“Ethan Montclair? Tim Mappes, New York Times. I understand your wife, Sutton Montclair, is missing. Would you like to give me a comment?”

Click.

The doorbell rang. He could hear someone calling his name, a strange woman’s voice. “Mr. Montclair? Mr. Montclair? Will you come talk to us?”

Holy Christ, he was under siege.

You knew this would happen, didn’t you, Sutton? You knew the whole world would want to find you. Well played, wife.

Finally, exhausted, drunk, but unable to sleep, he turned off the ringer, took one of Sutton’s Xanax, and passed out cold for a few hours.

* * *

Ethan woke to a blinding headache. The front of the house was dark. He’d passed out on the couch.

Smart move, idiot.

He groaned as he sat up, perched on the edge of the couch with his feet on the floor and his head in his hands until the worst waves of nausea passed. Managed to make it to the kitchen and put on some tea. Popped three Advil, drank a bottle of water. The kettle took forever to boil. When it started whistling, pain rippled through his head.

He needed...something. Help. Support. Getting pissed and passing out wasn’t going to solve things. The media wasn’t simply going to walk away because he told them to. There was a story here, and everyone knew it.

The phone was sitting quietly on the counter, innocuous. He picked it up, ignoring the wave of burning bile that forced its way into his throat, and turned the ringer back on. It started to ring immediately. This number he recognized, and wasn’t entirely unwanted.

“Hullo, Bill.”

“Hullo? That’s all you have? Where the fucking hell have you been? I’ve been trying to call you for two hours!”

“Asleep. Drunk. Like most normal people.”

“It’s been half a day, Ethan. You’re not a normal person, and you’re definitely not in a normal situation. The New York Times is printing a story about Sutton being missing. Since you’ve been ignoring me, I have a flight to Nashville first thing in the morning. We have to coordinate a plan, figure out how we present this—”

“Would you calm down? It’s my wife who’s missing.”

“And I’m your agent. You should have called me the minute you realized this was turning into a story. I could have helped. You really don’t have any idea where she is?”

Shafts of light cruised across the kitchen, first there, then gone, then back again, fading. The beams from the news trucks as they shuffled positions out on the street. The on-again, off-again light reminded him of the past few months with Sutton. If only he could count on the clouds parting. He managed a sip of tea.

“For Christ’s sake, Bill, if I knew where she was I wouldn’t have called the police to start looking for her.”

“You called the police?”

Ethan hadn’t known a man could shriek, but Bill had just offered a full-fledged shout that would make a pterodactyl proud.