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Chapter 3
Judith typed the account password into her laptop, a pulse pounding at her temples as she stared at the screen.
Her eyes scanned the account details.
Balance: zero.She blinked hard.Looked again.Still zero.
Fingers of ice crawled across her scalp and down her spine.This could not be happening.
Her three thousand dollars was gone.The money she’d squirrelled away from her pay packet each month, feeling empowered that she was saving towards their overseas holiday.Gone.
Fingers shaking, she pulled up the details of the account.
Her eyes widened at the last entry.Three withdrawals of nine hundred dollars, on three consecutive days, which was the limit she’d put on account withdrawals.
Oh, and a neat little thirty dollars to round it all off on day four.
All paid into the account of one Mark Downing.
Now the tight, icy feeling had spread to her chest, like poison ivy threatening to squeeze the breath out of her lungs.
Why would Mark do this?She’d paid him his share; it had never occurred to her she would need to close off that account.
And now, without asking, he’d taken what wasn’t his.
Her forehead was so tight she was worried her skull might crack with the pressure.
There must be some explanation.She scrubbed two fingers across the crease that had formed between her eyebrows, as though if she got rid of it, this would all magically go away.She racked her brains.Maybe his salary hadn’t come through this month, or he’d had to pay some extra bills.No, that didn’t make sense.He’d had enough for the bond and two months’ rent payments.They’d organised all that.
Sure, Mark had fallen out of love with her, but that didn’t make him abadperson.
It didn’t make him someone who wouldstealfrom her.
She stood up so abruptly her chair clattered to the floor.Hugging herself, she paced the kitchen, rubbing the tops of her arms, which were numb with shock.
Finally, she grabbed her phone off the island bench and brought up Mark’s number.Typed in,Have you stolen my money?
Erased it.She hated sounding accusatory, there had to be some more logical explanation.Mark, we have to talk.
That would have to do.She pressed send.
Then followed it withURGENT.
Before the split, he’d been good at phoning her, admittedly more often than not to check if she’d bought chocolate on her way home from work.She hadn’t heard much since he’d moved out.Truthfully, she was worried she’d go around to his apartment and find him dead from gaming.She’d heard that could happen on a talkback show about problem gaming.She’d recognised the classic signs in Mark.People just sat at their computers, so immersed that they forgot to eat, forgot to drink, forgot to pee.And then their hearts stopped.They simply dropped dead in the middle of slaying dragons or demons or whatever.
The minutes ticked by loudly on the clock above the stove.
Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer and called him.
No answer.He’d taken off his voice message.That was strange.
She tried again, tapping in his number manually even though it had always gone through on automatic dial before.
Still no answer.
There were only two possibilities: Mark had died at his computer or run off with her share of their savings.Both options were too horrible to contemplate.
As she put her phone down, her eyes caught on her bag of new frocks.
