Page 21 of The Vanishing Wife
Her body dropped. She grabbed for something—anything—to keep her from falling. Her opposite hand latched higher up. The wire cut into her palm. The pain ordered her to let go. Blood seeped from the creases and dripped down her wrist. And Elyse stared down the length of her body. At the distance between her and the dining table now. She couldn’t go back. Not without getting answers. “You can do this. You have to do this.”
Raising one foot, she tried to hook her heel onto the lowest deck plank. And missed. The safety wires strung horizontally from one side of the balcony to the other groaned. Groans that said she had mere seconds. Elyse tried again. Her heel planted against the edge of the plank. Giving her enough leverage to climb higher. Within seconds, she threw herself over the handrail and landed on her back. Out of breath. Her hand hurt like hell. Her shoulder wouldn’t budge. She made a fist as though that could solve all her problems.
The sun started casting its rays overhead. Exposing her to anyone who happened to glance in the direction of the house. Elyse set her gaze on the set of three narrow doors leading into the house. Crawling to stand, she clutched her injured hand to her chest and reached for the doorknob with the other.
It turned in her palm.
The door’s weatherstripping hissed as she pushed inside. Cool air kissed her face. Elyse hadn’t realized how much of a sweat she’d worked up in the past few minutes, but it was easily done with Alabama humidity. If a forensic team had the opportunity to collect samples from this house, they would have no problem identifying her as a potential intruder. Something she might have to come back to fix later.
She memorized the layout of an upstairs living room. Not the main bedroom as she’d assumed, but her position at the edge of the dunes hadn’t given her a clear view to the second floor. Soft couches and ottomans hugged the walls with two leather chairs facing the glass doors. Blue and beige motel art highlighting boats and ocean waves took up the walls with accents of navy. So…very non-threatening. Doubt crept in, slowly at first. Then all-encompassing. This didn’t fit the style of the grungy, unkempt man she suspected of assaulting her two days ago. More like a mask. A picture-perfect lie.
Elyse moved to a door on her right. It looked like a guest bedroom. Not large but done in the same beige and navy palette as the living room. The queen-sized bed had been made up. Not the twin-sized mattress she’d discovered in the storage room a mere eight hours ago. A bathroom—completely renovated—attached at the opposite end of the room. No signs it’d been used recently or of a visiting guest.
She searched the room stocked with two sets of crisp white bunkbeds. Each held twin-sized mattresses—the same size as the one she’d found underneath the house in that cold, dark room. Peeling back the sheets on each one, Elyse pressed her palm into her shirt to keep the blood in her hand from spreading. None of the mattresses looked as if they’d suffered through a night outside. She straightened. Why keep someone in a storage room on a bare mattress, supplied with water and snacks with all this extra room inside? To limit the spread of evidence? To keep their screams from disrupting his beauty sleep? She didn’t know. Wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Another room, nearly identical to the first, fit another queen-sized. All untouched. All pristine. All for show. Closets empty. Rugs perfectly vacuumed.
It was the largest bedroom, the one that faced out over the ocean, that drew her inside. The bed had been made in here, too. Not quite as perfectly as the others. There were toiletries strewn across the bathroom counter, a wet film left in the shower.
Elyse touched them, one by one. Hoping to gain some kind of understanding about the man who owned them, but that might’ve been asking for too much from a stick of deodorant. And a gold metallic disk. A small loop had been strung through the hole. A pendant missing its chain. Turning it over it her palm, she ran her thumb over the engraved “P” perfectly gouged into the metal in typewritten font. Small but unassuming. A gift? Or heirloom? She didn’t know, and she didn’t have time to find out. A sense of urgency filtered into her veins. She wrenched open the vanity’s drawers, searched underneath cabinets. How could anyone possibly be this clean? No smudges on the granite. No toothpaste spit on the faucet or mirror. Perhaps Samuel Thornton suffered from an intense fear of germs.
Or was determined not to leave any evidence of himself behind.
She moved back into the bedroom. There was almost a vibration of panic in her body as she flipped back the covers on the bed. She needed something—anything—to prove she wasn’t crazy. That the man she’d confronted had attacked her. That he was keeping someone in this house against their will.
