All Chapters of My Husband Married Me For Revenge : Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

Reid's POVThe handle turned without a sound.Someone had oiled it. I noticed that before I noticed anything else, the way you notice a smell. The hinges moved like they'd been used last week, and the panel swung inward on a draft of air that was cleaner than anything else in the cellar."Stay behind me," I said."No," Audrey said, and came up on my shoulder with the phone light. "But I'll keep it low."It wasn't a passage. It was a room. About the size of a pantry, brick on three sides, with a low ceiling I had to duck under. A folding table. One kitchen chair. A lamp with a cracked shade, unplugged, its cord running to a car battery on the floor. A thermos on the table, open, still warm when I put my hand near it. Beside it, a small black recorder with a cassette in it.And shelves. Two of them, floor to ceiling, packed with cassette tapes in plastic cases."Reid," Audrey said quietly.I picked one up. The label was handwritten, blue ink, a hand I'd have known anywhere because I'd s

Chapter 115Audrey’s POVFor three seconds, nobody moved.The clock stood at the end of the hall, its glass reflecting the light from the study. The pendulum hung motionless. Both hands pointed to twelve past four.I looked at the paper again.The seven was crossed.“Don't touch anything,” Reid said.Thane stopped halfway down the hall. “What is it?”Reid didn't answer. He was staring at the clock with an expression I couldn't read.I stepped closer to the study doorway.“Thane, when you found the note, did you read it here?”“Yes.”“Did you touch it?”“I picked it up. I read it, then put it back exactly where I found it.”“Exactly?”His face tightened. “Audrey, I know how to preserve a scene.”“I wasn't questioning your competence. I was asking whether you moved anything else.”“No.”“Did you notice the clock?”He looked toward the hall.For a moment, I watched the answer arrive on his face before he spoke.“It was running.”“When?”“When I came out of the study to look for my father

Audrey's POV Reid didn't move. I watched his face the way you watch a glass at the edge of a table. Nothing spilled. Nothing broke. But I knew exactly how close it was. "Put it on speaker," I said. He didn't answer. "Reid." He lowered the phone from his ear and pressed the screen. The flat voice came into the hall as if it had been standing there all along. "There you are, Mrs. Calloway." "Don't call me that," I said. "Would you prefer Whitmore?" "I'd prefer you tell us where Sterling is." "He's comfortable." Reid's jaw tightened. "Put him on." "I thought you wanted to know which one you were talking to." "I want my father." "Of course you do." A pause. Then a sound came down the line, muffled and far away. A cough. A man clearing his throat the way old men do when they've been quiet too long. "Reid," a voice said. Weak. Close to the phone, but not close enough. "Don't come to the bank." Reid took half a step forward, as if he could reach into the speaker. "Dad?" "D

Audrey's POVReid drove. I took the front seat, and my father asked to sit behind us, where he could see the backs of our heads and neither of our faces.Before we left the house I had stopped at the hall table. The steel key was still sitting beside the lamp. I picked it up and held it out to Reid. He took it without looking at it and put it back inside his coat.The dash said 4:19. Two hours and forty-one minutes."The east gym," I said."Yes," my father said."That's the building. The lockers.""That's the building." He was quiet for a block. "I haven't been inside it since.""Thirty-four years," Reid said.Nobody answered that.The streets were empty and wet. Every light we passed turned green for us, which felt like somebody's idea of a joke. Reid's phone buzzed in the cup holder and I read it for him. Daniels had sent the permit. The contractor was a demolition outfit on the north side. The crew lead was a man named Pruitt, and his phone was off until six."Can the permit be pul

Audrey's POVReid's shoulder was in front of my face. I could see the back of his neck and the tire iron held low, the way you hold something you've never had to use."Reid," I said."Stay behind me.""I am behind you.""Further."Nobody moved. The dust hung in the flashlight beam and didn't settle. Thane's breathing had gone shallow and fast. On the floor, Sterling had stopped smiling at nothing. He turned his head toward the bleachers like a man hearing his name called from another room.Something shifted back there. Not a footstep. Cloth on wood."Come out," Reid said. His voice was flat. It was the voice he used in boardrooms when someone had already lost and didn't know it.No answer."I won't ask twice.""You don't have to," a man said.It came from the dark behind the folded bleachers, and I knew the voice before I understood why. I had heard it forty minutes ago on a speaker in a study with a lamp burning. Flat. Patient. Pleasant, almost.Then it changed. Between one word and