Things You Won't Say (3 page)

“Hi there,” she said. She could hear Mr. Married breathing behind her, so she blocked the pique from her voice.

“Something exploded at work,” Simon said. “Rain check?”

She wondered if Mr. Married had given his wife the same excuse. But Christie wasn’t even a wife. She was a girlfriend, and not a demanding, jealous one, either.

“Sure,” she said.

“Love you,” Simon told her. It rankled her that he never added the
I,
but she let it go, like she always did.

She waited until she heard him hang up, then she added, “Oh! I thought you said the bar at the Ritz! Okay, I’ll meet you in a few.”

She put her phone in her purse and stood up. She didn’t meet Mr. Married’s eyes; she suspected he’d seen through her charade. She left the bar and entered the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, blinking hard as she assessed herself: long hair styled in beachy waves, tanned skin, false eyelashes applied individually so they looked really natural, and a body that tilted toward lush in all the right places, effectively highlighted in her short black skirt and black tank top. True, her nose was a sharp triangle and her chin was a little weak, but she was still the prettiest woman in the bar, she thought.

She exited the bathroom and stood in the hallway, wondering what to do next. Maybe she’d get a salad in the dining room, even though a woman eating alone seemed pathetic.

“Excuse me.”

She whirled around, expecting to see Mr. Married. But it was a different man, one who looked a little older and rougher around the edges. He wore a white button-down shirt and soft-looking tan blazer, cowboy boots, and one of those leather bolo ties with a big sterling silver and turquoise pendant. The outfit didn’t quite work here in D.C., unless he’d tied up his horse in the parking lot.

“I was hoping to talk to you about a business proposition,” the guy said.

“Are you kidding me?” She felt her heartbeat quicken in fury. “You think I’m a hooker?”

“No, no, not at all,” the guy said quickly. His brown eyes were a little watery-looking behind his glasses, and he had the beginnings of a gut. “I think you’re a businesswoman. I wanted to talk to you about a job—a real one.”

The guy held up a briefcase. Like him, it had seen better days. There were scuffs around the edges and the metal lock had dulled. “I can explain. I’ve got all the paperwork here. I’d offer to buy you a drink but I saw how you responded when the last guy did that.”

“A job,” Christie repeated. “Are you for real?”

The guy nodded vigorously. “It pays well and it isn’t illegal or unethical. And you’d be doing a service for womankind.”

He seemed sincere. Christie could usually sniff out a creep a mile away, but this guy didn’t exude weird vibes.

She couldn’t help blurting: “Why me?”

Later, when she found out what he wanted her to do, she’d think about his answer and wonder if it was the nicest compliment she’d ever received or a degrading insult.

“Because you’re absolutely perfect for it,” he said.

Chapter Two

JAMIE AWOKE SUDDENLY, FEELING
as if the house had tilted off-balance.

She sat up, listening with a mother’s ears. She hadn’t slept deeply through the night since her children were born. She always awoke at the first cry—sometimes she even felt as if she’d been jerked out of sleep right
before
the cry, alerted by a subtle gathering change in the atmosphere signaling a sick or scared child.

She quickly realized what was amiss: Mike’s side of the bed held only the rumpled comforter. He’d probably gone downstairs to click on ESPN, as he had so many nights recently, Jamie thought. Strange, though. She couldn’t hear the sound of the television through their house’s thin walls.

Suddenly, she was wide awake. She almost called out her husband’s name, then stopped before the single syllable escaped her lips. Something told her not to speak. She slipped out of bed, still craning to hear whatever it was that had awoken her, an electric tension snapping through her body.

She walked along the hallway and crept down the stairs, moving quietly in the shadowy space. She almost tripped on a
toy car one of the kids had left on the second-to-last step, but she caught herself on the banister.

There weren’t any lights on in the main level of the house, either. Could Mike have taken his police cruiser and gone somewhere?

She crept toward the kitchen, her heart thudding so powerfully it almost hurt. When Mike stepped out of a corner and grabbed her arm, she nearly screamed, but instead released a tiny squeak.

Mike was naked except for his boxers, and he was holding his police-issue SIG Sauer. He raised a finger to his lips and pointed toward the sliding glass doors that led to their small wooden deck and, one flight below it, the backyard. There was a gap of a foot or so between the two doors. Jamie could feel the gentle breeze against her cold skin.

