The Discovery
My phone vibrated in my palm, the sudden noise making me gasp. It was an unknown number.
A text message.
They know the trooper flagged her. The cruiser’s GPS just went dark. He’s dead, David. You have less than ten minutes before cleanup arrives. Look in the lining of her cosmetics bag. The black leather one.
My phone screen went black. I tried to reply, but the message vanished, deleting itself from my device via a remote wipe protocol.
The black leather cosmetics bag. She had brought it upstairs to the master bathroom when we first arrived.
Moving like a ghost, I unlocked the guest room door and slipped out into the dimly lit hallway. The house was dead quiet now. The television downstairs had been turned off.
I glided into the master bathroom. The air still smelled faintly of her lavender perfume. There it was, sitting on the marble countertop—the black Chanel cosmetics bag I bought her for her birthday two years ago.
My hands were sweating so much I could barely pull the zipper down. I dumped the contents onto a plush bath towel—lipsticks, foundation, moisturizers, tweezers. Nothing.
I felt the lining. It felt thick. Too thick.
