Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN BEFORE ME
I had known Tristan had been married once before.
That was the version he gave me.
A short marriage in his twenties.
An impulsive mistake.
No children.
No contact.
He said her name was Hannah and that she had moved overseas after the divorce.
Whenever I asked for details, he called the relationship ancient history.
Now Celeste’s warning turned ancient history into evidence.
Detective Bell searched immediately.
There was no divorce record for Tristan and Hannah Mercer.
There was, however, a death certificate.
Hannah had died nine years earlier.
Cause of death: complications from a sudden bacterial infection.
My entire body went cold.
The similarities were impossible to ignore.
Hannah had been thirty-one.
She had developed an infected cut on her hand.
According to the old medical report, she delayed seeking care for almost two days.
By the time she reached the hospital, she was septic.
She died forty-eight hours later.
Tristan had been the husband at her bedside.
I read the summary three times.
Then I saw the line that made my vision narrow.
The wound had reportedly happened while Hannah was cleaning broken glass at home.
Tristan had treated it himself.
Bell reopened the old file with help from the local department where Hannah had lived.
Back then, nobody had suspected a crime.
The death had been tragic, fast, and medically plausible.
The life-insurance payout had been modest.
One hundred eighty thousand dollars.
Tristan used part of it to launch the career that eventually led to medical procurement.
“Could he have done the same thing to her?” June asked.
Bell refused to speculate.
I did not need him to.
The pattern was already living inside my bones.
Then Hannah’s younger brother called me.
His name was Daniel Mercer.
Bell had contacted him after reopening the case, and Daniel asked if I would speak with him.
I agreed.
His first words were an apology.
“I should have pushed harder.”
I told him none of this was his fault.
He said Hannah had called him the day before she collapsed.
She had sounded frightened.
“She said Tristan wouldn’t let her go to urgent care.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Why?”
“He told her she was overreacting.”
The room blurred.
Same words.
Same pattern.
Daniel said Hannah had also discovered Tristan was seeing another woman shortly before her death.
Not Celeste.
Someone else.
He never learned her name.
After Hannah died, Tristan moved quickly.
He sold their apartment.
He changed jobs.
He stopped answering Daniel’s calls.
Before hanging up, Daniel told me there was one thing police had never seen.
Hannah had left him a voicemail the night before she went to the hospital.
He had kept it for nine years because he could never bring himself to delete her voice.
He sent the recording to Bell.
Then he sent it to me.
I listened alone.
Hannah sounded weak.
Her breathing was shallow.
Behind her voice, I could hear a man moving around a room.
Then she whispered:
“Daniel, something is wrong.”
A pause.
“He keeps telling me not to leave.”
Another pause.
“I think he put something on the cut.”
A man’s voice sounded in the background.
Tristan.
“Hannah, who are you talking to?”
The recording ended.
I sat frozen with the phone in my hand.
Nine years earlier, another woman had been trapped in a room while Tristan told her not to seek medical help.
She had not escaped.
I had.
Daniel Mercer sent me a photograph of Hannah before our first long conversation.
He said he wanted me to see her as a person before I saw her as a case.
She stood on a beach wearing a ridiculous yellow raincoat and holding two paper cups of coffee.
Her hair was blowing across her face.
She looked impatient with whoever held the camera.
Alive in the most ordinary way.
I printed the photograph.
Then I felt guilty for printing it.
Hannah did not belong to my story.
I belonged, unwillingly, to a pattern that had already consumed hers.
Daniel told me she loved old mystery novels and hated olives.
She worked in a veterinary clinic.
She once drove six hours to help him move apartments and spent the entire trip complaining about his music.
Those details mattered because crime files flatten people.
Victim.
Deceased.
Female, thirty-one.
A row in a spreadsheet.
Tristan’s spreadsheet had done the same thing in a more chilling way.
Name.
Policy.
Event value.
Daniel wanted Hannah restored to language larger than money.
The renewed investigation found archived pharmacy receipts showing Hannah had purchased ordinary antiseptic the week she was injured.
The bottle was never recovered after her death.
Tristan told police at the time he threw it away because it was empty.
Nobody questioned that.
Now investigators compared his old statement with his company access records.
Two days before Hannah cut her hand, he checked out a concentrated cleaning sample from work.
