Chapter 2 - THE MAN WHO DIDN’T EXISTThe emergency room ceiling had forty-two holes in one acoustic tile.
I counted them repeatedly because counting was easier than thinking about the police officer’s words.
Daniel Reed has been dead for eleven years.
My obstetrician, Dr. Hannah Morris, moved the fetal monitor across my stomach while Sophie’s heartbeat filled the room.
Fast.
Steady.
Beautiful.
“One hundred forty-eight,” she said.
I closed my eyes.
“She’s okay?”
“She looks good right now.”
“Right now?”
“You experienced abdominal trauma, Claire. We’re keeping you overnight for monitoring.”
My sister Rachel sat beside the bed.
She had arrived twenty-five minutes after the ambulance and had not stopped trembling.
Unlike me, Rachel expressed fear as anger.
“I’m going to kill him.”
“Please don’t say that in a hospital.”
“I’m serious.”
“That makes it worse.”
“He shoved his pregnant wife into a metal counter.”
“I know.”
“You’re eight months pregnant.”
“I know.”
“He could have killed both of you.”
“I knew that too.
I just hadn’t allowed myself to say it.
Rachel reached for my hand.
Her anger disappeared.
“How long?”
I looked away.
“How long has he been hurting you?”
“He hasn’t…”
The lie died before I finished it.
Rachel waited.
“Not like today,” I whispered.
Her eyes filled.
“Claire.”
“He’d grab me sometimes. Punch walls. Throw things.”
“Did he hit you?”
“Once.”
She covered her mouth.
“Twice.”
“Oh, God.”
“I thought it was getting better.”
Rachel stood and walked toward the window.
For years she had disliked Daniel. She called him controlling. Arrogant. Too interested in knowing where I was every minute.
I had defended him.
He worries because he loves me.
He handles the money because he’s better with finances.
He doesn’t like you because you’re hard on him.
Every excuse sounded ridiculous now.
A knock came at the door.
Two detectives entered.
The first introduced herself as Detective Lena Ortiz.
The second was Detective Marcus Hale.
Ortiz was around forty, composed and observant. Hale was older, perhaps fifty-five, with tired eyes.
“Mrs. Reed?”
“Yes.”
“Can we ask you some questions?”
My stomach tightened.
“About Daniel?”
Ortiz pulled up a chair.
“About whoever your husband actually is.”
Rachel turned from the window.
“What does that mean?”
Hale opened a folder.
“The driver’s license your husband was carrying is fraudulent.”
I swallowed.
“He’s had that license for years.”
“Seven years, according to state records,” Hale said. “The Social Security number attached to Daniel Reed belonged to a man from Oregon who died in a boating accident eleven years ago.”
My skin prickled.
“Then who is my husband?”
“We’re working on that.”
Ortiz studied me.
“How did you meet?”
“At a restaurant in Chicago. I was thirty.”
“What did he tell you about his family?”
“That both parents were dead.”
“Siblings?”
“No.”
“Childhood?”
“He grew up outside Boise.”
“Schools?”
I thought.
“He didn’t talk about school much.”
“Old friends?”
“He said he moved around.”
Each answer revealed another empty space I had never questioned.
Daniel knew everything about me.
My childhood home.
My first boyfriend.
My father’s heart attack.
My grandmother’s peach cobbler.
But when I tried remembering specific stories from Daniel’s life, I found fog.
No yearbooks.
No childhood photographs except one blurry picture of a boy beside a lake.
No cousins.
No school reunions.
No hometown visits.
I had married a biography made of shadows.
Ortiz continued.
“Did he ever use another name?”
“No.”
“Have multiple phones?”
“One for work.”
“Did you ever see the work phone?”
“Sometimes.”
“Employer?”
“Northwest Strategic Logistics.”
The detectives exchanged a look.
“What?”
Hale closed the folder.
“That company doesn’t appear to exist.”
I stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
“He said he was a regional operations consultant?”
“Yes.”
“Traveling frequently?”
“Usually two or three days every month.”
Rachel turned sharply.
“Where was he going?”
“Phoenix. Denver. Dallas.”
Hale said nothing.
That silence frightened me.
“What did he do?”
Ortiz leaned forward.
“We don’t know yet.”
My heartbeat accelerated on the monitor clipped to my finger.
“Why was there a federal warrant?”
“That’s where things become complicated.”
She removed a printed photograph.
A younger man stared back at me.
Shorter hair.
No beard.
But the eyes were unmistakable.
Daniel.
Except the caption underneath read:
MATTHEW JOSEPH VANCE.
“Who is that?”
Ortiz answered quietly.
“We believe that’s your husband.”
The date beside the picture was twelve years earlier.
He had been twenty-nine.
“What happened?”
“He was questioned in connection with a financial fraud investigation in Nevada.”
“Questioned?”
“He disappeared before authorities could arrest him.”
I stared at the picture.
“For fraud?”
Hale hesitated.
“Initially.”
“Initially?”
Ortiz gave him a look, but I caught it.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Hale sighed.
“There was a woman.”
Rachel came closer.
“What woman?”
“His fiancée.”
My chest tightened.
“What about her?”
“She disappeared three days before Vance did.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“No.”
“They never found her.”
“No.”
“Claire—”
“You’re saying Daniel killed somebody?”
“We’re not saying that.”
Rachel’s voice sharpened.
“You’re implying it.”
Ortiz remained calm.
“We’re telling you Matthew Vance was a person of interest in the disappearance of twenty-seven-year-old Allison Grant.”
I stared down at my wedding ring.
Five years.
I had worn it for five years.
I suddenly wanted it off.
My fingers had swollen during pregnancy, but I twisted until the metal scraped painfully over my knuckle.
Rachel helped.
The ring came free.
I placed it on the table.
A nurse appeared in the doorway.
“Sorry to interrupt, but Mrs. Reed needs rest.”
The detectives stood.
Ortiz handed me a card.
“One more question.”
I looked at her.
“Did your husband know you inherited money?”
My stomach dropped.
Rachel froze.
My grandfather had left me $680,000 eighteen months earlier.
Daniel handled the investment account.
“Yes.”
“How much access did he have?”
“Complete access.”
Ortiz and Hale exchanged another look.
I knew before either spoke.
“Claire,” Ortiz said, “we need you to contact your bank immediately.”
Rachel pulled out her phone.
I called.
After security questions, the representative transferred me to private banking.
Seven minutes later, a man named Aaron told me my primary investment account contained $18,406.
I stopped breathing.
“That can’t be right.”
Rachel stared at me.
“How much?”
I held up a finger.
“There should be over six hundred thousand dollars.”
Silence.
Then keyboard clicking.
“Mrs. Reed,” Aaron said carefully, “there have been multiple transfers.”
“When?”
“Over the past fourteen months.”
“To where?”
“Several external accounts.”
“Under whose name?”
“I’m not authorized to—”
“It’s my money!”
The fetal monitor accelerated.
The nurse came toward me.
“Claire, breathe.”
I couldn’t.
Because suddenly the fourteen-dollar blanket made sense.
It was never about fourteen dollars.
Daniel hadn’t become angry because we couldn’t afford it.
He’d become angry because, for months, he had been hiding the fact that we could barely afford anything at all.
My husband hadn’t only stolen someone else’s identity.
May you like
He had stolen my inheritance.
And while I lay in a hospital bed protecting his unborn daughter from the damage he had caused, police officers were beginning to discover where he had sent every dollar.
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