Mike put his lips close to her ears. “I heard someone,” he whispered.

The kids.
Jamie’s eyes darted toward the stairs, but Mike shook his head. “I think he’s in the living room,” he whispered. “Stay back.”

He started moving slowly, his gleaming black gun leading the way. Jamie began to tremble. Why was Mike going after the intruder? They needed to barricade themselves upstairs! For one wild moment she wondered if the shooter from the police station had tracked Mike down, but that was impossible—the man had been killed instantly. But he could have a father or brother who was seeking revenge.

Mike took another slow step toward the living room. He was too far away for her to reach him now. She was torn between going after her husband, to try to protect him, and getting to the kids.

She chose her children.

She hurried back upstairs, stopping to grab the cordless phone and dial 911. “Intruder,” she gasped, giving their address as she checked each of the bedrooms and strained to
hear what was unfolding one floor below. Sam was sleeping soundly, his ragged stuffed bunny against his cheek, as were Eloise and Emily, who shared a room. Henry was sprawled on the top bunk bed in the tiny far bedroom, snoring softly. The moment she realized they were all safe, Jamie began shaking so profusely the phone banged against her cheek.

“How many are there?” the emergency operator was asking.

“I don’t know,” Jamie whispered. She was standing guard in the hallway, which gave her the best vantage point of all the bedrooms. “But my husband is a police officer. He has a gun. He’s the one wearing boxers. Oh my God, please tell them not to shoot him.”

“Officers are on their way,” the operator said.

“Jamie?”

Mike’s voice floated up the stairs, sounding normal now. She pressed the button to hang up the phone as she rushed to his side, no longer worried about making noise.

He was standing in the living room, the overhead lights blazing, holding a fuzzy red Elmo doll that gave a bleat as it feebly lifted an arm above its head. “The batteries are dying in this,” he said.

“Was that the noise?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said. He tossed the Elmo doll back into a toy bin. “The door was open when I came down here. I checked the rest of the house. It’s clear now.”

“Did they take anything?” Jamie asked. She saw her iPad still sitting in plain view on the kitchen counter and the laptop Henry used for homework on the couch. “Mike? Can you put away your gun?”

The sight of it made her feel a little ill.

Mike stared down at it as if he hadn’t realized it was in his hand. “Yeah,” he said, and he started to go upstairs. Since having children, he always unloaded it and kept it in a small safe in their closet.

“Maybe you should put on some pants. I called nine-one-
one,” Jamie said, just as the flashing lights of an approaching cruiser spun swaths of blue and red through the house, illuminating Mike’s face.

“You did what?” he asked. Something shifted in his expression. Was he angry with her?

“I thought someone broke in! We’ve got kids in the house, Mike!”

He hurried upstairs without a word, and Jamie went to open the front door for the responding officers. She could see the neighbor across the street come to stand on her front steps, and Jamie waved at her, wishing she’d had time to put on a bathrobe over her long T-shirt.

She didn’t recognize the two young officers who stepped out of the patrol car, but when Mike came back downstairs, he seemed to.

“The sliding door was jimmied open,” Mike said. “But I cleared the house.”

“We’ll do another check,” said the officer with glasses, the one Mike had called Stu. He looked fresh out of the academy. No wonder he’d drawn the overnight shift.

“Our kids are sleeping upstairs,” Jamie said. “Please try not to wake them . . . I think they’d be scared if they saw you.”

“Of course, ma’am,” Stu said.

“I’ll go with them,” Mike said. He was barefoot, wearing jeans and a red Washington Nationals T-shirt now, and his thick, dark hair was unruly.

“Just stay behind us, please,” Stu said.

Jamie could see Mike tense at that. He probably had ten times the experience of these guys. But he followed the men as they checked every room, closet, and cupboard. Their house had four bedrooms and two baths upstairs and a kitchen, dining room, and living room on the main level, but all of the spaces were small, and the search didn’t take long. Remarkably, the kids never stirred. But then, Jamie had once burned cookies she was baking for a PTA fund-raiser (
baking
being a
loose term—her effort involved slicing dough off a premade roll) and the smoke detector had blared for the better part of five minutes. That hadn’t roused the kids, either.

