To try not to think about the first phone call of his morning.

  He literally had not set eyeballs on Christine since the day of their final divorce hearing. At that time, he’d already separated all their finances and was living on his own when the judge signed the final order severing what few ties were left between them. He’d moved out months earlier, before the end of the year, and knowing they were having problems long before then had been filing separate tax returns.

  One less thing to deal with. Especially with her increasing hostility toward him, which would flip in an instant to weepy and apologetic, keeping him off-balance. The whole dynamic that had started his allergy to drama in the first place.

  After their final hearing, he’d wished her well and left after shaking her hand, not wanting to be a douche. He just wanted to…leave. She’d driven him crazy in bad ways, especially toward the end before he’d made the decision to file for divorce. In retrospect, he never should have married her.

  But he’d never wished her ill-will.

  He was a person of his word. If he said something, he meant it. If he was wrong, he admitted it. He’d been upfront with Christine from the very beginning, when they were first dating, that he did not want kids.

  Period.

  Full-stop.

  At the time, he couldn’t afford to simply drop money on a vasectomy, but he used condoms religiously until they were living together and she got fitted with an IUD and it took effect.

  For her part, she’d insisted she was okay with that, said she didn’t want kids, either. Which was why he’d been willing to marry her after dating for a while and living together for a couple of years.

  But it was like once the ring was on her finger, she changed, thought she’d change his mind.

  Got mad at him when she switched from using an IUD back to the pill, and he insisted on using condoms again.

  He wasn’t falling for that. No way did he want to have an “oopsie” baby. The only reason he’d stopped using condoms with her with the IUD was because her doctor had assured him that while nothing was perfect, those were pretty darn close.

  He knew some of Christine’s desperation to have kids was “teasing” from Christine’s mother and aunts, wanting to know when they’d start having kids. Because at every fucking family function they went to, even though Tony always answered their nosy and repeated inquiries about when they’d “start a family” with the same answer—we aren’t—her relatives were always pushing her to think about her biological clock.

  Like she was less of a woman if she didn’t have kids.

  Like there was an imperative for her to have kids, or she was a failure.

  He was not the man for that role. He had nothing against kids, nothing against his friends’ kids. He loved kids.

  He just did not have any desire to be a parent, and never had.

  He also hadn’t been raised in a family that apparently tied self-worth to how many grandkids you could produce for the family name.

  He honestly hadn’t thought about Christine in a couple of years before today.

  Dennis told him that she’d had another marriage, which had also ended in divorce. The guy’d told her he did want kids. Then he’d flipped after they got married, and had finally admitted he’d had a vasectomy years earlier, after she started talking about going to see a fertility specialist when she didn’t get pregnant their first year together and he realized his secret would come out anyway.

  After that, she went through a string of boyfriends, long- and short-term, and had recently been fighting severe depression.

  But no one had realized how severe until now.

  It was one of her co-workers who’d contacted Dennis yesterday. She’d sat through a teary lunch with Christine. Christine had also given the co-worker her house key and asked her to please take care of her cat for her for a few days, but didn’t say why. When the coworker went over that evening, she found no sign of Christine, but she discovered several sealed envelopes on the kitchen counter, including one addressed to Dennis, and it included his cell number on the outside.

  With a sticky note asking Dennis be called first once they were found.

  There was also one addressed to Tony.

  The detectives hadn’t released those other notes to the family yet, and Dennis hadn’t opened them before calling the cops. When the co-worker had called Dennis, he’d rushed over to Christine’s apartment and ripped the envelope open addressed to him, then immediately called 911.

  Tony had also given Dennis his work cell number to pass to the detectives if they had more questions for him.

  Christine had turned off her cell phone before leaving work. Police had already tried pinging it after obtaining an emergency court order. Her car was an older model with no on-board electronic systems that would allow it to be tracked or located.

  No activity on her debit or credit cards.

  No activity on her social media feeds.

  Nothing.

  All they could do was pray she hadn’t hurt herself. Normally, they couldn’t file a missing person report that quickly, but the presence of the notes and their obvious meaning indicated she fell under the endangered designation, and law enforcement had sent out BOLOs all over the region to various law enforcement agencies. They’d also put out a Silver Alert for her car on highway signs, even though she was younger than the usual criteria.

  No one had known she was seeing a counsellor for her depression, and that she was on several medications for it, until she’d told her co-worker about it at lunch and left her doctor’s contact info in the note she’d written to Dennis.

  More alarming was that she’d purchased a handgun three weeks earlier and hadn’t told anyone about it. Her brother discovered the empty box for it, with the receipt inside, sitting on her bed.

  She’d never owned one before and did not have a concealed carry permit.

  Tony still had an hour before he was supposed to meet with Jim Coughy downstairs for breakfast before heading to the job site when his personal cell rang from a Sarasota number he didn’t recognize.

  Gut clenching, he answered. “Tony Daniels.”

  “Tony, hey, it’s Ethan Neri.”

