Chapter 1
My Husband Took My New Porsche and Crashed With His Pregnant Mistress—Then My Mother-in-Law Thought I Was the One Dying and Said, “Don’t Save Her”...
At 3:12 in the morning, a doctor called to tell me that my brand-new Porsche had gone off a mountain road with two people inside.
I knew immediately that neither of them was me.
“Is this Audrey Whitmore?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
“This is Front Range Medical Center in Denver. A vehicle registered to you was involved in a serious accident west of Golden. We have a male driver and a female passenger. Both are in critical condition.”
I sat upright.
The other side of my king-size bed was empty.
My husband, Mason Kincaid, had left four hours earlier wearing the charcoal suit I had bought him for our anniversary.
“Late client dinner,” he had said while adjusting his cuff links in the mirror.
“Don’t wait up.”
I had believed him.
My Porsche had been delivered less than twenty-four hours earlier.
I had purchased it with the advance from my newest psychological thriller, and I had deliberately told almost no one.
Especially Mason’s family.
For four years, every purchase I made became a family debate.
If I bought a handbag, his mother asked why I had not paid down her credit card.
If I booked a vacation, his sister complained that she had never been to Europe.
If I invested money, his father suddenly remembered a medical bill.
So I had hidden the Porsche key inside the locked drawer of my home office.
The doctor continued speaking.
“Mr. Kincaid had identification on him. We believe he is your husband.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“And the woman?”
“We haven’t confirmed her identity yet.”
I closed my eyes.
There are moments when your marriage ends before anyone says the word divorce.
That was mine.
But twenty seconds later, something much worse happened.
The doctor said they had been trying to contact Mason’s parents.
I knew Diane Kincaid would answer her landline because she kept it beside her bed.
And I knew something else.
Months earlier, after Mason’s father Russell suffered a cardiac episode, I had installed a small emergency camera in their living room so I could check on him if he stopped answering his phone.
I opened the security app on my tablet.
The camera loaded.
Diane appeared in a pale robe, marching toward the ringing telephone.
Russell followed her.
She answered irritably.
“What?”
I could hear only her side clearly.
Then her expression changed.
“A white Porsche?”
Pause.
“Registered to Audrey Whitmore?”
Another pause.
Something happened to Diane’s face.
She smiled.
Not widely.
Just enough.
My stomach turned cold.
She covered the receiver and looked at Russell.
“It’s Audrey.”
Russell blinked.
“What?”
“She crashed that ridiculous car.”
He stared at her.
“Is she alive?”
“For now.”
Those two words sounded almost cheerful.
Russell lowered himself into a chair.
Diane’s breathing quickened.
“What about the condo?” she whispered. “And her accounts?”
My hand began trembling.
The Denver condo was mine.
So were the investments.
So were the royalties.
Mason had contributed almost nothing to any of them.
Diane lifted the phone again.
Whatever the person on the other end said made her roll her eyes.
“No,” she snapped. “We’re not paying for anything.”
Pause.
Then came the sentence I would hear in my nightmares for months.
“If she’s dying, don’t save her.”
I stopped breathing.
Russell glanced toward her.
Diane continued.
“I mean it. Don’t waste some fortune trying to keep her alive if she’s never going to recover.”
The hospital employee apparently tried to explain something.
Diane cut him off.
“We’ll deal with everything in the morning.”
She hung up.
For five full seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then Russell asked quietly, “What happens to her property?”
Diane’s smile returned.
“Mason is her husband.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean—”
“She has millions, Russell.”
My throat tightened.
Diane started pacing.
“The condo. Her royalties. The car insurance. Investments. She doesn’t have children. Mason gets everything.”
Russell looked nervous.
“What if she has a will?”
“Then Mason contests it.”
She said it casually.
Like they were planning Thanksgiving dinner.
I had paid thirty-eight thousand dollars toward Russell’s medical treatment two years earlier.
I had covered Diane’s dental work.
I had paid the deposit on Brooke Kincaid’s apartment when Mason’s younger sister lost her job.
I had told myself generosity could turn difficult people into family.
Instead, I had apparently spent four years feeding people who were waiting for me to die.
Then Brooke entered the camera frame.
Diane had called her.
“Is Audrey really dying?” Brooke asked.
Diane nodded.
Brooke’s first question was not whether I was conscious.
It was not whether I was frightened.
She asked, “What happens to her jewelry?”
Something inside me went completely still.
I got dressed.
Black pantsuit.
Hair pulled back.
No makeup except enough concealer to hide the shock on my face.
Before leaving, I checked the drawer where I had kept the Porsche key.
The drawer was still locked.
The key was still inside.
I stared at it.
Mason had made a duplicate.
That meant he had planned to take the car.
I grabbed my phone, identification, laptop, and a portable battery.
Then I called a rideshare.
Rain was pounding downtown Denver when I stepped outside.
Twenty minutes later I reached Front Range Medical Center.
A trauma surgeon met me near the emergency department.
“Your husband has extensive injuries,” he said. “The female passenger is also in critical condition.”
“Are you treating them?”
“Of course. We’re doing everything medically appropriate.”
Relief mixed with something darker.
Diane’s order could not kill anyone.
But it had revealed exactly who she was when she thought I could no longer hear her.
The surgeon hesitated.
“Mrs. Whitmore… the woman with your husband appears to be pregnant.”
I looked at him.
The hallway seemed to tilt.
“How far along?”
“We don’t know yet.”
I sat down.
My husband had stolen my car.
He had lied about a business dinner.
He had taken another woman into the mountains.
And she was pregnant.
Then my phone vibrated.
The Porsche app had sent an automatic collision notification.
Under it was another alert.
Cloud drive recording available.
The car had recorded the final trip.
I stared at the screen.
Suddenly, I no longer cared where Mason had been going.
I needed to know what he had been saying before he crashed.
And when I opened the recording, the first sentence I heard made my blood run colder than anything Diane had said.
May you like
Mason laughed and told the woman beside him:
“After Audrey is gone, none of this will matter.”...