“Let’s take a look at that back door,” Stu said.

“I didn’t touch it,” Mike said. “It’s still like I found it.”

Jamie followed the men through the living room and watched them kneel down to examine the door.

“No marks,” Stu said. “Good solid lock, too. The intruder would’ve walked through the yard . . . hang on . . .” He bent down and pointed to a small clump of dirt on the mat just inside the door.

“That could be from our dog—” Jamie started to say, before cutting herself off. “Wait—where is she? Wouldn’t Sadie have barked?”

Mike always let Sadie out in the backyard at night just before coming to bed. It was one of the rituals they’d fallen into by unspoken agreement: Jamie turned on the dishwasher and set up the coffeepot, Mike let Sadie out and locked up.

“Where does the dog sleep?” Stu asked.

“Upstairs, on the floor in one of the kids’ rooms,” Jamie said. Technically, Sadie usually climbed onto a bed at some point during the night—dog and kids coconspirators against Jamie’s halfhearted rules—but Sadie never would’ve let the two officers go near the kids without putting up a protest.

Jamie ran back up the stairs and checked every bed, but their little tan-colored mutt was gone. She took a moment to grab her bathrobe before heading back downstairs.

“She isn’t there,” Jamie said.

“Could she have gotten out when the intruder came in?” Mike asked.

“It still doesn’t explain why she wouldn’t bark,” Jamie pointed out. “You know she always goes nuts when someone new comes into the house. I would’ve heard her.”

Her head snapped up and she looked at Mike. “Are you sure you locked the sliding doors after you let her out?”

Mike’s brow furrowed. “Yeah.”

“Because if there’s a crack, she can nudge them open with her nose.”

“I locked them,” Mike insisted.

Jamie leaned out through the opening. “Sadie!” she called loudly.

A moment later, the dog came bolting up the deck’s stairs and back through the sliding doors into the house. She immediately began barking at the two officers. Stu knelt down and let Sadie sniff his hand. She gave two more yips before allowing herself to be petted.

“Hard to believe an intruder would get by this killer,” Stu said. “For such a little thing, she makes a lot of noise.”

Instead of responding, Mike rubbed his eyes. Jamie could see it happening: Mike, bone-weary and stressed, one eye on the television as he let Sadie in for the night, reaching to slide the doors shut but not locking them. Sometimes during the day, they let Sadie out in the backyard and didn’t bother locking up, especially if the kids were running in and out to the play set. It was possible—natural, even—that he’d forgotten at a time like this, when their lives had been upended.

But why had Mike immediately grabbed his gun and assumed the worst?

“Anything missing?” Stu asked.

“Not that I can tell,” Mike said.

“Our electronics are still here,” Jamie added, gesturing to Henry’s computer.

Stu cleared his throat and glanced at his partner, then looked down at his feet. “Probably some teenagers playing a prank,” he said. “Summer vacation’s just about here. They’re getting antsy.”

“One of them stole a street sign a few miles away this week,” the other cop added.

Stu was a terrible liar. He’d come to the same conclusion she had: Mike had forgotten to lock the doors, then over
reacted. Jamie was just glad the officers hadn’t seen Mike cutting through the house in his boxers, aiming his gun at the squeaky Elmo doll. He never would’ve lived it down at the station.

But the way the officers
weren’t
looking at Mike was almost worse than teasing. Mike reached out and pulled the sliding doors closed, then locked them, the clicking sound echoing in the sudden stillness.

“Teenagers,” Jamie said, nodding. “We’ve got a fourteen-year-old here tonight, so maybe they were planning a prank like you said.”

She’d made it worse, Jamie realized. She’d been the one who’d suggested it was Sadie, and her sudden reversal was too obvious.

“Can I get you guys a cup of coffee?” she offered quickly and was relieved when they shook their heads and said they needed to get going.

“Let you two get some sleep,” Stu said. Mike reached out and slapped his palm.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “Sorry my wife called you in. I figured it was nothing.”

Jamie could feel her cheeks heat up, but she kept quiet. She knew Mike needed to save face. She closed the front door behind the officers and locked it, then turned to her husband. He looked a little dazed, as if he’d just awoken from a vivid dream and felt disoriented.