He glanced over his shoulder. He almost expected her to be there, watching him. This was all a test, just to see how far he’d go to invade her privacy again, and Sutton would be livid that he’d been in her things.

Again. Because they’d been through this once before.

He used to—used to—check her internet history, trying to understand the mercurial woman he’d married. It was fascinating, her focus, and terrifying, all at the same time. Two years ago, for two weeks straight, she’d done nothing more than delve deep into something called borderline personality disorder. For a while, he’d thought she was researching for a character, but, curious, he started reading the same websites, and everything he saw startled him. She was researching herself. Looking for ways to handle the disease.

God, it explained so much. The narcissism, the coldness, the inappropriate affect when bad things happened to good people. She seemed so compassionless to him, lacking some sort of inner core that he’d never experienced in another person. Sometimes it turned him on, but other times, it scared him to the bone.

He’d known then he should confront her, get her to a psychiatrist, get her on medication. But the mind of a writer is a curious place. It can see the smallest fragment of reality and spin it into a world heretofore unknown.

So instead of sitting down with his wife and asking what he could do to help, he’d made an epic, life-changing mistake.

He’d taken the kernel of the idea, married it to the research, and built himself a character.

Strike one, buddy.

And of course, that character came alive for him in ways no one could ever imagine, considering the model was only an arm’s length away. The story unfolded in front of him, and he was helpless to stop it. Once the woman in his brain came to life, it was as if he were on a train, barreling toward the station.

If only he’d known he was actually on a steep descent into the depths of the earth.

He’d pitched the idea to Bill, a story about a sociopathic young mother struggling to be normal, and Bill had sold the idea to Ethan’s publisher the next day, for a gigantic wad of cash.

He had asked them to be very careful when they publicly discussed the sale, wanting to be sure no one let slip the subject of the book. Of course, some intern blew it, entranced with the description, and posted the blurb of what the book was about from his proposal in the actual announcement. And Sutton had seen it.

He thought he’d known coldness from her before. Now he was face-to-face with an Antarctic glacier. His own fault, too. That breach started them down the long path, unraveled their relationship quickly and neatly. The things that followed—the affair, the death of the baby, the book cancellation, now Sutton’s disappearance—were all because he’d decided to be an arse and profit on her back.