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T he words echo in my head.

The woman sitting in front of me doesn’t look flustered or upset. She’s perfectly calm and put together, making me even more interested in what she has to say.

“All right,” I say. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’ve been following this case really closely and watching all of the news coverage of his wife’s murder. He’s being presented as this devastated widow grieving the loss of his beloved wife. And then the neighbor said that Sabrina Ward was pregnant when she was killed and how that made the whole situation so much sadder because they would have made such a beautiful family,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “You have reason to believe that isn’t true?”

“Very much so,” she says.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I was sleeping with him. And I’m probably not the only one,” Caroline says.

“You were having an affair with Ander Ward?” I ask.

“I preferred not to call it an affair. I think of an affair as a relationship that involves feelings and a deeper connection. That’s not what was going on between us. It was sex, plain and simple. But that’s not the most important part. Ander and I met on Secret Keepers,” she says.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“It’s a website designed to help married people who are looking for something casual with other people to find each other and connect,” she says.

I take a second to let that sink in, churning over every interaction I’ve had with Ander in my head and seeing every second of it differently now.

“Ander Ward was on an adultery site?” I ask.

“Was and very likely still is.” She leans toward me. “Look, I’m a married woman. I’ve been with my husband for almost twenty years. We have two teenage children. I have a career. A big life. It isn’t like I just woke up one day and decided I was going to start cheating on my husband. Whatever you might think of me or what I’m doing, I do love him. I want to be married to him. But things just started getting extremely predictable and routine.

“Everything in our life was prescribed down to the minute, it felt like. What we ate. Where we spent our leisure time. The shows we watched in the evening together. Everything. My husband is perfectly fine with that. He likes the routine and feeling like everything is settled. We talked about it over and over, and he always said that’s just what being grown-up and married is all about. You figure out what works for you, and you stick with it.

“That just wasn’t enough for me. I needed more excitement and adventure in my life. I needed to feel that thrill of being desired. Really desired. I didn’t need more romance or affection. My husband is a very caring man who makes sure I know he loves me. He’s just not been willing to try anything new or go outside of our little rhythm that we’ve established. I never thought about starting up a relationship with anyone else. It’s not like I have flings with people at work or anything like that. But I heard about Secret Keepers, and it stuck with me. I didn’t just jump on it. It took a few months for me to even look at it and then even longer for me to make a profile. I just wanted to get back that feeling of being really alive.”

“How long after you joined did you meet Ander Ward?” I ask.

“He was one of the first connections I made. I saw his picture and thought he was really attractive, so I sent him a connection request, and he accepted it. We started talking on the site, and it all went from there,” she says. “I didn’t come to tell you this just because he was cheating on his wife. It’s more than that. The site has you fill out a questionnaire with all kinds of details about who you are, your lifestyle, what you’re looking for. That kind of thing. It just ensures you connect with other like-minded people and minimizes the chances of things going wrong.”

“And I imagine the risk of that is very high with something like that,” I say.

Caroline nods. “That’s part of the reason I was so drawn to the idea of a site specifically dedicated to married people wanting discreet, casual connections. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories of people starting affairs with people they’ve met in bars or other places online turning into obsessive stalker situations because one person ends up wanting much more than the other. I didn’t want anything to do with that.

“The site makes sure that everything is laid out clearly, so you know what you’re signing yourself up for when you make connections with people. Ander’s profile described him being bored in his marriage and feeling trapped, like he had gotten himself tangled up in a net when he was too young to recognize it and now can’t cut himself out of it. And he was extremely blunt and upfront with the fact that he does not and will not ever want children. That was actually something we talked about when we first started communicating. He said he couldn’t fathom why anyone would want children, and it was something he and his wife agreed on before they got married. They weren’t ever going to have them.”

“But he never did anything about it? He never got a vasectomy to make sure?” I ask.

“He said he wasn’t interested in getting surgery. It was too invasive, and he was worried about the potential side effects. So it was all on his wife. She had an IUD. There’s no way he’s in deep mourning for a possible baby,” she says.

I’m stunned by the revelations and feel a hot ball of anger building in my belly.

“When was the last time you met up with Ander?” I ask.

“It was several weeks ago,” she says. “We’d kind of cooled things off. It wasn’t as exciting anymore.”

“Did it end on a negative note?” I ask.

