“She was popping Xanax like breath mints,” Riley said. “She was ducking her husband’s calls. The guilt was eating her up.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Barrett said. “Lucy was the consummate professional. Everything about her was above reproach. You can ask anyone.”

“Oh, we will,” Riley said. “You can count on it.”

Barrett shrugged. “Fine. But it’s Lambert’s friends and family you really should be talking to.”

“She doesn’t have any family,” Cruz piped up.

Barrett raised an eyebrow. “Is that what she told you?”

The detectives exchanged a glance.

“Ahh, I see. Jack?” Barrett snapped his fingers, and Culligan came down off the stage with a folder in his hands. “Our security team does a background check on each of our new hires. Jack’s handing you a copy of what he found on Lambert. Take a look, gentlemen,” he said as Culligan handed the folder to Cruz. “She’s not who she says she is.”

Chapter 19

February 2, 2014

The lights flashed on in the apartment. David was back. He was tearing through the dresser drawers. He was hauling armloads of clothes out of the drawers and dumping them out in the hallway. My clothes.

I bolted upright in bed. “David! What are you doing?”

He wheeled on me. “I want you out of here! Get up. Get out!” He took my suit off the hook and flung it out into the hall.

“David, please—stop!”

He stooped to sneer in my face. “God, you make me sick. It makes me sick to look at you!”

I couldn’t tell whether he was desperate for a fix or he’d already had one. I scrabbled away from him, backward on the collapsing mattress.

“I wish I’d never married you. I wish I’d never met you! You ruined my life! I had everything going for me! Everything! And then you came along. Acting like you were gonna be somebody. Amount to something. But you were nothing but a loser. A total loser. And you’ve done nothing but drag me down with you.”

“David, no, sweetheart—”

“You acted like you were going places, but that’s all it was: an act. You’re nothing but a fraud!”

“But I have a job again. We’re going to be okay now.”

“A job,” he sneered. “You think you’re something, you and your job. But you’re nothing but a worker bee, a little insignificant worker bee. A peon. A wage slave. That’s all you are.”

“Even so, it’s a start. We can build from here. We can get our feet back under us.”

“Don’t you fucking hear me?” he yelled. “There is no we!”

He lunged across the bed and dragged me off the mattress and across the littered floor of the apartment. I struggled to stand up, and he grabbed the front of my T-shirt and almost lifted me off my feet. I was startled by the power in his grip, that he had that much strength left in him.

“You get out, and never come back. You hear me? Never come back!”