Chapter 1

"# Chapter 1: The Wrong Body

The funeral director had the nerve to look offended when I asked to see the body again. I didn't care. I'd buried a stranger once already. I wasn't about to do it twice.

"Mrs. Ashford, the casket is sealed. The service begins in twenty minutes."

"Then I suggest you unseal it."

I stood in the viewing room of Ashford Family Funeral Home, the same place we'd laid Daniel's father to rest three days ago. The old man's death had been quick. A stroke at his desk, a bottle of bourbon still open. Now his youngest son lay in a polished mahogany box, and I was expected to weep.

I hadn't wept for Daniel in six months. Not since the night I found the death certificate.

"Mrs. Ashford, the remains are... not suitable for viewing."

"I've seen worse." I stepped closer to the casket. "I grew up in the bayou. You learn to look at dead things straight on."

The funeral director, a man named Gerald who'd known the Ashford family for forty years, shifted his weight. His hands were trembling. That should have been my first clue.

"The accident was severe," he said. "The fire. There was no way to..."

"The fire." I repeated the word like it was a piece of hard candy in my mouth. "Funny. The police report said there was no fire. Just a drunk driver crossing the median. Daniel's car went into the river."

Gerald's face went white.

I pulled the folded paper from my purse. I'd kept it in an envelope inside my Bible, the way my grandmother kept her salvation testimony. Only this wasn't a testimony. It was an indictment.

"I requested a copy of the death certificate from the county clerk," I said, unfolding it. "You know what I found?"

"Mrs. Ashford—"

"The Social Security number listed doesn't belong to Daniel. It belongs to a man named Marcus Delgado from El Paso, Texas. He's alive. I called him. He was very confused to learn he was dead."

Gerald's mouth opened and closed like a fish on a dock.

"So," I said, "I'm going to ask you one time. Who is in that casket?"

The silence stretched. Outside, I could hear the first cars arriving. The Ashford family would fill this room soon. Daniel's mother, Eleanor, with her pearls and her gin. Daniel's brother Rhett, who'd flown in from Scotland last night. The business partners. The lawyers. The vultures.

"I don't know," Gerald finally whispered. "He paid me. Ten thousand dollars. He said it was a body from the morgue, an unclaimed man. He said I was never to open the casket."

"He."

"I don't know his name. He wore a mask. He had an accent. Scottish, maybe."

I folded the death certificate and put it back in my purse. My hands were steady. That surprised me. I'd spent six months drowning in grief, and now I felt nothing but cold, clear purpose.

"Gerald," I said, "you're going to open the casket. Then you're going to call the police and tell them everything you just told me. And then you're going to retire."

"I can't—"

"You can. You will. Because if you don't, I'll tell the entire Ashford family that you buried a stranger with their name on the headstone. And I'll tell Eleanor that you were the one who picked out Daniel's favorite tie for the viewing. The one he wore to his wedding."

Gerald's face crumpled. He was a weak man. That was why Daniel had chosen him.

The casket lid creaked as he unlatched it. I stepped forward as he lifted it, expecting the worst. A burned man. A mangled man. Something that would make me sick.

But the man in the casket was whole. Middle-aged. Gray hair. A face I'd never seen before.

"Different body," I said. "Wrong face. Wrong hair. Wrong everything."

Gerald was crying now, quiet tears streaming down his cheeks. "I'm sorry. He said you'd never look. He said widows don't look."

"He was wrong about that."

I reached out and touched the dead man's hand. It was cold. Real. This man had a name. A family. Someone had lost him, and Daniel had turned him into a prop.

I pulled my hand back and looked at Gerald. "You're going to call the police. And then you're going to tell them the truth. And then you're going to leave town."

"What about the funeral?"

"The funeral goes on." I smiled. It was the same smile I'd practiced in the mirror every morning for six months. Sweet. Grieving. Believable. "We're going to bury this man with full honors. And Daniel Ashford is going to watch from wherever he's hiding, and he's going to think he won."

Gerald stared at me like I was a ghost. Maybe I was. The Wren who'd married Daniel at twenty-two, bright-eyed and desperate for a way out of the bayou, was dead. This Wren was something else entirely.

The door opened. Rhett Ashford stepped in.

He was taller than I remembered. Broader. The Scottish distillery had aged him, given him lines around his eyes that made him look like his father. He wore a black suit that fit him too well, and his hands were shoved in his pockets like he didn't know what to do with them.

