His attention turned to Molly as his thoughts did too often these days. He wouldn’t have shared the stress in any case, but she’d been smart to insist on minimal contact.
The next morning he headed to work, already strategizing his way through the various meetings and decisions on the docket for the day. As he slowed to a stop at an intersection, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
A semi, approaching too fast. It roared toward him. He spun the steering wheel hard, gunned the Audi. A gigantic force T-boned him from the other side and spun him around. Not the semi, he realized, dazed.
The door on the driver’s side was smashed in, immoveable. Not enough time to find his phone. He flung a communication spell.
Molly’s voice, sleepy and confused, “What… Josiah?”
He should have said it before, but he was so often his own worst enemy. He should have done so many things differently. “I love y—”
With a scream of metal, the semi hit his car from the other side. He felt a gigantic jolt, and then everything went black.
Chapter Twenty
Forty-two hours later, Molly’s plane touched down at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on a sultry, late-summer afternoon.
Thirteen weeks into her agreement with Josiah. Over four months after the death of her husband. She was fourteen weeks pregnant.
Two plainclothes detectives from the Atlanta PD met her as she deplaned. One of them, a world-weary man in a gray suit, introduced himself as Frank Williams. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Sullivan.” His tone was polite as he eyed her with a penetrating gaze. “I’ve got two uniforms appropriating your luggage from the airline. If you would kindly come with us to the police station.”
“Of course.” She kept her expression closed to scrutiny, her voice calm. “I expected as much. That’s why I called you.”
The drive to the station was riddled with pleasantries. How was her flight. Had she missed the Atlanta summertime. The air felt like pea soup today. Frank liked sweet tea on a hot day. His partner, Molly believed his name was Rubio, drove in silence. Apparently Rubio didn’t feel the need for pleasantries.
Neither did she. She stared out the window at the scroll of familiar scenery and answered questions when they were asked. At the station, they took her into an interrogation room and tucked her luggage into a corner.
Was she under arrest? No, of course not, but Frank didn’t mind if he said so himself: he thought it was exceedingly odd she would disappear for such a significant amount of time when her husband had just died and so many personal issues were unresolved.
Could she tell them what happened the Saturday night her husband died?
Would she mind going over that again?
They just needed a little clarification… Could she narrow down the timelines in her story a bit more?
She told them a deeply edited version of what had happened and stuck to it no matter how often they circled back around to question various points.
What happened the night of the doomed party. How she had emptied out the house safe when she left.
How Austin had found her at the hotel and chased her into the elevator. How she had filed a restraining order, hired Nina, found a place to stay, filed for divorce. She had given her hard copy of the Seychelles file to Nina, whose office files had burned in the fire, but she had kept a copy of all relevant documents in a zip file in her email account.
She left out any mention of Josiah completely. Funny. He was the most important part of it all.
Her composure cracked when she told them about the attack. Her memory had grown foggy on the details. (True enough.) She got away from Austin, drove her car back to the Airbnb rental, and realized she was in way over her head and needed to disappear.
True, true, and true. After spending months under Sarah’s tutelage, she knew the importance of telling at least some version of the truth. Even if they weren’t aware of it, many people had a rudimentary truthsense.
“About that,” Frank said. “How did you disappear so completely?”
At that point she stopped feeding them information. “I don’t have to explain that,” she said. “I felt like my life was in danger, so I did what I needed to in order to hide and survive.”
They didn’t like that, so they circled back around again, taking turns and questioning her for several hours. She asked