Chapter 1
During dinner, Nathan suddenly put down his fork and looked at me.
"Who's Marcus Knight?"
My heart skipped a beat.
Marcus Knight.
That name was something my best friend Lily and I had made up one drunken night.
We'd agreed that if either of us ever got into trouble and couldn't be reached, we'd use Marcus Knight as our distress signal.
Besides the two of us, no one else in the world knew this name existed.
And Lily had been missing for exactly one month.
She'd said she was going to Thailand for vacation.
And then she never came back.
I looked at Nathan's casual expression, my heart sinking bit by bit.
How did he know this name?
The name Marcus Knight was something Lily and I had invented during our college graduation year, after finishing an entire bottle of wine while lying on the rooftop.
The moon was full that night.
Lily wrapped her arm around my neck, drunk, and said, "Claire, let's create a code word."
"What kind of code word?"
"Like if one day something happens to one of us and we can't be reached, the other person will know something's wrong when they hear this name."
I told her she was being silly.
But I still spent half the night thinking of names with her, finally settling on Marcus Knight.
We were the only people in the world who knew what Marcus Knight really meant.
And Lily had been missing for exactly thirty-one days.
She'd said she was going to Chiang Mai, Thailand for a few days.
Before leaving, she'd even video-called me, holding up her phone at the airport duty-free shop and shouting, "Claire! What do you want? I'll bring it back for you!"
That was the last time I saw her face.
After that, her SnapChat messages stopped.
Her phone went straight to voicemail.
Her Instagram froze on a photo of a Chiang Mai night market.
I filed a police report. Her family filed one too.
The Thai authorities were investigating.
But Lily had vanished from this world like vapor.
And now my husband, Nathan—a man who had zero connection to Lily—had casually dropped this name during dinner.
"What's wrong?" Nathan saw me freeze and smiled. "Why do you look so strange?"
"Nothing." I lowered my head, putting food in my mouth that tasted like nothing. "I've just never heard that name. Where did you hear it?"
"Oh, a friend mentioned it." Nathan picked up his water glass and took a sip. "Just asking."
He changed the subject and started talking about work.
But I couldn't hear a word.
My mind had only one thought: How did he know that name?
After dinner, Nathan went to shower.
I sat on the couch, palms sweating.
Water sounds came from the bathroom.
I glanced at the bathroom door, stood up, and walked toward his phone on the dining table.
I knew the password.
It was our wedding anniversary.
I opened the phone, fingers trembling, and started going through his chat history, call logs, notes.
Nothing.
Then I went to check his computer.
His laptop was in the study. I knew that password too.
Or rather, he'd never hidden it from me.
Browsing history, folders, download records—I checked everything.
Until I opened a cached record from a flight booking app.
My hand stopped.
A month ago.
Nathan had told me he was going to Los Angeles on a business trip for three days.
I'd even helped him pack his suitcase.
But the booking record showed he hadn't bought a ticket to Los Angeles.
He'd bought a ticket to Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Departure date: one day before Lily left.
Return date: two days after Lily went missing.
The bathroom water stopped.
I quickly closed the computer, walked back to the living room, sat on the couch, and pretended to scroll through videos on my phone.
Nathan came out drying his hair and glanced at me. "Still up?"
"Yeah, just scrolling a bit more."
I smiled.
He walked into the bedroom and turned off the light.
I stared at the bedroom door in the darkness, fingers slowly gripping the armrest tighter and tighter.
What had Nathan been doing in Thailand?
Early the next morning, I told Nathan I had an urgent work project and needed to travel for a few days.
Nathan was adjusting his tie and didn't even turn around. "Where to?"
"Chicago."
"How many days?"
"Not sure. Maybe three or four."
He turned to look at me and smiled. "Be safe."
I smiled back.