Layla asked the news agency's resident hacker - tech expert - to trace the five deleted phone calls on the excuse that it was for an article she was writing about adultery, of all things. One of them, the IT guy, tracked to a payphone in Las Vegas. She frowned and asked how anyone still used payphones and was then reliably informed by the IT guy—who was a maverick on the slot machines—that they were in every hotel on the Strip.

The second call was linked to a gas station near their house... and across from her OB-GYN's office. She realized then that it was Amara, whom she had seen a few weeks ago, also outside her gynecologist's office. The third was to a florist. The fourth, a bakery. But it was the fifth that concerned her the most: it was to their mechanic.

Why would Hayden delete a call to the mechanic? Was there something wrong with her car? His car?

He's a man, she told herself. Maybe he overspent on a part and doesn't want you to ask questions about it. Or maybe, he was waiting for her to ask questions, waiting for her to play into his trap and lose everything, sanity included.

Well, she had more to worry about than herself now. There was no way she would let him touch her or the baby.

Tapping her pen against a notepad, she stared at her blank Word document as though waiting for it to fill up on its own accord. Huffing a sigh, she got up to stretch her legs. Just as she neared the water cooler, a delivery man stepped off the elevator. "Flowers for Layla Song?"

She stopped in her tracks. It was a modest-sized bouquet, pink lilies interspersed with blue orchids. She cleared her throat and regained control of her senses. "Yes, that's mine."

He passed her a pen. "Sign here, please."

She scribbled his signature before accepting the crystal vase. Layla sat down at her desk to open the note, ignoring her coworkers' oohs, ahhs, and stares. It was a yellow Post-It note slapped onto white card stock, in Hayden's neat hand. Layla Song, I'm sorry - H. Despite all that had happened... He knew how to make her smile. And lilies were her favourite flower.

She excused herself from her work and went into the hall to place a phone call. "Hayden?"

"He's driving," said a woman's voice.

So much for his office job making him more accessible. "I'm his wife," she said, her fingers clenching into a fist around the phone. "Can you get him on the line, please?"

"Hey, honey," he said easily. Fine. She could be nonchalant, too. "Sorry about Carly. I'm just driving her to her ultrasound appointment."

The irony embedded into their conversation was not lost on her. This is another reason you can't tell him, her mind whispered. You can't even trust him. "No problem. I just wanted to thank you for the flowers." She let her voice take on a dreamy lilt, one she reserved for cooing at puppies and small children. "They're just so beautiful..."

"And you read the card?" he said, sounding surprised.

"Of course," she said. "Holding it right now." It was true. She hadn't wanted to leave it on her desk at the mercy of her prying coworkers.

"I'm glad you like them," Hayden said. "Listen, we're almost at the clinic. I'll see you tonight?"

"See you," she said before hanging up. As she spun around, she caught sight of Vihaan smoking out of an open window. She was surprised no alarms had gone off yet.

When she walked past him, he said, "You sounded awfully gushy. Who are you and what have you done with Layla Lee?"

She didn't bother to correct him on her name, as she didn't use her married name professionally. "He's my husband."

Another possessive claim. How much longer would it be true?

"I'm just being your friend," he said.

Layla kept walking, fanning away the smell of smoke that haunted her day... And night.

Back at her desk, she worked through her lunch and coffee break, only pausing to drink a smoothie and consume a snack of grapes and string cheese, as well as the recommended prenatal supplements, which she stored in an aspirin bottle for fear of discovery. A sense of uneasiness plagued her, clinging to her just as much as the cigarette smoke did. Something was coming. Something was happening. But was it the danger that her sister warned her about, or adultery that she suspected, or something far worse? Was it their pasts, coming after them surely as Amara was?

Her computer dinged with an email from her editor. It was terse.

Good work, but the victim's name is Heller, not Hayden; fix that and we can publish.

She groaned. Layla had changed the name. She was sure of it. Or had she repeated the mistake somewhere else? She did a quick find and replace for the names and then sent off the article to be published on the digital edition of their paper. Finally, the clock's hands crawled to 5:30, and she left the office.

When she got into her green Honda Accord, however, it wouldn't start. She sighed and began calling a taxi. Vihaan strolled into the parking garage just as smoke started billowing from under the hood. He whistled. She scrambled out of the car, spots of colour rising in her cheeks. The call to the mechanic... her heart pounded. But after a few minutes, the plumes subsided and she was left dialling a tow truck instead.

The engine sputtered as she backed away slowly from the car, standing behind a concrete pillar. She waved the noxious smells of smoke out of her face.

"Whoa, there," Vihaan said as her arm hit his while she reached for the pillar to steady herself. "You okay?"

Layla turned to face him, recoiling from the hand he reached out as if to keep her upright. She was hardly a skittish horse and didn't need the support. "Fine."

"Do you need a ride?"

"I'll get a ride," she said, taking another step away from him.

Her heel wedged in a crack on the floor, and she almost twisted her ankle trying to get free. This was beginning to feel more and more like a trap. Layla hugged the flower arrangement to her chest, searching for the sweet floral fragrance among the choking scent of exhaust and the faint cigarette odour that clung to his clothes. But the bouquet had no smell.

"Do you want me to wait with you until he gets here?"

