The Sunday Wife: A Lockdown Thriller

  Contents

  Title

  Rights

  Description

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Epilogue

  Second Epilogue

  Before She Lied

  The Last Writer

  The Author

  THE SUNDAY WIFE

  A LOCKDOWN THRILLER

  ADRIANE LEIGH

  Copyright 2021 by Adriane Leigh

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced without express permission by the author unless it is for a book review. All scenarios and characters are fictional and any resemblance to real people or situations is coincidental.

  When a couple is offered a stay at a chalet in the mountains, they jump at the chance to relax and reconnect.

  No cell service, no internet, and every modern luxury they could wish for sounds like a dream come true. But when one of them ends up hurt on the night of a terrible storm, their perfect paradise becomes a prison.

  Trapped without escape, details come to light that shake the foundations of their relationship. In the search for answers, more secrets are uncovered that leave them wondering which of them can be trusted, and who is the real threat.

  Why were they lured to the chalet? Will they ever make it off the mountain? Or will this quick weekend getaway be their last?

  Prologue - One Year Ago

  Working late again.

  No wonder she fell asleep exhausted at her chair in the early hours of the morning. It’s just too bad she left her front door wide open, her fragile life vulnerable to any asshole that might want to take advantage.

  Like me.

  I’d been checking up on her often since I’d been back in town. So much time had passed, I wondered if she’d welcome me like old times.

  Sweet Freya had come to obsess me.

  I never imagined she actually needed checking on, the last time I’d left her she was strong and capable, now she seemed a broken shell to be handled with care. A grin crossed my lips as I thought about my next move. Maybe rushing into her house with a ski mask just to scare her and teach her a lesson about trusting strangers.

  But I wasn’t a stranger.

  I just needed the right moment and that would take strategy. I fingered the tiny digital tracker in my front pocket, anxious to slip it under the wheel well of her car to keep tabs on her. She was cautious enough to pull her car into the garage each night and lock the doors, but with time she would loosen up and then I would make my move.

  With time, I was confident I could convince Freya Fremont of anything. I knew her well enough to know that at least.

  I zoomed the lens in on the bay windows of the bungalow to find her chatting on the phone, a freshly steeped cup of tea on the table.

  “Probably him,” I grunted, making a note to check her cell records to confirm who she was talking to.

  She twirled her hair between her fingers as she spoke, then took slow sips from her mug when she listened.

  Funny how a girl can get snowed in love so easily. There she was chatting away, thinking herself perfectly safe in his arms, and here he was the devil incarnate, putting her in harm’s way without her cute little upturned cheeks even knowing it. She was probably just one in a line of his victims.

  She hung up the phone a moment later and sat at the table, a soft frown on her face. Apparently love wasn’t all roses in paradise this morning. She climbed the stairs where I knew she’d be headed for her morning shower in the en suite master, followed by another cup of tea before she’d settle into the small corner office and sit behind her computer, working diligently all afternoon.

  This was her daily routine. I’d already had it established from the first day I’d set foot in her life. I sighed and turned away, slipping the key into the ignition until I saw her stop at her closet and rummage through clothes on the hangers and then watched as she came down the front steps of the small bungalow ten minutes later dressed in dark leggings and a button-down blouse.

  Apparently Freya Fremont had a few surprises in store for me today.

  One

  Loved seeing you today. Wish it was more often.

  I frowned before locking the screen of my phone and throwing it into my bag.

  “Who’s that, babe?" Tav walked in, hiking rucksack on his back and a warm smile in his eyes.

  He was so sweet.

  He’d lose it if he knew I was talking to Bradley again.

  I miss you, Bradley had said at the coffee shop yesterday afternoon.

  I miss me too, I’d thought as my daydreams about this upcoming getaway distracted me.

  Bradley only remembered the girl I was. The one in cutoffs and scuffed sneakers, quick to smile and quicker to anger. He’d asked me if I was still a spitfire like the old days, the pad of his thumb caressing my wrist with each drawn out syllable. He had a way of drawing me in, even after all the time spent between us.

  Life had wrestled me into a chokehold the last few years. I thought of Tav’s words the last time I’d seen him, his concern that I was pulling away from him. In truth, I was. Hiring my oldest childhood friend to handle the outdoor maintenance at my tiny bungalow may seem unwise with hindsight, but at the time I’d been happy to be his first client in his new business.

  “You look a million miles away. Did you wrap everything up with work?" Tav passed me in our small kitchen and turned my thoughts to work.

  “Sorry, it’s been so long since we’ve had a weekend away, I feel like I’m going to forget to send an email or client mock-up. It’s been so hard to focus lately.”