  Tony sat back and pulled his glasses off. Ethan was a friend in common from the Suncoast Society.

  He was also a Sarasota County Sheriff’s detective.

  “Hey, Ethan. I think I know why you’re calling me.”

  “Yeah. Wish it was better circumstances. Sorry I didn’t call you last night, but wasn’t sure if it was you or not, until I saw your number. This is my work phone.”

  “I figured. Did you find her?”

  “No. But I need to follow all leads. Her brother told me he called you…”

  Ten minutes later, Tony had logged into his personal e-mail account and was hitting refresh every few seconds, waiting for the scan Ethan was going to send him of the note. Tony had given him permission to open the letter to view its contents and send him copies.

  It finally hit his inbox, and he put his glasses back on before he clicked on the e-mail to open it. The e-mail was just a quick line from Ethan, sent from his work email.

  Mr. Daniels, attached please find a copy of the letter we discussed. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at…

  Tony clicked on the attachment. The letter had been handwritten on sheets from a lined yellow notepad in Christine’s familiar rolling script, and was dated yesterday.

  Dear Tony,

  I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch with you personally about this, but I know you. You’re a good man, even if I didn’t appreciate how good you were at the time. And I know you’d be talking me out of this, or trying to tell someone, and…well, that kind of defeats the whole purpose.

  There are things I want to say to you, though. I don’t want to leave them unsaid.

  I wasn’t very fair to you during our years together, and I’m sorry for that. Looking back, I can see how immature I acted, and how unfair I was to you. You were always honest with me, always open, and never tried to change me.

  But I did try to change you, change who you were. For that, I’m truly sorry.

  I know I made life hard for you, especially toward the end. I guess I couldn’t fathom a future where you didn’t finally give in, because you loved me enough to change for me.

  It was never that you didn’t love me enough, it was that I placed unrealistic expectations on you.

  You deserved better.

  I know there were other issues between us besides the issue of children, and you were honest and open about them as well. I could never fully appreciate that until later. I wanted to hold on to my self-righteous fury and insist you were wrong, when the truth was, you weren’t.

  You were right. About everything.

  I know I should have placed my focus on US, and what we had together, instead of what I wished I could have.

  You were the best thing to ever happen to me, and I was an idiot to let you get away. I should have been happy to have a man who was faithful and honest and forthright, a hard-working guy who always had my back, even when I didn’t deserve it.

  I heard you remarried a couple of years ago. I never found the nerve to contact you then and wish you well, because I wasn’t sure how to do it without making it sound like I was jealous or being snarky.

  The truth is, I am jealous. She’s married a wonderful man, and I truly wish you two a lifetime of happiness. Hopefully she’s not stupid enough to waste her chance the way I did. I guess that’s why I never went through the trouble of changing my last name, even after I remarried—and divorced—because part of me always knew I screwed up.

  I never found a guy who could live up to the high bar you set. I don’t say that to make you feel guilty. In fact, nothing in this letter is designed to make you feel…guilty. Seriously. It’s not. Please don’t feel that way, and please don’t feel there was something you could have done, because there’s not.

  I wanted to tell you that what I’m doing now is for ME, because life is hard, and I’m out of strength to keep trying. Maybe that makes me a coward or something, but it’s my choice, and it’s a choice I’ve spent the past decade struggling NOT to make, no matter how put-together everyone thought I was.

  I’m tired.

  And as I sit here writing not only this letter, but a few others, I admit that maybe it’s for the best I never had kids. Because even though I desperately wanted them—and yes, I know I could have adopted—I realized it’s not children that I needed.

  I needed to learn how to fill the void inside me.

  But it’s an endless, gaping void. It has only grown larger over the years, and no amount of children or antidepressants or psychotherapy or anything else is going to change that fact or stop its growth.

  I’m empty.

  The closest I ever came to feeling like I belonged, and like I wasn’t empty, and like I was loved, was when I was with you.

  And I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry for not recognizing what we had before, for not fully appreciating that it was enough had I only LET it be enough.

  You did NOTHING wrong.

  You ARE a good man, and you were a good man then, too.

  You were a good husband.

  You were an even better friend, and I desperately wish I hadn’t screwed that up, too, because I miss your friendship and those times we shared together as much as other times between us. I miss our sunsets. I miss our talks. I miss you making me laugh.

  I loved you then, and the sad truth is, I still love you and tried to find someone else I could love as much as I loved you, or who would love me as well as you loved me.

  And I can’t.

  I won’t.

  And even if I did, the void is so much bigger inside me now than it had been, and like I said, I’m tired.

  Really, truly tired.

  Too tired.

  It’s time for me to lay down and sleep and I hope you don’t hate me, because I only wish the two of you happiness.

  I also hope she appreciates how lucky she is, and hope she doesn’t try to change you, because you shouldn’t change. Not for someone else.

  Thank you for having been in my life.

  All my love,

  Christine

  Tony read and re-read the note and knew.

  They wouldn’t find her alive.

