Chapter 4: The Husband Before Me
I didn't go home that night.
Cole arranged a room at a motel two towns over — a plain place off the interstate, cash paid, registered under a name that wasn't mine.
He told me to text Laura that I was staying at a colleague's place after a work dinner ran late.
He told me to keep the message short and casual.
He told me not to call her.
I texted.
She replied with a single word: *OK.*
No question.
No follow-up.
No *miss you.*
I sat on the edge of the motel bed and thought about how many times I had read *OK* from her and felt nothing unusual about it.
Cole came back the next morning with coffee and a second folder, thicker than the first.
He set it on the small table by the window and let me go through it myself.
Gerald Pruitt was fifty-eight years old.
He lived in a suburb of Columbus in a house he had owned outright before Sandra Voss walked into his life.
He was a retired civil engineer.
Widower.
One adult daughter.
By every measure, a careful, steady man.
The photographs showed what three years with Sandra had cost him.
The house was listed for sale.
The retirement account was gone.
His daughter had given a statement to investigators describing her father as a man who had stopped recognizing himself.
*He trusted her completely,* she had written.
*He said she made him feel like he wasn't alone anymore.
He said she was the kindest person he had ever met.*
I set the page down.
"I need to talk to him," I said.
Cole looked up from his own coffee.
"Pruitt?"
"Yes."
"Michael—"
"He's the only other person who knows what this feels like from the inside.
And he might know something you don't."
Cole was quiet for a moment.
"I can arrange a call.
But I want one of my people on the line."
"Fine."
The call happened that afternoon.
Gerald Pruitt answered on the third ring.
His voice was measured, careful — the voice of a man who had learned to be cautious about unexpected phone calls.
I told him who I was.
I told him what I had found out four days ago.
There was a long silence.
"She told you Portland," he said finally.
"Yes."
"She told me Seattle.
Different city.
Same story.
Parents gone, no siblings, didn't like to talk about it." He exhaled slowly.
"She has a type, Mr.
Harris.
Men who won't push.
Men who think respecting privacy is the same as being a good partner."
That landed somewhere uncomfortable.
"Did you ever meet anyone connected to her?" I asked.
"Anyone she introduced as a friend, a colleague, someone from her past?"
"One person," Pruitt said.
"A man she called her financial advisor.
Came to the house twice.
Said he was helping her set up an investment portfolio.
I never saw documentation.
She said she was handling it."
"Do you remember his name?"
"She called him Daniel.
I never got a last name.
Medium height, maybe fifty, silver hair.
Drove a black Audi." He paused.
"He made me uncomfortable and I couldn't tell you why.
I mentioned it to Sandra once.
She laughed it off."
I wrote *Daniel* on the notepad Cole had left on the table.
"Mr.
Pruitt," I said.
"I'm sorry.
For what she did to you."
Another silence.
Longer this time.
"Find her," he said quietly.
"Not for me.
I'm past it.
But find whoever is behind her, because Sandra Voss didn't build this alone.
Someone taught her how to do this.
Someone is still using her."
The call ended.
I looked at the name on the notepad.
Cole was already on his phone.
"Daniel," I said.
"Silver hair.
Black Audi.
Visited Pruitt's house twice around 2018."
Cole nodded slowly, still reading something on his screen.
Then he stopped.
He looked at me.
"Say that again.
Silver hair.
Black Audi."
"Yes.
Why?"
He turned his phone around so I could see the screen.
It was a surveillance photograph, timestamped eleven days ago.
A man standing outside a coffee shop two blocks from my house.
Silver hair.
Dark jacket.
"That man," Cole said, "was photographed outside your home three times last month."
I stared at the image.
He had been watching us.
Watching *me.* While Laura smiled over dinner and asked me to pick up milk, this man had been standing two blocks away.
"He's not just connected to her," I said.
May you like
"No," Cole said.
"He's running her."