The entry contained his employee code.
The product was marked returned one week later.
But the employee who supposedly received the return had been on vacation.
It was another tiny administrative inconsistency nobody noticed until the story around it changed.
Daniel became angry when he learned how much had been available all along.
“If they had looked harder, she might have mattered.”
Bell did not defend the old investigation.
He explained that suspicious patterns often become visible only after a second event.
That answer was true and unsatisfying.
Justice contained many truths that were unsatisfying.
The old coroner had documented tissue damage but had no reason then to suspect deliberate chemical exposure.
The treating physicians saw sepsis, not a crime scene.
The insurance company saw a claim within expected limits.
Each institution held one fragment.
Tristan survived in the spaces between fragments.
When the Vancouver crash happened, I experienced a reaction that ashamed me.
For one second after Bell said Tristan had been injured, I hoped the injuries were serious enough to stop him permanently.
I did not hope he died.
I think that is true.
But I wanted the problem of him solved without another decision from me.
Then he called.
His voice erased the guilt.
He did not ask about Milo.
He did not ask whether I was recovering.
He did not apologize.
He ordered.
Fly here.
Take care of me.
Take care of Celeste.
As if marriage were a service agreement he alone could enforce.
The threat about Milo’s check followed because tenderness had failed to appear.
It was almost reassuring in its ugliness.
The man had not changed.
The distance between Vancouver and my hospital bed had only removed his ability to pretend.
After the call, I listened to Hannah’s voicemail again.
He keeps telling me not to leave.
I wondered whether Tristan had used money against her too.
Daniel said yes.
Hannah once told him Tristan threatened to stop paying the lease if she stayed with family.
She returned home partly because she could not afford two households.
Another ordinary pressure.
Another locked door without a physical lock.
I began writing these parallels in a notebook.
Not for court.
For myself.
Whenever I started thinking I had exaggerated what happened, I opened the notebook.
Hannah asked for help.
He delayed her.
I asked for help.
He delayed me.
Hannah suspected something was put on her wound.
My wound showed chemical injury.
Hannah died.
I escaped.
The last line terrified me.
It also kept me moving.
Daniel told me Hannah once kept a packed overnight bag beneath her desk at work.
She never used it.
After her death, a coworker found it and assumed it was for the gym.
Inside were clothes, cash, a spare charger, and photocopies of identification.
Hannah had been preparing to leave.
That detail stayed with me because preparation is invisible until the moment it becomes action.
I had no packed bag the night I escaped.
I had only a phone, damp pajamas, and enough strength to reach the stairs.
There is no single correct way to leave danger.
Some people plan for months.
Some leave in one feverish minute.
Some return before leaving again.
Judging the route from the outside ignores the terrain only the person inside can see.
By evening, prosecutors obtained an arrest warrant for aggravated assault, unlawful confinement, and evidence tampering related to my case.
A separate investigation began into Hannah’s death.
Vancouver police were given Tristan’s hotel information.
For the first time since I reached the emergency room, I allowed myself to believe he might finally be stopped.
Then the hotel reported that Tristan and Celeste had checked out.
Their rental car was gone.
Their phones were off.
The police issued an alert.
Two days passed.
Then three.
On the fourth morning, Detective Bell called me before sunrise.
“Reese, there’s been an accident.”
My stomach dropped.
“Where?”
“Outside Vancouver.”
I sat up in bed.
“A vehicle matching Tristan’s rental crashed into a barrier near the Sea-to-Sky Highway.”
I gripped the phone.
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
“And Celeste?”
“Alive.”
I closed my eyes.
Bell continued.
“They’re both hospitalized.”
For one second, I expected relief.
Instead, another call flashed on my screen.
Unknown number.
Canadian area code.
Bell told me not to answer until he could conference the call.
We connected.
Then Tristan’s voice filled the line.
Weak.
Breathless.
Still commanding.
“Reese.”
I said nothing.
“I need you to come to Vancouver.”
My jaw tightened.
He sounded almost offended that I had not already offered.
“Celeste can’t walk.”
Silence.
“I need help too.”
I stared at the wall.
May you like
Then he returned to the one weapon he thought would always work.
“Do it, or I’ll cancel the ten-thousand-dollar check for Milo’s hospital bill.”
