All Josh had ever wanted to do was save lives. He had a savior complex. He’d gotten a taste of what it was like to help someone with Aubrey and her awkward childhood situations, and that feeling of accomplishment had stuck.
The idea of him as a criminal was laughable. But someone had wanted him dead. That was irrefutable.
And good people didn’t murder innocent doctors.
She felt her heart speed up a bit. What if this was it, at last? What if the bragging Tyler had overheard was the key?
Aubrey had spent the past five years breathing, running, drinking, getting up in the morning and going to work, sleeping when she could, showering when she remembered. Finding out what truly happened to Josh would be heaven on earth.
A good man gone bad—a young doctor, no less—murdered when he tried to do the right thing? Was this the story no one had heard?
She’d thought she was ready to move on, to put Josh’s disappearance behind her, but felt the familiar threads of obsession beginning to pull at her. She’d searched for answers before. She’d never had any luck.
Heard Meghan’s voice in her head: This way lies madness, Aubrey. You know that.
I know. I know. This will be the last time, I promise.
She had to find out who killed her husband.
And then she’d kill them herself.
CHAPTER 20
Aubrey went upstairs, took a familiar path: down the hall to the small, dark closet that housed a rickety ladder leading directly to the tiny storage space in the eaves above her bedroom. The boxes were in the eaves. The boxes were full of the case files: trial transcripts, newspaper articles, DVD recordings of the local news, photographs, her own arrest and trial records, everything she’d collected that had to do with Josh’s disappearance.
Aubrey had been forced to part with most of Josh’s things when she sold the house and moved to the small space off West Linden. She couldn’t afford a storage unit, so she’d compromised by packing nearly everything into plastic boxes and allowing Daisy to haul them off in her stupid Mercedes with those ridiculous eyelashes on the lights. Daisy had no idea how senseless she looked, but Aubrey wasn’t about to be the one to spring it on her. Especially since, despite the grumbling and bitching, Daisy taking the boxes, trip after trip after trip, saved Aubrey from throwing all of Josh’s things away.
Three hard-sided cardboard boxes waited at the top of the ladder. She hauled them down to her bedroom one by one.
She’d just gotten the lid off the first box when she heard Winston rouse from his slumber and start to whine.
She stopped, listened. It was a quiet night. No wind, no rain, no leaves and branches brushing up against the house. The moon had set, and the sky was very dark. She realized she hadn’t drawn the blinds; though no one could really see in through the dormer, she still liked the security of having that window dark to the outside.
She heard nothing. The light at her back meant she couldn’t see out the window to the street, either.
Winston whimpered again, and a shiver began to curl around her tailbone.
She wasn’t usually afraid to be in her own home at night. She didn’t have a gun, but she did have a large aerosol bottle of wasp spray that she kept near the bed. She figured she had a better chance of hitting an intruder with the spray than she would with a bullet. It was a trick she’d learned of in jail.
A bump now, right outside the front door. She scrambled to the other side of the bed and grabbed the spray, took the lid off, and slid to the corner of the bedroom nearest the door. No one would be able to get in without passing by her.
She adjusted the bottle, got her finger on the trigger.
Winston began barking, and each yelp reverberated in her spine. She heard him running up the stairs toward her.
Great. Even the dog was scared.
Which meant she would have to check and see what was happening herself.
She hoped for Tyler. Maybe he’d been irritated enough at her to come back and have words. No. Tyler would slam his fists against the door in anger. The only way he knew to deal with the rage that ate away at him from the inside was brute physicality.
Winston arrived in the hallway and cuddled up next to her, his tongue out, panting loudly. She set the spray down and used both hands to close his mouth so she could listen. He didn’t like that, fought back, his head wiggling out of her grasp. He woofed again, and she shushed him.
A discreet knocking started.
Quiet, soft. She swallowed hard, tightened her hold on the can of wasp spray, and decided.
She crept down the stairs. The knocking started again, then stopped.
Who the hell was knocking on her door at four in the morning?
The door was silent.
She got to the bottom of the stairs and fumbled for the phone. Dialed 9-1-1 but didn’t hit the Send key.
“Who’s there?” Her voice sounded stronger, surer than she felt. “I have a gun. Don’t even think about breaking in here.”
“Aubrey? Don’t shoot. It’s me.”