Trespassing(40)

A moment of silence precedes his repeated and more staccato: “I asked you not to go.”

“Well, as it turned out, I didn’t. I was on my way—I was—but someone was following us. A brown sedan.”

“Following you?”

“I thought they were, but . . .”

“Did you catch the license plate?”

“It was an Illinois plate, and it started with S-T-X.”

“Where are you, Mrs. Cavanaugh? Are you going to Plum Lake?”

“No. I’m a little farther south than that.” I’d stopped looking in the rearview mirror by the time we crossed the border into Georgia, stopped jumping every time someone else happened to pull up to the gas pump next to mine.

“You’re heading to the place in Key West.”

A chill races up my spine when he says it, as if it hasn’t been real until now. “I guess I am.” I hadn’t wanted anyone to know about the house in Key West. I didn’t want anyone to know where we were going. It was as if I thought we might disappear forever, if we made it safely to the Florida Keys.

But I should’ve known Guidry would find the property deeded to me. It’s his job to dig and find information.

“Why didn’t you tell me you owned a house in South Florida? You didn’t think it worth mentioning, considering the remains of the plane—”

“I didn’t know about the house,” I say. “And I need you to believe me. I guess there’s a lot I didn’t know about, so . . . yeah. I would’ve told you, but Micah never told me.”

I hear the drumming of his fingers against some surface, but he doesn’t reply.

“Listen,” I say. “If I had anything to do with my husband’s disappearance or death, would I have called you?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“I’m calling because I’m scared. You can’t expect me to believe that everything is okay, when Micah was obviously keeping secrets. Bella said something about a man in the kitchen.”

“I remember.”

“Well, she said this agent had been in the kitchen, when we saw him at the bank.”

“What agent is that?”

“Lincoln. With the FBI.” A glance at the speedometer tells me I’m driving like a bat out of hell. I ease off the gas. “He was at the bank the day I left, and something in the way he was looking at me scared me. And there was a man on the fairway again, smoking. Micah’s gone, right? And I don’t know what he was dealing with, but I feel like all of you expect me to know the answers. I don’t understand any of this. You’re supposed to be helping me, but it feels like you’re hunting me. I left because I’m terrified.”

“Confirm this for me: you’re heading to Key West.”

This time, I’m the one who doesn’t reply for a moment. “Yes.”

“Please stay there until I get to the bottom of things. I’ll have local eyes on you, so don’t think about skipping town on me again.”

“I don’t”—I swallow over tears—“I don’t have anywhere else to go. We’re months behind on the mortgage at Shadowlands. Did you know that? Micah invented a job. Why would he quit a job with a commercial airline if he didn’t have another job?”

“I’ve spoken with other pilots in his class. He didn’t quit United for better opportunities. He quit to avoid a criminal investigation.”

“He . . . what? What kind of investigation?”

“Criminal. Meaning he did something he wasn’t supposed to do.”

I rub my temple, which is suddenly aching with the onset of a tension headache.

“And searches on his social security number . . . I’ve hit a brick wall with that, too. The search showed no legitimate employment since United.”

“No employment.” Yet he was paying medical bills out of pocket. Depositing cash into our account. Faking pay stubs. A gurgle of a sob escapes me. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“As a matter of fact, it’s your father-in-law’s social security number associated with your mortgage at the bank. Your husband couldn’t secure the loan for the house in the Shadowlands. Without traceable income . . . well, that’d be hard to do.”

“There has to be a mistake. Check again. Please.”

“I have.”

“But if that’s the social security number on the mortgage papers . . .” Is he saying Micah and I don’t actually own the house? That his father does? “It’s my fault,” I whisper. “I kept pushing for more children, more fertility treatment. I pushed and pushed, and I pushed him over the edge.” I pushed because I thought he wanted it, but still . . . I can’t imagine the pressure he must have felt to provide. Desperate men take desperate measures, but to have fabricated a job and insurance?

“It’s Micah’s social on your marriage license,” Guidry says. “So it’s safe to say you married who you thought you were marrying.”

I stifle a sob. God, what if I hadn’t? What if my marriage was as much of a ruse as the rest of this?

“How long did you know your husband before you were married?”

“Two years. It wasn’t like we rushed anything. I mean, the engagement was quick, but we waited until after graduation.”