I shouldn’t be doing this.
She paused, feeling an unfamiliar beat of fear. Glancing down a darkened hallway, Natalie couldn’t see past a table that held a vase with a few orange flowers in it.
I shouldn’t go in, but I have to.
She took out her phone to check the time. 8:37. She told Scarlett she’d be back by nine thirty at the latest. There was plenty of time to figure out what was going on. A car zoomed by and the word “witness” came to Natalie’s mind.
Witness—because you shouldn’t be here, she told herself.
“I can see your car in the driveway,” Natalie said to no one. “I’d like to speak with you, and you know what it’s about.”
An eerie feeling washed over her. The apartment was as still as could be. Her heart beat erratically. Sweat dappled the nape of her neck. She took a cautious step inside and headed to her right, through a doorway into a living room, which held little more than a couch, love seat, and TV resting on a console table. A lone floor lamp was the same one that backlit those gauzy curtains. She used her phone to take pictures of the room. Right now she was too nervous to search carefully for evidence of Michael’s presence, but perhaps the photos would reveal something of consequence she’d catch later, when she could view them under less precarious conditions.
“Hello,” Natalie cried out again, her voice echoing in the stillness. “Audrey, are you here?”
She had a passing thought that Michael and Audrey had left together in his car, and forgot to shut and lock the door on their way out. An oversight. Great sex could addle the brain, same as lack of sleep.
“Audrey?”
Natalie reentered the foyer, took a few more pictures, before venturing down the unlit hallway farther into the home. All appeared normal, but something felt off. She had an intense feeling, unsettling to say the least, and she couldn’t ignore that type of intuition.
“Hello?”
Natalie’s voice sank into the gloom. She took each step slowly, carefully, pausing to listen. As she proceeded, Natalie noticed a set of framed photos hanging on the walls. All three photographs were of two girls—the older one was somewhere in her late teens, utterly gorgeous, with long strawberry-blond hair and a delicate face. The younger girl, her arms draped around her companion with a smile like the sunrise, was no doubt Audrey Adler in her much younger years.
Who is the older girl? Natalie wondered.
Curious, Natalie used her phone to take a digital picture of the framed photographs. While the photos clearly had nothing to do with Michael, at that moment Natalie wanted to know everything she could about the woman who was more important to her husband than she was.
What other mysteries did the house contain?
Checking a closed door to her right, Natalie poked her head into a small bathroom. She kept the light off, didn’t bother looking around, nothing to see here. She closed that door before making her way deeper into the condo. Another door to her right revealed a bedroom. The duvet was on the floor; the sheets were rumpled. Natalie felt sick to her stomach thinking about what took place on that bed. Too sick to take a picture, so her phone went back into her pocket. She picked up an odd odor, a musty kind of smell, not the scent of sex. It was coming from somewhere else, so she backed out of the bedroom, focused now on a bright glow spilling out from a doorway at the end of the hall.
Natalie swallowed hard as she looked for, and found, the source of that light. Her heart stopped nearly mid-beat at the sight. Audrey Adler was spread out supine on the kitchen floor, floating in a lake of blood. The white blouse she’d worn to work that day was soaked in crimson. The blood appeared to have come from multiple wounds to her abdomen, but the stained blouse made it hard to tell where the bleeding had originated. Shards of a broken green plate littered the floor near Audrey’s inert form.
A low moan like a rattling wind escaped from Natalie’s lips. She stood in the doorway, arms and legs shaking with fright. She’d never seen a dead person before, and really shouldn’t have assumed Audrey was gone, but she knew. Maybe it was the odd angle of her head, or the faraway look in her eyes, or perhaps the stark paleness of her face that told her Audrey Adler had breathed her last breath.
Natalie took a few shaky steps down the hall, away from the body, and stopped. She forced herself to go back into the kitchen. A fierce tremor shot up her spine when she saw Audrey for a second time. She took a tentative step closer, then two, until her body froze and she could move no more. The heavy thud in Natalie’s chest wouldn’t abate. Thoughts came at her, piercing like the tips of darts.
Michael did this.
You left your house in a rush.
HR knows you’ve been harassing Audrey.
Michael will say you’ve made accusations about him and Audrey.
He’ll turn you in for his crime to save himself.
You shouldn’t be in this apartment, but now your fingerprints are everywhere.
Her hands felt like blocks of ice as she grabbed a roll of paper towels off the kitchen counter along with a nearby bottle of spray cleaner.
What had she touched?
She thought back to moments ago—the bathroom doorknob, the one to the bedroom, the front door. That was it. Not much. It would be easy to clean. Her gaze traveled over to Audrey, splayed on the floor. The milky look of death in her eyes bore into Natalie with a cutting force. Her mind clicked out of its raw shock as her survival instincts took over.
The kids. Addie and Bryce. They need a mother. I’m so sorry, Audrey. I’m sorry for everything.
Natalie backed out of the kitchen slowly before starting down the hallway again, clutching the cleaner and paper towels. Prickling fear stayed with her every step of the way. It felt as if at any moment Audrey’s cold dead hand would latch against her shoulder, pulling her back to the kitchen.
Pushing her fear aside, Natalie stood at the threshold to the bedroom. Call the police, rang an angry voice in her head. But no, she couldn’t risk it. Not even an anonymous call. No, that could still be traced back to her.