Chapter 2
I woke with a plastic bracelet around my wrist.
DOE, FEMALE.
Fluorescent lights flickered above me. Beyond the curtain surrounding my bed, people coughed, cried, and called names that no one answered. A woman in navy scrubs noticed my eyes were open and came to my bedside.
"You're at the St. Agnes emergency annex," she said. "They brought you in from Lafourche Parish. Do you know your name?"
My throat burned.
"Mara Bennett."
She wrote it down, but uncertainty remained in her expression.
"Do you have identification?"
I tried to reach for my pocket. Pain tore through my ribs. My phone, wallet, and emergency bag were gone. Only the brass seal had survived. It sat inside a clear belongings pouch beside the bed, still stained with mud and a thin line of my blood.
"What day is it?"
"Thursday. You were unconscious for almost thirty hours."
Thirty hours. Long enough for Daniel to think I was dead. Long enough for him to decide what came next.
I needed to know what he had told people. More than that, I needed to see what he had done after the boat left me behind. The nurse checked my pupils and asked me where I lived.
"Can I borrow your phone?" I asked. "My husband may have reported me missing."
She handed it to me. My fingers shook as I typed my name. Daniel's face filled the screen.
He stood outside an evacuation shelter, unshaven and hollow-eyed. A local reporter held a microphone toward him.
"My wife is still missing," he said. His voice broke on the word wife. "The rescue crews are doing everything they can."
He looked devastated. For one dangerous moment, seeing him like that made me want to call him. Then Sienna stepped into the frame.
She wore my navy field jacket. I kept it at the studio for cold mornings, the sleeves permanently marked with pale flecks of printing ink. Sienna had rolled the cuffs exactly the way I did.
"Mara would want us to focus on the families who lost everything," she told the reporter. "She built Bennett & Bay because she believed a home could help people remember who they were."
Those were my words. I had written them eight years earlier, after my grandmother died. Sienna touched Daniel's back as he lowered his head. His hand found hers without looking.
Not a new gesture. Not an accident. The nurse leaned closer to the screen. "That's your husband?"
"Yes."
"I can call the shelter. Or the sheriff's office. They'll get him here."
Her finger moved toward the number beneath the video.
"No."
She stopped. I forced myself to breathe through the pain in my ribs.
"Please don't tell anyone I'm here. Not yet."
"Mara, after a head injury--"
"I know my name. I know my address. And I know I don't want him contacted."
The nurse studied me, then slowly lowered the phone.
"I can mark you confidential."
"Do that."
After she left, I opened the browser again. Our company files were stored in a shared cloud account. My password worked. The most recent folder was labeled HURRICANE CONTINUITY.
Inside it was the route log from our shared emergency account. The evacuation order had been issued at 9:03 Tuesday morning. Eleven minutes later, Daniel had abandoned our planned route toward the highway. The blue line turned inland. Not toward the warehouse, as he had told me.
It ended at an address I recognized immediately. I had driven there for birthdays, late dinners, and more Sunday mornings than I could count. Sienna's house. Daniel had lied about checking the warehouse.
He had gone there specifically to get her.