Page 72 of Take Your Breath Away

“I think becoming an uncle will be kind of cool,” he said.

“I’m looking forward to being a dad.”

“I know I’ve been kind of an asshole at times,” Tyler said, “with puking on your deck and stuff, but I’ve been thinking things have been working out okay here.”

“I think so, too. It’s been a big adjustment for all of us. You know my story, what I went through when I was your age. I’ve been there, having to get used to a new place, and a lot of the time not liking it.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “But now, with what’s happened, it could all go to shit.”

“I’m hoping that won’t be the case,” I said.

“So what if, somehow, it really is her? What if the woman who came to that house is Brie? What then?”

“That seems to be the number-one question. I’m gonna try to be honest with you here, Tyler. I don’t know. This is all uncharted territory. I’m in the woods without a compass. But the last thing in the world I want to do is hurt Jayne. So I’m taking this a day at a time. Maybe this is a whole lot of fuss about nothing. Maybe that was just some woman who went to the wrong house and for whatever reason flipped out. The thing is, I don’t see how it can be Brie. It seems very highly improbable.”

My phone rang.

I pulled it out of my pocket and saw a name I was not expecting, and certainly wouldn’t have been hoping to see.

ISABEL

I tapped the screen and put the phone to my ear.

“Hello, Isabel,” I said, although as soon as I’d said her name I wondered whether it might be Norman using her phone. He had, after all, tried to reach me the night before, and I had declined the call.

But it was definitely Isabel who said, “Andrew.”

“What can I do for you?”

“My mother wants to talk to you about something.”

“About what.”

There was a pause, followed by, “Brie came to visit her this morning.”

Twenty-Eight

When Hannah Brown opened her eyes and rolled over, she was expecting to find her partner next to her. But the covers were pulled back, the other half of the king-sized mattress empty.

They often slept in on Sunday mornings, but evidently not today. Hannah swung her legs down to the floor, tucked her feet into a pair of furry Ugg slippers, and walked down the hall to the bathroom.

No one there.

She went downstairs to the kitchen, and it was there that she found Marissa Hardy, perched on a stool, reading something on an iPad that she’d propped up on a stand.

“It’s Sunday,” Hannah said. “What the hell are you doing up so early?”

“Did you know that Agatha Christie once vanished for ten days?” Hardy said, looking up.

“What?”

“The mystery writer. She went missing for ten days, and finally showed up at a health spa, and she would never say where she’d been or what she’d been doing for that period of time.”

“Oh.”

“Of course, ten days is not six years.”

Hannah blinked a couple of times. “No, it certainly isn’t. It’s shorter.”