Prologue - Alejandro
Queenstown, New Zealand; February 2027
I scanned the crowded event, my heart pounding at the fact I’d lost sight of her. I knew Ryder would have eyes on her if I didn’t, but still—she was my wife.
Well, not really mine. Not legally. But try telling that to my heart, soul, and brain. They’d teamed up and bought the lie around my finger like it was the gospel truth.
There you are. My entire body relaxed the second I found her.
Of course she’d drifted closer to the orchestra. The sax solo had lured Audrey in, her hand at her side, fingers moving as if she were playing along on some invisible piano. She was locked in and completely mesmerized by the music, just like I was with her.
I lifted my bourbon for a sip, needing to steady my pulse, but the band on my finger caught my eye. Clinging to me like it belonged there, representing a false sense of forever with my best friend’s sister.
And here I am, trying to remind myself we didn’t actually exchange vows. While in truth, I was already in so deep with her, I might as well have been standing at the earth’s core.
Then she turned. Swept the skirt of her dress aside to find me. And I rose. Not just to the surface, but to the top of the entire damn world.
Her blonde hair was pinned up, a few loose strands framing her face the same way my hands had not too long ago. Her hair softened the line of her jaw, pulling my attention to the delicate curve of her neck. Then down to the perfect slope of her shoulders, and to the black dress that looked like it’d been painted on her body. The memory of where my hands had been earlier hit me all over again.
Not really my wife. That reminder ghosted over my skin, tightening the collar of my shirt, crawling across my shoulders, slipping down my spine.
I lowered my tumbler to my side, letting it rest against the leg of my tailored Italian slacks as I remembered what had happened in the honeymoon suite tonight.
She finally looked away, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.
I only wished I could make everyone vanish, right along with our problems.
At the feeling of being watched by someone else, I pivoted. Delta One’s eyes were on me. Audrey’s brother. My friend of fifteen years.
I made love to your sister tonight. Broke my promise.
I wished I could blame it on walking in on her half dressed, standing there in wedding-white lace. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her naked, but tonight had been different.
Tonight, after I’d slid the wedding band on her finger, she didn’t just feel like my wife. She felt like my forever. And when she’d whispered orders to herself to stop touching me, given what was at stake, her fingers kept moving. Kept unbuttoning my white dress shirt. Mine didn’t follow my own commands to shut it down, either.
At Ryder’s continued stare, I cleared my throat, forcing my head back into the game. I gave him a subtle nod, one I hoped he’d read as I’m fine.
That was far from the truth. And he’d know it. No way was he fine, not with what was about to go down any minute.
But it would be over soon.
So would this role as Audrey’s husband.
After all, we were here because Audrey’s reality shattered a year ago, when her son’s stepfather’s plane went down.
But in this world, nothing stayed buried.
Not lies.
Not the truth.
And apparently, not even the dead.
Chapter One - Audrey
Evergreen, Colorado; One Week Earlier
Six months, fourteen days, and three hours. Give or take. That was how long I’d been trying to turn this house into a home. But I knew my fresh start couldn’t happen until I dealt with this box.
With my bedroom feeling far too quiet, I set my half-empty glass of red wine on the dresser and went over to the old record player I hadn’t touched since the move. It’d belonged to my dad. The man who’d raised me as his own, never letting me know I wasn’t biologically his—not even on his deathbed.
I opened the lid. The last vinyl I’d played back in Virginia still rested on the turntable.
“Not sure I can handle you tonight. Not with that box glaring at me.” Against my better judgment, I moved the arm in place and dropped the needle, letting Ella Fitzgerald’s “The Man I Love” play.
The first crackle of sound ran up my spine. Each note unfurled like a memory I wasn’t ready for, curling into the air.
I turned toward the unopened box in the corner of my room.
My hands settled on my hips, fingers aching for piano keys instead of scissors to cut through packing tape to get to the emotional land mines.
Just do it. This was why I’d asked Trevor to take Chase out in the first place, to be alone with this box and finally deal with it.
After two and a half hours, all I’d done was scroll job listings, cry into half a bottle of red, and avoid it.
I knelt in front of the box, the same way Mitch had dropped to both knees when he proposed, and I picked up the scissors I’d left on the floor.
With my free hand, I traced the tape’s seam, exhaling a shaky breath as I remembered the day I packed the items inside shortly after Mitch died a year ago.
I sliced the tape down the center, peeling it back like an old wound. One flap. Then the other.
A yellow envelope sat on top of the neatly folded remnants of a life that didn’t belong to me anymore. Inside were divorce papers. Mine signed, his untouched. Because Mitch never had the chance. He’d never come home.
His death had changed me from a woman secretly enduring the collapse of her marriage to a widow.
People had mourned his loss, hugged me, cried at my side, and whispered about the tragedy. But no one had asked what our final months had really been like. No one saw me as someone grieving two different kinds of loss. And why would they? The only person aside from Mitch who had known our marriage was over was my lawyer.
But to lose him like that? To really lose him meant I wasn’t allowed to be mad anymore.
I wasn’t allowed to feel bitter or broken, because what kind of person hates the dead?
I set aside the envelope and reached for his ring box, which was sitting on top of a folded-up flag in a glass case.