"I'm good," she said, summoning her brightest smile. It didn't appear as radiant as she might have wanted, but whose fault was that? "I have pepper spray and a taser in my purse."

Was she assuring him of her safety or threatening him to make him go away? Layla didn't know. She had been keeping people at arm's length for so long that she no longer knew how to stop, or if, like Hayden, it was simply another part of her now.

"Goodnight," he said, getting into his silver Audi. She didn't repeat the greeting, fingers digging into the crystal vase to keep from dropping it. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she wanted to be friends.

Vihaan waited in his car, making her roll her eyes. When she said she was fine, she meant it. Her phone rang, vibrating against her palm, and she realized she'd never finished calling a tow truck She picked up. "Hello?"

"I'm outside your office," Hayden said. "Where are you?"

"You're picking me up?" she said, staring at her Lexus and the smoke that vented from its hood. She hadn't called him by accident, had she? "I mean, I'm in the parking garage."

Moments later, his bronze Buick rolled to a stop next to her. Hayden cranked down the window. His face brightened when he saw her. So many emotions ran through her at the same time when she saw his smile that it was hard to quantify which one was the strongest, let alone name all of them. She had always liked his smile, but that didn't mean anything, did it?

"Thanks for coming," she said. She felt like the lie she had told him to come true, like the plot of a book she had read in junior high. "How did you know?"

"Know what?" he said, getting out of the car to take the flowers from her and open her door. His frown looked genuine. For once, Layla didn't protest, too paralyzed by suspicion to let out a word.

"That my car had trouble starting," she said. Was this the deleted call to the mechanic that he had made? Had he intended to kill her, then swoop in like Prince Charming on a white horse and save her life? Did he miss playing the hero?

"What's wrong with it?" He stood outside the Buick as she got in. "Let me take a look."

"No, no," she said. "It's okay."

Still, she could hardly stop him. She stayed in the car while he examined her faintly smoking car, and she didn't miss how he stopped and looked at Vihaan's silver Audi for a solid minute. The men chatted for a second, Vihaan rolling down his window and Hayden gesturing toward her with an expression that she might almost call possessive.

Ten minutes later, he slid into the driver's seat, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. "Let's go home."

#

The faucet had been leaking.

Hayden had heard the steady drip like sandpaper on his nerves as he'd rummaged through the bottom drawer, reaching for his shaving cream. Pushing past about ten different bottles of Layla's stuff - one bottle called contour, something called concentrate, just to name a few Hayden groaned in frustration. He slammed the drawer shut and the cups on the counter rattled. Her tube of shaving cream stared him in the eye like a taunt.

Just as he pulled out his phone, stomped on his pride, and was about to ask his wife if she'd seen it, there was a scream from the living room. Every fibre of his body coiled up, ready for an attack. Picking up the nearest thing he had to a weapon - a nail file with a pointed tip - he brandished it before slowly walking out into the main living area.

Layla had furnished the place in white: walls, bleached driftwood floor from California, white cushions on the pale grey sofa, even a white rug now stained with patches of brown and grey. Even the cat was white. Which made it all the more noticeable when a woman clad in all black lounged on the sofa with her feet propped up on the white coffee table with Inky curled up on her lap, purring. He reached for a gun that wasn't there, looking for a wife who might have never been.

Hayden saw the cause of the scream: broken glass littered the floor from an ugly vase. Red petals and water droplets were scattered on the white rug.

"You have one minute to explain why you're here before I'm calling the cops," he said, grabbing his phone.

"You're not even going to ask me how I got in?" she said, sounding amused. The woman stood, pulling herself into a full height, approximately five foot three inches, shorter than Layla, with dark hair, facial features mostly obscured by a surgical mask. She was barefoot, which seemed odd for a criminal.

"Ten seconds," he said.

"I'm not here for you," she said. If he could've seen her face, he'd be a hundred percent sure that she had a smile on it. As it was, he was only ninety percent sure. "I'm here for your wife, silly."

"What do you want with her?" His heart seemed to contract at a slower pace, time thickening like molasses and trapping him as easily as a fly in amber.

"I'm currently quite harmless, I assure you." Maybe, but she was surveying his living room like she was casing the place for a burglary. Next time, he was going to bring his gun into the bathroom. "Your wife is in danger."

"How did you know? And from whom? Or what?" Was this related to her job? She'd written some unflattering exposes before but never anything bad enough to warrant a full-blown threat.

She's in danger from you, Hayden. The voice was so loud, his self-accusations roaring in his ears, that he blinked and almost missed it when the woman made for the door. "Hey, not so fast."

She put a hand on the knob. "I told you why I'm here. And with five seconds left, to boot. So go get your wife."

And that was how he'd wound up here, driving his wife home from work. Could she sense the encounter on him?

The suspicion, fear, mistrust, and paranoia - did they roll off of him like cologne?

"You have a five o'clock shadow," Layla said, suddenly reaching out to touch his jaw when they waited at a stoplight.

"Yeah, I couldn't find the shaving cream." Hayden kept his eyes straight ahead.

"You ran out," she said. "There's a three-pack in the cabinet under the sink." Her tone was nearly wistful - like she was savouring the last bite of a dessert, the last word of a good book.

As they drove home, he wondered: Does she know it's almost the end?