THE DOUBLE LIFE OF MY EX-CON HUSBAND

Chapter Seven: Do Come Home

The first window exploded before I could scream.

"Down!"

Ethan hit me from the side. We crashed through the porch door and slid across the kitchen floor as the whole front of the house came apart. Glass. Splintering wood. The roar of automatic fire, so loud it shook my teeth.

He dragged me behind the iron stove. The bag with the ledger skidded across the boards and stopped against my knees.

"How many?" I shouted.

"Too many." He peered through a crack in the wall, his face grim. "Mercenaries. Corvin muscle. Victor paid for the best."

A bullet tore a hole through the table where we had sat the night before. Plates shattered. The bread we never ate burst into crumbs.

Ethan pressed a pistol into my hand. "Back door. Tree line. Run, and don't stop until you reach the road."

"Not without you."

"Maya—"

"We're partners." I clutched the gun with both hands. "Remember?"

His eyes met mine for one second. Fierce. Terrified. Proud.

Then he kicked the back door open and shoved me through it.

We ran across the yard in a hail of noise. Bark exploded from the pines. Something hot grazed my arm. I did not feel it. I only saw the tree line ahead, so close, and Ethan beside me with his gun raised, firing back over his shoulder.

Then a second line of men stepped out of the trees.

We were trapped.

"Left!" Ethan hauled me toward the barn. A mercenary lunged out of the dark. Ethan dropped him with one shot, but the effort cost him a step. A heavy hand seized my coat from behind, ripped me backward, and tore me away from him.

"Ethan!"

He spun. He saw the man dragging me. He saw the barrel pressed to my head.

He lowered his weapon.

"No!" I screamed. "Don't!"

The shot came from the porch.

It hit him in the chest with a sound like a fist striking wet cloth. He stumbled one step. His eyes went wide, as if he had just remembered something. Then his knees folded, and he fell into the mud.

"Blood bloomed across his shirt, dark and fast. His hand reached toward me, fingers spread. Then it dropped.

A gloved hand clamped over my mouth. A needle bit my neck. The world tilted, and the last thing I saw was Uncle Victor on the porch steps, buttoning his coat, as calm as a man leaving church."

I woke to the hum of tires.

My head was heavy. My wrists were bound in front of me with plastic ties. The floor beneath me shuddered. A van. No windows. A single dim bulb swinging overhead.

And across from me, sitting on a bench with his legs crossed, was Victor.

"There you are," he said warmly. "I was beginning to worry."

I lunged at him. The ties bit into my skin. He did not even flinch. Two men sat beside him with rifles across their knees, watching me like dogs watching a bone.

"He's dead," I choked. "You killed him."

"He was already dead, my dear. I only made it official." Victor sighed and adjusted his cuff. "Do sit up. I would like us to speak like adults."

"Go to hell."

"Eventually, I'm sure." He smiled. "But not tonight."

The van swayed around a bend. I pushed myself upright against the wall, my chest heaving.

"You want me to ask," I said. "You want to hear how clever you were."

"Do I?" He tilted his head. "Perhaps I do. It has been a lonely thing, keeping a masterpiece secret."

My stomach turned.

"Do you remember the recording?" he asked softly. "Ethan's voice, telling a Corvin man that his wife was a naive heiress and her family name was a useful shield?"

I went cold.

I remembered. Three weeks before the arrest. A voicemail, left on my phone from an unknown number. Ethan's voice, low and cold. She knows nothing. She never will. The name is all I need.

I had played it a hundred times. It was the reason I had believed the worst.

"That was never him," I whispered.

"A clever young technician in Prague," said Victor. "We fed him an old speech of Ethan's and a few hundred words of dialogue. It took him six weeks. I thought it was exquisite." He gave a small satisfied shrug. "The forged transfers took longer. But I enjoy patience."

The van bumped over a pothole. My bound hands curled into fists.

"Why?" My voice cracked. "Why us?"

"Because Edmund found out." Victor's face softened, almost sadly. "My brother discovered what I'd been doing with the Foundation accounts. He wanted to go to the board. To the authorities. I begged him to reconsider." He studied his hands. "He would not be moved."

"My father had a stroke."

"He did. It was quite sudden." Victor's eyes lifted to mine, pale and patient. "I was in the room, you know. I simply did not call for help."

Something inside me went white and silent.

"You watched him die," I breathed.

"I sat beside him. I held his hand." Victor smiled. "It was the closest we had ever been."

My hand, resting on the floor, brushed against something small and metal.

A loose utility blade. Dropped, perhaps, by a careless guard. Half hidden beneath the bench.

I did not look down. I did not move. I only let my fingers drift, slowly, and curl around the edge of it, and slid it into my sleeve.

Ethan had taught me that, too. Never look at what you want. Let it come to you.

He was gone. Bleeding in the mud, in a field, alone.

I would not let him die for nothing.

The van stopped so hard that I slid across the floor.