"Wren." His voice was low, steady. "The cars are here."

"We have a problem," I said.

He looked at the open casket. Then at Gerald. Then back at me. His face didn't change. That was the thing about Rhett. He never showed his cards.

"What kind of problem?"

"That's not Daniel."

Rhett walked to the casket and looked down at the stranger. He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "I know."

"You know?"

"I've known since the funeral home called me in Scotland. Something didn't add up. The paperwork. The timing. My brother was too careful to die in a drunk driving accident."

"You didn't tell me."

"You weren't ready."

I wanted to slap him. I wanted to thank him. I did neither. "I found the death certificate. Wrong Social Security number. He's alive. He's in Scotland."

Rhett's jaw tightened. "He was. He's not anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"Father's will was read yesterday. You own forty percent of the company. Daniel owns nothing. He can't touch the distillery or the brand or the money. He's coming home to fight for it."

"Home?"

"He lands tonight. He thinks you don't know. He thinks you're still the grieving widow."

I looked down at the stranger in the casket. He deserved better than this. But he'd get the funeral anyway, and maybe that was enough.

"Let him think that," I said. "Let him come home. Let him walk into this funeral home and see this casket and think he's safe."

Rhett watched me carefully. "What are you planning?"

"I'm planning to smile at his funeral." I smoothed my black dress. "And then I'm going to take apart everything he built. The distillery. The castle. The wife. The fortune. Every single piece of it."

"He'll see it coming."

"He won't. Because he's never seen me as a threat. I'm just the bayou girl he married to piss off his father. I'm just the widow. I'm just the mourning wife."

Rhett stepped closer. Close enough that I could smell him. Whiskey and rain. "He's dangerous, Wren. More dangerous than you know."

"So am I."

Gerald had stopped crying. He was watching us like a man who'd wandered into a play and couldn't find the exit.

"I need you to do one thing," I said to Rhett. "When Daniel arrives, you're going to greet him. You're going to shake his hand. You're going to tell him how sorry you are that he missed his own funeral."

Rhett almost smiled. Almost. "And you?"

"I'm going to be in the front row. Crying. Beautifully." I touched my chest, right over my heart. "I'm going to be the best widow this town has ever seen."

"And then?"

"And then I'm going to find his wife."

"His wife?"

"The Scottish heiress. The one he married after he faked his death. I'm going to tell her everything. And then I'm going to offer her a deal."

Rhett's eyes narrowed. "What kind of deal?"

"The kind that leaves Daniel with nothing."

The door opened again. Eleanor Ashford swept in, all silk and gin and grief. She didn't look at the casket. She looked at me.

"Wren, darling. You look pale. Are you alright?"

I smiled my practiced smile. "I'm fine, Eleanor. Just saying goodbye."

She nodded, satisfied, and swept past me to take her seat in the front row. Gerald scrambled to close the casket. Rhett stepped back, his eyes never leaving my face.

"Be careful," he said. "He'll be watching you."

"Let him watch." I turned to face the casket. "Let him watch me bury a stranger. Let him think he's won."

I walked to the front row and sat down beside Eleanor. Outside, the church bells began to toll.

They were ringing for a man who wasn't dead.

And I was going to make sure that by the time they stopped, Daniel Ashford wished he was.

Rhett took the seat on my other side. His hand rested on the armrest, close enough that I could touch it if I wanted. I didn't. But I noticed.

The organ started. The mourners filed in. And I put my hand over my face, pretending to cry.

Through my fingers, I watched the door.

Daniel would walk through it soon. He'd be wearing a hat, maybe. A coat. He'd look at the casket and he'd smile inside, thinking of his fortune, his whiskey, his castle.

He didn't know I'd already found the death certificate.

He didn't know I'd already called his wife.

He didn't know that when he walked into the funeral home, he'd be walking into a trap I'd been building for six months.

The organ swelled. The preacher stood. And the door at the back of the chapel opened.

A man stepped in.

Tall. Dark hair. A black coat over his shoulders. He moved with the easy confidence of a man who'd never been questioned in his life.

Daniel Ashford.

My husband.

He was alive.

And he was looking right at me.

I lowered my hands from my face and smiled.

His smile faltered.

That was the moment I knew I had him.