“His car is in the driveway.”
I stood quickly from where I was pulling on my boxer briefs and looked toward the window—the curtains were closed.
Before I could ask, she answered: “It’s like he’s trained me to be terrified of the sound of his car on our driveway; I couldn’t miss the sound of it even if I tried.” She pulled her shirt over her head and immediately began tidying the bed. “Oh God, oh God, oh God! Why is he coming home early?” she whispered to herself. “He never does this, why does he keep doing this?”
As soon as I was dressed, I pulled her away from the bed and into my arms. I cut off her harried whispering with my mouth, and even though her body was tense at first, it quickly melted against mine until we heard the key in the lock.
“You have to go!” she said, but I knew in her hopeless expression that there was no way I was getting out of there without her husband knowing about it.
“I’m a firefighter, Low. I can just climb out the window,” I suggested.
“No!” she said too loudly, and began pushing me toward the closet in the room. “All the windows have alarms on them. If you open one, it’ll chime throughout the house. Just—”
“Harlow!” Collin yelled, and her body seemed to crumple while remaining upright.
“We have his parents’ anniversary dinner tonight, it’s hours away, but you’ll be—”
“Harlow?” Collin called out again, his voice sounding farther away, but more aggravated.
My eyes narrowed and my body prepared to fight.
“Please,” Harlow whispered. “Don’t.”
With that she turned and walked calmly out of the room, and I strained to hear every sound, and every word.
Chapter 16
Harlow
Present Day—Richland
COLLIN WALKED INTO the living room at the same time I walked out of the hallway. Thankfully he’d missed what room I’d come from.
“Where the hell have you been?” he snapped, and my head jerked back.
I blinked slowly, and prayed to whoever was listening that my shaking wasn’t as bad as I feared it was. I needed to make this look convincing. Forcing my body to move slowly, I looked behind me, then back to Collin. “I—what time? I fell asleep after my shower . . .” I let my eyes widen and my breathing deepen, and hoped that my fear of my husband finding Knox in the house showed well enough like the way my fear of Collin usually did. “Oh—I’m so sorry; I can’t believe I slept so long. I-I-I’ll be ready so soon, I—”
“It’s only one P.M., Harlow.”
I knew I still had a part to play, I knew I needed to make him think something . . . but at that moment I couldn’t remember what, because I’d just noticed his eyes. Lifeless. He was now coming home early because of my monster.
“Collin,” I whispered as he inched closer.
“You know, I was at work and there was just something about this morning that I couldn’t stop thinking about.” He moved a couple of steps closer, and I finally figured out how to move back, but he quickened his pace as he continued speaking. “Do you know what it was?”
I shook my head hastily and my body jerked when I backed into the wall.
“Guess, Harlow.”
“Um, you . . . I don’t—um. You didn’t eat. I didn’t make you anything else that you could to take with you and you didn’t eat breakfast?” I sputtered out quickly.
“No, but close.” He waited until his body was pressed against mine and he was looking down at me before he spoke again. “You threw up.”
If I wasn’t so worried about what he was about to do—not only for me, but because I knew Knox would try to interfere—I would have given him a questioning look. As it was, I stood there breathing shallowly, trying to figure out where this was going. “Y-yes,” I said, but it sounded more like a question.
“I know you don’t like eggs, but you didn’t have a reason to throw them up, unless you did in fact poison them. Why else would you need them out of your body so quickly?”
No. No, no, not this again. My voice was barely above a whisper when I said, “Collin, no.”
“What did you put in the salt shaker?”
“Salt, Collin, I told you. I will go make something else and eat it all if it will convince you!”
A wicked smile pulled at his lips; the look on his face said it was too little, too late.
I shook uncontrollably as I waited for something . . . anything. But instead of what I was used to, or any of the new things, he tilted his head to the side and all the blood drained from my head when he asked, “How’s Hadley?”
My body instantly swayed, but he was standing close enough that I didn’t go far. “No. No,” I whimpered. “Please, no. It was salt; I swear to you it was salt. Don’t touch my sister!” I begged.
“Touch her?” he scoffed. “I would never do that, wife.”
With the way he was looking at me, and the way he called me “wife,” I was so sure he knew about Knox. But as I stood there holding my breath, he didn’t mention him or the secret phone.
Collin reached into his back pocket, and a second later he was pushing my cell phone against my stomach. Once I had it in my hands, he stepped back and dipped his head in the phone’s direction. “I had to come home because I have no doubt someone is going to be calling you soon.” He turned and walked toward the couch, and the humor in his tone was unmistakable. “It’s convenient that your sister decided to stay in Richland over the summer, isn’t it?”
My stomach churned, and the dread that filled me over the next few minutes was enough to make me almost forget that Knox was hiding out in the guest room.
I jumped when my phone rang, and my chin began trembling when I saw “Mom” on the screen.
I looked over to where Collin sat on the couch with a sly grin and asked, “What did you do?”
His smile fell. “Me? That’s a bold accusation, especially considering neither of us actually has any idea what you’re even talking about. You should probably answer your phone.”
After tapping on the screen and bringing the phone to my ear, the tears began falling when I heard my mom sobbing on the other end. “Mom?”
“Oh, Harlow,” she whimpered, and her sobs increased. “Harlow, it’s Hadley, she—she drove her car into a-a-a—” She broke off, and I heard the phone being shuffled.