AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He kept saying that. She no longer believed it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Spinning, spinning, spinning. That’s what happened when a person got too nosy. Push and someone would push back. Seemed like common sense, but apparently not.
But maybe the game had gone too far. Planting hints about mental instability sounded easy enough. Seeing things. Forgetting things. Acting odd. Coming undone. But when the target came wrapped in a problematic package the distance between sowing doubt and going over the edge shrank to almost nothing.
A destabilizing campaign was a delicate thing that demanded a lot of attention. Make the speaker’s words irrelevant, yes. But one step too far and the focus shifted to rehabilitation—helping and shoring up—the target. That, too, put the emphasis in the wrong place. Got people curious, and that was only a short walk away from nosy.
The trap. The plan. One more time. It was all so close now.
Sisters, by marriage or birth, were overrated.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Elisa needed another look at Josh’s house.
She dropped Nathan off the next morning and waited until Josh and Harris were at work. She debated what level of covert skulking to use. She had a key to his house and knew the alarm code. She could park in the driveway and walk right in, and no one would blink. She’d met the neighbors. Her stopping by to see Josh or handle something for him wouldn’t be unusual. But that option ran the risk of someone mentioning seeing her... then everything would explode. Josh would demand to know why she was at the house. Harris would be furious.
No, the right answer was to ditch the car three streets over, park in front of a random house, and sneak into Josh’s place through the back. Don’t be seen. Don’t raise questions.
Heart pounding and brain fogged, that’s exactly what she did. She snuck in, silently paying him back for all the unexpected drop-ins lately.
She glanced at her watch. The plan was a quick in-and-out. Search whatever she could search, trace every step Abby might have made in her last days, and get the hell out.
The chance she’d missed something the first time loomed over her. Some note, some scrap of paper or receipt, might explain where she was or, more importantly, why she wasn’t still here. Abby leaving personal things behind made zero sense. Even if Josh had taken the duffel and the sweatshirt, why keep them for months? If he wanted to run her in circles, the duffel would do that. What was with the laptop? That held incriminating information. The kind a smart man would hide or at least erase.
She stood at the bottom of the steps and glanced upstairs, thinking the bedrooms might hold the answers. But, too obvious. Where would Abby hide something she didn’t want Josh to find... the laundry room? To this day, he sent out everything, including the non–dry cleaning items, to be handled. He knew how to use the washer and dryer. Harris confirmed their mom taught Josh those basic skills, but he liked having someone else take care of things.
Elisa wanted to kick her own butt for playing along with his practiced incompetence about everyday chores. Hiring a cleaner for him. Making dinners. Being there... she resented all of it now.
She slipped into the small room off the kitchen. He had detergent, which struck her as a new addition. Then she saw the nightgown. Rachel. Elisa didn’t know if Rachel had moved in, and didn’t want to ask.
Elisa opened cabinet drawers and searched through a fewboxes stacked in the corner. She flipped through old photographs and . . . her head shot up at the unexpected noise.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
She had trouble hearing over the racing of blood in her ears. She double-checked her watch. She hadn’t lost track of time. It was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday and she heard voices.
She vowed to jump out if she recognized Meredith’s voice. Catch Josh in the act after being forced to hear him lie yesterday. But the female voice belonged to Rachel. Rachel and Josh, here. At home. Just on the other side of the wall.
Caught.Elisa couldn’t get caught.
She didn’t move, and she tried to slow her breathing. Anything to become smaller and less visible. To not be heard. She could hear the rustling of what sounded like bags. Lunch, maybe? But this was a long way for Josh to go to eat during the day.
“Her expression was priceless,” Rachel said.
“That was all you.” Josh sounded as if he was moving around the kitchen, opening drawers and cabinets. “You’re the one who came up with the storage locker idea.”
“Because you want to destabilize her, make Harris question her,” Rachel said.
“And I’m succeeding.”
Rachel laughed. “Honestly, it shouldn’t be that easy to rent a locker in someone else’s name.”
“Who knew it was? Taking a photo of her driver’s license sure came in handy.”
Part of Elisa wanted to storm out, have some sort of cartoonah-ha!moment, but she knew the right strategy was to hunker down. She’d learned more in the last ten seconds than she had in days of Internet searching for Abby.
