I Died, and He Went Mad

After the call, Julian left for the office to pick up the bid proposal I had spent months preparing.

He was almost there when the police called.

“Mr. Whitmore, the results are back on the blood from the coat. It matches your wife’s DNA. We’ve also just recovered a wedding ring in the hills about three miles from the river. Your initials and your wife’s are engraved inside. We need you to come and identify it.”

I looked down at my left hand.

My ring finger was bare.

The night he killed me, Julian had broken every finger on that hand, one by one. I hadn’t known where the ring fell.

Whitmore Group’s headquarters stood just ahead.

Julian frowned. He clearly didn’t want to turn around and drive to the river now.

“Detective, I have something important to deal with at the office. Why don’t you take the ring back to the station? I’ll come by and identify it later.”

“I’m afraid that won’t work.” Something in Hayes’s voice shifted. “The man who found it specifically requested that you come to the scene yourself.”

Julian sounded annoyed.

“Who does he think he is? He won’t even cooperate with the police?”

Hayes was silent for a moment.

Then he gave a name that changed Julian’s expression instantly.

“You know him. Lucian Blackwood.”

Julian said nothing.

Half an hour later, I followed his car back to the river for the second time.

This time, I spotted Lucian among the people immediately.

He was wearing the same black coat he had worn two days earlier. Tall and straight, he stood with a cigarette between his fingers, its orange tip brightening and dimming in the wind.

Behind him, the cloud-heavy evening sky looked as though it existed for him alone.

Only when we got closer did I see the dark circles beneath his eyes and the rough shadow of stubble along his jaw.

I almost never saw him look exhausted.

It didn’t make him appear disheveled. If anything, it made him more forbidding.

“Mr. Blackwood. I certainly didn’t expect you to be the one to find my wife’s ring.” Julian put on his usual mild, polite smile. “I heard you were attending the summit in Switzerland. Doesn’t it run until next week?”

Lucian glanced at him through the thin veil of smoke.

“Do I need to clear my schedule with you?”

His voice was freezing. He flicked ash from his cigarette.

Julian’s smile grew strained.

“You misunderstand. I—”

“Interesting. Your new wife is missing, and nobody knows whether she’s alive. Yet you seem much more interested in me.”

For the first time since becoming a ghost, I laughed and actually meant it.

Lucian’s tongue was famously poisonous. The man could probably kill himself just by licking his lips.

Julian stopped trying to smile. He held out his hand.

“Then return my wife’s ring.”

Lucian ignored him.

He took his time drawing on the cigarette, then exhaled, leaving Julian’s hand hanging in the air.

“Lucian, what the hell do you want?”

The tension hardened. Before it could turn into something worse, Hayes stepped between them.

“Gentlemen. Let’s keep this civil. Mr. Blackwood has spent two days and two nights personally leading a search for Mrs. Whitmore. His people have covered this area inch by inch. He even brought in a team to search the river. That’s how he found the ring.”

I wondered whether I had heard correctly.

Lucian had spent two days and nights out here looking for me himself?

So when Miles told him they would arrive in twenty minutes, two days ago by the river, he had meant a search team?

A team Lucian had brought in to find me?

I stared at him in disbelief.

Had he lost his mind?