. It’s a life at stake.
Except the ransom demand wasn’t sent to Marin. It was sent to her husband, and the life at stake is McKenzie Li’s. The woman whose death was worth—in a moment of weakness, in Marin’s darkest hour—two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The amount it cost Marin to end her life is, coincidentally, the exact same amount it will cost Derek to save it.
Marin has no idea if her husband loves this woman, or has ever loved her. When Sebastian disappeared, he and Marin were schooled by the FBI on exactly what to say if they were to ever receive a ransom demand. And not saying or doing anything to antagonize the kidnappers was the first thing on that list. Just because Derek said he would get the money doesn’t mean he will.
Either way, that’s not Marin’s immediate concern. She wants to know what the hell the text is referring to with You don’t want it to happen again.
Again? Did Derek get a ransom demand for their son, and not tell her, or the FBI? Is this the same person who took Sebastian? Or is it someone totally unrelated, preying on Derek’s trauma over the abduction of their son and betting that he’ll pay up to avoid another tragedy?
She thinks back to the days after Sebastian’s disappearance. Their phones were never out of their sight, never not fully charged. All they did was wait for the call, and the call never came. Except it might have. The wording of the ransom demand could be interpreted two totally different ways, and since Derek’s response was immediate and decisive, it’s clear her husband knew which way to take it.
Derek knows exactly what they mean.
In the general scheme of things, two hundred fifty thousand dollars is a drop in the bucket for them. It’s a phone call, a few numbers typed into a computer, a wire transfer, and a confirmation email. It affects their finances almost not at all, which is probably why the kidnappers asked for a number so low. It’s an accessible amount, one that gets the whole thing over with quickly.
No more avoiding. No more pretending. No more secrets. No more lies. The time has come to address all of it with the only person who has all the answers. The common denominator.
Marin sits in the kitchen, drinking coffee, waiting for Derek. His meetings had ended sooner than he’d expected, and he managed to get on an earlier flight back to Seattle. He sent her a text thirty minutes ago to let her know he’d landed, just like he used to back when they were happy, before all this happened. He didn’t check a suitcase, he didn’t park a car. He’ll simply deplane and take a taxi home. With traffic at this time of day, she has maybe thirty more minutes until he walks through the door.
She pulls out the small piece of white paper she found on the floor of their closet three days before, and finally calls the number on the front of it.
“Sunshine Cab,” a dispatcher answers, halfway through the first ring. A man’s voice, clipped. “Where you headed?”
“Hi there, I was in one of your cabs the other day, and I think I left my wallet in it.” Marin speaks smoothly, the lie rolling off her tongue.
“Receipt number?”
Marin recites the eight-digit number stamped on the top right corner.
She hears typing in the background.
“That’s cab four-oh-two,” the dispatcher says, more to himself than to her. “One sec, I’m going to check if any lost articles were logged in that night.” More typing. “Nope, nothing.”