New Husband. Old One Gone novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Corey Gone

I picked up the cane.

It was cold. It had been out there a while.

The rubber foot was wet with dew, and there was a ring of dew on the brick where it had lain.

"He came here," I said. "Last night. To us."

Sawyer looked at the iron doors behind me.

We'd bolted them at six. We'd been on the floor right on the other side of them half the night.

"We'd have heard him," he said.

"Would we?"

He didn't answer that.

I called Corey's phone. It went straight to the robot lady.

I called again. Same.

I texted him. "Where are you. Call me. Nobody's mad."

It said delivered. It never said read.

Sawyer was already on his own phone.

"Get the guys up," he was saying. "All of 'em. I don't care, it's Saturday. Corey's gone off."

Ten minutes later I was in my truck with my hair in a knot and his flannel still on under my jacket.

We split the town in half on the hood of his truck.

Sawyer and the foreman took downtown. Every bar on Front and Market, the ones that open early for the fishermen.

The crew took the river walk, the bus station, the hospital.

I took the base road.

His apartment first.

The tire shop was just opening. The man rolling up the bay doors looked at me and at the cane in my hand.

"He went out last night about two," he said. "Heard him on the stairs. Didn't hear him come back."

"Was he drinking?"

"Didn't smell like it, if that's what you mean. He's been real good lately."

Corey's door at the top of the stairs wasn't locked.

It was one room. A mattress on the floor, made tight with the corners tucked, the way they teach you in boot camp.

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