  He smiled warmly as he passed me and went out through our front door. I inhaled his usual cologne. The same green bottle I bought him every year for his birthday. It wasn’t that it was so perfectly proportioned that it naturally lent itself to his yearly gift, it’s that he liked it that way. If the bottle began to look prematurely low, he’d cautiously move it to the back of the shelf and go without for a few days to conserve so I could buy him his new bottle.

  Tav liked his life to run a certain way, and lucky for me I fit naturally inside of that.

  Neither of us liked to cook, so we ate out often.

  We jokingly called ourselves spiritual but not religious for the irony of it, and preferred dancing around the house on Saturday evening with wine before making slow, sweet love every Sunday morning.

  Rituals mean everything.

  “Babe—if we’re going to make it to the chalet by dark we need to get on the road. Did you load all of your stuff into the car?" Tav finally paused, taking me in with a concerned look. "Do you want my help?”

  “I’m ready. I was just thinking ab
out something my mom used to say about—”

  Just then his phone vibrated loudly and he held a finger up to me as he hit the answer button on the bluetooth that fit snugly in his ear. He mouthed: "Tell me in the car, okay?”

  I nodded, swiping the hardcover that’d collected dust on our coffee table for the last year. I never made time to read, maybe this long weekend would be my chance. Self-imposed isolation at a winter chalet—the perfect getaway to reconnect—Tav had breathed at my ear as he told me about it.

  He’d come home with the slim pamphlet a few weeks ago. A smart house in the mountains with all of the modern amenities and none of the headaches read its tagline.

  “I can’t wait for the next three days." Tav appeared at the door then, car keys dangling from one finger. "Eight hours and counting.”

  “Eight hours...would you kill me if I napped?”

  “Not in the slightest." He pulled me against his chest and pressed a soft kiss to my lips. "I want you fully refreshed for the weekend I have planned.”

  I let my heartbeat match his as I inhaled his comforting scent. The last two years with Tav had been the best of my life. He’d taught me how to laugh more and worry less. He took care of me in a way no one had ever before. So why did it feel like the distance had grown between us these last few months? We were both overworked, but happily so. He spent more nights in the city at the office, but I didn’t mind. Being together only three or four nights a week kept our relationship fresh. I always looked forward to seeing Tav. Every moment was priceless.

  Always the gentleman, he held my hand as we left our suburban Lancaster bungalow. Opening the passenger door of the car, he snuggled me inside with the fuzzy blanket he’d packed for me, then nestled the book in my lap and strapped me in securely with the seat belt.

  “Good night, sleep tight, Princess," he teased. "By the time you wake up we’ll be in the mountains.”

  A thrill of excitement coursed through me. "I can’t wait.”

  “You and me both."

  Two

  “Hope you like to snowshoe.”

  My eyes fluttered open and I yawned, the book I’d fallen asleep reading still open in my lap.

  “Have a good nap?" Tav asked. I nodded, back aching despite the heated leather seats.

  “It’s only October, how does this place have so much snow?" I hummed as shadowy snowdrifts streaked past my window.

  I turned the heat up on the thermostat instinctively.

  Tav chuckled. “Welcome to the mountains."

  “How much farther?"

  “Not long now. Maybe another hour, less if it weren’t for the snow.”

  I watched the whirling snowflakes before they met their end on the windshield. We didn’t pass many cars, and before I could blink again another small town was fading in the rearview. Tav slowed as we slid through a four-way intersection. He cussed under his breath, then eased into a driveway and turned around. "That was our turn.”

  I didn’t reply, only watched him navigate this new landscape.

  We rarely saw snow this deep at our home in Lancaster, and he saw even less as he worked in Virginia Beach.

  The elevation started to climb as soon as we passed beneath an old-fashioned covered bridge. It looked eerie in the snowy darkness, like something out of a cheap horror film. "These woods are giving me intense Blair Witch vibes.”

  Tav grinned then. "Here’s hoping the driveway isn't snowed in. I can’t imagine living in a place like this, a person might as well be in the Arctic.”

  I let his words hang as the road narrowed and continued to twist and climb up a mountain. We turned an almost jack-knife sharp corner near a stand of towering evergreens and a dark shape darted out in front of the headlights.

  I shrieked. Tav tapped on the brakes. "It’s only a deer, Freya. I need to get you out of the house more if a deer strikes terror in you.”

  I laughed. "I’ve been a hermit, even the squirrels in the backyard scare me at this point."

  “You should come with me to Virginia Beach for a few days, you can work from the townhouse all day or there’s a ton of great coffee shops in the neighborhood.”

  I shook my head, already not keen on the idea of leaving my home office setup. "You’re pushing it with a long weekend, Garrison.”

