Page 11 of Over Her Dead Body

The thought lasts three seconds.

Then I look at the door.

No.

I know my husband.

I’m not crazy. I’m stalling.

“Here is fine,” I say.

I pay him. I get out. I stand on the street holding my carry-on and a phone containing eleven unanswered messages from the woman currently holding my career together by a thread.

The cab pulls away behind me. I glance back before I can stop myself, one hand lifting, as though I might call back the last clean exit I had. The brake lights slide around the corner and disappear.

Fine, then.

I should find a hotel. I should call Margot. I should get back to the airport before Margot runs out of plausible lies about why I’m not there. I should do almost anything other than stand outside my dead husband’s building waiting for him to admit he isn’t dead.

The list of all the things I should do is getting rather long when a voice behind me says, “Are you following me?”

CHAPTER 6

EMMA

Everything stops.

Again.

I turn around.

He is standing ten feet behind me. No rolling bag. No jacket. He went inside, put his things down, and came back out, which means he saw me get out of the cab and chose not to stay safely behind a locked door.

Up close, the differences are easier to see. The grey at his temples. The harder line of his mouth. Ten years sitting where ten years should.

The voice is the same.

Older. Rougher at the edges. But his.

“You’re following me,” he says.

“No.”

He looks at my carry-on. Then at the corner where my cab disappeared. “You’re not very good at this.”

“You’re supposed to be dead.”

Nothing moves in his face. Not surprise. Not recognition. Not the smallest fracture in his composure.

He studies me as though he is trying to decide what kind of problem I am. His expression softens a moment later, once he has apparently settled on one.

“I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

He lowers his voice, giving me the courtesy of not announcing my apparent breakdown to the entire street.

“I’m Martin. Martin Hale.”

“No.”