He’d had no family besides me to take his belongings, so I was stuck with everything.
Each piece was a painful reminder of promises he’d stopped trying to keep long before his uniform made it into the box.
Died serving our country. Died as my husband. And died having broken my heart before his plane went down.
As the record slowed to its final, haunting notes, a chill crept up my arms and silence reclaimed the room.
I opened the ring box, and something shifted. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but . . .
“Mitch?” I glanced over my shoulder.
The air felt wrong. There was a painful, biting sting to it.
I’m not ready for this.
I had a decent excuse to leave the box untouched for another day. Chase would be overtired if he wasn’t home and in bed soon. I’d be the one dealing with our cranky son in the morning, not Trevor. But that was me, always worrying about tomorrow, even though tomorrow seemed to take care of itself.
The tick-tick-ticking of the grandfather clock sliced through the quiet, alerting me to the fact that it was officially ten o’clock.
I put the ring box away and pushed off the floor to grab my phone to text Trevor, my ex-husband.
Yes, I’d been married twice. Of course people judged me. And as my son wisely liked to say, Sometimes people just suck.
Me: Almost back? It’s late.
Trevor: Be there in 5. We went for ice cream after the movie.
I relaxed for a second, relieved that he’d answered, only to tense again at his response.
Me: He’s lactose intolerant. <face-palm emoji>
Trevor: A little dairy won’t hurt him.
Me: The nausea he’ll have all night will. And why are you texting while driving? Especially at night while it’s snowing.
Trevor: Why are you texting me while knowing I’m driving with such precious cargo, then?
Trevor: And I’m voice-texting. Relax.
Trevor: And I got him that vegan crap. Even if I think that dairy intolerance stuff is nonsense. So, relax there too.
Me: Maybe one day he’ll thank you for toughening up his gut. Today’s not that day.
Trevor: Roger that.
Trevor was an excellent father, and even a good friend now, but we were total opposites, and sometimes he could be such a pain in the butt.
I tossed my phone onto the bed and went to my dresser for the wine. I needed to kill five minutes, and it wouldn’t be with that box.
Instead of picking up my glass, I lifted the framed picture beside it. It was a photo of Chase mid–snowball fight with his uncle, Ryder, along with Ryder’s two teammates. Three elite Delta operators had lost—and lost quite comically—to my son.
We’d taken hundreds of photos during those few days at Christmas, trying to make up for lost time.
Trevor had spent the holiday with his parents in Michigan, so I’d used the quiet to introduce myself to my brother. The brother I’d only found out existed at Thanksgiving, when I learned the man who’d raised me as his daughter my whole life wasn’t my biological dad.
Talk about an eye-opening family dinner. Something told me it wasn’t the wine that’d loosened my mother’s lips that evening; it was the guilt she’d been living with for thirty-three years.
The ink on the paperwork for this house had barely been dry when I had to survive two curveballs: I had another dad and a half brother. One sent me packing, and the other welcomed me with open arms.
I was seconds from rethinking every bad decision I’d ever made when my neighbor’s dog started barking. I set down the photo, the barking drowning out the clock but not the other sound. Had the floorboards creaked downstairs?
I tried to listen closely, but Peter Pan, the Labradoodle next door, wouldn’t quiet down long enough for me to focus.
Still, that noise hadn’t come from the pipes . . . and I had heard something, hadn’t I?
Feet flat to the floor, I crept toward the door, intending to shut and lock it. I was not going to be like the girl in a horror movie who investigated strange noises in the dark.
Of course, even Chase knew how to pick the lock with a butter knife, which was why step two would be to grab my phone. Step three was under my bed.
Trevor had insisted I keep a gun in the house—a 9mm in a biometric lockbox. I’d humored him, never thinking I’d need it.
Please, God, don’t let tonight be the exception.
Chills burst up my back and goose bumps covered my skin as I softly turned the lock. That sense of unease spread into something sharp and distinct. Something real. No, my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me. Someone’s here.
Peter Pan finally went quiet, and I heard the unmistakable sound of someone walking around my house.
My heart pounded, terror tightening in my chest. My lungs begged to scream, but fear and common sense held me in silence.
I backed away from the door, grabbed my phone, and called Trevor. I fell to my knees by the bed with plans to reach for the lockbox.
“Hey, we’re pulling in to the driveway now,” Trevor answered as the doorknob rattled, officially triggering my panic.
“Someone’s in the—”
I never finished. Never made it to the gun, either, because the lock gave easily.
The door flung open, and I let out the scream I’d been holding in so Trevor would know to keep Chase away from the danger.
A man in dark clothing, face hidden behind a ski mask, stepped inside. His gaze snapped to my phone, to Trevor shouting through the speaker.
“We’ve got company,” a deep voice called from the hallway.
The man shifted slightly, reaching behind him for something.
I prayed the self-defense lessons Trevor had drilled into me would kick in, and lunged for him.
The guy was faster. He wrangled me in one arm and took me down, then climbed on top of me.
I turned my head, peering under the bed to that tease of a lockbox just out of reach, terror choking me up, mangling my insides.
“Mommy!” Chase crying out over the line was the last thing I heard before I was hit on the side of the head and knocked out.
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