The Day I Died Twice Chapter 07

The Day I Died Twice Chapter 07

I stared at the message until the screen went dark.

Ask Nathaniel who introduced him to Marissa.

In my last life, it had never occurred to me to ask. Marissa had simply existed—the assistant, the other woman, the witness who damned me. I’d been so consumed by Nathaniel’s betrayal that I’d never wondered how she had come into our lives at all.

Who was M?

I typed back with shaking fingers: Who is this?

The reply came instantly.

Someone who’s been watching you longer than Nathaniel has. You always were the lucky one, Celeste.

The lucky one.

Something cold slithered down my spine—not fear exactly, but a memory I couldn’t quite reach. Like a word on the tip of my tongue. Like a face glimpsed in a dream.

I drove home that night with Mabel buckled safe behind me, checking my mirrors the entire way.

I should have felt the nightmare was finished. Nathaniel was in a cell. My mother was alive—I’d called her, sobbing, and she’d picked up, confused and worried and breathing. My father was alive, asleep in the house he’d died trying to leave in another life. My daughter was alive, drawing pictures of rabbits in the backseat.

—

I’d saved everyone.

So why did that message feel like a hand tightening around my throat?

I put Mabel to bed, checked every lock twice, and sat at my kitchen table with the phone glowing in front of me. I pulled up everything I could find on Marissa.

Marissa Bauer. Twenty-eight. Hired as Nathaniel’s executive assistant fourteen months ago. Before that—

The trail went cold. No college. No prior employer that checked out. No family listed. The earliest record of her existence was a driver’s license issued three years ago.

It was as if she’d materialized out of nothing, fully formed, exactly when she was needed.

Exactly the way a planted person would.

My hands went still.

What if Marissa wasn’t Nathaniel’s mistress who became my downfall?

What if Marissa had been sent to Nathaniel—handed to him by someone who knew he’d take the bait? Someone who wanted me destroyed and used my husband as the weapon?

The message glowed up at me. You don’t even know who really started it.

I called the detective. Voicemail. I called the station. They’d

—

let Marissa go home for the night under supervision; she was cooperating, a key witness.

I needed to talk to her. I needed to know who M was, who had reached into my life and arranged my murder like a chess game.

I grabbed my keys.

And then my phone buzzed one more time.

A photo this time.

It was me. Standing at my own kitchen window. Taken from outside. Just now.

Don’t go anywhere, Celeste. I’ll come to you. We have so much to catch up on. After all—

The next line stopped my heart.

—we have the same face.