The Atonement (The Arrangement, #3)(6)

Love him, fight for him, or kill him, he made sure the world only revolved around him.

I turned away and hurried from the room, unable to stand the sight or smell of it any longer, and swiped tears from my eyes angrily.

He wasn’t here.

None of this was conducive to my mission.

Peter wasn’t here, and standing around crying in the burned-up heap that was once our bedroom wasn’t solving anything. I’d made this mess. It was my fault. And now, if I wanted to save my children and myself, I needed to track down my husband and end things once and for all.

If only it were that easy.





CHAPTER FOUR





PETER





It had been a week since my wife tried to kill me, and I still wasn’t sure I believed it.

I mean, really, how does one come to grips with the fact that the person they’re married to is a monster?

There was no other word for it, try as I might to find one.

Monster.

I couldn’t rationalize how the woman I’d shared a home and a bed with for so many years could suddenly seem so different to me. Like a light switch. Like she’d flipped, switching personalities in an instant to become someone I didn’t recognize.

Once, I’d seen Ainsley as someone safe—someplace safe. The calm to my storm. But now? Now, she was a storm all her own, and no one was safe.

The next exit showed a sign for a little diner, the kind of hole-in-the-wall place I might once have gone to for an entirely different reason, and I lifted my foot from the accelerator, switching lanes.

I needed to get something in my stomach, coffee if nothing else. A few minutes later, I was pulling into the small diner parking lot. There were a total of five cars in the lot, including mine, and I suspected most were employees.

Walking inside, my suspicions were confirmed. The diner was small, quiet, and smoky. At the far end of the room, a small child sat with a man who must’ve been her grandfather. She dug into a stack of pancakes hungrily as the man sipped his coffee.

“Just you, honey?” A waitress in a light-blue uniform approached me from around a corner. Her wild and curly graying-blonde hair was pulled up on top of her head in a manner that looked like she’d been playing with an electrical socket, and the red lipstick she wore was too bright and too smeared to appear anything other than sloppy. Though I tried to fight it, I couldn’t help thinking of Ainsley then—the red lipstick she wore so perfectly.

I cleared my throat. “Yep. Just me.”

“Right this way.” She led me toward a booth against the left wall, so I could look out at the parking lot through the oversized window, and placed an enormous laminated menu in front of me. “Know what you want?”

“Erm, coffee, please. And…” I scanned the menu—they had everything from burgers and tacos to pancakes and crepes, but nothing sounded appetizing.

“The sampler’s on special today. Just seven ninety-nine.” She extended a long, bony finger to point toward the menu. Bacon, hash browns, eggs, sausage, toast, and pancakes.

“Sounds good. I’ll take that.”

“How do you want your eggs?”

“Scrambled’s fine.”

“Be right back with your coffee.” She took the menu from me, tucking the pencil and notepad in her apron and laid a roll of silverware on the coffee-and-cigarette-stained tabletop.

Once she was gone, I checked in with the little girl and her grandfather again. My breaths slowed as the memories of my children began to take over. It wasn’t so long ago that could’ve been us—them talking nonstop about something I was only half listening to; them asking me to try a bite of their breakfast; their sticky-sweet smiles and fingers; the chocolate-and-whipped-cream mustaches after a particularly sweet treat.

I’d lost track of time—overcome by the memories and overwhelmed by the sadness of knowing they were long gone—when the waitress reappeared and placed a mug of coffee and a bowl full of various creamer options in front of me.

“Thanks.” I tore open one of the containers and poured the liquid into my drink, stirring it slowly.

For the past six days, I’d worked tirelessly to track Ainsley down. I’d never been so thankful I’d decided to put in an emergency escape plan, on the off chance something went wrong in that room, though I’d never expected that something to be what it was. After escaping the room that day and taking care of a few housekeeping items like burying Joanna’s body, I checked the bank account.

After she’d killed our therapist, Ainsley said they were going away, but she hadn’t said where. Luckily, the charge to the Panama City hotel was easy enough to track. She thought she was so smart—always one step ahead of me—but this time, I’d proved her wrong. This time, I was the one ahead of her. I’d found them at the hotel, watched how she moved so freely through life, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. As if she wasn’t a walking, talking husband murderer.

I could’ve gone after her. Could’ve chased her down and confronted her right then, but I’d been working on my impulse control. Ironic, isn’t it? My impulses were what got us into this mess, and now I wanted to learn to control them?

Hm.

Well, better late than never, I guess.

So, rather than acting, I watched. Observed. Though she tried to hide it, I saw her checking over her shoulder more than once. Was she looking for me then? Or maybe just the police?