The Couple Next Door(71)

The man she married.

And then he sat there, in their kitchen, and told her that the dead man looked familiar.

She’s suddenly afraid of her own husband. She doesn’t know who he is or what he is. She is starting to understand what he’s capable of.

Had he ever loved her, or had he only married her for her money?

What does she do now? Does she go to the police with what she knows? What might happen to Cora if she did?

After a long time, Anne pulls herself up off the floor. She forces herself to walk quickly upstairs to the bedroom. Trembling, she pulls out an overnight bag and starts packing.

? ? ?

Anne gets out of the cab at the foot of her parents’ circular gravel drive. This is the house she grew up in. It is very grand. The large stone house with its lush, professionally tended gardens backs onto a wooded ravine. She pays the cabdriver and stands there for a minute with her overnight bag at her feet, looking at the house. The homes are set far apart here. Nobody will see her, unless her mother is home and happens to look out the window. She remembers vividly the day she stepped out of this house and climbed onto the back of Marco’s motorcycle and decided that she was in love.

So much has happened. So much has changed.

She hates to go back to her parents. It’s an admission that they were right about Marco all along. She doesn’t want to believe it, but she’s seen the evidence with her own eyes. She’d gone against their wishes when she’d married Marco—she’d known her own mind then, and her own heart.

Now she doesn’t know anything.

There at the end of her parents’ drive, from out of nowhere, Anne suddenly remembers where she saw the dead man. She trembles like a leaf in the wind, trying to make sense of this new information. Then she takes out her cell phone and calls another cab.

? ? ?

Marco tries Richard again, leaves another terse message on his voice mail. Richard is punishing him, keeping him out of the loop. He’s going to handle it himself and not let Marco know until it’s all over, when Cora is back safe and sound. If she does come back.

Even Marco admits to himself that maybe it’s better this way. If anyone can pull this off, it’s Richard. Richard with his bags of money and nerves of steel. Marco is exhausted, physically and emotionally. He wants nothing more than to lie down on his office couch, sleep for a few hours, and wake up to a phone call that Cora is home again, safe. But then—what happens after that?

He remembers there’s an open bottle of scotch in the back of one of his filing-cabinet drawers. He stops pacing, moves over to the filing cabinet, and pulls open the drawer. The bottle is half empty. He grabs a glass, also hidden in the filing cabinet, and pours himself a stiff one. Then he resumes his pacing.

Marco can’t face the possibility of never seeing Cora again. He is also terrified of being arrested and going to prison. He’s sure that if he is arrested, the lawyer most likely to be able to get him acquitted, Aubrey West, will no longer be acting for him. Because Anne’s parents won’t pay, and Marco doesn’t have the money to pay for a top-notch lawyer himself.

He refills his glass from the bottle, which is now sitting open on the blotter on his expensive desk, and realizes that he’s already thinking about what to do after he’s arrested. Arrest now seems inevitable. Anne won’t stand by him, not once she hears the truth from her own father. Why would she? She’ll hate him. If she had done this to him, he would never forgive her.

Then there’s Cynthia and the video.

His nose deep into his third drink, Marco for the first time considers telling the police the truth. What if he simply told Rasbach that yes, he met with Bruce—who turned out to be Derek Honig. Yes, he had business troubles. Yes, his father-in-law refused to help him out. Yes, he planned to take and hide his own baby for a couple of days to get the ransom money out of his wife’s parents.

But it wasn’t actually his idea. It was Derek Honig’s idea.

Derek Honig was the one who suggested it. He planned it. In Marco’s mind it was just a way to get a bit of an advance on his wife’s inheritance. No one was supposed to die. Not his accomplice. Certainly not his baby.

Marco is a victim in this, too. Not blameless, but still a victim. He was desperate, and he fell in with someone who gave him a false name, who manipulated him into the kidnapping for his own gain. A good lawyer like Aubrey West could spin it.

Marco could come clean with Detective Rasbach. Tell him everything.

Once Cora is back home.

He would go to prison. But Cora, if she survives this, would be with her mother. Richard would no longer have anything to hold over him. And Cynthia would be shit out of luck. Maybe he could even make sure she went to jail for attempted blackmail. For a minute he imagines Cynthia in a shapeless orange jumpsuit, with unwashed hair.

He looks up from his pacing, catches his reflection in the large mirror hanging on the wall across from the window, and barely recognizes himself.





THIRTY-TWO


Marco finally returns home, once it’s dark. He’s had too much to drink, so he leaves the car behind and takes a cab. He arrives home disheveled, his eyes bloodshot, his body racked with tension, even with all the alcohol in it.

He lets himself in the front door. “Anne?” he calls, wondering where she is. The house is dark and feels empty. It’s very quiet. He stands still, listening to the silence. Maybe she isn’t here. “Anne?” His voice is louder now, worried. He walks farther into the living room.