Chapter 38
NO CELL RECEPTION,” Tessa reported, holding her phone closer to the passenger window, as if that might help. “Damn mountains.”
“Do you know where we are?” Wyatt asked her. Because it felt to him like they’d already been driving forever, and Tessa had a point. So far, all he saw was dark, endless mountains.
“No, only where we’ve been.”
“Gotta be getting close.”
“Can I just say one thing? This road alone proves one of our theories. We’ve been driving forever without even a bear for company. If this is truly the location of the infamous dollhouse . . . no way Nicky Frank magically crawled off the grounds and hitched a ride to New Orleans all by her lonesome. She had to have help.”
“Thomas isn’t just her husband; he was her getaway,” Wyatt agreed.
“Interesting basis for a marriage.”
“And yet they’ve lasted twenty-two years.”
“Until the past six months,” Tessa grumbled. “When Nicky decided she wanted the truth about her past and immediately became expendable.”
Wyatt didn’t comment right away. He’d been the first to doubt Thomas. Any man whose wife had mysteriously suffered three accidents. Let alone that Nicky herself had placed him at the scene of the car accident. And yet, the video. Something about the video. The way Nicky still walked right up to him, placed her hand in his own.
Fear and love.
Wyatt was making an investigator’s worst mistake and he knew it: He was contemplating two suspects, Nicky and Thomas Frank, and seeing himself and Tessa.
“Come on,” Tessa prodded him now. “You’re telling me you’re suddenly a fan of Thomas Frank? At the very least, he met his distraught wife Wednesday night, handed her a pair of fake fingerprint gloves, then seat-belted her into her vehicle before pushing it down a ravine. Hardly the actions of an innocent man.”
“Fan would be a big statement. Just gotta say, for the record, the vehicle in question was a new Audi Q5 with airbag this and safety feature that. Hardly a death trap. Plus, he put on her seat belt.”
“Better to cover his tracks, make it look like an accident.”
“Nicky was already drunk. She’d done that on her own. An investigating officer wouldn’t have questioned the lack of seat belt.”
“He’s not an investigating officer.”
“True. It’s just that . . .”
She stared at him. “Spit it out.”
“I don’t know. The cop in me agrees with you. Clearly here’s a man with plenty to hide. And yet, two decades of marriage later . . . You said it yourself. Just because he saved her that night didn’t mean he had to marry her. And even if his job was to somehow keep tabs on her, watch her for Madame Sade. Twenty-two years later, how do you fake that kind of relationship? I don’t know. I watched that video tonight, and . . . There’s something there, some kind of dynamic we don’t understand yet.”
“You’re a romantic,” Tessa informed him.
“I prefer the term open-minded.”
“The picture she drew of him. Thomas was at the dollhouse. The expression she sketched on his face. Thomas was not a happy kid. Meaning he was definitely part of what was going on back then. Nicky starts to remember everything, those memories put him at risk.”
“He would’ve been young himself. Possibly a victim as well.”
“The look in his eyes was hard.”
“I thought he looked determined.”
“Wyatt!”
“Tessa!
“You know I love you, right?” he said abruptly.
In the passenger’s seat, Tessa stilled. He could tell his words had caught her off guard, and yet they hadn’t. Love and fear, he thought again. Except not Nicky and Thomas’s, but their own.
“I’m not good at this,” Tessa murmured.
“Tessa, what’s wrong?”
“Can’t we just . . . solve this case? You like arresting people; I like arresting people. We’ll be fine.”
“Is it Sophie?” he asked steadily. “Because I can be patient, Tessa. I know she hasn’t fully accepted me yet. That’s okay. I’m in this for the long haul.”
She didn’t answer.
Sharp turn in the road. Forcing himself to focus.
“John Stephen Purcell,” she stated abruptly. “Police just located the gun used to kill him. I’m told they recovered a single latent print.”
Wyatt couldn’t help himself; he exhaled sharply. “That’s it? A gun? A recently recovered gun? That’s why you’re so distant?”
“You don’t understand. John Stephen Purcell, the man who shot Brian, my husband . . .” Her words were weighted with meaning.
“No, no, no,” he interjected hastily, hands flexing on the wheel. “I understand plenty. And we’re not married, so this doesn’t fall under privilege, and there’s definitely no need to say more. God, Tessa. I thought you were breaking up with me.”
Her turn to frown. “It doesn’t bother you? I’m not just talking about what the police might discover; I’m talking about what I once did.”
He didn’t even have to think about it. “No. You saved Sophie. Tessa, I know who you are. It’s why I love you so much.”
She fell silent again. Not ominous this time. More pondering.
He reached over and took her hand. Heard her own heavy exhale.
“Tessa,” he said, keeping his voice light, “you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“What if I don’t have a choice? One fingerprint; that’s all it will take.”
“We’ll figure it out. Two smart people with lots of law enforcement and legal connections. You really think we can’t figure this out?”
“I can’t lose Sophie.”
“I know.”
“One thousand ninety-six days. I told myself it should be enough. It isn’t.”
“I know.”
“Plus, you know, the puppy. I haven’t even met the puppy, and I can’t leave the puppy. Our family is changing; that’s what Sophie said. Our family, my family. I can’t give it up, Wyatt. I can’t lose all of you.”
“Then we’ll figure it out. Together. Because that’s what families do. That’s what we do.”
And suddenly, he got it. How far a man might go for the woman he loved. Or what Thomas Frank had being doing that night, at the scene of his wife’s accident, bearing a glove with fake fingerprints.
A desperate husband, taking one last desperate chance . . .
“Stop!” Tessa shouted. She twisted away, pointing at a spot along the darkened road just as their headlights swept by. “That’s our turn. The road to the dollhouse. Wyatt, we’re here!”