When Never Comes(3)

Christine found herself unable to look away. A prostitute? A one-night stand? A casual dalliance or something more? And if so, how much more?

Connelly cleared his throat. “Do you have any idea—”

“No.”

“I know this is hard, Christine, but please take your time. Look closely.”

“I don’t need to look closely. I don’t know who she is or what she was doing in my husband’s car.” Her voice broke suddenly, and for an instant, she thought about lunging at the detective. “This is why you’re here. Because of her. Because you were Stephen’s friend, and they thought you’d be able to get a name out of me. That’s what you meant when you said you were here to explain things. When you said things, you meant her.”

“Christine, I know this doesn’t look good. I can’t even imagine what’s going through your mind right now, but we don’t know what this means. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

“She isn’t wearing a shirt, Detective.”

“And there might be a perfectly valid explanation for that. Maybe when the divers pulled her out of the car, her clothes . . .” He let the words dangle, the look on his face making it clear he’d drawn the same conclusion she had—the only conclusion that could be drawn when a half-nude woman was pulled from a man’s car in the middle of the night.

Connelly shifted uneasily, his beefy shoulders bunched. “Was he—do you know if he was . . . seeing anyone?”

Christine glared at him, astonished. “You’re asking if I knew my husband was having an affair? Like that’s something we’d discuss over dinner?”

“I’m sorry. I thought maybe women had a sense about these things. Women’s intuition or whatever you call it.”

She eyed him coldly.

Connelly ran a hand through his thatch of gray hair. “Look, I’m just trying to do my job. I’ve got two years left in homicide, and I’m out. Until then, I do what they tell me. When they realized who they’d pulled out of the bay, they asked me to come down and talk to you. We’ve got a Jane Doe whose family is going to want to know why she didn’t come home tonight, and we can’t tell them until we know who she is.”

Christine bristled at the inference that it was somehow her duty to help identify the half-nude woman. “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Detective. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to go home. You said there were some papers I needed to sign.”

Connelly stepped away briefly, returning a moment later with the clipboard Ryan had been scribbling on. He pointed to a line at the bottom then flipped the page, pointing to two additional lines. Christine signed without reading and pushed the clipboard back into his hands.

“Are we finished?”

“For now, yes. You’ll get a copy of the report when the ME’s finished his examination, and someone will call to let you know when you can come down and collect his things.”

Christine stared at him blankly. “His things?”

“Keys. Wallet. Cell phone.”

“Right. His things.” She turned toward the door, fumbling in her pocket for her own keys.

“Here,” Connelly said. “Let me walk you out.”

“Thanks, no. I can find my way.” She knew she should thank him for coming down in the middle of the night, but somehow she couldn’t manage it.

She was almost to the door when he stopped her. “I’m sorry about this, Christine. Truly sorry. Stephen was a friend, but he was also a highly visible public figure. The media’s going to want to know what happened. I’ll do what I can to keep the details quiet, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

Christine nodded, then turned back toward the door, not sure whether she should feel gratitude or dread.





TWO

It was half past four when Christine finally navigated the Range Rover back through the security gate and into the garage. For a time—she couldn’t say how long—she simply sat there with the door open and the engine running. The sun would be up soon, the beginning of a new day. There would be people to call, details to handle, but she was too numb to think about any of that now. Instead, she sat in the eerie glow of the dashboard lights, wondering how her carefully ordered marriage had ended in such a spectacular derailment.

She had married an icon, a catch by any woman’s standards. Not bad for a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Stephen Ludlow. Even his name had conjured respect. And if he’d seen it as his job to smooth out her rough edges and make her over into a proper society wife, it was a small price to pay for the stability she had craved. But who was she now that Stephen was gone? A widow suddenly adrift, unmoored from a life that had never quite been hers.

A widow.

How was that even possible? Marriage had never been part of her plan. Far from it, in fact. She’d grown up hard and fast, the way most children of addicts did, and had learned a thing or two along the way. At ten, she learned that no address was permanent, at twelve, that no promise was sacred, and at sixteen, that there was no such thing as safe. There were other lessons too. Lessons that were still etched in her mind—and her flesh.

She dragged back her coat sleeve, and stared at the trio of scars on her wrist, shiny and pale, like a constellation of tiny moons. Her badge of survival. Yes, she’d learned a thing or two growing up, including what happened when you trusted the wrong people.