Darker Shades of Elise novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Home Before Six

A blank card, a clip from a stranger's number and a calm dinner with Mitchell send Felicity back into Rafe's loft at night, where she finds a wall of eleven women.

I was home by five forty, with a clean face and a card in my bra.

Mitchell's car was already in the garage.

He stood at the kitchen island in his shirtsleeves, slicing a lemon for the fish.

"You're early," he said, and kissed my cheek.

His mouth was dry and cool, the way it had been for eighteen months.

"Maribeth's flowers were done fast," I said.

"Good."

"I want you rested."

"The buyer's people fly in a week from Friday, and they'll want to meet you."

"Me?"

"You own half of your father's company, Fliss."

"They want to shake the hand that signs."

He smiled and handed me a glass of wine.

I held it with both hands so they wouldn't shake.

We ate the fish at the dining table with the good napkins.

He talked about zoning variances and the buyer from Ohio, and I said the right things in the right places.

I used to be an actress.

It turns out that's useful when your whole body wants to scream.

At eight my phone buzzed on the counter.

An unknown number, and a video that was ten seconds long.

I carried it into the downstairs bathroom and locked the door.

It was my face, close and open-mouthed, lit by a lamp I knew.

No sound.

Under it, one line of text.

"Thursday."

I deleted it, and then I sat on the edge of the tub with my head between my knees.

Mitchell knocked once.

"Everything all right in there?"

"Cramps," I said.

"Take something," he said, and his footsteps went away.

At ten, while he watched the news upstairs, I took the memory card to the laptop in the den.

It was empty.

Not damaged, not locked, just wiped clean, formatted that morning by the look of the date.

Rafe had told me the truth in the loft.

He had never kept anything on that card.

I sat in the dark and listened to the house tick.

Then I called Maribeth, who answered on the first ring because she always did.

"Tell me he's dead," she said.

"Not yet."

I told her in nine sentences, and I heard her flower shears hit the counter at the third.

"Go to the police," she said.

"And show them what?"

"Twelve afternoons of me?"

"Evidence of a crime, you idiot."

"Of what?"

"I walked in on my own legs."

"I'd never get past the first detective's eyebrows, Mari."

She was quiet.

Then she said, "What do you need?"

"The drive."

"He keeps the real files somewhere, and it's in that loft."

"Fliss, no."

"I know the side door code."

"He typed it in front of me every Thursday for three months."

"Take me with you."

"If I'm caught, I'm just a stupid wife."

"If you're caught, you're an accessory."

"You say stupid wife like it's a stage name," she said.

"Call me when you're out."

At one in the morning I put on Mitchell's old running jacket and drove to Norwalk.

The mill building was black except for one orange light over the loading dock.

I punched in four numbers.

The lock clicked, and I almost laughed.

Three flights up, the loft door was unlocked.

That was the second thing that scared me.

Rafe's bed was empty and made, the smoke detector white and innocent above it.

I tore through his desk first, then the shelves, then the cabinet under the sink.

Cameras, lenses, a shoebox of old film.

No drive.

There was a door at the back that I had always assumed was a closet.

It was ajar, and a thin line of light lay across the floor.

I pushed it open with two fingers.

The room was narrow and bright, one lamp on a stand, and every wall was covered with photographs.

Women.

Some laughing, some asleep, most of them naked, pinned in tidy rows with their dates written underneath.

I counted without meaning to.

Eleven faces.

Ten of them had a small black dot in the corner of the print.

One of them had a red cross drawn over her face, so hard the paper had torn.

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