You’ve got me worried.”
Ryan hung up abruptly, leaving Denny puzzled. Ryan and Melissa were the “perfect couple.” What could have gone wrong?
Denny pushed the suitcase to the other side of his bed. Promptly, he lowered himself to the floor, kneeling like a schoolboy, and began to pray.
Ryan disconnected with Denny and considered his next course of action. He tried to put himself in his wife’s shoes. Where would I go if I were Mellie? he wondered.
He considered getting into the car and driving around to look for her, just to be doing something . But he thought better of it. He needed to be near the phone—in case she called.
Daisy padded to Ryan’s chair, rested her chin on his knee, and whined softly. Ryan rubbed her golden fur and her floppy ears for a minute, then picked up the phone, dialing Melissa’s best girlfriend, Alice Graham. Ali .
She answered on the third ring, and Ryan explained the situation as matter-of-factly as he could. Ali’s reaction was utter shock, disbelief. “This is nuts. She left a note?”
Ryan read the note to her, which brought a little gasp. “I can’t believe this,” she whispered.
“The two of you were together for lunch today, right?” he pressed.
“Yeah …” She paused. “Oh no …”
“What?”
“I don’t know … it didn’t make sense to me at the time, but now—”
“What happened?”
“At the restaurant. We hadn’t even finished eating, and … she just suddenly wanted to get going. Said she wasn’t feeling well, so she got up and left, just like that. Left me sitting there alone. She seemed a little pale. I called later to check up, but she wasn’t home.”
“What time was that?” Ryan asked, his heart slamming the walls of his chest.
Ali seemed to hesitate. “I guess around two o’clock or so.”
Ryan blocked out the rest of the conversation. Melissa … sick? Why hadn’t she told him? What had happened today?
Chapter Five
THE HIGHWAY HAD BECOME A LONG and monotonous box—a rectangular shape, as though the pavement stretching out before her were the base; the blue of the sky, the top; the lush, green barrier of trees and underbrush, the sides.
Melissa scanned the radio, searching for something soothing. She chose an oldies station with frequent news updates featuring snarled traffic up and down I-95 along the eastern sea-board. Such gridlocks were apt to put her in a dire position—stalled. She simply could not afford the risk of entrapment.
So she listened intently for reports of serious snags on the major roads leading into the Big Apple. Populated areas were best, she’d decided. After all, a driver could lose herself in the mayhem of rush hour. And in an emergency, attention could easily be diverted elsewhere. Calculating a host of worrisome thoughts, she weaved in and out of traffic as afternoon hurtled toward evening.
Any day but Friday , Melissa thought. Yet, it wasn’t as if she’d planned to leave on the worst traveling day of the week. Being mid-August posed another problem—last-minute family vacations. The northbound lanes were crammed, bumper to bumper, with cars, vans, and buses headed for the shore.
She thought of the beach at Napatree, near Watch Hill, Rhode Island, where she’d first met Ryan more than three lovely years ago. Had it already been that long?
Glancing at her watch, she took note of the date: August seventeenth. In more than one way, the final full month of summer was extraordinary. Her father would have celebrated his forty-eighth birthday this month, had he lived.
She gripped the steering wheel. She hadn’t thought of her dad’s birthday in years. And why, on the day of her mad dash away from the evil that tormented her life?
Trying to refocus her attention on driving, she shifted her weight slightly, eyeing the cruise control button. Should she set it in this congestion? Wouldn’t it just be a matter of time before she’d have to brake, throwing the setting off? Why