Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

M ark worked silently, ignoring the banter of his crew. The owners had hired him to gut the old place. Replace everything , they'd said. Leave no stone unturned . Oh, and we want to be in by Christmas.

He'd tried not to laugh. They'd be lucky to finish by Easter.

The house had been built in the late eighteen-hundreds in Hingham, an old, upscale town closer to the coast. It sat on three acres of pine forest and weed-infested lawn and was probably worth more than Mark would make in a decade.

Today, he and his youngest employee were measuring the edges of the ceilings for crown molding while the other guys tapped in tongue and groove hardwood in the living room.

When Mark wrote down the last measurement, the kid grabbed the notebook and headed for the garage.

"I'll make the cuts," Mark said.

"You sure? It's freezing out there."

Mark snatched the notebook from his hand. "I can manage. Why don't you double-check the cabinet order?"

The garage was filled with every tool—power and otherwise— you could think of. Thank God for the space, too. Between the temperature and the whipping wind, he'd freeze outside.

Mark opened the garage door halfway. Frigid air swirled around his feet as he found the miter saw against the wall and dragged it into the center of the garage, plugged it in, and grabbed the first length of crown molding. With his safety goggles firmly in place, he set to work. The small space filled with the buzzing of the electric saw. Clouds of sawdust swirled in the wind sneaking in beneath the garage door while he obsessed about Amanda.

He'd fallen in love with her over crab cakes in Narragansett, Rhode Island, more than a decade earlier. He carried her picture with him to Afghanistan, staring at it so often, the glossy finish had begun to flake off. When he'd returned stateside, he'd wasted no time in proposing to her. They'd been together ever since.

No, they'd been together until a month before, when she'd kicked him out.

What had gone wrong? They had two beautiful daughters, she had a great career, and he was happy for her.

He grimaced and laid another length of molding on the pile.

At least one of them should be happy. He was proud of her. To go from being a chef to starting a business to publishing a cookbook and writing a blog, all while caring for two small children—she was a walking success story. He bragged about her to everyone he knew.

And then, out of the blue, she'd kicked him out.

Except it hadn't been as much of a shock as he'd like to think. Things had been falling apart for two years, and though he didn't know exactly why, he knew when it started—when Amanda told him about her past.

Mark would never forget that night. After putting the kids to bed early, she'd turned off the TV set and sat beside him. "I have to tell you something."

And then she launched into the story that changed everything.

That monster of jealousy roared—the one he'd so skillfully kept hidden for years of marriage. It twisted in his gut, fed on his hatred, and fueled his anger. The face of his fragile, beautiful wife disappeared until he could see only the dark profile of a man in a high-priced suit and Italian loafers with a tongue as smooth as a knife's edge.

Even now his mouth filled with the bitter taste of vengeance. For two years he'd told himself he could not hunt down Dr. Gabriel Sheppard and kill him. But he had allowed himself the occasional fantasy about confronting him and making him pay. He refused to act on those fantasies. There was no room for the soldier inside him on this side of the Atlantic.

But if he had to, he could rip Sheppard apart, piece by piece.

Mark pressed, white-knuckled, against a length of crown molding. The piece slipped beneath the saw blade, leaving a jagged, useless edge. Closing his mouth tight against the swear word dying to escape, he tossed the ruined end into a pile of scrap, thankful that at least part of the board was still usable. He stretched his arms and tried to relax.

It was no use.

Only after Amanda told him the truth about her past did he understand why she'd used initials—not even her real initials—instead of her full name on her cookbook and blog, why she hadn't allowed the publisher to add a photograph of her to the cover, and why she'd turned down every offer to appear on TV. Hiding from Sheppard. She swore the man would never hurt her, but Mark could see that, deep down, she didn't believe it.

Writing the memoir had been therapeutic, and he'd encouraged her to do it. He'd read it as she wrote, so touched that she trusted him with it, and tried to be enthusiastic about her writing. But it was hard to think past the fury swirling inside him, even harder to hide it. More details about what Sheppard had done to her led to more creative fantasies about how he would eventually kill him.

It never occurred to him she'd want to publish it.

Mark grabbed his cell from his jacket pocket and dialed his best friend.

"I just caught a case," Chris said after a curt hello . "I only have a minute."

"I need your help."

"Okay. What's up?"

"I need to figure out how Sheppard found my wife this weekend. I'm thinking maybe I should check the list of attendees from the conference against his name, see if I can find a connection."

There was a pause on the other end. "Could you give me a minute?" Chris said to somebody else. Into the phone he said, "And what do you need me to do?"

Mark ducked beneath the half-mast garage door and walked down the short driveway. "I was hoping you could use your charms to help me get my hands on the list."

"My charms or my credentials?"

Mark smiled. "Both?"

"And how exactly are you going to check their backgrounds?"

"You could help with that, too."

”I can't investigate innocent people on a whim, Mark. It's not legal. And I don't know how I can get that list. If I worked in New York maybe?—"

"What if I get it?" Mark said. "Will you help me check it?"

"What are you looking for exactly? "

"A connection between Sheppard and somebody who knew my wife was going to be there. Somebody had to have told Sheppard. Her roommate for the weekend invited her. Maybe we should start there."

"What difference does it make how he found her?" Chris asked. "He found her—isn't that what you should be focusing on?"

Mark rubbed his temple. Was Chris right? Did it matter now how Sheppard found her? He turned at the street and walked back toward the house, shivering. The sun wasn't pumping much heat into Massachusetts today.

He stopped just short of the garage door. "I think we need to know. If somebody did tip him off, that means somebody close to her can't be trusted. We need to know who that person is."

"Meanwhile, what about Sheppard?"

"Well, that was my next favor," Mark said. "Have you found anything on him?"

"Not yet. You know, if you came to work here . . ."

"I'm trying to save my marriage, Chris, not add another nail to its coffin. Believe me, right now I'd much rather have a job where I could carry a gun legally."

A pause. "As opposed to carrying a gun . . . illegally?"

"Never mind, Agent Sapp," Mark said, picturing the handgun in his glove box. In this state, getting caught with it would mean at least eighteen months' jail time, but right now, it was worth the risk. "Listen, if you help me out on this, I'll owe you forever. I'll . . . I'll redo your bathroom or something."

"I don't want my bathroom redone. I want you and your gut feelings helping me solve crimes instead of hanging cabinets."

"You still trust my instincts?"

"Of course. You saved my butt in Afghanistan more than once. "

"Then do this for Amanda, because right now, my gut is screaming at me that she's in danger."

Waiting through the long pause on the other end of the phone, Mark prayed he had his friend hooked.

"I'll have to work on it from home," Chris said. "I can't use my FBI resources."

"I know, but you're better than anyone I know at ferreting out information. You'll work so much faster than I will."

"Fine. Call me when you have some names, and I'll see what I can find out."

"Thanks, man. I appreciate it."