The Neighbor - Lisa Gardner [135]
I could’ve arranged for a “spa” night. But again, I’d never told Wayne of my unusual marital arrangement, nor did I mention it now. Spa nights were for strangers. And this wouldn’t be with a stranger. This would be different.
So we went round and round. E-mailing and texting, but mostly anticipating our chaste Thursday night walks around the South Boston Middle School, where this one man gazed at me with unrelenting hunger, wanting, needing, demanding …
And I let him.
The second week in February, Jason surprised me. School vacation week was coming up and he announced it was time for the family to go on vacation. I was standing at the stove at the time, browning hamburger. I was probably thinking about Wayne, because I had a smile on my face. Jason’s announcement, however, jarred me back to reality.
“Yippee!” Ree squealed, sitting at the kitchen counter. “Family vacation!”
I shot Ree a dry look, because we’d never gone on family vacation, so how would she know it was such a good thing?
Jason wasn’t looking at our daughter, however. He was regarding me, his expression contemplative, waiting. He was up to something.
“Where would we go?” I asked lightly, returning to the frying pan.
“Boston.”
“We live in Boston.”
“I know. I thought we’d start small. I got us a hotel room downtown. A swimming pool, atrium, all sorts of fun stuff. We can be tourists in our own town for a few days.”
“You already booked it? Chose a hotel and everything?”
He nodded, still staring at me. “I thought we could use some time together,” he said, his face inscrutable. “I thought it would be good for us.”
I poured in the Hamburger Helper seasoning packet. A family vacation. What could I say?
I gave Wayne the news by e-mail. He didn’t reply for two days. When he did, he wrote one line: Do you think it’s safe?
That jarred me. Why wouldn’t I be safe with Jason? Then I remembered the photo again, and the research I was supposed to be doing with the family computer, except I’d gotten so caught up in flirting with Ethan’s uncle, I’d forgotten Wayne was supposed to be offering me expertise instead.
We have a four-year-old chaperone, I wrote back at last. What could go wrong?
But I could tell Wayne didn’t approve, because the text messages dropped off. He was jealous, I realized, and was naive enough to be flattered.
Sunday night, I sent him a cell phone photo of Ree, dressed in a hot pink bathing suit with a purple snorkel, blue face mask, and two oversized blue flippers. Chaperone prepares for duty, I wrote, and included a second photo of Ree’s suitcase overflowing with the approximately five hundred things she believed she needed for a four-night hotel stay.
Wayne didn’t write back. So I cleared the inboxes of my cell phone, purged my AOL account, and prepared for four days of family vacation.
My husband will never hurt me, I thought I guess right up until that moment, I didn’t realize how much both of us were living a lie.
| CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO |
D.D. was on a roll. She could feel it. First the conversation with Wayne Reynolds, then the interview with Maxwell Black. The investigation was coming together, key pieces of the puzzle starting to fall into place.
The moment they were done talking to Sandy’s father, D.D. had blasted Jason Jones’s photo over to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, as well as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. She was getting a solid profile in place now—known aliases, possible geographic connections, key financial information, and relevant dates. Jason had left a heavy paper trail from the past five years, after he disappeared from the radar screen. Now they were getting the sliver of insights necessary to crack his full identity wide open, including tracing his offshore funds.
At this point, D.D. was willing to bet that some other law enforcement agency in some