After the meal, I suddenly felt very unwell, and when my husband wrapped an arm around me and whispered, “Hang in there, sweetheart, I’ll take you to the hospital,” I still believed I was safest with the man who had just poisoned me.
Chapter 1
My name is Claire Dawson. I was thirty-six that night, married eleven years, and less than an hour earlier I had been sitting across from my husband, Evan, eating what he called our reconciliation dinner. By the time I carried my plate to the kitchen, a vicious cramp folded me against the counter.
My throat burned. My fingers trembled so badly that the water glass in my hand knocked repeatedly against the sink.
“Evan.”
He appeared beside me almost instantly.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Something’s wrong.”
He touched my forehead and slipped his arm around my waist.
“Easy. I’ve got you.”
His voice was so gentle that I surrendered my weight to him.
“We’re going to St. Catherine’s,” he said. “Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
He helped me into the passenger seat of his SUV. When I reached for my phone, he took it from my hand.
“I’ll call the ER and tell them we’re coming.”
I nodded.
St. Catherine’s Medical Center was twelve minutes from our house outside Portland. I had driven there dozens of times to visit patients from my healthcare network.
Even through the nausea, I knew the route.
Evan missed the first turn.
“Hospital’s back there.”
“Road work.”
“There wasn’t any this morning.”
“They started this afternoon.”
His hands tightened around the steering wheel.
I leaned my head against the window.
We passed another intersection that could have returned us toward town.
Then another.
The houses thinned out.
Streetlights disappeared.
“Evan.”
He didn’t answer.
My heart began pounding for an entirely different reason.
The pavement narrowed between tall Douglas firs. Beyond the headlights, everything was black.
“Where are we going?”
“Just sit back.”
“Turn around.”
He kept driving.
I tried to reach for my phone.
It was beside his thigh.
“Evan, give me my phone.”
“No.”
One word.
Flat.
That was when I understood the concerned husband was gone.
The SUV turned onto an unpaved service road. A weathered sign flashed past in the headlights.
HOLLOW CREEK ACCESS ROAD.
I knew the area. Timber property, undeveloped land, almost no nighttime traffic.
Three weeks earlier, I might have explained it away.
That night, I slipped two fingers beneath my left sleeve.
My sister Natalie had given me a cellular safety watch after an argument with Evan that frightened her more than it frightened me. Holding its side control long enough was supposed to transmit my location and open an emergency connection without making an obvious sound.
I pressed it.
Nothing happened.
No vibration.
No light.
My fingers were already going numb.
Maybe I’d missed the button.
Maybe the signal couldn’t reach us.
Evan drove another half mile, then stopped.
The engine remained running.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then he stared through the windshield and exhaled as if some exhausting task had finally ended.
“I put something in your dinner.”
I thought I had misunderstood.
“What?”
He turned toward me.
“You have maybe thirty minutes.”
My stomach clenched violently.
I searched his face for a smile, a twitch, anything suggesting a monstrous joke.
There was nothing.
“Evan…”
“You should’ve left the accounts alone.”
My breathing became shallow.
“The accounts?”
“You couldn’t stop digging.”
“They’re our accounts.”
“They were my business.”
“You forged my signature.”
His expression hardened.
“And you were going to destroy everything over it.”
I pulled weakly at the door handle.
My hand slipped.
Evan leaned across me and opened the passenger door.
Cold air rushed inside.
“Get out.”
“Please take me to the hospital.”
“Get out, Claire.”
“Evan, please.”
Eleven years of marriage flashed through my mind in useless fragments. His proposal beside the Columbia River. Our first apartment. The morning my father died and Evan held me until sunrise. Christmases. Anniversaries. Coffee in bed.
Surely a person who had done those things could not be this person.
He released my seat belt.
Then he shoved me.
I hit the dirt shoulder on my side.
Pain shot through my shoulder. Gravel cut my palm.
“Evan!”
The door slammed.
His SUV accelerated away.
I watched the red taillights disappear between the trees.
He had my phone.
He had left me miles from the hospital.
And whatever he had put in my food was already making it difficult to breathe.
I rolled onto my back.
The night above me was black except for a strip of stars between the trees.
My heartbeat felt strangely weak.
I pressed the watch again.
“Please,” I whispered.
Still nothing.
My eyelids wanted to close.
Then, beneath my sleeve, I heard a faint voice.
“Claire Dawson, if you can hear me, emergency responders have your location.”
I almost cried.
The watch had worked.
But from somewhere deeper in the woods came the sound of an engine.
And for one terrifying moment, I thought Evan had decided thirty minutes was too generous.