The doors flew open. Cold air rushed in, smelling of rust and diesel and old river water. Beyond the guards I saw a row of dark warehouses, a black line of cranes, and a long, empty pier stretching out over the water.

"Out," Victor said.

A guard hauled me down by the arm. My legs buckled, but I forced them to hold. Victor strolled ahead of me, humming. At the edge of the dock he stopped and turned, framed against the black water, with the lights of the far shore glittering behind him.

"You understand," he said, "I wish it were otherwise. I loved you, Maya. Truly. But you have become a liability."

"You never loved anyone."

"Perhaps not." He drew a small silver pistol from his coat. "But I will miss you."

The guard released my arm and stepped back.

Victor raised the gun. His other hand took my shoulder, almost gently, and turned me toward the river.

The moment he leaned close, I moved.

The blade slid out of my sleeve. I slashed it across his wrist, as hard as I could, and felt it bite deep.

Victor howled. The pistol flew from his fingers and clattered across the planks. Blood sprayed across his sleeve.

"Kill her!" he screamed.

I did not wait.

I threw myself off the end of the pier.

The river hit me like a wall.

Cold. So cold it stole my breath and stabbed through every bone. I sank into blackness, my coat dragging at me, my hands still tied. I kicked wildly and surfaced, gasping, just as something whistled past my ear.

Bullets.

They tore the water into white threads around my head. I gulped a breath and dove again.

The current caught me. It was stronger than I had expected, a great black muscle pulling me downstream, away from the lights. I let it take me. I used the blade to saw through the plastic ties at my wrists, my fingers numb and clumsy, and then I swam with it, kicking and pulling, until the sound of shouting faded behind me.

My lungs burned. My arms stopped answering. Then my knee struck something hard, and I clawed at a slope of slimy concrete and dragged myself up out of the water.

I collapsed on my side and coughed up half the river.

When I could breathe again, I lay on my back and stared up at the clouds.

Ethan.

I had left him. He had been shot, and I had left him in the mud.

I pressed my knuckles to my mouth and made no sound. There was no time for tears.

"I'm coming," I whispered. "I'm coming back. And I am going to burn them all."

The shed stood a hundred yards up the bank, sagging and dark, with a faded sign for a shipping company that had gone bankrupt years ago.

I forced the door with my shoulder. Inside it smelled of damp wood and engine oil. A rack of work gloves. A rusted heater. Three battered lockers along the back wall.

I tore my sodden coat off and wrapped myself in a stiff canvas tarp. My hands shook so badly I could barely tie the knots. I bound my frozen legs in strips of cloth. Then I pried open the lockers one by one.

The first held a hard hat. The second, a bottle of cheap whiskey, half empty.

The third held a phone.

It was an ancient burner, scuffed and cracked, left behind by some long-gone dockworker. I pressed the power button. The screen flickered, glowed, and died.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."

I shook it. Pressed the button again. A tiny red bar blinked at the bottom of the screen.

One bar. Maybe two minutes of battery.

I had one number.

Ethan had made me memorize it on the drive north, while the rain blurred the windshield. If I'm ever not with you, he had said. Call this. Say my name. Say "the north door is open."

I dialed with trembling fingers.

It rang once. Twice. Three times.

"Yes?" said a rough, low voice.

"The north door is open," I said. "It's Maya."

A beat of silence.

"Mrs. Vance." The voice sharpened. "Where are you?"

"Is he alive?"

"He's breathing."

The room spun. I sank to my knees on the dirty floor.

"Breathing," the man repeated. "The bullet missed his heart by an inch. I have him on a table. He has lost a great deal of blood. I won't lie to you. It is bad."

"But he's alive." I pressed my forehead to the cold metal of the locker. "He's alive."

"For now."

I breathed in. I breathed out. The terror in my chest hardened into something new, something clean and sharp.

"Listen to me," I said. "I need a weapon. Untraceable. Tonight."

"Mrs. Vance—"

"My uncle just tried to murder me. He shot my husband. I am not going to hide." My voice shook, but only once. "Tell me where to go."

A long pause.

"Fourteen Harrow Lane," he said at last. "Behind the tannery. Come in through the cellar. I'll have something waiting."

"Thank you."

"Mrs. Vance." He hesitated. "He said your name. When he was under. Over and over."

My eyes burned. "I'm on my way."

I was reaching to hang up when the line crackled. The medic's breathing changed, quicker now, strained.

"Wait. Someone's at—"

A crash. A shout. A dull, wet thud.

Then silence.

Then a soft sound, close to the phone. Someone picking it up.

"Maya," said Uncle Victor.

He sounded tired. Almost kind.

"I am so sorry, darling. Ethan died ten minutes ago. I came to tell you in person." A pause. "Do come home. We have so much to discuss."

The phone slipped from my fingers and hit the floor.

Outside, headlights swept across the shed's cracked window, one pair, then two, then three.

The door began to open.