Chapter 1

We were eating cake when Ethan put down his fork and looked at me.

"Who's James Miller?"

My knife and fork froze in midair.

My heart clenched.

James Miller.

That name was a code Lily and I came up with freshman year of college, after too many drinks and a stupid, tender night.

We agreed that if either of us ever got into trouble, ever went silent, the other one would use that name as a signal.

No one else knew. Just the two of us.

And Lily had been missing for thirty-two days.

She said she was going to Harlow, Montana to clear her head.

And then she never came back.

I looked at Ethan's calm face and felt my blood go cold.

How did he know that name?

I still remember the night we came up with that stupid code.

Lily had her arm around my shoulders. She was a little drunk.

"Everly," she said, "let's make a code."

"What kind of code?"

I told her she was being dramatic.

But I stayed up with her thinking about it anyway, and we settled on James Miller.

Because it was so ordinary. The kind of name you'd pass on the street without a second thought. No one would ever suspect its meaning.

Only the two of us in the whole world knew what it meant.

One was me.

The other was Lily Hart.

She said she was going to Harlow, Montana for a few days.

She even sent me a voice message the morning she left, her voice bright and excited. "Everly! What do you want me to bring back?"

That was the last time I heard her voice.

After that, her WhatsApp went silent.

Her phone went straight to voicemail.

Her Instagram stopped at a photo she'd posted by the lake, blue sky, white clouds, her standing in front of a flower stall with her eyes crinkled shut from smiling.

I filed a missing person report.

Her family filed one too.

Local authorities in Harlow, Montana were looking.

But there was nothing. No sign of her alive, no sign of her dead.

Lily had vanished like she'd never existed.

And now.

My husband Ethan Cole.

A man who didn't even have Lily's number.

A man who would barely nod at her when they were in the same room.

Had just asked me that name, casually, between bites of cake.

"You okay?" Ethan watched me go still and raised an eyebrow. "You look weird."

"I'm fine." I looked down and put a piece of cake in my mouth. It tasted like nothing. "James Miller? Never heard of him. Is he someone you know?"

"Oh, just scrolling." He picked up his coffee and took a sip. "Never mind."

He changed the subject. Started talking about a golf game he had planned for the weekend.

I didn't hear a word.

There was only one thought in my head.

How did he know?

How did he know that name?

After dinner, Ethan went to take a shower.

I sat on the couch with sweat on my palms.

The sound of water came through the bathroom door.

I glanced at it, then stood up and walked to his phone on the coffee table.

I knew the passcode.

It was my birthday.

I unlocked it and started going through his WhatsApp, his call log, his notes. My fingers were shaking.

Nothing.

It was too clean.

Clean in a way that wasn't normal.

A real person's phone doesn't look like that.

I went to his laptop next.

It was in the study. The password was my birthday too.

He had never hidden it from me.

I went through his browser history, his folders, his downloads, one by one.

Then I opened a ride-share app and pulled up his trip history.

My hand stopped.

A month ago.

Ethan told me he was going to Boston for two days on a work trip.

I had helped him pack.

But the app said something different.

He hadn't gone to Boston.

He had gone to Harlow, Montana.

He left one day before Lily did.

He came back two days after she disappeared.

The shower turned off.

I closed the laptop, walked back to the living room and sat on the couch and picked up my phone like I was watching videos.

Ethan came out with a towel around his shoulders. He glanced at me. "You're not sleeping?"

"In a bit. Just finishing something."

I smiled.

He went into the bedroom and turned off the light.

I sat there staring at the dark line under the bedroom door and felt my fingers tighten one by one around the arm of the couch.

Ethan.

What did you go to Harlow, Montana for?