“Not at all. Again, we didn’t have feelings for each other. There was nothing deep or meaningful about what was going on between us. We liked talking to each other, met up sometimes for sex, and then it was done. It’s that simple,” she says.

“Would you be willing to show me the communication between the two of you on the site?” I ask.

“Sure,” she says. “I can pull it up on my tablet.”

It takes her a few seconds to get the site open, then she turns the screen toward me. I’m faced with a message thread between her and Ander that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. Within the first couple of exchanges between the two, the intention is obvious, and there’s no question as the communication continues about what is going on. Bold details about their liaisons lay bare a torrid relationship happening completely unbeknownst to the unsuspecting Sabrina Ward.

“Can you show me his profile?” I ask after getting my fill of the salacious conversation.

She clicks a few commands, and the screen fills with several images of Ander as well as a descriptive bio and the answers to several prying questions. If it wasn’t for the fact that this woman had met up with Ander in person on multiple occasions, I would be tempted to think that this was all crafted by someone else. It’s so completely against everything that Ander presented himself as being.

“I really appreciate you coming forward with this,” I tell Caroline.

We stand up, and she shakes my hand again.

She lets out a heavy sigh. “I guess it’s time to go home and talk to my husband,” she says. “I don’t want him to find out about this for the first time on the news.”

“I’m going to do my best to keep it discreet for as long as possible,” I tell her. “But it’s a good idea to tell him. Thank you again.”

She leaves, and Detective Fuller comes into the room. The look in his eyes tells me he was watching the entire interaction on the feed from the camera mounted in the corner of the room.

“Did she just tell you that she’s been sleeping with Ander Ward, the pious security guard wracked with grief over the loss of his pregnant wife?” he asks.

“That would be what she said,” I tell him. “And by the messages I just read between them, she’s not exaggerating. I think I need to go have a chat with him.”

“I wanted to let you know that I put in a request for Marshall Powell’s phone records. They said we should be getting them possibly tomorrow.”

“Great, thank you,” I say.

I call Ander from the car.

“I need to talk to you,” I tell him. “Are you still at the memorial?”

“No, I’m at my house. What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Ander’s eyebrows are knit together, his expression concerned, when he opens the door to me at his house. There’s still a lingering smell of industrial-strength cleaners in the air, and I can see the damage to the paint on the wall where the permanent marker was scrubbed away. We walk into the living room where I sat with him and Sabrina as I interviewed them about Gideon, and I feel a tightness in my chest.

“Do you want to sit down?” he asks.

“Not particularly,” I say. “When were you planning on starting to be honest with me?”

He looks confused as he lowers himself into his chair. “What do you mean? I have been honest with you.”

“No, you haven’t. Do the words ‘Secret Keepers’ mean anything to you?” I ask.

He looks stunned for a second, then his head drops into his hands. “Shit.”

“Strong word for someone so committed to the ministry and the way of the truth,” I say. “Of course, that’s nothing compared to what was going on through that website, is it? And before you try to twist and concoct anything, I have already seen it and know the details. So please don’t waste my time by pretending to not know what I’m talking about.”

Ander lifts his head. “I’m not going to. I’m just so embarrassed.”

“I’m sure you are. And you should be. But that’s really not what you should be worried about right now. Your wife, who was carrying your child, was murdered, and you’ve been maintaining a profile talking about how trapped you felt in your marriage to her and that you never wanted children. That you agreed to that before you got married and couldn’t even imagine ever wanting them. Do you understand how that looks?” I ask.

His face goes red, and he jumps to his feet.

“Agent Griffin, I admit I was doing something horrible. I went behind my wife’s back, and I sinned against her. I broke my marriage vows and violated the trust that she put in me from the day we met. I can’t deny that, and I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life. But I didn’t know she was pregnant until I saw it on the news. She must have told Annette, but she never told me. I said things on that site that I am not proud of, and I can’t change them, but you can’t possibly think that I killed Sabrina. I would never be able to do something like that.

“I was on that site for entertainment. It was a wrong decision, and I own that. We got into a slump, and I just wanted to feel that rush again. But even if you don’t believe me about that, you have to remember that I was at my mother’s house when she was killed. There are probably a dozen police officers, firefighters, and neighbors who can tell you that. I was unfaithful to my wife, but I didn’t murder her. I would have no reason to.”