Pretty Little Wife(40)
“But we have video from the neighborhood, and there’s no sign of Lila’s car going in or out. All we have is Aaron’s car leaving, hours before his usual time, driving to school, and vanishing.”
“So what does that mean?”
“We need a deeper look around Lila’s house.”
JARED WASN’T AT home. Lila had called, and he told her to let herself in. He’d given her the code for emergencies years ago and to help out when people came to do work in and around the house. A few weeks ago she was there to make sure the guys cutting down a dying tree didn’t crash it into the house.
His willingness to give her open access to his most private space was exactly what she wanted, but taking advantage felt wrong. She knew Jared wasn’t hiding Aaron, but maybe Aaron had stashed something here, where it would be out of her reach.
She typed in the security code on the number pad and opened Jared’s back door. While Aaron had insisted on owning a big, fancy house, Jared didn’t. His needs were more understated.
If he was trying for a swanky modern bachelor pad, he’d missed by a mile, but the place was very him. A gray midcentury modern one-story house on a hill. Surrounded by trees and very few neighbors, it had a carport, a small stone patio in the back, and a distant view of Cayuga Lake out the front.
The furniture inside matched the outside aesthetic. Simple with clean lines. A little sparse and impersonal for her taste, but the décor fit Jared. He’d picked out every piece himself and declared the place his refuge. It also had a separate building on the other side of the carport that the previous owner had used as an art studio. Jared used it as a home office.
She walked past the kitchen and down the hall to the extra bedroom. Aaron slept here for a short time after the fight that started all of this. If he hid something this might be where. But the furniture in the room consisted of a bed, a chair, and a dresser. The search took all of five minutes. She even stomped on floorboards and looked under the mattress, thinking those might be places Aaron thought Jared wouldn’t look.
Anxiety bubbled up inside of her as soon as she finished digging. She could hold the churning sensation off for long periods of time and get through the day, but another night without knowing where Aaron was or what game he was playing pushed on her reserves. Every time the sun went down, her nerves unraveled. The only thing that saved her was having Tobias in the house.
She peeked through the curtains. Her gaze bounced around before landing on the studio office. If she were Aaron, she’d hide whatever he needed hidden in the one place he knew she viewed as off-limits—Jared’s private space.
She bit on her bottom lip as the urge to peek built inside her. Without thinking, she shot down the hall and out the side door in the kitchen. A few minutes later, she stood at the entrance to the office and engaged in an internal debate over whether it was okay to invade her brother-in-law’s privacy. Her patience snapped, and she typed in the code, surprised when it worked here, too, and the lock clicked open.
She stood there, taking her time looking inside the open room. She had no idea what made her so hesitant to breach this one last space. It wasn’t as if she’d been playing nice and following the unspoken rules in the weeks since she’d found Aaron’s secret cell phone. But this was Jared, and he wasn’t her target.
“Screw it.” She forced her legs to move.
Once inside, a new sense of dread filled her. The drumbeat of her heart in her ears muffled all other sounds. She felt achy and a little nauseated. A voice in her head screamed at her to turn back. Blocking it proved impossible, so she tried to ignore it, letting it morph into a steady beat in her head.
The desk chair creaked as she sat down. She tried not to notice the shake in her hands as she opened one desk drawer after another and rifled through the contents. The task didn’t take long. Jared had everything organized. A place for every paper clip and pen. Labeled bins and files. The only thing without their own bin or drawer were a few stray coins. He had a jar of coins across the room on top of a cabinet. She thought about combining the ones in the desk with them, then decided she shouldn’t move anything.
She scanned the bookshelves and sighed at the file cabinets, unwilling to go through every bit of paper. Chalking this up to a bad idea, she shifted to stand and kicked something. Shoving back in the chair, she looked down and saw a small fireproof lockbox—the kind she had at home and used for things like passports and important papers.
Jared had a built-in safe in the closet. She knew because he told her that’s where she should look if anything ever happened to him. So . . . this? She scooted back and reached for the handle. She maneuvered the heavy box to the desktop just as she saw a flash as a car turned into the driveaway.
“Come on. Come on.” She begged the box to open, but it was locked. She rummaged through the top desk drawer but didn’t see a small key.
Jared’s car eased to a stop, and he turned away from the house, reaching into the back seat for something.
She had only seconds. She grabbed a paper clip and unbent it.
Jared’s car door shut.
Right as she put the end of the open clip into the lock and started wiggling it around, a wave of guilt hit her. Her hand dropped to the desk. “What the hell am I doing?”
She stood up and quickly sat back down again, debating what to do next. After she dumped the box on the floor, she slammed the desk drawer shut. She was up and out of the chair as Jared passed by the carport, heading for the front door.