Page 20 of Best Laid Plans

“I don’t even know how long I was in the hospital, but James came to see me every day. He might be evil on the inside, but there is no denying he’s very handsome on the outside. I was young and sheltered, and the only kind of sexual encounters I’d had were at the hands of my⁠—”

She shakes her head. “He wooed me, for want of a better word. He helped me heal, and he took care of me. He knew someone who worked as a marshal and somehow got me a new name, Lilith Taylor, a Social Security number, and even a birth certificate. He made it sound like it was for my safety because the man who threw me off the bridge hadn’t been found.

“When it was time for me to leave, he asked me to move in with him, and I said yes. I was so infatuated with this handsome, smart, and worldly man that I missed all the red flags until it was too late.” She drinks some more of her water, her hands shaking again.

“He convinced me to study to become a nurse so I could travel around the world and work beside him in countries that needed medical staff badly. It felt good to give back instead of take, so I said yes and worked my butt off. I thought everything was great until I ran into someone at the hospital when I was doing a clinical, and they nearly passed out from shock. They hugged me, shocked that I was alive, and then asked why the hell I’d come back. I honestly didn’t know what she was talking about, so I wrote it off as her mixing me up with someone else. But then a couple of days later, I was looking up something in one of his medical journals, which he keeps in his office. When I pulled the book from the shelf, there was a photo behind it, as if it had slipped down the back and been forgotten. It was a photo of me and James in wedding attire. Only we were never married, and that woman wasn’t me, even if we shared the same face.”

Chapter Seven

LIL

“That motherfucker!” Powers roars, getting it first. Then I see the penny drop around the table with everyone else, too.

“Hold on. Are you telling us that he reconstructed your face to make you look like his wife’s?” Ambros asks incredulously.

I nod, remembering that twisted, sick feeling in my stomach as I felt my life starting to unravel all over again. “He’d told me he was married once, and his wife died in a boating accident. I felt sorry for him. It was clear he loved her from the way he spoke about her, but I didn’t know enough about love to understand the difference between love and obsession.” I finish the rest of my water, my mouth suddenly dry.

“Something instinctual told me to keep my mouth shut and dig, and so that’s what I did. The internet was an interesting concept to me. While I knew the basics, I didn’t know how to do deep dives or search for hidden information. I didn’t let that slow me down, though. I found the missing person’s report on his wife and researched everything I could about the woman with the sad eyes, and wondered if that’s what people saw when they looked at me. After looking into her, I dug into James. But that’s where I made a mistake. I couldn’t find anything suspicious. The media made him sound like a saint, and I was starting to believe it was all in my head. I paid someone to look into him for me. I don’t know if the guy just wasn’t careful or if he went to James with the information, hoping for some payout. James had him killed, along with one of my only friends on the same clinical placement as me. She was my punishment, he told me, for being ungrateful.

“I told the police, but James had friends on the force. Powerful friends. I ended up being forcibly admitted to a psych ward for evaluation.”

“For how long?” Powers chokes out.

“Six months. They pumped me full of lithium and fuck knows what else. I did what I knew best. I became the person I needed to be to survive.”

“You became the wife he wanted,” G says softly.

I nod. “I was docile but not withdrawn. He wouldn’t want me to draw attention to myself. I worked hard, but I made sure I never shone. It wouldn’t do me well to receive more praise than him. I made him believe I’d given in. And then I tore apart every inch of that house, looking for clues or some proof that he killed his wife because that’s what I believed. Until I found a blank page in an otherwise empty notebook that changed everything.”

“I’m so fucking confused,” Crane sighs.

“All the things James supposedly bought for me were actually Lilian’s. My dressing room was her dressing room, which had lain untouched except for the regular dusting by the cleaning lady. It was because of her that I was looking for a notepad in the first place. I needed to leave a message to avoid the upstairs bathroom as it was being remodeled. In the bottom drawer of the vanity, I found a pad and pen. But when I started to write, I realized I could see the indentations of whatever had been written on the page above it. I used a pencil to shade over it lightly and found the words “Raven Souls MC Ohio” on it, along with a number and the word “Poacher.” It took me forever to realize Poacher was likely a club name, though he was long gone by the time I got here. Nobody has even mentioned him.”

I look over at Havoc, who is shaking his head. “Doesn’t mean anything to me either. G?”

“Sounds familiar⁠—”

“He was a nomad,” Probe jumps in. “Been a while since I heard of him, to be honest. He was an old-timer who lost his family in a freak accident, and after that, he could never settle in one place for long. He wasn’t a Raven Soul. I can’t remember what club he was originally attached to, but most clubs were more than happy to let him use a barstool when he was passing through. As far as I remember, he was a good guy who never did anyone any harm. He was just sad, you know? Blade is the one you need to talk to. I have no doubt he’ll remember him.”

“I’ll call him after this,” Havoc tells him before his eyes come back to me. “So that note made you think James hadn’t killed his wife, but that she ran?” His voice is skeptical. I get it, but I can’t explain it any differently. It was just this hunch I got.

“All of her things were in that house. She took nothing. She couldn’t if she was faking her own death. I imagine he has her birth certificate and shit as he does mine for safekeeping, but there was nothing personal in that place. If she took nothing and her room was untouched, then where the hell was that woman’s essence? You’d think I’d feel like I was living with a ghost, but there was nothing there. That note was the only thing I’d ever seen that was even remotely personal.”

“Alright, but how did that lead you here? Not being funny, but it could have been anything.”

“It was all I had. I⁠—”

Knocking at the door has us all pausing. Before Havoc can say anything, the door opens, and Con sticks his head in. “Cops are here.”

The room goes wired at that. I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach at the look he’s giving me.

“What the fuck do they want?” Havoc snaps.

Con shakes his head. “Not what, who. They’re looking for Lilian Taylor.”

My head drops in defeat. “He knows I’m back.”

Powers looks over at me and curses.