  She’d likely driven somewhere yesterday she knew would be quiet, peaceful, and most likely desolate.

  Quite easy to find in that neck of the woods. Drive twenty minutes east, and you could be in the middle of nowhere.

  She’d always loved sunsets. She probably did it close to sunset, he’d guess.

  He called Ethan back.

  “Detective Neri.”

  Tony rubbed at his forehead. “Search parks, beaches, anywhere like that. You’ll find her facing west, wherever it is. Good chance it’s an inland park somewhere.”

  “Hold on.” It sounded like he stepped away from whatever group of people he’d been near. “Say that again?”

  “She’s already gone.” Tony’s voice choked. “She did it close to or just after sunset. She sat somewhere and watched the sun go down and did it.”

  “Did she have any place in particular you can think of?”

  “I don’t know. But she loved sunset. Loved watching them. We used to do that a lot, stop and watch the sunset, wherever we were. Check public parking lots on the beaches, St. Pete to Punta Gorda. Anywhere she could have driven to between when she left work and sunset. That’s your timeframe, your search area. But we used to go hiking a lot, like at Myakka River State Park, places like that, so she might have gone to an inland park. Or she could be on Boca Grande, or Manasota Key, up at the Skyway rest areas, Ft. De Soto—it might not be at the actual beach, either. But wherever it is, she could see the sunset, and she’ll be facing west.”

  “Thanks. I’ll use that as a starting point.” He paused. “Are you okay?”

  He let out a weighty sigh. “I…don’t know. I know this is your job, but can you please do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you lead on this?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Call me as soon as you find her, please? On my work cell, because I’ll get calls on that. I don’t get reception inside the data center on my personal cell.”

  “I will.”

  “Please don’t tell her brother I think she’s already dead. That’s between you and me. And please don’t say anything to Shayla about this. Or our other…friends. The focus needs to be on her family right now, not on me. I’ll tell Shayla later.”

  “No problem.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tony ended the call and tipped his head back, eyes closed. He wasn’t a praying man, but he needed a moment.

  I’m sorry, Chris. I’m really, really sorry.

  Chapter Five

  Tony had been downstairs over twenty minutes, and had nearly finished his breakfast from the hotel’s breakfast buffet, when Jim finally staggered into the restaurant and dropped into a seat at the table.

  Tony glared at him. “About time.”

  “Chill out, man.” His eyes looked red, bloodshot, and he smelled like alcohol.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “No, I’m hungover,” he snapped, “and you’re not helping.”

  Tony took a deep breath and dropped his voice. “This is your only warning. You stop this, or I’ll report you to HR. No more drinking, no more pot, no more edibles. I’ll have your ass hauled in for a drug test, then you’ll be out of a job.”

  Jim snorted and leaned in. “Good luck putting that fucker together without me then. You might want to rethink that. Yeah, I fucked up last night. I shouldn’t have had the drinks. I met a cutie at the bar across the street and stayed out too late. The pot’s nothing. We haven’t had a fucking day off in weeks, so unless you want to be doing this by yourself, get off my back, huh?” He shoved back his chair and headed for the breakfast buffet.

  Tony leaned back in his chair, pulled out his work phone, and called up a blank e-mail to his boss, Darren.

  Need HR procedures for immediate termination. ASAP. Can’t talk right now. Just issued Jim Coughy a verbal warning for alcohol and pot consumption. Told him it’s his only warning. Also, FYI, will be needing to dip into discretionary to hire temps soon. Be prepared.

  Send.

  He tucked his phone into his front shirt pocket.

  Why should I be the only one having a crap day?

  He had a small discretionary budget for emergencies for his department. He could dip into that and hire one or two guys from the colo facility to come in and help him finish the hardware portion of the build, but he’d need one of his own guys from Bradenton to fly out for the troubleshooting portion of it. And he’d need Darren to go to bat for him to force the reallocation of funds.

  Which, since Darren was starting to feel heat from his superiors, he’d likely hand-walk it through to the VP above him and suck whatever dicks he’d have to and ensure it went through.

  Fucker.

  He didn’t speak to Jim Coughy again until they had driven to the job site and were preparing to return to work on the row of servers they’d been wiring in. By that point, Tony had nearly chewed off his own tongue to keep from firing the guy, but in that way, Jim was right.

  Tony needed an extra set of hands.

  At least until he hired the temps.

  On top of his thoughts returning time and again to Christine’s letter, and the deep sorrow filling Dennis’ voice…it made for a shitty-ass day in beautiful Denver.

  At lunch, Tony had already planned to drive over to the colo to talk to their rep there about arrangements for moving their servers, so he didn’t need to make any excuses to Jim.

  But while there, Tony arranged for two temps to start working with him Monday morning, made sure they already had current Asher NDAs on file for working with their servers, and got their personal information so he could prep site IDs for them for the new campus. They would add it onto Asher’s bill, and Tony assured them Darren would send them a signed PO for the manpower by the end of the day.