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CHAPTER EIGHT

CELINE

As I’m driving home from Tate’s office, the screen on the car lights up with an incoming call from a number I recognize from my numerous attempts to call it today. I lean forward and tap the green button to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Mrs. Thompson?” The detective’s monotonous voice fills the line.

I swallow the lump in my throat, realizing this might be one of the last times I’m called Mrs. , but I can’t allow myself to think like that. “Um, yes. It is.”

“Mrs. Thompson, this is Detective Monroe with the Oakton County Police Department. I received your messages and am sorry it’s taken this long to get back with you, but I’m calling you with an update on your husband’s case.”

My heart stalls as I wait to hear what he’s going to say. Have they found him? Do they know what happened to him? Did he run away and leave me? Is he hurt? Is he dead?

I want to ask all of this, but instead, my tongue has turned to cotton, and I can’t seem to force my mouth to work at all. Not a sound comes out of my throat, no matter how hard I try.

“We have been able to confirm the identity of the man who was in your husband’s vehicle during the crash yesterday,” he says.

I take a sharp inhalation of breath. “You have?”

“Does the name Dakota Miller sound familiar to you?”

I rack my brain but come up empty. Finally, thankfully, my voice comes back to me. “No, I don’t…I mean, I don’t think so.”

I can hear him shuffling papers over the line. “Did your husband ever talk about his time at Highland University?”

The question confuses and shocks me in equal measure. “Not…really. It was a long time ago. Why?”

“We’ve been able to connect your husband with Mr. Miller through their university. We’ve just spoken to Mr. Miller’s next of kin, his wife, who is out of town on a business trip and believed her husband was at work today. When we asked her about your husband or why they might be in contact, why he would be in your husband’s vehicle, she couldn’t tell us. She said she’d never heard Dakota mention Tate’s name, but we did find out that he’s also an alumnus of Highland and that he and your husband attended during the same years. It seems that he and your husband were classmates, and though we still can’t prove it, between the matching tattoos, the fact that he was in your husband’s car with his phone and ID, and the connection to Highland, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny the likelihood that they knew each other.”

I swallow. “What does any of that have to do with why he was driving Tate’s car yesterday? Even if they knew each other in college, they weren’t still in contact. I’d know if they were. Tate talks to me. He tells me everything.” Almost everything, apparently. “Did he…I mean, they didn’t work together, right? No. I’d know if they did.” I answer the question before he has the chance. “Are you any closer to finding Tate? Do you have any new leads aside from this man’s name? I’m sorry I’ve called so much, I just feel like I’m not being told anything. Not that it’s your fault, it’s just…” I heave a sigh, not bothering to finish the thought. Thankfully, he steps in without waiting.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have anything concrete to report just yet, but we’re actively following up on a few leads and will be in touch as soon as we can. In the meantime, if you remember anything your husband might’ve mentioned to you about his time in college, particularly anything that relates to Dakota Miller, please give me a call back at this number so we can discuss it.”

“Okay, sure. I will.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Thompson. We’ll be in touch, okay?”

I nod, though he can’t see me, and end the call, my mind spinning. What in the world was my husband’s old college buddy doing driving Tate’s car? How did he manage to have a wreck? And where is Tate?

When I get home, the first thing I do is head to our bedroom and pull out Tate’s laptop. His password here is the same as it’s always been—our anniversary.

I type it in and unlock the screen, trying to decide where to go first. I open his email account and search for the name the detective gave me: Dakota Miller.

To my surprise—it almost feels too easy—there are seventeen results for Dakota Miller in my husband’s inbox, spanning back over the last three years, with two of them just before Tate’s disappearance.

Most of them are simple and easily explainable—an invitation to an alumni game, a wedding invitation for a classmate.

What’s strange is that Tate hasn’t replied to a single email from what I can tell, though Dakota kept sending them.

The most recent emails are a bit more confusing. Five days before Tate went missing, Dakota emailed him with a single question mark. Two days before Tate disappeared, he sent an address without an explanation.

Interest piqued, I copy the address and paste it into the internet search bar, but I find that it’s the address of an insurance firm a town away. Nelson Insurance Company. Could this be related to work somehow? Was that why Dakota and Tate were in touch again? Maybe it is somehow related to the bad appraisal Tate told me about before.

If that was even true.

I hate that it’s come to this. That I’m now having to question everything Tate has ever told me. We were never that couple. We trusted each other, had faith in each other. Before the text I confronted him about last week, I can count the number of times I questioned him about anything on less than one hand. He never gave me any reason to doubt him. Or maybe I just saw what I wanted to see. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough. Have I just been foolish all this time?

I know for certain now that he was lying about more than I knew. That he took a vacation and lied to me about where he was going every day. I feel so stupid. I must look so stupid. I rarely questioned anything, and Tate took advantage of that.

I scroll back through his emails and scour each line for anything that might stand out, but there’s nothing. Who was this man? Why wasn’t Tate responding to him?

If he was simply just an old classmate that Tate had no interest in speaking to, why was he in my husband’s car? It’s another piece to the puzzle, yet I can’t seem to place it. It doesn’t seem to fit anywhere inside this mosaic of solutionless clues.

I click on one of the invitations to an alumni game and realize Tate was CC’d to the email with two other guys. It’s no surprise to me that I don’t recognize either of these names any more than Dakota’s. Aaron Bond and Bradley Jennings.

Opening up my browser again, I search Aaron’s name first.

It takes seconds for the results to load, and when they do, my heart stalls. Aaron Bond works for Nelson Insurance Company. What are the odds this isn’t all related somehow?

Without second-guessing myself, I grab my phone and dial the number listed on the website.

“Nelson Insurance, Kristen speaking. How can I help you?”

“Hi, Kristen. I was hoping to speak with Aaron Bond, if he’s in.”

“Sure,” she chirps happily. “Can I tell him who’s calling?”

Shoot. I can’t be honest here. Somehow, I just know I can’t. “Um, Melinda Jones,” I say, spouting off the first fake name I can concoct.

“Okay, please hold, Ms. Jones.”

Within a few seconds, I hear the trill sound of a phone ringing and then, “Nelson Insurance, thanks for holding. This is Aaron.”

“Hi, Aaron.” I take a deep breath. “This is Celine Thompson. You don’t know me, but I believe you know my husband, Tate?—”

“I don’t want anything to do with this.” His warm tone turns cold in an instant.

“Anything to do with what? I’m sorry, my husband is missing, and I thought?—”

“Please don’t call here again,” he says firmly. “Don’t contact me.”

“But—”

The line goes dead before I can utter another word. What in the world was that about? Chills line my skin as I think back over the way he spoke to me. Something upset him. I upset him, but why? And what did he mean about not wanting anything to do with it?

Hoping I’ll have better luck with the second name, I type it into the browser.

Bradley Jennings.

The first result holds answers, just not ones I was hoping for. It’s yet another mysterious piece of this unending puzzle. One that just got a lot more serious, too.

Because Bradley Jennings, just like Dakota Miller, and potentially just like Tate, is dead. Stranger still, he died a week ago today.