Through the narrow opening, I heard him issue instructions to another officer.
He returned less than a minute later.
“We’ll locate the bag.”
“If he opens the lining, he’ll know exactly what I copied.”
“Can he access the files?”
“They’re encrypted.”
“With what?”
I hesitated.
“Our wedding date.”
Miller gave me a look that held no judgment, only urgency.
“He’ll guess it.”
“Yes.”
The police found Adrian four hours later at a private airfield outside Chicago.
He had my gray work bag, two passports and almost ninety thousand dollars in cash.
He also had a one-way charter reservation to the Bahamas.
But when officers opened the bag, the drive was gone.
Adrian returned to the hospital in handcuffs just after midnight.
I knew because Miller asked whether I was willing to see him.
Every sensible part of me wanted to refuse.
My body had endured a fall, surgery and an attempted suffocation.
I had already given the police enough.
But I needed to see his face when he looked at me alive.
Miller arranged for Adrian to stand outside my room behind the observation window.
Two officers remained beside him.
I lay motionless beneath the hospital lights, my body still sealed in plaster.
For a moment, Adrian looked like the man I had married.
His dark hair was disordered.
His expensive coat hung open.
His face carried the pale shock of a husband confronted with his wife’s suffering.
Then our eyes met.
The concern vanished.
Not gradually.
Instantly.
His gaze dropped to the wire beneath my gown and then shifted toward Detective Miller.
He understood.
“You recorded my mother,” he said through the open doorway.
Miller did not answer.
Adrian smiled at me.
It was a small smile, almost tender.
“You always needed to be the cleverest person in the room.”
My throat still burned, but my voice came out clearly enough.
“Where is the drive?”
He tilted his head.
“What drive?”
“The one you removed from my bag.”
“I took the bag because it belonged to my wife.
I was leaving to clear my head after her terrible accident.”
“With cash and two passports?” Miller asked.
“My family travels.”
“Your mother just said you planned Elena’s fall.”
“My mother is unstable.” Adrian’s expression did not change.
“She has been unstable since my father died.
Elena knows that.”
He looked at me again.
“You manipulated a sick woman into saying what you wanted.”
