Page 8 of Over Her Dead Body

“Was the change authorized?”

“No.”

He sighs. “Does she have business there?”

“No.”

“Then why Lisbon?”

I look at the message again. One word. No explanation. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be calling.”

The silence that follows is different.

“Have someone waiting when she lands,” I say. “I want to know where she goes and who she sees.”

“How much time do we have?”

I check the departure time. “Nine hours.”

He is quiet for a moment. “I have someone in Lisbon.”

“Send him to arrivals.”

“Instructions?”

“Stay with her. No contact. Tell me where she goes and who she meets.”

I end the call.

Lisbon is not a city Emma Calloway has any reason to visit. She has no clients there. No sales. No contacts I am aware of, and I am aware of most things where Emma is concerned.

Until this morning, she had never once deviated. She goes where she is supposed to go. She does what she is supposed to do. She is reliable in the way of people who have rebuilt themselves from wreckage—meticulous, habitual, precise.

Nine minutes later, a Portuguese number appears on my screen.

Send her photograph.

I send Emma’s.

I have the flight. I’ll be at arrivals thirty minutes before she lands.

I type back.

No contact. She cannot know you’re there.

The reply comes almost immediately.

She won’t.

CHAPTER 4

EMMA

Nearly ten hours is a long time to sit three rows behind your dead husband and pretend to be a stranger.

It is enough time to cycle through every stage of grief, circle back to anger, and park there. Enough time to conduct a sustained internal argument about what you are doing and lose on every front. Enough time to memorize the back of a man’s head so thoroughly that you could describe it under oath.

I have been doing all of these things. It is hour five.