Chapter 12

TWELVE

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Tuesday, September 17

11:43 p.m.

She was back on the trail.

Elyse understood now. What she'd been doing here the morning of the attack. How she hadn't really been on a run. She'd come here. For information.

Lights inside the beach house on Mobile Street highlighted Samuel Thornton's movements on the first level. In the kitchen, then in front of the TV. The tint on the windows did nothing this time of night. Giving her a perfect view inside.

As far as she could tell, Samuel Thornton lived alone. No wife, no kids. Internet searches hadn't turned up much other than an out-of-date LinkedIn profile and a private Instagram account. Obviously, a private person.

A man who liked to keep secrets.

Elyse memorized the layout of what she could see of the living room. The double doors on the deck seemed to be the best way to get inside. Was that what she'd been doing on the deck yesterday morning? It seemed an entire lifetime ago. There were still holes in her memory, but pieces had started to slip through the cracks. What she couldn't forget, however, was the sly smile Samuel Thornton had shot her this afternoon as Detective Moore guided her back to the trail. A knowing smile that would haunt her if she didn't follow through with this plan.

Movement from inside the house brought her back into the moment.

Seemed Samuel was finally putting himself to bed. The brightness from the TV cut short, and he shoved free of his position on the couch. Gathering snack bowls and a half-empty potato chip bag, he headed for the kitchen at the back of the house. No access there. Just walls of windows providing the perfect view.

Except he wasn't headed upstairs to the bedrooms on the top level. He diverted his path. Outside.

It was impossible to see her from this distance, but Elyse still found herself hugging the line of trees that opened onto the dunes a little closer. Just in case. She raised the flashlight she'd taken from her bedroom side table, ensuring the beam wouldn't give away her position.

"This is where you've been disappearing to?" a voice asked from behind.

Her nerves shot out of control as she spun, flashlight raised in defense.

An outline separated from the shadows creeping across the trail's asphalt.

Revealing her husband. Casually dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and his gym shoes. His hair had given up the fight against the mousse applied every morning, sticking up at one side. Everything about him was familiar and foreign at the same time. Out of touch. "Did you really think I wouldn't notice the fact you hadn't gone to the store as you'd claimed or that you never came home with library books this afternoon?"

"Did you follow me?" Her heart rate refused to come down. Elyse glanced back toward the beach house. To make sure they hadn't drawn the attention of her target. Samuel Thornton had taken to the stairs. She turned back to face her husband, and a panic set in. "You can't be here."

Despite the wash of moonlight, Wesley's skin lost even more color as he visually followed Samuel Thornton. "Are you…" He rolled his lips between his teeth, maybe needing more time for the thought to solidify. Motioning toward the beach house, Wesley lost his charm and exposed the man scared of losing the things he cared about the most. "Is he why you've been running this route every day? Why you're suddenly okay with the beach, even though you've been telling me how much you hate it here for years?"

"Yes." She stepped into him, planting a hand on his chest to stop him from bolting out of here with the wrong idea. "But it's not what you think."

Hurt contorted his face into something ugly. "Are you… in love with him?"

"What? No." She dropped her hand away, as though he'd burned her with the accusation. A sin he'd been guilty of less than four years ago. Possibly even sooner. "That's not what this is."

"Then tell me what it is. Who is he?" Wesley closed the distance between them.

"I think he's the man who attacked me." The words rushed and desperate and slurred as her body filled with adrenaline. He wasn't supposed to be here. He wasn't supposed to know.

"What?" He grabbed for both her arms, aggravating the pain in her shoulder. "Elyse, we need to call the police. You need to tell them."

"I did. I called that detective. Moore. I brought her here this afternoon. I tried to prove it was him, but…" She didn't have the energy to go into how much the detective's dismissal hurt. All her life she'd taken care of others. She'd sacrificed her needs to put everyone else ahead of her. She listened over and over to the same story of her youngest brother flying over his bike handlebars in front of a car when he was nine and walking away during family gatherings. Claiming it'd been a miracle he'd survived when in all reality, Elyse's quick thinking had saved his life. But nobody saw that. Not her brother. Not her parents. Instead, she'd been criticized for not keeping a better eye on him in the first place. That time and many others. She'd lost count of the number of times she'd said yes to dropping off a meal to a family in their church or committing to help another elderly woman get her groceries to the car. Not to mention the thousands of hand-cooked meals she'd fed her family with over the years. Even when the chemotherapy treatments had wracked her body to the point she believed it wasn't the cancer that would kill her but the treatment itself. She'd been there at her mother's beck and call as the heart disease stole the last years of her life just after losing her second child in utero. She'd grieved with mothers who suffered miscarriages and infertility in the private rooms of the office. She'd forgiven Wesley for the affair. She'd taken care of Leigh in the hours after the surgery.

