Ella was still sleeping peacefully in her cot.
But Jamie had gone.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Staring around the office, Rebecca had no idea where to start.
Jamie’s good at hiding all his lies and secrets from her. More than good, he’s a pro, with months of practice behind him. He’d like to think he was, anyway. No matter how careful and concise he thought he was being at covering his tracks, some habits never die.
And Rebecca had been here before with Mark. She knew what signs to look for.
Which is why she made it her business to know everything about Jamie. He’s smart. But she’s always had to be smarter.
All those hotel bookings for those ‘business trips’ when he’d spend a night or two away from home. The receipts he thought he’d hidden deep inside his jacket pockets. For someone who prided themselves as being so successful and clever, Jamie really wasn’t as clever as he liked to think he was.
But this time he’d been really thorough. Rebecca hadn’t been able to find a single trace of where he’d gone. Bending down, her hands tear through the contents of the bin, but again she finds nothing. Which angers her because she knows the answer, the clues to where he might have gone, must be here somewhere.
Yet there are no signs of any receipts or paperwork. No booking print outs. No half-scribbled notes on the notepad next to the phone.
Sitting back up, she stares at the computer, her mind whirling as she switches it on and waits impatiently for the screen to fire up, a tiny part of her suddenly apprehensive about what she might find on here.
There’s a deep feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach, but still she knows she must look. So she taps at the letters on the keyboard.
ELLA2019
Such an obvious choice of password for a man with so much to hide, and for a second, Jamie’s predictability almost disappoints her.
Though she can’t deny it’s served her well in the past.
She’s in. The screen lights up and Rebecca scrolls aimlessly though his emails and messages, unsure of what she’s looking for. Hoping to see some form of hotel booking made in the last twenty-four hours.
An Airbnb perhaps.
An email from a colleague? Though she doubted Jamie would stay with any of his colleagues. He was too private for that.
There’s nothing. Pausing, Rebecca’s finger hovers over the mouse, immediately suspecting that maybe he’s deleted some.
Because there’re emails here that have been opened today, so she knows he’s been online.
Of course he has.
Work doesn’t stop for anything in Jamie’s world. His whole life is work. Why would today be any different?
She clicks on the ‘Trash’ folder, biting down on her lip as she waits to see what deleted files have been moved there. Only that folder has been emptied.
He’s hiding something from her.
There’s something he doesn’t want her to see, she’s sure of it.
Tapping on her hand on the desk, anxious now that she might have missed something, she stares at the screen.
Then it comes to her. Jamie’s search history. Though she’s not holding much hope of finding anything there either, because he’s clearly too astute to leave any kind of trail. Only he must have forgot to clear his history, because everything he’s looked at the past few days is here.
Everything is there, listed in chronological order for her to see. The dates and times of every site Jamie has visited. She’s searching for a name of a hotel, or an Airbnb, but when she’s looked at a few down the list, she stops, her gaze fixed on a webpage that floors her for a few seconds.
It can’t be?
Rebecca blinks hard, convinced that her eyes are deceiving her, but when she refocuses, she knows it’s true, knows that Jamie’s seen this.
That he knows the truth about her.
She clicks the link with trembling hands. Her eyes scanning the newspaper headline.
Two dead in fatal crash.
Physically flinching at the words, her heart beats faster, violently, drumming loudly inside her chest as her blood runs ice-cold inside her veins.
She’s holding her breath, as if she is suddenly too scared to breathe.
Too scared to move.
Jamie knows!
Is that what this is all really about?
Rebecca wants to throw up. Her stomach churning.
Unable to look away from the harrowing image of the blackened, burnt-out car. She tries to block out all memories of that fateful day, pushing it back to the deepest, darkest recesses of her mind again, but it’s ingrained in her.
Two bodies. Two dead.
Two.
And she thinks of her then, for the first time since that horrific evening. The darkest, most painful memory she has, the one she’s spent her life running away from.
Little Jessica. Dead in the back of the car. A raw, vicious pain tears through Rebecca at the memory, a stricken sob escapes her mouth.
It’s too much for her to bear and the room begins to spin, suffocating her, the walls gaining speed and closing in. The pounding in her chest is replaced by a tinny ringing inside her ears, her eyesight blurred with a haze of a million tiny white flecks.
It looks like the starry sky she’d laid down and looked up at on that fateful night.
That’s Rebecca’s very last thought before she sinks down from the chair, hitting the floor with a thud.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Oh, Rebecca! You’re not as smart as you like to think you are.
Trawling through the office. Tapping at the computer keyboard, frantically searching for clues.
But you’re not as clever as you once were, nor as strong.
Not since Ella.
Becoming a mother has made you vulnerable. And that’s good, for me at least, because it means you’ve let your guard down, Rebecca.
You’re losing it.
The old you wouldn’t have taken so long to work it all out.
The old you wouldn’t have missed the clues in front of you.
But you have. And as you stare back at me through the lens of the webcam, you’re still unaware that I’m at the other end. Watching you.
Oh, if only you knew.
I see your eyes scrolling down to the list of web addresses. I see the panic flash behind them when you click the link.
You’re trying to work it all out, but you still don’t really have a clue.
I’ve taken my time fucking with you. Savouring every second of your gradual demise.
You thought you were safe here. In your own home. Lulled into a false sense of security, not knowing that I’m all around you.
You pick up your phone, unaware that it’s yet another constant gateway I can tap into. I watch you there too, Rebecca.
I watch you all the time. That’s the beauty of technology, you see. You think it gives you freedom, but really it’s placed you in a cage.