Chapter 4

With its pianist gone, Confession in the Dark had to be canceled.

An internationally known musician, home for a rare performance, abducted on the night of the show--the story went off like a bomb. Every available officer joined the search.

A day later, a man's body was found in the countryside outside Chicago.

Vivian lost her mind.

She ran dozens of red lights on the way and clipped seven cars, and half fell out of the wreck of her own when she reached the scene.

Officers recognized her and got in front of her fast.

"Professor Sullivan, you aren't the examiner on this. You can't go in."

Vivian, who never raised her voice about anything, screamed at them.

It took Tessa, arriving at a run, to get both arms around her.

"Vivian, what is wrong with you?" she shouted. "Nobody has identified that body as Noah. Why are you like this? This isn't you."

Vivian grabbed her hand. She was shaking. "Even if it's one chance in ten thousand, I have to know."

Ethan's spirit flinched again.

He watched the woman in front of him come apart at the seams.

One chance in ten thousand that it might be Noah, and she couldn't hold herself together.

His body had been laid out under her hands, and she'd felt nothing at all.

Had she really not recognized him? Or had she simply never cared enough to look?

She was about to shove past the line when her phone rang.

She answered, and her eyes went bright.

"What? You found him?"

By the time Vivian and Tessa reached the hospital, Noah had finished his statement and his examination.

"Mr. Shaw isn't hurt," an officer explained. "He's shaken up, that's all. The kidnapper was gone before we got there. Based on what we have, we're looking at an obsessive fan."

Tessa frowned. "How does a fan get backstage?"

"He didn't. I went outside on my own."

It was Noah, from the bed. He was pale, and his voice wasn't steady.

"I got a text from my brother saying he'd meet me in the underground garage. So I went down, and then--"

"Ethan?" Tessa said, before she could think better of it. "Wait. He couldn't still be angry enough about all that to hire someone--"

"That's impossible."

Vivian cut her off, hard.

Tessa stopped, remembering a beat too late exactly who Ethan was to her, and said nothing more.

But Vivian's face had gone dark.

Ethan's face surfaced in her mind, and with it something she hadn't let herself notice.

She hadn't seen her husband in nearly a month.

On the phone she'd said things she had never said to him in her life, and he still hadn't come.

There was a time when one call, one sentence from her, would put him in front of her no matter how far away he'd started.

The wrongness of it set something crawling under her skin. She pulled out her phone.

"I'll get Ethan here and we'll ask him ourselves."

On the bed, something went across Noah's face.

"Wait--"

He reached out, but he was too slow. Vivian had already dialed.

And a familiar ringtone started playing somewhere inside the hospital room.