Chapter 5 - The Web of Lies
We walked out of the bathroom with our heads held high.
I watched Chloe perform. It was an astonishing display of courage. She walked into the sunlit garden, smiled at our cousins, accepted a small box of baby booties from her aunt, and leaned into Spencer’s side when he put his arm around her waist.
Spencer looked down at her, his posture relaxing fractionally. “Feeling better?”
“Much better,” Chloe said softly, looking up at him with wide, trusting eyes. “You were right, babe. The crowd is overwhelming. Let’s pack up our gifts and head home.”
Spencer’s eyes gleamed with quiet triumph. “Good girl. I’ll carry the boxes to the car.”
While Spencer was loading the back of his black Audi SUV, I slipped Chloe’s spare apartment keys and a small digital audio recorder from my late husband’s old desk into her handbag.
“I’m following you,” I whispered, hugging her by the trunk. “I will be parked two houses down from your driveway. If you are not out of that house in sixty minutes, I’m calling 911 and driving my car straight through your front door.”
“Give me forty-five,” Chloe said under her breath. “The moment he gets in the shower for his evening run, I open the safe.”
I watched their car pull away from the curb. My hands shook as I grabbed my purse, hopped into my sedan, and kept a safe three-car distance behind them through the quiet suburban streets of Oak Creek.
As I drove, my mind raced through the past four years.
Spencer had appeared in Chloe’s life when she was at her most vulnerable—right after her father passed away. He had swept in like a savior. He bought dinner, handled the estate paperwork, and insisted on paying for her mother’s roof repairs. He was the golden boy from a prominent family, an Ivy League graduate with an easy smile.
We had thought he was a blessing.
In reality, he was a predator who had smelled blood in the water. Chloe had inherited this small house and a modest life insurance payout from her father. Spencer had used her trust, her grief, and her deep longing for a family to construct a fortress of absolute control.
Twenty minutes later, Spencer’s Audi turned into the driveway of their two-story colonial home.
I pulled my car to the curb three houses down, killing the headlights behind the overgrown hedge of an elderly neighbor’s yard. I pulled out my phone.
The screen showed a live audio link. Before leaving my house, Chloe had connected her phone’s voice memo app to an open shared drive. I plugged my earbuds in, listening intently.
The sound of a heavy front door closing.
The rustle of keys tossed into a ceramic bowl on the foyer console.
“I’m going to take a quick shower and wash off this outdoor sweat,” Spencer’s voice came through crisp and clear over the microphone. “Then I’ll make you some chamomile tea, sweetheart. You need to rest that stomach.”
*Chamomile tea.* The same tea he had brought her every night before her previous miscarriages.
“Sounds wonderful, babe,” Chloe replied, her tone dripping with sweet exhaustion. “I think I’ll lie down on the sofa.”
The heavy footsteps of Spencer walking up the hardwood staircase.
A door clicking shut upstairs.
The low hum of pipes rattling in the walls as the shower water began to run.
May you like
Then, the rapid, nearly silent padding of Chloe’s bare feet moving across the downstairs hardwood, straight toward Spencer’s private study at the back of the house.
***
