Page 35 of The Vanishing Wife
Ava nodded, suddenly no longer a fourteen-year-old but a child. Her emotions and body at the whim of the world determined to crush her. Reactive and scared. She handed off her phone. “I think this is it.”
Leigh took the phone, angling it toward Detective Moore.
“You’re sure it was this trail?” The detective didn’t let a single emotion pulse through her composure. “The Hugh S. Branyon Backcountry Trail?”
“I think so. I’ve never been there before. Not that I can remember,” Ava said. The tears were gone. For now. “And I’ve never paid for someone else to be picked up or dropped off with my app.”
Leigh imagined the next few hours would be difficult, knowing two girls Ava had known had been murdered with a third missing. Not to mention her mother’s disappearance. Who would be there to help her through it? Elyse was gone, and Leigh didn’t have a lot of faith in Wesley. Though it was possible for Ava to do this on her own, it wasn’t ideal.
“Thank you for all your help.” Detective Moore handed back the device. “If you think of anything else?—”
A gunshot exploded through the station.
Leigh and Detective Moore moved as one. The detective ducked behind the conference table, reaching for her sidearm, as Leigh went for Ava. She wrapped the girl in both arms and put her back to the door. To use her own body as a shield if necessary. Shouts echoed down the hallway. Officers rushing past the conference room window into the main area.
“Stay here.” Leigh stretched a palm out to Ava as she aimed for the door.
Detective Moore unholstered her weapon, and they took the corridor as one.
Only neither of them were prepared for the scene ahead.
Officers parted around the body. Lead pitted in Leigh’s stomach at the sight of so much blood. So much like the pool of blood in Elyse’s house. With a single glance through the blinds, she set her sights on Ava. And the girl stared back at her. As if she already knew.
Detective Moore holstered her sidearm as she lunged to keep Wesley Portman from bleeding out on the floor, but the damage had already been done. She was just the last to see it. “Call an ambulance!”
“He grabbed my gun,” an officer admitted to Leigh. He turned to her, devastation visually gutting him from the inside. “Why would he grab my gun?”
TWENTY-FOUR
Gulf Shores, Alabama
Thursday, September 19
10:10 a.m.
She’d ended the video call mere seconds after answering.
Long enough to confirm her darkest suspicion.
Despite how much she’d prepared for this moment, she’d lost her nerve. Elyse had taken screenshots of the preceding messages. Where’d you go? Answer your phone. Show me that beautiful body. And another video request had come through. Elyse had declined, then responded with a mom home. call u l8tr. That was how fifteen-year-olds communicated, right? There’d been a few times she hadn’t been able to decipher Ava’s texts because of her shorthand, but her response seemed to do the trick. As she earned herself a thumbs-up from the other end.
She’d bought herself some time.
While Elyse had gotten a pretty good look at the man who’d assaulted her three days ago, there were still gaps in her memory. Things she couldn’t account for. Like the differences between the man in her memory, the one she’d met that day on the beach in person, and the other viewed through a phone screen. She couldn’t make a mistake. She had to know for sure.
“All right. You can have your office back.” Elyse logged out of the profile she’d created on the stolen phone and cleared the history from Wesley’s internet browser. For a split second, she’d waited for her husband to answer.
But there was only earned silence.
Because he wasn’t in the house. His following her to the trailhead, the threat of divorce, the affair—it’d all taken a back seat to her proving Samuel Thornton had abducted a fifteen-year-old girl. And, for the first time in days, she allowed herself to sit with the fact her marriage was over.
She’d prepared for this. Just as she’d prepared for everything else in her life. To shoulder it alone. That was how it worked when you were forced to raise two bratty brothers who loved nothing more than pushing buttons and parents more interested in their careers than the children they’d brought into the world. She’d figured out how to cook, how to bathe them, how to do laundry and load the dishwasher all while keeping up on her own homework. Because she’d had to. Her brothers—her parents—they’d all counted on her to be strong. And she’d done a damn good job.
She’d been strong faced with the uterine cancer diagnosis. Then with the decision not to terminate her pregnancy during chemo treatments. She’d somehow kept herself together after the delivery of that precious soul, even though the nurses advised against seeing her second baby. The one who would never take her own breath or whimper for her mother’s attention. She’d cried and raged and yelled when learning about Wesley’s first affair despite how tired she was from trying to be the mother Ava deserved. With home-cooked meals and daily check-ins. With advocating for her daughter against teachers and principals and ensuring deadlines were met. All while pursuing her own purpose for those mothers who got to take care of their babies. Distractions. All of it. She knew that, but the only other option was giving up entirely. Sinking into a destruction so intense she’d never recover.
She’d been strong before. She would do it again.
Except she didn’t want to be strong anymore. She wanted to be soft. Love, happiness, peace—she’d had it all once. After Ava had been born, and hers and Wesley’s entire lives had changed in an instant. It’d been visceral and solid. Steady. Wesley had been there for her, taking shifts at night, mixing formula, reading every book in the house. Not just the baby books they’d bought but full novels. Just so their daughter could hear his voice. He’d softened, then, too. Shown her how much he could really love. They’d been…happy. And she’d convinced herself all these years later nothing had changed—that they were still those people—but it’d been a lie. One she’d told herself a thousand times over.