  “What are you gonna do when we get married? I thought we talked about a destination wedding to Tahiti?" His hand rested on my knee for a moment and squeezed.

  “Maybe." I fingered the engagement ring on my left hand. I remembered the night we’d talked about it. After gin and tonics and two rounds of making love, he’d begged me to marry him while his lips were pressed to mine.

  I hadn’t answered then, but by the time he’d brought it up the next morning at breakfast, I’d started to open to the idea of him and I forever. From the moment Tav and I had met at the art gallery two years ago, we’d been inseparable. I’d stayed with him at his bungalow that first weekend, and outside of a few trips back to my tiny apartment for clothes, I’d never really left. Our lives fit easily together, our flow always fluid and seamless. We were meant to be, he’d whispered in my ear. I believed him.

  But then why were Bradley’s texts burning like a flame in my back pocket?

  I’d known Bradley since we were kids—we’d grown up side by side in our tiny Pennsylvania coal town. He’d stayed when I went to Durham for college and we’d lost touch as our lives took different directions. I’d never really planned to go home again, especially when I was offered an internship at a prestigious advertising company in the graphic design department. One quick summer and I was hired full-time after graduation. Within six months I was handing in my resignation though, determined never to work under a boss again.

  Everything about my time with that firm left a bad taste in my mouth. It was then I vowed to work from home, even if I had to work harder than every other freelance graphic designer. I hit the internet and then the streets of Philadelphia dropping off business cards and setting up meetings with any firm looking for freelance artists.

  Business had boomed ever since, and when Tav was offered the full-time contract with the Department of Defense, I’d been willing to move wherever was needed. But he already had his first surprise for me then—he was keeping the house in Lancaster and adding my name to his deed. One less hoop to jump through when we got married, he’d pledged.

  Plus, his new defense contract gave him a living stipend in the city, and so it was that he worked four days a week in Virginia Beach, and then drove home each long weekend to be with me. Our lives found a new natural rhythm, and we slowly began to talk about when we would get married.

  And then everything fell apart.

  Three

  I thought of the first moment mom told me she was moving across the country to California. I'd smiled and nodded through the phone line as tears filled my eyes. She was all I had. I may have been freshly graduated from college, but it’d been only her and I for nearly two and a half decades. The fact that she wanted to move across the country and follow her dreams after giving me all of mine was brave. I just wasn't sure I was brave enough to live a life without her in it every day.

  I was lucky. She called everyday and I helped her pick out paint and curtains for her new condominium in Monterey. Her happy artist soul had finally found a home. My father had crushed her spirit early on, but just like the strong stubborn woman she was, she carried on for me. She raised a baby alone and she worked everyday including weekends if that's what it took to put food on our table.

  But Mom didn't talk much about my dad. Only that he was a drifter in college that she had only known for a summer. He moved on and she was left with me at the age of seventeen. When she brought him up she always smiled wistfully and closed her eyes and told me that I was just like him. One night after my bedtime story I’d asked her if she’d ever looked for him, if she ever tried to tell him about me. She waved me off and said only that wild things die in captivity.

  It’s hard to miss some
thing you’ve never had and mom made life so carefree and fun I never felt like I missed out on anything.

  Until the week after I graduated from Duke and she told me she was moving. I offered to help move her across the country but she'd only laughed and said that she'd already sold everything. Then she drove often into the Appalachian mist, me in her rearview.

  It was after that that I began working obsessively.

  And not long later Tav and I moved to Lancaster. I was so happy and things were moving so quickly that I lost myself for a while in all that happiness. And then the worst had happened. I'd gotten the call that changed everything.

  My phone rumbled to life in my bag then, pulling me back into reality. I pulled the phone from the dark depths of my purse, the screen lit with Bradley's name. Tav glanced at me across the cab. I swiped, ignoring the call and letting it fall back into my purse thinking maybe now was the time I would have to block Bradley. No matter what he wanted, it was always too often, and what Bradley didn't understand was that Tav was so well connected that in one breath he could ruin Bradley's new life.

  "Who is calling you so late?"

  "Telemarketer. I've been getting them all hours of the day lately," I answered him.

  Tav tapped his finger on the steering wheel, his jaw working back-and-forth quietly as his eyes laser-focused on the snowy road ahead of us. The car suddenly felt too small, the stagnated air left me choking for oxygen.

  Silence hung between us as the narrow road turned curvy. Evergreen limbs hung heavy with wet ice and snow and it dripped on the windshield in fat raindrops. I wrapped my arms around my torso, rubbing my palms against them for warmth. It wasn’t just the outside temperature that felt frigid.

  Tav’s mood swings gave me whiplash some days, but I had a way of feeling things too much too—we were the same that way.