But none of it had made a damn bit of difference. All of it had gone unnoticed. Dismissed as easily as Detective Moore's refusal to see the truth about Samuel Thornton. "I'm tired of being overlooked, Wesley. I go out of my way to make sure everyone in my life—even people I don't know or want nothing to do with me—are happy. But there hasn't been anyone who's been willing to do the same for me. Not even you. And I deserve to be put first for once."

Tears burned as the truth she hadn't wanted to face broke down the emotional jam in her chest. She needed to be needed. Simple as that. But her husband didn't need her. He had someone else he'd been turning to in the middle of the night while she'd been asleep. Ava was fourteen now. Her daughter was learning independence and how to get through life on her own. Navigating high school politics and friends and AP classes. Her brothers had their own lives, careers, and families. They didn't even bother reaching out on her birthday anymore. She was the one who'd always made the effort to stay in touch, to plan sibling lunches, to host the Christmas party. Her parents were gone, and Leigh only came up for air at the end of whatever case she'd taken on.

Elyse slid free of her husband's hold, hand gripped around the flashlight. "So I'm going to do this. If nobody else is going to fight for me, I will. I'm going to find out what happened to me, and there's nothing you can do or say to change my mind."

"Elyse, you don't know what you're doing. This could be dangerous. We should go to the police again." Wesley raised one hand, pointing at the beach house that'd since gone dark. "What is your plan? Are you just going to walk up to this guy and ask if he attacked you? Why would he give you an answer? Do you even know him?"

She chose to ignore his first question. She had a plan, but it was still in the brainstorming stage. Right now, all she needed was information. Proof. She couldn't do anything without proof. She nodded, as if that would set the end of the conversation. Yes. She was going to do this. She was going to put herself first for once in her life. "I've learned everything I need to from Leigh. I'll be careful. I promise."

"Leigh put you up to this?" Disdain for a friend he'd never met coated the words. "You're not an investigator, Elyse. You don't have her training. What are you going to do if something happens?"

"I don't know, but I need to do this, Wesley." She couldn't have him going to Detective Moore. The police would be duty-bound to warn Samuel Thornton of any threat. No matter how insignificant at this point. "And I need you to accept that. The police won't help. So, please, go home. Call your girlfriend and forget you ever saw me here."

His jaw worked to defend himself, but no sound escaped.

"You heard me. I saw your call logs earlier today. I used your phone to call Detective Moore. And there they were. Dozens of outgoing calls. All in the middle of the night, most of them the past couple of days." She didn't want to think beyond that. About what her husband had been doing with another woman. She was already too close to losing it. To having that dam she'd spent years building break permanently. And she didn't want him to see that. She didn't want to break. Not for him. "I had hoped since you were caught the first time you stepped out on our marriage, you'd have altered your habits. But nothing has changed, has it? I'm still not good enough for you."

He took a step toward her. "Elyse, no. I can explain?—"

"Go home, Wesley." She wasn't interested in the explanation. In the excuses. She'd heard them all before, and while she hadn't planned on having this conversation outside the home of a man she suspected had assaulted her, she was glad for it. To finally accept the end. Elyse headed down the trampled dune toward the beach house. "I don't want Ava to wake up to an empty house."

A quake of devastation rocked through her with every step. This was it. This was when she took control of her life, control of her own happiness. Perhaps that'd been her mistake from the beginning. Waiting for other people to step up and do the right thing by her. Maybe that was why she compromised so often, why she tried to please others at every turn. Just for that small acknowledgment. A thank-you. But it was clear now that wasn't ever going to happen.

Elyse didn't turn back to make sure her husband was gone. She could feel it. That cold sweat between her shoulder blades. Slowing her pace, she managed a full breath to remind herself of why she was here. Why she was risking her life to find the truth. Samuel Thornton had gone back inside sometime in the middle of her fight with Wesley. The beach house lights had gone dark. She jogged the remaining distance from the dunes to the bottom of the stairs leading to the main deck.

And found the storage room door ajar.

It was just like the one holding up her vacation house on its shoulders. More like a built-in shed. Elyse listened for signs of movement from the main level or stairs, but all she could hear was the low roar of the ocean coming up the shore. Slower than she wanted to go, she peeled the door back fully to get a glimpse of what a man like Samuel Thornton hid from the world.

Darkness refused to give up any outlines, and she angled the door wider to give the moonlight a chance to come inside.

To find a mattress, a blanket, and food wrappers spread over the bare cement.