Unless… Elyse tried not to allow the idea to take shape, but it was too late. Unless she’d gotten too close and forced him to make a rash decision. No. She couldn’t think about that right now. She studied the sheets, and a wave of relief chased back the unsteadiness of her own thoughts. “Bingo.”
She pulled a long dark hair from one of the pillows. Not Samuel’s. His was more blond. Shorter, with some gray. This… this was something else. Elyse held it up in the light coming through the window. A woman’s hair? Except she hadn’t noticed a woman the past few days. Which meant it’d had to come from whomever had been locked in the storage room. It made sense. Now she just had to prove it.
Elyse went back to the bathroom, the hair pinched between her fingers. She emptied a baggie of what looked like ibuprofen from the men’s toiletry case and slipped the hair inside. Sealing it before shoving it deep into her pocket. Okay. That was enough breaking and entering for one day. Her courage waned as she navigated back into the upstairs living room. There was no way she’d be able to lower herself down with this shoulder or the cut across her hand. She’d have to leave from the main level. Move the dining table and chairs back in place.
The hair in her pocket almost burned against her thigh as she jogged down the light-colored laminate steps. She rounded down into a separate mudroom off to one side of the main level that hid the staircase. Noting a piece of paper peeking out from something that looked close to a coat closet. More mail? Maybe something that would tell her exactly who the man she’d been watching was. Then again, it could be nothing but a grocery list or receipt. Curiosity dampened logic, and she crossed to the closet, pulling the paper free.
Not a grocery list. A photo.
Recognition flared the longer Elyse memorized the subject’s fine lines, dark hair, and wide smile. She grabbed for the closet’s handle and nearly ripped the door off its hinges. A dozen other photos fluttered in the disturbance. Other items too. News articles, handwritten notes. Torn pages. The photos highlighted differing angles, some up close, some taken from a distance. Almost like the subject had been unaware of them at all. But they all featured the same person.
Ruby Davis. The missing teen girl Elyse had seen on TV.
FIFTEEN
Gulf Shores, Alabama
Sunday, September 22
6:14 a.m.
The warrant request for Elyse’s last GPS location had come through an hour ago.
The sun had yet to make an appearance, but trying to make up for the hours of broken sleep proved a waste of time. Leigh thanked her ride-share driver and shoved free of the small four-door sedan that smelled slightly of french fries. The odor clung to her black jeans and tank top. Too hot for the blazer she usually wore, and she was pretty sure the sweat stains had yet to dry from yesterday.
A mouthful of humidity clogged her throat as she faced off with the Hugh S. Branyon Backcountry Trail sign. The last registered coordinates of Elyse’s cell phone pulled her to the left, through a row of mostly empty parking stalls, and to the head of the asphalted trail. Trees stood tall as giants, demanding attention from either side of the path. The sedan’s headlights cascaded over her as the driver pulled out of the parking lot, leaving her to fend for herself against whatever waited at the end of the trail.
Leigh faced off with the darkness and tapped the flashlight feature on her phone. It didn’t have a whole lot of range, but it was better than going in blind. Details of Elyse’s incident report, of the morning of her claimed assault, held on to the edges of her mind as she followed the trail. Elyse had been dressed in workout clothing, tied into her running shoes. Sand had been collected from her socks and underwear. It was plausible her friend had, in fact, fallen during an early morning run, but why wouldn’t anyone have noticed? Why hadn’t Detective Moore requested the last coordinates of Elyse’s phone from the cell phone company to follow up?
Leigh wanted to give the detective the benefit of the doubt considering the circumstances of this week, of having to search for her missing niece, but Leigh couldn’t ignore the knot of dread in her gut either. The one that said there was something more going on than what Detective Moore had written in her report.
Insects halted their early morning calls as she walked the trail, a few scurrying across the asphalt in front of her. It was another ten minutes before sunrise, and the shadows seemed to set in around her. As though they’d never lift. Elyse would’ve needed to run with a flashlight or headlamp to navigate this kind of darkness. To ward off anything looking for its next meal. Leigh checked her phone’s screen. The last location Elyse’s cell phone had pinged was up ahead. Near the shore. The trail curved to the right ahead, but the GPS coordinates told her Elyse had ventured off the path.